JOHN167 - When the Stakes Were Highest and the Pressure Was On, John the Baptist Came through Perfectly

Hey everybody, it's Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible Hour Podcast. And today we are in John chapter 3, which is a chapter built of just basically two stories that involve a lot of conversation. And this story that we're looking at, the second of the two stories, involves Jesus and John the Baptist. And I think this is a pretty emotional story that we get here at the end of John chapter three.

I think this is particularly a pretty emotional passage that we're going to look at today. And part of the reason it's so emotional is well, one, it's just it's the last thing we hear from John the Baptist. And he's been a great character. He's been very important to the story. He's not going to be on screen again through the rest of John or anywhere in the rest of the Bible.

This is it for the Baptist. Wow. I mean, it's too soon, right? But also, I think this is an emotional passage because John the Baptist is at a crossroads. There's a situation where people have really liked him and really celebrated him, but he knows that his purpose is to direct attention to Jesus. And now all of a sudden it's being put to a test.

There's an incident that's unfolding, and all the spotlights are shining on John the Baptist, all kinds of pressure. Which way is he gonna break? Is he gonna let his normal human pride get the best of him and be like, yeah, look at me? Or is he gonna stick to his guns all the way to the very end? I am here to point people to Jesus.

Look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Which one is he gonna do? If he gives his vouch to Jesus, it basically transfers all of his credibility and authority toward Jesus. If he doesn't, he's causing a gigantic split in the church before there's even a church. He has the ability right here in this moment to do tremendous good or maybe nearly irreparable damage.

It's all hinging right now, or it seems like it from the perspective of the story, on the character of this guy and the commitment to what his life has been about. Will he come through now that the pressure and the stakes are high? So this is an emotional passage that we're looking at here. And the, you know, John 3 is a really interesting chapter structurally because it's just two situations, two conversations.

And in the first one, we get a bunch of stuff, and then it isn't really marked with quotations, but it looks like after we get a whole bunch of stuff from Jesus and Nicodemus, then we get some commentary on it from John the Evangelist, the guy writing the book of John. And then the second half of John three is a big situation and a social dynamic, just like the first half of John 3.

And then we hear from John the Baptist, and then, well, there aren't really quotation marks in ancient Greeks. We can't really tell exactly where it ends, but it looks like the last little bit of chapter three is again John the Evangelist offering commentary on the story we just heard. We'll talk more about that tomorrow.

But for now, this big, emotional, important payoff scene is at hand. And it goes like this Jesus and his disciples leave Jerusalem in the conversation with Nicodemus. They go out and they're baptizing pretty close to where John the Baptist is baptizing. And there's an argument with some of John the Baptist's disciples and some random Jewish guy.

And in the course of debating it all, the it comes up that, well, Jesus is over there baptizing too. And that alarms John the Baptist's disciples, and they go back over to John the Baptist and are like, Rabbi, the guy who you baptized and the one you testified about? Well, now he's baptizing, and everybody's going over to him.

And then this is the moment that I've been setting up. You know, it's we're on a razor's edge. What will John the Baptist, the guy with all the cards in a human sense, the all the clout, the guy who's holding the trigger, he's got his finger on the button. He's the one who is the decider in this situation.

What will he do? Will he act like a normal person and take care of himself? Or will he follow through on what his purpose in life is, which is to point people to Jesus? Well, here's what happens. John 3, 27. The disciples of John the Baptist have just asked him the question, and to this John replied, A man can only receive what is given him from heaven.

You yourselves can testify that I said, I am not the Christ, but am sent ahead of him. The bride belongs to the bridegroom. The friend who attends the bridegroom waits and listens for him, and is full of joy when he hears the bridegroom's voice. That joy is mine, and it is now complete. He must become greater, I must become less.

Dang! He came through. That's what he was here for. It all boiled down to this moment, as things so often do. There's one crucial pivotal. Throw the ring into the volcano and destroy it, or cling to it and get what you imagine to be yours kind of moment. And John passes the test. He accomplishes what he's here to accomplish, and those are the last words we get from John the Baptist in the Bible.

Now, some people, in fairness, do argue that what comes next is best understood as being more from John the Baptist, but I'm not going to treat it that way. I think again, this is commentary from John the Evangelist that we get next. And I like the fact, I like the idea that the last words of John the Baptist, the sign-off would be, he must become greater, I must become less.

That's an all-time great public goodbye, farewell. It's been awesome knowing you, but I'm done here. It's like Lou Gehrig's speech in 1939. He got ALS. I mean, the disease is named after him, Lou Gehrig's disease. He was strong as an ox. He was ultra famous. He was in the prime of his life. And then he gets hit with this thing, and he gives one of the most remarkable farewell sign-off speeches ever.

He says, Fans, for the past two weeks you've been reading about the bad break I got. Yet today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth. So I close in saying that I might have been given a bad break, but I've got an awful lot to live for. And for all intents and purposes in the public consciousness, that's the last thing we heard from Lou Gehrig.

That was his sign-off. It wasn't self-aggrandizing. It was wrapped in humility. It was pointing toward something better. It demonstrated concern for the people who were hearing him and who would come after him. We get the same kind of thing from John the Baptist. Or how about Charlotte's Webb? Did you read that book when you were a kid by W.B.

No, not W.B. Dubois, uh E.B. White? I read it as a little kid, and then I read it more recently because my kids were going through school. And as a little kid, I thought it was kind of the first chapter book I ever read that had real emotion and real stakes and loss and all of that. Going back through it again as an adult, I saw more themes.

And one of the themes that really popped is how much Charlotte in the book kind of reminds me of John the Baptist. There's this little pig named Wilbur, and he's the runt. And the little girl on the farm finds out that her favorite little pig, Wilbur, is going to get fattened up for the slaughter. And she begs for that not to happen.

And the parents send the pig away so that that'll still happen, but maybe the little girl won't see it. And so Wilbur ends up at this other farm, and eventually he finds out what the plan is. He's going to get turned into bacon. And he laments about this to his barn mate, this old gray spider named Charlotte.

And they're not even really close, but she cares and makes his problem her problem. And she has to come up with, you know, she says she'll come up with a plan to save him. Now, this part doesn't closely parallel Jesus and John the Baptist, but I think this next part kind of does. And so she figures out that what she can do is just use what's left of her life energy to hype up Wilbur.

So it turns out this spider, she can write in English, and she weaves into her web some pig right above Wilbur, and everybody's in awe of this. And then later she weaves into her web the words, I'm not sure if I radiant is one of them, fantastic or terrific is the other. And people get really excited, and the minister comes, and eventually Wilbur gets taken to the state fair, and there's one last writing with her last energy that Charlotte puts in the web above him, and the word is humble.

And well, it looks like story-wise, Wilbur makes it because of Charlotte's vouch. She took everything that was left of her and she invested it in hyping Wilbur. And when I read it as a kid, this didn't occur to me, but when I went back to it more recently, this did. Nobody ever cared about the fact that there was a spider that could write, they just all gawked at the pig.

Which makes sense. It's pretty cool. But like nobody, nobody really made a big fuss about Charlotte. Her whole role was make Wilbur more and make herself less. Look, obviously, there are all kinds of problems and dangerous heresies that could be associated with this analogy. Take this for what it's worth.

The theme that I appreciate about Charlotte's web and the way I think it applies here is just the attitude of John the Baptist and how similar it is to Charlotte. The idea that, no, I really I know what I'm doing here. This is my exercise, this is my point, this is my role in this thing. And if people don't notice me spinning this web of glory pointing to Jesus, well, that's the point.

That means I've done a good job. Great, fine. And so you get this incredible pivotal moment where most people would want a victory lap. Most people would want to be celebrated. They'd want to go out on their own terms. But John the Baptist, his disciples come to him and they're like, the Jesus thing is it's taken off.

And he's like, Is it good? That was the point. That's what I was here for. Yeah, but like, we'll stick up for you and stuff. You want us to go like, I mean, I they didn't say that, but the intonation is we should do something about his popularity. And John the Baptist is he uses the example of a wedding in verse 29.

I mean, come on, guys, picture picture a wedding. It's about the bride and the groom, right? And if I'm asked to be, and I'm using modern wedding terms, this isn't exactly probably how they did weddings back then, but if I'm asked to be the best man, my job isn't to get all of the attention. My job is to make this amazing and heap all of the attention on the groom.

He and his bride, they're the point of the exercise here. And I'm supposed to be genuinely happy for them, not because I get anything, but because this is love and it's true and it's real, and that's my role here. And then John the Baptist says in so many words, and I did it. That joy is mine. That that metaphor, I've experienced that joy, and it is now complete.

Whoo. Well, tomorrow we'll talk about, you know, other kind of completionist sign-offs, but what a dramatic sign-off from John the Baptist. Okay, I did what I was here to do. It is complete. From here on out, the trajectories have to go like this He must become greater, I must become less. And especially if you're talking about Jesus, God in the flesh, those are pretty good last words.

Hi five John the Baptist. See you around. I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do this again soon.

JOHN167 - When the Stakes Were Highest and the Pressure Was On, John the Baptist Came through Perfectly

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