Passage this morning comes from John chapter one, verses six to eight. Continuing our series in John, but we will be going faster as we go through the book of John. I'll open us up in prayer and we'll go ahead and I'll read the scripture and we'll get into the sermon. Let us pray. Oh, holy God, you have spoken to us through your word. And you have promised in Isaiah, your word will not return empty, it will accomplish what you purpose it to do, because you are a gracious and holy and all powerful father. And so gracious father, speak the word of Jesus Christ to us and illumine our minds in the power of the Holy Spirit. that we may hear your word, we may listen to your word, and we may feed upon Jesus Christ. Help us, most holy and gracious Father. We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ, amen. Once again, our passage this morning comes from the book, The Gospel of John, chapter one, verses six to eight. There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to bear witness about the light that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever. So many of you know, who are good historians here, you've heard the story. Let's go back in time a little bit. It's 1775, it's April, and it's a still and it's a cold night. And silence permeates the air. And on this silent night, all of a sudden, it's shattered by the hoofbeats of a lone rider. This gentleman, he galloped through the countryside with lanterns flashing in the night, and he's warning the American patriots that the British are coming. Many of you know who this man is. It was Paul Revere. His mission was crucial. to alert the colonial militia of the impending British forces. His job was to give them precious time to prepare for the battles of Lexington and Concord. And just as Paul Revere heralded the coming of an important event that would change the course of history, you think of John the Baptist this way in this passage. He is a herald. He is a town crier. He is preparing the way for Jesus Christ, for Jesus Christ, who is the true light of the world. And much like Paul Revere was sent by the colonial government, he was part of the Sons of Liberty, John the Baptist, was sent by God to prepare the way for the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. We see here John the Baptist is the one who is crying out, which brings us to our main point today. And we'll break these up by each verse. Main point. God sent John the Baptist to point people to the Messiah, that they may approach him by faith alone in Christ alone. Remember, just a little background on John the Baptist. He was a forerunner of the Messiah. He went before the ministry of Jesus Christ. He was born six months before the Messiah, and he was a cousin of Jesus Christ. So there's a family connection between Jesus and John the Baptist. And if you remember, John the Baptist was filled with the Holy Spirit while he was in his mother's womb. He was specially called out for this heralding process. He was going to be a great prophet. His ministry was to turn hearts to the knowledge of God as revealed in Jesus Christ. John the Baptist also spent many years in the wilderness alone with God, eating honey and locusts. Remember growing up, I heard a pastor say, John the Baptist was eating locust burgers all day in the wilderness. Well, he was out and about in the wilderness alone. He was a prophet, and Jesus himself said that there was no man born of a womb that was greater than John. People, and let's remember the context before we get to our passage. People had failed to love the Lord their God alone. We don't have all the time for an Old Testament survey right now. But with an exilic process, where the people were exiled, they had failed to love the Lord their God alone. And here's John's ministry. It was one of awakening. He preached. and the power of the spirit of God. His ministry was one of repentance. You had Roman soldiers who were repenting. You had Pharisees who were repenting. You had the poor who were repenting, the rich who were repenting. John the Baptist had a ministry of awakening. This happened. because John the Baptist was a simple man with a simple message. And what was this simple man with a simple message? He pointed to the Messiah who was a lamb of God. He was sent for this purpose, which brings us to verse six, the man that God sent. So in most Bibles, there's a white page that separates the Old and the New Testament. What's interesting about this is, you know, there's nothing on the white page. But when you see that white page, you need to see 400 years. There was 400 years of silence from God to his people. Four hundred years. And remember, in the Old Testament, God had spoken to his people through prophets, through mediums, and ultimately through the Torah. But there was a prophet. Usually he would arise over time and he would speak to his people. So you can imagine what the people of God would be thinking. When will God speak to us? Things are bad. The temple is in a problem. There's mass apostasy. When will God speak to us? and in the stillness of the silence, finally, God sends a prophet, John the Baptist. And this is important for us for understanding John the Baptist. He's the last of the Old Testament prophets. You need to think of it like this. You have Isaiah, you have Jeremiah, Amos, Hosea, and you have John the Baptist, right? So when we look at our New Testament, we're like, oh, look, John the Baptist, he's a New Testament guy. No, no, no, no. I mean, that can be deceiving. John is the last of the old covenant before the new covenant, Jesus Christ. John the Baptist is the last of the Old Testament prophets. That's why he's wearing the camel's hair. He's going out into the wilderness because God would speak to his prophets in the wilderness. See, the whole Old Testament was pointing forth to a coming Messiah who would bring salvation. And now here comes John like a lightning bolt. And he's saying, look, the Messiah is here. Everything that was pointed to a Messiah, faith in the Christ that would come, faith in this Messiah. He is here. That's why it's important in this first verse that it mentions that John was a man. And this is important, because what have we previously been talking about when we talk about the prologue? In the beginning was the Word. In the beginning was the Logos. We're looking at how Jesus Christ is God, and yet here this verse, there's a contrast that John is a man. He's not the Messiah. He's a creature that God has made. And these verses are saying this because it's pointing us to Jesus Christ. John is the messenger. He's not the mediator. It's Christ alone who brings salvation. And hopefully, Lord, when we keep bringing this out, this passage is pointing to the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And it does this over and over in each verse. And since he's a man sent by God, this is showing that his calling is from heaven himself. So John didn't take this message up on himself. John didn't raise his hand one day and say, hey, I think things are a problem. I'm going to take it upon myself. No, from the moment that John was in his mother's womb, God had set him apart to preach the coming Messiah. You know, you look at the context in these surrounding verses, you see that this message comes from outside of this world. And that's because the world needs God to fix the problem of alienation from God. When I say the word alienation, this just means separation from God. You may have heard something like this. The answer to the problem is not the problem itself. So an example would be if you have like a really bad employee or you know that there's a really bad employee and you would say, well, we had to fix this problem and this has to get fixed. This employee cannot fix it. This employee cannot do the work to fix it. That is how humans are apart from Jesus Christ. We're bad employees. We cannot work our way to salvation. That's why Martin Luther really brought that out in the book of Galatians, and he was quoting Paul, and Martin Luther was getting the mind of Paul, was that if there was any way that humans can work their way to heaven, why did Jesus Christ have to get crucified on a cross? Why did he have to face the wrath of God? See, there needed to be one who would do the work, who would rise from the grave, who would conquer death. And that was the Lord Jesus Christ. And this is who John is pointing to. John himself. He's not the answer. God is the answer. And that's what John's name means. His name means Yahweh is gracious or his name means the gift of God. And see John here is pointing to the ultimate gift of God. And here's a theme that will come up throughout the book of John as we go through it. God is gracious. The world did not deserve God. The world deserved to stay in silence and not hear from God. But God, in his loving mercy, sent the word to take on flesh. And he had this plan going back in time. You see, in Psalm 82, even in the Old Testament, God was calling out to his people saying, come to me, return to me, leave your idols, leave your idols. And even in the end, God kept pursuing his people because God is a gracious and a faithful God. And so part of God being faithful is he sends the prophet John to call back a gracious, to graciously call back people. Maybe you can think in your life of parents, spouses, friends, children, someone who was gracious to you. You look back in your life, I know I do, And you look back in your life and you say, I am so glad that they were gracious to me, even with all of my problems, even with how I acted, even what I did. I am so grateful that they didn't treat me according to how I acted. They were gracious to me. If John was preaching to you this morning, he would want you to know that God is a gracious God. that you can turn from whatever sin you have in your life, that whatever is keeping you from God, how you treated someone, how you ran away from someone, John would call you, return to your gracious God. See, our minds are tainted by sin, and we think of God as a much bigger version of us, right? And that we would cast someone off if they acted like this, but God is a gracious God, and he calls his people back. And it's an unbiblical way to view God, and the Bible rejects this. When Adam and Eve saw God as ungracious, when the friends of Job saw God as ungracious, when many of the people in the Old Testament, the Old Covenant saw God as ungracious, when the disciples at times, when they interacted with Jesus, they thought of God as on a works-based relationship. And what does Jesus do right before the Lord's Prayer? Our Father who art in heaven. Our Father who art in heaven. God is a gracious God. And this brings us to verse seven, to the witness principle. So verse seven, you can see John's mission as a witness. So witness has another biblical context. In Deuteronomy, when Moses speaks to the people on behalf of God, Moses says, God is a witness in this covenant at this time. God would enter the covenant and they had a witness. And in the Old Testament, prophets would often act as witnesses. You need to see sometimes it's not completely analogous. You need to see the prophets as covenant lawyers and covenant witnesses. They would bring a lawsuit against the people of God for not for failing to love the Lord their God with all their heart, with all their mind and all their strength. And so when people didn't listen to God, when they didn't believe in His promises, and they would act really bad, God would speak, and the prophets would hear from God, and they would tell people, you are not being who you are. I mentioned him before, there was a great British preacher named Martin Lloyd-Jones, And he said the hardest thing in ministry is to get people to understand their identity and who they are in Jesus Christ, who they are in Christ. Many times people will go away from this, they will forget who they are in the relationship to this gracious God. And the prophets would witness to the people. He would say, you were saved out of the exodus event. God has saved you. You are covered by the blood of the Lamb. Return to your God. This is not who you are. And he would call out. Sometimes the people would hear, sometimes they wouldn't. And so when John is witnessing, once again, you remember that Old Covenant context I mentioned. John is a witness. He's pointing forward to the new covenant promise, Jesus Christ. He was repenting, he was preaching them about their law breaking and telling them about the hope that is found in the Messiah. So another way to think of John is he's a bridge builder. Think about like he's building a bridge from the Old Testament to the New Testament. And he's talking about the good news of the Lamb of God, of having faith in Jesus Christ. So once again, I won't bring it out too much before we move on, but you see the duality here. And why does this matter? The duality of John being the messenger, of the Logos in the previous passage, and we'll see the temple coming in the coming weeks, of the Son of God being God, of divinity, because only salvation can happen through the mediator. Only salvation can happen in faith alone, because flesh can do nothing to bring themselves before God. It must be faith in God alone. I'll skip ahead and read 12. We'll get to it next week. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God who were born not of blood, nor the will of flesh, nor the will of man, but of God. It is faith. in Christ alone that makes someone a child of God. And this was the purpose of John's mission. The purpose of John's mission was to bring people to faith in the Messiah. And John is witnessing here. Place your faith in the Messiah. Cast all on the Messiah. Surrender to him. Come to the Messiah with empty hands. And so the purpose of John's mission was to bring people to faith in Jesus Christ, to see Jesus and to see yourself and to behold the glory of Jesus Christ. And that's our purpose in many ways. There's many purposes. It's to bring ourselves to others, to bring ourselves into faith in Christ. So you may be asking, wait, you're converted once, you bring your faith in Jesus Christ. But we're supposed to live a lifestyle of faith. Let me give you some examples. When you are sick, you place faith that ultimately Jesus has healed you from the disease of sin. You thank God and rejoice that you have eternal life. When your life spins out of control and you're wondering what is happening right now, God holds you in his hands and has you. He still loves you and he will not leave you in the dark storm. When you receive material blessings, when things are going well, you realize it is God that has given this to you and your true inheritance is in Jesus Christ. When you want more, maybe you're hard on financial issues, you realize that my real inheritance is in Jesus Christ. when we live by faith in prayer and we pray to God to bring his kingdom into this world, when we pray for things that we want to see happen in our life, when we pray for God to move, we live by faith that God hears your prayers. We live a life of faith that we have been justified, that the nails of God slapped those nails. It was done by the Roman soldiers, but ultimately it was the hand of God that he took your sins and he nailed them to the cross and they are buried and they will stay in the grave and they will never come back. Jesus Christ took your sins to the cross when you feel that shame that you felt in your life. that you have adoption, that you are a child of God, and Jesus Christ makes you more like himself. When you are lonely, we live in a lonely world now with the rise of technology and social media, all the things that are happening, people are noticing. It's not just a Western problem. All across the world, the world is becoming lonelier for various reasons. You can know that you're not alone in Christ. You have fellowship with God above and you have your brothers and sisters in Christ. That alienation has been removed. You have faith in Jesus Christ. Faith is purposeful. It is specific and its focus is on Jesus Christ. And once again, that was John's purpose, was to bring people to faith. Finally, before we move on to our final verse, Robert Murray McShane once said, Every sin that you have, every look you take at your sin, take ten looks to Jesus Christ. Ten or not, I don't know how many you take. The point of what that Scottish preacher was making is that Jesus Christ is the object of our faith. He's the finisher and the author of our faith. That's who we focus on. We are always tempted not to focus on Christ. Point to something else, but true gospel humility is the answer, which brings us to verse three, John's gospel humility. This verse is repeating itself in a different way. It's saying that he was not the light. It's already made this point earlier. So why say this again? Why repeat this? This verse is making sure that you know that John is not the light, but Jesus Christ is the light. You know, in the book of Numbers, there was a bronze serpent, which when the people rebelled against God, when they grumbled, when they went against God, God sent fiery serpents onto the people for their sin and the rebellion. And the answer to that is that you would hold up a staff. And that was a sign. to point to the graciousness of God and to point to faith in God. And what happened is when they looked at that serpent, and that's what Jesus Christ would say in John chapter four, I'll be lifted up, so all men look to me, we'll get to that, but they would be healed of their sin. God healed them of their sin. But then what happens in 2 Kings, you see the people that kept that bronze statue, they put it in a temple. And then the people actually started worshiping that bronze statue instead of looking to faith in God. If we are careful, good things in our life can become idols. And that's what this text is implicitly warning us against. That even though John was the greatest prophet who ever lived, He is just a man sent by God. That's why when John who wrote this book, not John the Baptist, but the apostle John sees the angel in the book of Revelation, he wants to worship him. The angel once again says, you must not do that. Only God is worthy of worship. John the Baptist would have no problem looking at his life of commitment, his love to God, and he would want you to imitate that. But John would want you to know his name. Yahweh is gracious. John the Baptist once said, I must decrease so he may increase. It was not about John, but about Jesus Christ. You know, the old adage, you know, that the 16 year old birthday party and you have to tell the girl or the guy, hey, this is our before the child's birthday party. This party is not about you. It's about the other child. Maybe you've seen this where the child comes in and tries to make it about themselves. Or in a way, that's how we naturally are. We want to make it about ourselves or something else. And we don't want to make it about God and Jesus Christ. Humility looks away from us, from the self, and looks to Jesus Christ. Another way to put it is that John exalted Christ. He lifted up others before Jesus Christ. If you're proud of something, you may exalt in it. It's not necessarily bad. You can exalt in your family, your job, or a trait that you have, and that's not necessarily wrong to exalt something or to lift it up, but oftentimes you can honor and praise it up. John the Baptist is lifting up Jesus Christ because John does not want people to see him. He wants people to see Jesus Christ. The purpose of a window is for people to see through it. It's a window, it's not a mirror, and you see the reflection there. And usually when there's like these, I know there's nice windows, but usually when you see this great, beautiful view, someone will say, oh, that's a beautiful window. No, they won't say that. They'll say, that's a beautiful view, because what's the purpose of a window? The purpose of a window is to show this beautiful, great view what lies beyond the window. Well, that's what John here is being. He is a window showing Jesus Christ. This verse is showing the source of John's message. It's not John and it's not about him. I mean, how many of us would have struggled? Why couldn't we make this a little bit more about us? We would have struggled with this, maybe. But John the Baptist here is making it about him. We mentioned a moment ago how a window, you can see through it. What do you have to do to make a window very clean? You have to clean it, because even at the end of the day, We need to show forth Jesus Christ in our lives. Final application here, we are the church of Christ. The church's mission is to witness about Jesus Christ. That's one of our main missions, to gather the elect of saints and perfect the saints by proclaiming and pointing them to Jesus Christ. And how is this done? It's not something we do. It's not something exalted in us. It's by exalting Christ and lifting him up. And through the exaltation of Christ comes union and fellowship with the triune God. And so as we leave you this morning, as we conclude, I wanted to conclude on this final application. We're entering into a new season here as a church. Things are, we're having conversations, we're going forward, but no matter what happens, we need to keep this in mind. As the catechism says, Westminster Catechism, what's the chief end of man? To glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. And part of that, that's kind of the big grand thing, but one of the missions that's underneath that is that we are to exalt Christ and point forth to Jesus Christ. Another way to say it is that we should be a gospel church. We should be a gospel church. We should focus on pointing Jesus Christ. And this is a simple thing we could take with us in any avenue of life. I remember when I had Lionel, I did have it, Sarah did, when we had Lionel, I started reading all of these books on parenting. And they were helpful. But the really good books on parenting always came back to this. Point your children to Jesus Christ. Be holy, love Jesus Christ, love the Lord your God with all of your heart, all of your soul, all of your mind and all of your strength. Pray for your children in the name of Christ and point your children to Jesus Christ. It's the same thing with missions. There's all of these different books and there's all of these books on church planning and missions and they're great. They can be helpful. But if a church forgets, if a church plant, if a missionary forgets to point to Jesus Christ, to exalt Jesus Christ, there will be problems. Or another way to put it, when I was listening to some old seminary lectures on the church, the program of the church is Jesus Christ. Does that make sense? You know, you can almost look at different things the church can do in the program. The program or the method and the means of a church is the Lord Jesus Christ himself. Point to Jesus. I promise I'm concluding. This is a conclusion to the conclusion. In my first calling, I was counseling. And there was a gentleman, and I still had a good conversation with him. He's a lovely Christian man. But he started telling me about things he needed help with. And it was about two minutes into it, and I was like, oh no, what do I say? He was bringing me a problem, and I was like, I am not equipped to handle this. I should have listened more to my counseling classes in seminary. You know, I should have done more of that. And I was just like, what am I gonna do? And I just, whatever it did, I just kept pointing him to Jesus Christ. And I remember I talked to an older minister and I told him the story. He was like, well, honestly, that's probably one of the best things you could do. You pointed them to Jesus Christ. You don't have to have all the answers. You just need to listen and point them to Jesus Christ. And so that is our purpose. And we should make this a practice in our life holistically, in our jobs, in our families. And when we interact with people and in our church, we should hold out the message of John the Baptist and hold up the Messiah, Jesus Christ. Let us take that to our hearts and apply to our lives. In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, let us pray. Our most holy and gracious Father, we thank you that you sent John the prophet to preach Jesus Christ. Thank you for sending him, for pointing to the Messiah. And thank you for giving us your word that points to the living word, the Messiah. Father, may we look to Jesus Christ. May we never go to anything else. May we remember that it is the Messiah who is our wisdom, who is our righteousness, who is our sanctification. As Paul says in the book of Colossians, O Father, he is our redemption. He is who we are united to. And we walk by faith as we have received him. So most Holy Father, we ask that you would give us faith, that we would live by faith and see Jesus Christ and he would nourish us. and He would give us more life, and we would walk in sweet communion with You, our great Shrining God. We pray this in the name of Jesus.