Jesus is the Greatest

Thanks very much, Olivia. Good morning, everyone. Great to have you with us, whether you're here in the building or watching online.

Let's start with a question, and our question this morning is, who wants to be a goat?

That may sound a rather strange question and say, well, why would anyone want to be a goat?

But actually, there are lots of people who might want to be considered a goat.

Here's four possibilities. Who is the male tennis goat? Is it Lever, Federer, Nadal, or Djokovic?

Or who's the football goat? Do you think Pele, Maradona, Messi, Ronaldo, maybe someone else?

Or the female singer goat? Rita, Whitney, Beyoncé, Taylor?

You can probably add half a dozen names, depending on your age and your musical tastes.

In case you're not aware of it, goat is an acronym for greatest of all time.

And these people I put on the screen, to a greater or lesser extent, would have a claim to be the greatest of all time in their field.

But here's the thing. If you went up to one of these people and said to them,

do you consider yourself the greatest of all time?

They would probably kind of smile modestly and say, well, I try not to compare myself to others.

I do my best. It's great when I win trophies or awards.

But I'm really not thinking like that.

If you went to one of their fans, one of their followers, and asked the question,

you would immediately get 20 reasons why this person is the goat, the greatest of all time.

If you want to start an argument with me, you'd come to me and suggest that Djokovic is greater than Federer,

or that Maradona is greater than Pele, and I have quite strong views on these,

and I'm sure a lot of people do as well.

And that's what we're looking at, I think, in our passage this morning.

The question is, who is the greatest?

We have John, and we have Jesus.

And John's disciples are saying to him,

this fellow, this fellow who is with us across the world, don't even give Jesus a name.

He's doing all the things that you're doing, John.

He's baptizing, he's drawing lots of people to him.

And there's almost, John, you need to do something about this.

You're the greatest, you're the Baptist.

Why is this other person doing the things that really belong to you?

Because they thought John was the greatest.

And we won't talk about, obviously, the greatness of Jesus,

but let's just recognize the greatness of John for a second.

Jesus said, among those born of woman,

there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist.

In other words, John does have a claim to be the greatest of all time.

Mind you, Jesus then qualifies it by saying that the least in the kingdom of heaven

is greater than John.

But John is very clear here with his disciples,

and previously in John,

that Jesus is much greater than he is.

So if you cast your mind back to chapter 1,

John said,

He who comes before me has surpassed me because he was before me.

And the passage we're looking at today,

as John presents the greatness of Jesus,

and then there's a commentary on it,

which I think is by John, the writer of the gospel,

what comes across is actually there's no question at all.

Jesus is much, much, much greater than John the Baptist

or than anyone who's ever lived.

And what I hope we'll go away with this morning

is recognizing that Jesus is way, way above anyone else,

that he is the one who deserves our praise and our worship,

that he is the one we should be following.

Let's start, though, with a little bit of background.

I think it's always helpful to try and orientate ourselves

as we go through books of the Bible.

And it's very easy in John to say we go from one incident

to another incident to another incident

and perhaps lose a bit of track of the big picture.

So the big picture in John is that John is trying to convince us,

to help us to believe that Jesus is the Messiah,

the Son of God.

And everything we read in John's gospel has that purpose.

It's not just a series of random incidents

in the life of the Lord Jesus.

Every one of them, John wants us to understand a bit more

about the greatness of Jesus and that he is God's Son.

And so in this particular section of John's gospel

we're looking at over these few weeks,

we have a number of conversations,

a number of encounters between people.

We saw Nicodemus last week.

Next week we'll look at a woman at a well.

And then there's a royal official.

There's a series of people who have conversations with Jesus

and gain from that the understanding of how great Jesus is.

But in the middle we have this slightly peculiar instance.

Jesus isn't in this conversation.

It's a conversation between John and his disciples.

And yet it does fit within the flow of what John is doing at this point in his gospel.

He's presenting Jesus as the Son of God through a series of conversations.

And in chapter 3 of John is conversations with religious leaders.

So last week or two weeks ago,

we thought about his conversation with Nicodemus,

who is the leader of the religious establishment, if you like.

This week the person who's in the forefront is John the Baptist,

who's the maverick religious leader working outside the formal constraints of Judaism.

And I think in each of these two incidents,

John has a pattern in the way he develops it.

So he starts with the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus to begin with,

and then between John and his disciples.

And then we have some commentary from John, the gospel writer.

So verses 1 to 15 are Jesus and Nicodemus.

Verses 16 to 21, I believe, are John the writer's commentary on that.

Now, if you disagree with me, please talk to me afterwards.

There are lots of different views on this.

But it makes sense to me that the first part, verses 1 to 15,

is a conversation of Jesus and Nicodemus.

Verses 16 to 21 are John the gospel writer's commentary on that.

And then similarly, verses 22 to 30, we have the conversation between John and his disciples.

And then we have from verse 31 on, John the gospel writer's commentary on that.

So John is saying, here's what happened.

Here's the conversation that took place.

And here's what it means.

Here's the significance of it.

Here's how it shows how great Jesus is.

So with that in mind, let's look at the passage this morning.

So we've got a situation where Jesus has been in Jerusalem, talking to Nicodemus,

been at the feast before that.

And he goes out into the Judean countryside, the area around the River Jordan.

And he is baptizing people.

Now, if we read next week, we'll see it wasn't actually Jesus who was baptizing people,

his disciples, but they were doing it on Jesus' behalf.

Now, the baptism we're talking about here is a little bit different from the baptism

that Graham was talking about, or those who may be baptized in the next month or so.

It is very much similar to the baptism of John.

It is a baptism of repentance.

So it doesn't have the full significance that we would attach to Christian baptism,

of identifying with Jesus, being buried with him, and so on.

It is the baptism of repentance.

At the start of the account today, there's some Jew, and he's not really named,

and he comes and has a discussion with John's disciples about purification.

Now, we don't really know what that discussion was,

but perhaps the Jewish leader or whoever it was was saying,

well, why do you need to baptize Jews when we've got all our own purification rituals?

Baptism is for Gentiles who want to come into the Jewish faith.

It's not for Jews.

And maybe that's what it was.

It doesn't really matter.

What matters is that this seemed to have prompted something in John's disciples' minds,

and they thought, well, we really need to talk to John about this fellow who's baptizing

and drawing all the people away from us.

It's really not right that he is doing that.

And so they come to John, and they say, what's going on here?

Why is this person baptizing?

Why is he taking people away from you?

That shouldn't be happening.

And John reminds them of what he has said from the start.

And John reminds them of the perspective that he has.

It's verses 27 and 28, if you're following along.

John says, I've made it very clear that I'm not the Messiah.

I have my job to do.

I've been given my job from heaven.

And I've done it, and he's done it faithfully.

But he says, I'm not the Christ.

I am only the one who is sent to prepare the way for him.

In other words, don't put me on a pedestal.

I'm nothing extra special.

I'm just a guy who's been chosen by God to do a particular work.

And I've done it the best I can.

And then I will step aside afterwards.

There's no place, says John, for me to be jealous of Jesus

and the fact that he is attracting people more than I am

because he is greater than me.

He's the Christ.

I am only the forerunner.

Great lesson there for us if we ever are tempted to get proud

in our ministry for the Lord Jesus.

To think I'm someone special because I can preach

or because I can talk to other people about Jesus

or because I can do this because I can do that.

None of us are that special.

We're only messengers for God, serving him the best we can,

but recognizing that Jesus sits way, way above where we ever could.

There was a famous missionary, I'm sure most of you have heard of him,

called Hudson Taylor.

Hudson Taylor was a real pioneer missionary in China.

It was said of him that since the Apostle Paul,

no one had had a wider vision for missionary work

or carried out a more systemized plan

of evangelizing a wide geographic area than he had.

In other words, if you're looking at great missionaries,

you're going to have Hudson Taylor on that list.

One time Hudson Taylor went to a report meeting as missionaries do,

and as sometimes happens at these meetings,

the chairman went a bit overboard in talking about him.

We've got this great man, this great missionary with us here today,

doing a great work in China.

He's the founder of the Great China Inland Mission,

and it's a real privilege to have him come and speak to us today.

Hudson Taylor stood up and very quietly said,

Dear friends, I'm the little servant of an illustrious master.

That's a great description, and that's how we should feel as well.

Little servants of an illustrious master.

Anything we can do for Jesus is great,

but let's not build ourselves up, let's do it for his glory

and recognizing that he is the one who is great,

not us.

We need a right perspective.

Then John says we need to have right priorities.

He has this lovely picture of a wedding.

Now, Jewish weddings were a little bit different

from weddings that we would have today,

but there were some common features.

One of the common features was there was someone

who we'd call the best man.

What is the purpose of the friend of the bridegroom?

Well, the friend of the bridegroom,

the best man in our terms,

he's there to reassure the bridegroom,

to make things run smoothly,

to give a funny speech, and so on.

But he's not there to be the main person.

His job is to do the work that he's been given

and then to step aside and to leave the bridegroom

with his bride.

It says in the passage that the friend of the bridegroom

rejoices when he hears the bridegroom's voice.

I'm not sure if that is maybe a reference

to the kind of vows you would have.

As the best man hears the vows of the bridegroom,

he can say, that's great, we've got to this point.

In a sense, I've done the main part of my job

and now I can step to one side.

And John the Baptist says,

that's my position.

I was here to prepare things for Jesus,

but I'm not the bridegroom, he is.

And now it's my turn to leave.

He must become greater, I must become less.

The description Jesus gives of John the Baptist

later in John as a burning lamp.

Someone who came into a dark place

and brought light to it.

But the light that John brought

is the light of the lamp.

The light that Jesus brings

is the light of the sun.

And if you've got the sun,

you don't need the lamp.

And that is what John is saying.

Someone much greater than me is here.

I've done my job.

I'll move on.

Sadly, John was moving to prison and to martyrdom.

I'll move on.

I need to leave the stage

so that he can become greater

and I can become less.

And again, let us learn the lessons from John.

We are here.

We're given a job by Jesus to do.

Let's do that to the best of our ability.

Let's serve in the church and elsewhere.

But our priority must be to raise Jesus up

that he may become more

and we may become less.

Let's move on then

and move to the part of the passage

that I'm suggesting was John,

the Gospel writer's commentary

on what John the Baptist has said.

And we're looking at the greatness of Jesus.

I think John says three main things about Jesus

that make it very clear

how much greater he is than any of us,

than anyone else who has ever lived in this world.

And the first thing is that Jesus is sent from God.

The word sent occurs more in John's Gospel

than in any other book of the Bible.

And 40 times it's used of the Lord Jesus,

God's Son, being sent by God into the world.

And so John is saying here

that Jesus is the one who has come from above,

who's been sent from God,

who is above all.

We said earlier in the Gospel

that John the Baptist was a man sent from God.

But he wasn't sent from heaven.

He was a man who grew up,

who was born at a normal birth,

grew up,

and then God said,

here's your mission,

this is what you have to do.

The Lord Jesus was with God

from before the beginning of time.

He's the one through whom the universe

was created and hold together.

His rightful place was at God's right hand

as a member of the God's head,

the Trinity.

But he was sent and he chose to come

into our world

to be the saviour of the world.

The one who comes from heaven,

from above,

is above all.

Jesus had come very differently

from any of us.

He was God from eternity past

and he chose to take the humble form

of a man

and to live among us.

But uniquely,

he came from God,

from heaven,

sent by God

to be our saviour.

The second thing about Jesus

that we read about in these verses

is that he was speaking

for God.

So that's from verse 32

through to verse 34.

It says,

He bears witness

to what he has seen and heard.

Whoever receives his testimony

says the seal to this

that God is true.

Jesus uniquely speaks for God.

Everything he says

is God speaking to us.

What he has received

from the Father,

he says,

he passes on to us.

He has received it

directly from God.

And therefore,

he comes with a special authority

that no one else can have.

But later this month,

we're going to have a budget,

at least a financial statement

from the Chancellor

and he'll stand up

in the House of Commons

and he will speak

with the authority

of the government,

with the support

of the Prime Minister

and so on.

We'll be hearing directly

from someone

who is involved

in constructing the budget

and thinking about

the nation's finances.

If previous budgets

are anything to go by,

in the papers

in the weeks before that,

we'll read things

that are attributed

to sources

close to the Prime Minister

or senior members

of the government,

always unnamed,

which are largely speculation

about what will happen.

Sometimes right,

quite often right,

sometimes not right.

But there's a difference there,

can you see?

If you hear it directly

from the Chancellor

of the Exchequer,

you know that is

the government's policy.

If you read it in the paper

attributed to someone anonymous

and you're not terribly sure

who it is,

well, it's not got

that same authority,

has it?

So what John is saying

to us here

is all of us,

John the Baptist,

and all of us

can talk about the Lord Jesus,

can talk about God,

and can do it with authority

if we do it from the Scripture.

But Jesus had that special authority

that he'd been with the Father,

he'd seen everything

that was happening,

he knew the Father's will,

and he was able

to pass it on perfectly.

And none of us

can claim to do that.

Remember at the start

of the book of Hebrews,

the writer says,

in the past,

God spoke to our ancestors

through the prophets

at many times

and in various ways.

And that was wonderful,

great to read the Old Testament

and see what God said

through the prophets.

But, says the writer,

in these last days

he has spoken to us

by his Son,

whom he appointed

heir of all things,

and through whom also

he made the universe.

Do you see again

the difference?

Prophets who God

has spoken through

and they got God's word

and they passed it on

faithfully.

The Son,

who is the heir

of everything,

through whom the universe

was made,

who has been with God

from before the start

of time,

he comes

and he speaks

with the authority

of God,

he speaks for God.

There's a little phrase

at the end of verse 34

where it says,

he gives the Spirit

without measure.

Now it's not entirely clear

what that means,

but I think the most likely

explanation of it is

that God gives the Spirit

to Jesus

without measure.

Now all of us,

if our trust is in the Lord Jesus,

we have the Holy Spirit

within us,

guiding us

and helping us

and directing us.

But our lives

are not fully directed

by the Spirit

because we have

our sinful nature

and we like to go

our own way

a lot of the time.

people who wrote

the Bible,

the men who were responsible

for the various books

in the Bible,

they received

a special filling

of the Spirit

for that

in that the words

they wrote

are the Word of God

and are absolutely

trustworthy.

And they for a period

had that inspiration.

But at other times,

they were just like us

and although they would have

had the Spirit in them,

they didn't always

walk in line

with the Spirit,

they didn't always do

what the Spirit

would have wanted.

Jesus was different

in that he had

God's Spirit

in him

in the fullest measure

and everything he said

was God's Word.

If you see the words

of Jesus in the Bible,

you know that what

you're reading is true

and is something

you really need

to think about

and let affect

your life.

a lot of the older

Bible,

I think some of the

modern apps

have the words

of Jesus in red

and I think in some ways

that's quite helpful.

Not that the rest

of Scripture

isn't inspired,

but there is something

special about

the words that came

out of Jesus' mouth.

He was speaking

uniquely

always

for God

and that makes

him much greater

than anybody

else.

And then finally

in verses 35

and 36

it tells us

that Jesus

was sanctioned

by God.

Now sanction is

one of these

funny English words

that has almost

opposite meanings

depending on

his context.

So we're not

talking about

the kind of

sanctions that

might be imposed

on Russia

or North Korea

or whatever here

which are

restrictions.

We're talking

about the

sanctioning

which is

authorizing

approving

someone

in the work

that they're

doing.

They've been

sanctioned

by some

higher

authority.

And so

Jesus

it says

here

has been

sanctioned

by God.

The Father

loves the Son

and has

given

all things

into his

hand.

There's a great

study to be done

and we've

not got time

to even scratch

the surface

of it this

morning

of the

authority

of Jesus.

Of what

God has

handed over

to Jesus

as the one

who is in

ultimate

control

in our

world.

The one

under whose

feet

God has

placed

everyone.

The one

who is able

to say

to his

disciples

as an

encouragement

as he

sent them

out

to be

his

witnesses

all

authority

has been

given to

me

in heaven

and on

earth.

God the

Father is

pleased with

God the

Son

and he

has given

them

authority

over

everything.

And in

our

world

although

there is

much

evil

there is

much

goes

on

that

is

grieving

to

God

and

to

the

Lord

Jesus

ultimately

the Lord

Jesus

is in

control

and will

be seen

to be

in

control

when he

returns

in glory

and he

rules

over

our

world.

He is

the one

who has

been

sanctioned

who has

been

authorized

who has

been

approved

by

God.

Who is

the

greatest?

There is

no

question.

It's

not like

a discussion

about whether

Nadal or

Federer is

the greatest

tennis player

and there's

arguments on

both sides.

When you

look at the

evidence as

John presents

it here

there is

one person

who sits

way way

above

any of

us.

Jesus

is the

greatest.

Jesus

is the

one who

was sent

from

God

who spoke

for God

who was

sanctioned

by

God.

And so

says John

in verse

36

our

ultimate

destiny

depends on

our attitude

towards

Jesus.

Whoever

believes in

the Son

has eternal

life.

Whoever

does not

obey the

Son shall

not see

life but

the wrath

of God

remains

on

him.

Ultimately

the thing

that matters

the most

of all

in our

world

and for

each

of us

is what

do we

make of

Jesus?

Do we

recognize

him as

the greatest

person who

has ever

lived as

the Son

of God

who came

into our

world?

Do we

see him

as the

one who

died on

a cross

to take

the punishment

for sin?

And do we

commit our

lives to

him recognizing

we can only

have forgiveness

through him

and the only

way to

avoid God's

wrath

the punishment

that we

deserve for

all the

wrong we've

done

is through

faith in

the Lord

Jesus.

And

ultimately

that's what

we would

really wish

for everyone

here today

that we

know Jesus

as the

one who

is God's

Son

as the

greatest

person who

has ever

lived

but more

than that

that we

know him

as our

saviour

that we

have a

personal

relationship

with him.

As we

go away

let's go

rejoicing

in the

greatness

of the

Lord

Jesus

but let's

also go

making sure

that we

have a

personal

relationship

with him

and that

we have

the confidence

that in

him we

have

eternal

life.

Let's

join together

in prayer.

Our

Father we

thank you

for your

word to

us today.

We

thank you

for the

way John

presents

the

ultimate

greatness

of Jesus.

For the

insight John

the Baptist

had of how

Jesus is

so much

greater

than he

is.

But then

the reminder

that Jesus

is the

only one

who came

from heaven.

He's the

only one

who speaks

completely

for God.

He's the

only one

who has

been given

authority

by God

over all

things.

And we

thank you

too that

he is the

only one

who is

able to

take our

place and

to die

on the

cross for

us.

We thank

you that

he did

that and

that through

that we

have life

in him.

May each

of us

have our

trust in

him,

receive the

son into

our lives

and then

live lives

of service

and of

humility

for him.

We give

you thanks

to be

with us

as those

in the

building

shared

together

in a

time

remembering

the

Lord

Jesus

in

communion.

For those

who are

leaving us

now,

we pray

that you

will be

with them

and bless

them

through the

coming

week.

We give

our thanks

in Jesus'

name.

Amen.