The True Friend of the Groom

John the Baptist’s Witness to Jesus

John chapter three, verses 22 to 30. After this, Jesus and his disciples went into the Judean countryside, and he remained there with them and was baptizing. John also was baptizing at Anon near Salem, because water was plentiful there and people were coming and being baptized, for John had not yet been put into prison.

Now, a discussion arose between some of John's disciples and a Jew over purification, and they came to John and said to him, "'Rabbi, he who was with you across the Jordan "'to whom you bore witness, look, he is baptizing, "'and all are going to him.'.

John answered, "'A person cannot receive even one thing "'unless it is given him from heaven. "'You yourselves bear me witness that I said, "'I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before him. "'The one who has the bride is the bridegroom.

"'The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, "'rejoices greatly at the bridegroom's voice. "'Therefore, this joy of mine is now complete. "'He must increase, "'but I must decrease.'". Please be seated.

Let us pray together. Father, as we approach your word, we remember with great fear and trembling the words that Moses spoke to the children of Israel, that even to this day, the Lord had not given them a heart to understand or eyes to see or ears to hear, but that their hearts were hardened despite the many signs they saw in the wilderness.

And so we pray, Lord, we ask you now, let this not happen to us. We remember that Christ, who is the greater Moses, acts as our prophet. He executes the office of a prophet by revealing to us your will for our salvation with both the word and the spirit.

And so now we pray and ask that you would pour out your Holy Spirit, that we might not resist your word, that we would humble ourselves before it. I ask for myself that you would guard my mouth, that I would not say anything contrary to your word.

I pray this in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, amen. Well, as we look at this passage, it's sort of introduced with a bit of a puzzling series of events. The events themselves are not puzzling, but John does not really explain to us what the connection between all of these events are.

He tells us, first of all, that Jesus is baptizing in one region, and John is baptizing not too far away. And then John's disciples get into this discussion with some unnamed Jew. And this discussion has something to do with purification and something to do with baptism.

And then they come to John concerned about Jesus. So we see all these things are kind of being mixed together, but the logical connection between all of these things, John does not lay out for us. And I think this is not a problem for us.

We often affirm that the word of God tells us all we need for faith and godliness, or those things that we ought to believe concerning God and what duty God requires of us, and not that it will tell us every curiosity that we will have.

In fact, Deuteronomy 29, 29 reminds us that there are some things that belong to the Lord our God, while those things that are revealed to us, that is what we are to cling to, that is for us and for our children forever.

Now, it is notable, however, but I'm going to largely resist the temptation to go into baptism here. It is notable that they are using lots of water, but I think you want to go to passages like Matthew 28, dealing with disciples, or 1 Peter 3, dealing with reminding us that baptism, its relationship to salvation, is not like water washing away dirt, but is an appeal to God for a good conscience.

And go to those passages for that, and probably not this passage. We can see what John is doing here with these verses, however. He is setting us up for the rest of the passage. He is sort of framing the question to set up the response that John the Baptist will give.

So, regardless of what this first conversation was, and whether that Jew even understood the relationship of baptism to purification, somehow this unsettled the disciples of John. And so, they go to John the Baptist, and they now are concerned because they have noticed that everyone is leaving John the Baptist and his preaching, and is now running to Jesus and hearing him preach.

And we know that some of Jesus' closest disciples, for example, Andrew, were told in John 1 .40 that he was originally following after John. And when he heard John proclaim that Jesus is the Lamb of God, Andrew stops following John, and he goes and he starts following Jesus.

And so, we can see that John, who was once a great phenomenon, he was the guy everyone was talking about, has suddenly lost the spotlight. And his disciples are very concerned about this. It seems as if they are very defensive over their teacher.

And perhaps you have a teacher that you love or somebody that you look up to as a role model, and if you feel like that person is not getting the glory he deserves, you would also become defensive for his sake and want to sort of remind everyone, no, my teacher is great, too.

It seems that John or his disciples are doing this for his sake. Now, John then gives a response, and I think it's very helpful to look at, not just the contents of John's response, but really his way of getting to his conclusion.

John Applies God’s Word Rather Than Prophesying

Because I think John here does some very good theology for us, and he sets a good example for us about how we ought to do theology. So, if we look at it, we can actually see it's almost a logical syllogism.

It's not exactly in that form, but it is essentially there. So we can see in verse 27, John tells us that a person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given to him from heaven. The second premise he puts in verse 28, you yourselves bear me witness that I said I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before him.

Premise three, the one who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom who stands and hears him rejoices greatly at the bridegroom's voice. Therefore, this joy of mine is now complete.

And then his final statement, he must increase and I must decrease. Now, I think we want to stop and think, what is John doing? Well, he has this situation that his disciples have brought to him. And John is, he is taking theological truths that he knows, he is sort of putting them together logically, and he is applying them to this situation.

I think it might be helpful to ask, and more enlightening to ask, what is John not doing? And one notable thing that John is not doing is John is not prophesying. Even though John is a prophet, arguably one of the greatest prophets.

Jesus will even say of those born of women, there is none greater than John. But John here, he is not prophesying. He cites a prophecy, he cites one that he makes. But he is not prophesying. And I think it's important to see this here because it can often feel tempting to think, if I just had this prophetic word from God, I could just zap all of my problems.

But we need to remember that for most of God's people, for most of history, this simply was not an option. Even though the Bible itself is filled with stories of prophecies, we need to remember we are getting largely the highlight reels of redemptive history.

And there are hundreds and thousands of years going on in between. And even a situation like with Moses, we see there's that scene in Deuteronomy where his father-in-law comes and Moses is sitting there judging for the people.

And everyone is surrounding Moses and asking Moses, what should we do in this situation and what should we do in that situation? And this takes all day and his father-in-law tells him, this just isn't gonna work.

Moses, you are going to wear yourself out. And his father-in-law tells him to appoint different judges who can handle the easier cases. If the issue is that person A took person B's cow, that is not a difficult situation to solve.

Give him back his cow. And then you sort of have this ladder, so to speak, and eventually Moses is at the top. And so only the most difficult questions are getting answered by Moses. And so we see even in Deuteronomy, even when Moses is walking in the midst of the camp, even when you do have a prophet and the lawgiver in the midst of the people of Israel, they are still taking the precepts, the word of God given to them, entrusted to them, and applying it to their lives.

And we can see this throughout redemptive history. Remember the passages like Deuteronomy 13, verses one to five we're told, oops, sorry, I messed up my notes. We'll come to that. Luke 16, verses 27 to 31.

And this is the story of the rich man and Lazarus. And the rich man is burning in hell and he asks Abraham to send Lazarus to his brothers. And he says, that I beg you, father, to send him to my father's house, for I have five brothers so that he may warn them lest they also come into this place of torment.

But Abraham said, they have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them. And he said, no, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent. He said to them, if they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.

And here we have just, I think, a very important point that if we refuse to hear and believe the word of God, then there is nothing that would have persuaded us. Even if a man were to rise from the dead, and I think Jesus probably is telling this parable with a sense of irony as he tells it, realizing that he will, in fact, rise from the dead in the near future and they will still refuse to believe, proving the point being made in this parable.

And Jesus will hammer away again and again that the reason the Pharisees and others refused to believe him is because they did not believe Moses and the prophets. And so the issue was an issue of believing and receiving the word of God and not need for so many other things.

Now, I think this is important, and honestly, I think it's so empowering or so helpful to know that whatever situation I run into, whatever decision I have to make in my life, that I have what I need.

I have God's word. Now, how does this work itself out practically? Well, I think we run into many situations, we can run into anything, and we will have to ask ourselves, based off God's word, is this something commanded by God's word?

Is this something forbidden by God's word? Or is this, in a third category, something that it does not expressly tell us? And if it's commanded, we naturally must do it. If it's forbidden, we must not do it.

But then we have that category of Christian liberty. And if it's in that category, we can choose to do what seems best to us. We can use our best wisdom and trust in God's providence to work out the rest.

Now, some may argue that we are rejecting the spirit in articulating this, but I would remind us that we believe that it is God's spirit working through God's word. As the Baptist catechism will often remind you that Christ does execute the office of a prophet in revealing to us by his word and his spirit the will of God for our salvation.

Or much earlier, that the light of nature tells us there is a God, but it is through his word and his spirit only does it work effectually for the salvation of his people. And it's this idea that we have to understand God's word in clear categories and learn to apply it to our lives that really stirred up the desire to build or to create catechisms to help in that process.

Oftentimes, you'll hear people making catechisms cite Hebrews 5 .12, telling us that, for though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God.

You need milk and not solid food. And say, we need these basic principles. We need to understand them and understand them well and learn to apply these principles to our lives. Now, as we go into the individual contents of what John is saying, we see in verse 27, he gives us the first statement that a person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given him from heaven.

Now, how does John know this? Well, he may have inferred this from the Old Testament. There are different passages that they may not say that exactly, but that idea is placed before our minds. Or he may have just inferred that from common sense.

And yet, this principle is laid out throughout scripture if you look for it, that everything that we received is something that God has given to us. There is nothing that we have that we can rightfully say to God, this is mine.

When we are interacting with each other, there are, we have an idea of property. I earned this, you can't take it from me. But when we are dealing with God, we have to remember that there is nothing that we have that we did not receive.

For John the Baptist could have said, wait a minute, I have worked hard for my accomplishments. He certainly did. It seems very likely that John was probably taught like his father in all of the training that would go with a priestly family.

It is very notable that John, he lives kind of a rough and tumble life in the wilderness. He is not living in a king's palace. No, he is in the wilderness eating locusts, which I think probably sounded about as gross to them as it sounds to us.

He is rugged like Elijah, and the comparisons are many and intentional. John the Baptist, we see in other places, he has to challenge many powerful people. He tells the scribes and Pharisees that they are a brood of vipers, something that is not going to make him popular.

And we also get a note at the beginning of this passage, John will be arrested by Herod. Why? Because he tells him that his marriage to his stepsister or his, sorry, his sister-in-law is not lawful.

He is breaking God's command. So John, he does not have an easy life. He worked hard to accomplish the things he accomplished. But in the sight of God, what does John have to complain about? John, I think, rightfully understands that everything he has, the mouth he speaks with is a gift from God.

The mind he remembers is a gift from God. And so he tells us that everything we receive or everything we have is something that we received. And I think this helps us understand that principle that the Bible is full of, that we need to both work hard, but understand that everything we have done is by God's gift.

There's nothing that we can say, God, this is mine. You had nothing to do with this. I think Psalm 127 verses one and two lay this principle out probably in its clearest. For we are told, unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.

Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. It is in vain that you rise up early and go to late, go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil, for he gives to his beloved sleep.

And here we are told that the workmen who work on a house, if God does not bless them, their work is going to be in vain. Now, I am not particularly handy and I don't build things, but when you see people who are building things, that is hard work.

They have to be careful. They have to work hard. And yet we're told you can work as hard as you want. You can double check everything. And if God does not build that house, it's all in vain. Likewise, with those who, the watchmen who watch over the city, they can be as sharp as they want.

They can drink as many Red Bulls as they can find. They can do whatever they want. And yet, if God is not watching over the city, all of their work is in vain. In vain, you rise up early and go late to rest.

My father's side of the family is Chinese and hard work is emphasized. Getting up early, going late to bed, and knocking out as much work as possible, this is something that is of great value in my family.

And yet, remembering that all the work that you put in, all of that, all the times you skipped over the fun things so that you could get more work done, or all of that, that is going to come to nothing if God does not bless you.

And just remembering, holding these two ideas together, this is very important. In Deuteronomy 8, verses 17 to 19, God tells the people of Israel, beware, lest you say in your heart, my power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.

You shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your fathers, as it is this day. And if you forget the Lord your God and go after other gods and serve them and worship them, I solemnly warn you today that you shall surely perish.

And so God tells them that he is going to bless them, but he's very much aware, and he warns them of the temptation to think, when they succeeded, yeah, I did a good job here. I knocked that out. You know, I don't think I needed God.

I had that under control. I've lived for long enough that I've seen the pattern, and I suspect we have all experienced the pattern of, as we are facing a difficult situation, we are petrified of what is going to happen.

We find ourselves praying, begging God to save us in any way. We feel like Peter walking on the water with the storm around us, and we are sinking, and the only thing we can say is, Lord, save. And then, when we finish, when we get through it, and everything seems great, we look back and we say, wow, wasn't I great back then?

This is fantastic. And we forget about the feelings of terror that we had, our desperation, and we believe that it was our doing throughout the whole thing. Now, why is this principle important to us?

God’s Gifts Make Faithfulness More Important Than Status

I think this principle is incredibly important to us because, in many senses, this is the great equalizer among all of humanity. Because when we go before God, none of us can brag about our accomplishments.

Rather, for the Christian, the concern is how faithful were we with what God entrusted to us? Did we take what God gave us and make the most of it, or did we squander it, waste our time, do frivolous things?

I think the parable in Matthew 25 of the talents, where the talents are entrusted to the people, and the question is, how faithful were you with what God has entrusted to you? And not, who got God the most money?

Because God did not need money. He does not need our work. And so, among humans, among us, it's kind of, it's easy, or pretty easy, to determine who is the important person in the room, who is sort of the top dog.

If we ask who is more important, the President of the United States or the janitor who cleans the floor, it's an easy question for us. We say, the President makes these important decisions. He does all this stuff.

Almost anyone can do the janitor's job. The President is clearly more important. But before God, the one who spoke creation into existence, even the great achievements of a great President simply are laughable.

Will any President go to God and say, God, you're really lucky that I did this. If I didn't do that, it would have been really bad. No, God would laugh at that. And so, faithfulness is what we are going to be measured by, not how many things we did.

And I think this is important for us because it is very possible, and I expect we will find this to be the case, that on Judgment Day, the people, the quiet people in the back of your church who you never noticed, will be highly esteemed in God's eyes.

And some people that we all see as doing great things for God are going to be less esteemed. Not because they did not do those great things, but because God had entrusted to them more things and they were not as faithful with what they had.

I try to remind my mother of this at times, who raised all eight of us, and there are many things that she gave up that she was not able to do because I and my brothers took a lot of time. And yet, being faithful with what she was given is what God is concerned with.

John’s Ministry Was a Prelude to Christ

Now, if we continue on to verse 28, John reminds us that, "'You yourself bear me witness that I said, "'I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before him.'". So John makes this, on the surface level, rather obvious statement that he is not the Christ and he never claimed to be, although some people did wonder if he was the Christ.

But I think John has a bigger point than just he is not the Messiah, sort of an implication of that idea. John is not the Messiah, and so this is not his show. Really, his part of his ministry is just a prelude to the ministry of Jesus, and that is going to be important.

And I think that point is important for us to understand because we may not ever be tempted to think or claim that we are the Christ, but we are often tempted to believe that what we are doing, that's the primary show.

This is the thing that needs to happen. And if we are to lose that, that's simply unacceptable. We need this to happen. And so we can imagine ourselves being in a situation where we have to give something up and we simply do not want to give it up.

We think this is too important. I can imagine different situations. Perhaps it is simply that we love it when our kids are small and they like getting hugs and cuddles, and we don't want to sort of give that up and let them grow up, but that is something that God asks us to give up.

Or we can sympathize with someone who thinks that I have been doing this thing a long time. I have been working here and I am good at this, and I have done so much and I don't want to give it up. After all, we can probably sympathize with John the Baptist.

As we said earlier, he worked hard, and you can imagine what it was like for John, the good feelings he had of a job well done. When he sees crowds coming out to him and just dying to hear God's word.

We remember in Malachi that we're told that John is going to turn the children to the fathers and the fathers to the children, sort of reconciling and bringing Israel to a point of repentance, lest God come with judgment.

And we're told earlier in, or rather in Luke, that John is having these people come to him and say, I want to repent, what should I do? He's having the tax collectors abandon their evil ways and listen to God's word.

He's seeing Romans, Roman soldiers asking him, how is it that I can be made right with God? He probably has so many people telling him about all the good that his preaching has done for them. And now, all of that, the joy that he felt when he saw his work making people's lives better, he saw people coming to repentance.

He now has to watch all those feelings go away with his ministry. Not because he did anything wrong, but because it is being shifted over to Christ. And we can imagine that he had to have felt the temptation to be a little resentful that he is losing that, because it feels good to help people.

It feels good to receive the praise of those people. And it would not be wrong for John to enjoy helping people. Those are good feelings, but you can imagine he would resent having to lose it, that he at least would be tempted with that feeling.

I used to be a great preacher that everyone listened to, but now the crowds are gone. And yet, John the Baptist gives us an analogy that sort of turns that whole idea on its head, that he should want to keep the crowds.

Look at the description he gives. He tells us that it is not, he gives this wedding analogy. Now, we have probably all been to weddings, or at least most of us, and some of us have probably been to quite a few.

And as we all know, when weddings happen, there is a lot of work going into them. And a lot of people put a lot of hours into making these things happen. And yet, on the wedding day itself, all the attention is going to the bride and the groom.

Everyone else is kind of sidelined. And that is the way it is supposed to be. This is supposed to focus on the main event, not on sort of the sidelines. And in some families, you have that relative, that relative that nobody really wants to invite to their wedding, but they feel like they have to, and there's that fear that sort of hangs over the entire event among some of the relatives, that this person is going to make a scene at the wedding.

They are going to try and basically suck up all the attention to themselves and not allow it to go to the person or the people that deserve the attention. The attention belongs to the bride and the groom, and yet this relative is going to try and make the wedding all about them.

And if you have one of those people in your family, I think we are rightfully repulsed by this person who tries to kind of crash the wedding and hijack it and steal the attention. We are frustrated, we're disgusted.

The Friend of the Groom Rejoices When Christ Increases

That feeling of disgust, that's the idea that John wants to sort of hit the resentment that Jesus is increasing with. It's, no, if I were to do that, I would be like that crazy relative who comes in and ruins your wedding.

My job is to support the groom. The people are supposed to go with the Christ. The people are not supposed to go with me. Actually, John takes this a step further. He would not just be like that crazy relative.

No, he would be like someone who tries to come in and steal the bride, taking this to simply a level that's unthinkable. Those feelings of why is God, why is God taking my ministry or my work away from me?

Why, I was doing so well. That would be like somebody coming in and trying to steal the bride from the bridegroom. That is simply unthinkable. And so our feelings of why is God taking this from me? Why don't I get to keep it?

John is telling us that we need to take those ideas and say, I am acting like that person trying to steal the bride from the groom. I am doing something unthinkable. The people belong to the Christ. They do not belong to me.

This is not my show. And so the question, I think, the important question that we really need to consider is, well, how do I know if I'm being the faithful friend as John was being, or if I am being that person sort of making the scene, this person trying to steal the attention or the bride herself?

How do I know if I am the true friend of the groom or if I am that unwanted relative? And I think this final conclusion that John gives to us, this is going to be the test. This is going to be how we know.

John tells us, I must decrease and he must increase. And so when these situations come up, when we are faced with a situation where we have to give something up for the sake of Christ, this is how we are going to know.

This is when it really counts, because really until a contentious issue comes up, we can all live together happily and we don't really know where people's ultimate loyalties lie. Lots of people can proclaim themselves Christians if it's easy to be a Christian, if the culture aligns with Christianity or with Christianity on a certain point.

Remember, at the end of the book of Esther, there's just a short little line, but I think it's very insightful, that after Esther and Mordecai triumph and the Jews have this great triumph, we're told, then many declared themselves Jews.

When they saw that, it seemed like when Mordecai is now an important advisor to the king and Esther is the queen and it looks like the Jews are on the upswing, there are many who declared themselves to be Jews.

Now, it's unclear in Esther if they are actually Jews who are just hiding their identity before or if they're just kind of frauds, and yet that's an important sign that when things are going well, it's easy to jump on the bandwagon.

But when things are difficult, when you have to give up things that you love, things that may be good, that is when it reveals where your ultimate loyalties lie. Who are you? Are you the true friend or are you the person in it for yourself?

Persevering in Faith and Repentance

Now, I think it is, of course, important to remember that we are all going to fail at this. We can all look back in our lives and see those times of testing where we failed and we clearly chose ourselves.

And for those times, I think we can take great comfort in the knowledge that we are not, we are not saved by our good works. This is not what makes us right before God. We are saved by our faith in Christ and in that alone.

And yet, I think the question still remains, despite the fact that these failures happen to everyone, we all sin against God in this way, do we find ourselves going back and repenting again and again?

Or are we simply making excuses for ourselves? That's not a big deal. Oh well, we didn't, that's too much for God to ask me. Are we like, I find it helpful to remember that image of Jacob when he wrestles with God.

Here, Jacob is wrestling with God all night and he has his socket blown out and Jacob is just kind of clinging to God and he's with all of his might and he's saying, I'm not going to let you go until you bless me.

Now, Jacob obviously can't force God to do anything, but that desire of Jacob, I am going to cling to God even though I'm dragging or being dragged through the dirt, dirty in the mud and yet still clinging to his one hope that God would bless him.

Or are we like those people in another parable that Jesus tells us in Luke 14, who when they are invited to the wedding, they do not come to the wedding, but they all make excuses. They give this excuse or that excuse and really we find that this is not just a one-off failure, this is them showing that God and his concerns are just not that important.

Yeah, they would love to be at the wedding if it isn't too inconvenient, but once it's inconvenient, once they have something else to do, they're out of here. No, we need to cling to Christ, we need to hold like Jacob did.

Because as Jesus reminds us, those who refuse to come to the wedding, they get shut out. And we do not want that for ourselves. No, we need Christ, we need to cling to him with all of our might. Let us pray.

Father, we have all had times when we heard your word preached, when we understood your word, and then we walked away and forgot about it, or we allowed the concerns of this life to sort of choke out our knowledge of the word or we allowed the worries of this or that thing to cause us to forget.

And so we pray now, Lord, do not let that happen this time. Rather, Lord, we ask that you would not let us be like the stony ground where the word is choked out, but let us be like the good ground. Let us receive your word with faith and love.

Let us store it up in our hearts. Let us practice it in our lives that we may grow fruit 30, 60, and a hundredfold, we pray. And we ask this all in Jesus' name, amen. Amen.