He must increase, I must diminish.  Fathers, I think you know what I’m saying, even if you have no son.  We’re here for a season.  We want to make it a winning season, for our children, of course, our families, even for ourselves.  Experience, maturity, and wisdom all have shown us that victory is not a matter of the final score.  You can bring your best game, play your best game, and the scoreboard can still say you’ve lost.  It’s no dishonor to lose.  What matters is how you play.  Is your heart in it?  Is your mind in it?  Are you pushing yourself or just on auto-pilot?  We’re never actually competing against anyone other than ourselves, but that can be fierce competition.

John knows his time is short.  Not many prophets lived to a golden old age, not when God’s Word was in constant conflict with those in charge.  That conflict will always be, even within the faithful.  The pull of this world is strong, beloved!  Will you honestly tell me you don’t feel it or haven’t noticed?  This denomination–like every other—has been gripped and ripped for decades.

Now, John seemed one hundred percent convinced that Jesus was the one, remember? “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.”  You don’t say that about just anybody.  We all have our moments of deep conviction, the swells of emotion, God stirring those seas powerfully.  Then the world roars back in.  We start to feel the wear and tear of the work, the demands, the disappointments.  We’ve all been on at least one getaway we sort of wished we could stretch out another few days, or weeks.  Yeah, right.

We simply cannot be our own, personal, source of hope.  Hope needs renewal, recharging.  Our batteries fail.  God’s light is eternal.  The night comes, and we’re alone and sad again.  God knocks on the door of these hearts, yet we aren’t always so quick to let Him in.  We feel low, drained.  Can God lift us?  Can He lift us, too?

Beloved, brothers—and sisters—like John there in Herod’s dungeon, our souls can get thirsty, and we can even cry out, arms outstretched.  We want to hear.  We want to hear something, some response, some word in another voice, some song to remind our soul that we are free.  But not just free.

When.  When will fulfillment come?  We can wait a long time for the good thing to happen.  Some good things don’t really depend upon us at all.  There’s nothing we can do to make the good thing happen, except, of course, pray.  Men—and sisters, too—it’s a praying people who are a growing people, growing strong, growing deep, growing sure.  No praying, no growing.  No growing, no going.  Prayer is a long-term investment.

John has been hearing hopeful things.  He needs to hear hopeful things: he has done as God instructed him and, as nearly all the prophets found out, most respond with indifference, thoughtless criticism, or outright hostility.  Yes, indeed, there were also those who listened, who felt the truth of what John was saying; there were also the even smaller number who did something positive, constructive, and faithful about it.  Yes, we hear that many were coming out to John to be baptized, but many isn’t most.  How many I’ve baptized and never seen, after.  O, desire God above all!

Just as Paul in custody in Rome, John also knew there was no chapter after this, just a brief conclusion.  Had it made any difference?  Would there be any signs of change, renewal, revival, in John’s own day?  Jesus speaks of going to those who are sick, or in prison: the circumference of their lives has become quite narrow!  The sickbed from which you may never rise, the prison cell from which you will be taken only to be led out for execution.  What consolation, then?  What assurance that any of the suffering, the sacrifice has been worth it?  So many seem to live no further than their next self-indulgence.  The thought of denying oneself to live for God strikes them as simple stupidity.

Beloved, even a John the Baptist can feel the whispers of despair.  Jesus himself wept tears like blood, there in the garden, wept over Jerusalem, wept as he beheld the incomprehension, misdirection, and feeble faith even among those whom he knew and loved best on earth.

We need food for our hope, fuel for the fire of faith.  God provides it always, but our senses are dull and our minds so often clouded by all that is happening around us, all that’s contending within us.  John sends a question to Jesus: “Are you the Coming One, or are we to look for another?” (7:19).  Is Jesus the real deal?  People still wonder.  I suppose some who disbelieve are just lazy and completely uninterested.  Others have been deeply wounded, deeply betrayed by events in this life, and people, including some who claimed to be Christians.  These hurt ones don’t want to live suspicious and mistrustful, but life hasn’t made it so easy for them to live otherwise.  Mistrust and distance is how they protect whatever is left to protect in their heart.  It’s a pretty big claim to be making, that you are the one in whom there is healing, abundance, grace—that you are the one who has the power to change lives, that you are salvation, health, and life.  John wants to believe, but; others want to believe, but—Lord, help them in their unbelief!

Jesus does not ask anyone to believe only on account of what he says, though that would be a wonderful grace, beautiful and child-like in the very best sense of the words.  As for the rest of us, just to be told something is so or not so does not convince.  Jesus points John’s representatives to what is happening around them, to testify to what they see wherever Jesus goes, to witness to what happens when people welcome and receive Jesus.  What does Jesus provide that you would not have, otherwise?

Jesus is pointing John’s disciples to what they already knew from Scripture, from the psalms and the prophets, God’s people crying out to God, and God crying out to His people:  “And He answered and said to them, ‘Go and report to John what you have seen and heard: people who were blind receive sight, people who limped walk, people with leprosy are cleansed and people who were deaf hear, dead people are raised up, and people who are poor have the gospel preached to them” (7:22).  Isaiah ‘twas foretold it: the time of restoration, cleansing, light and sight has come.  The change many had desperately desired, for which they had earnestly prayed, even wept, has come.  What does this mean?  What does this mean for you?  How shall you respond?

Luke, the physician, tells us not only that many were cured of diseases—wonderful!—but also that many were cured of what was afflicting them (7:21).  Now, yes, an affliction can be used as another word for a disease, but an affliction also is a particular sort of malady, often a malady of the mind or even the soul.  Afflicted with envy, afflicted with loss of interest, afflicted with doubt, afflicted with sorrow.  Oh, beloved, if we would only have a little courage to share with one another our afflictions!  We can be brave enough when our bodies are ailing, even broken.  It’s our hearts—that’s where we’re always most vulnerable.  Afflicted with sorrow, afflicted with grief, afflicted with doubts and fears, afflicted with temptations.  The dark night of the soul.  My prayer is that such a night may never come to you, never stay.  John, despite all his zeal for God, John the baptizer, John was in a dark place, beloved.  What good had he done?  What difference had he made?  Had anything he said mattered?  How had he failed?  Beloved, we aren’t going to know what success really looks like, in this life, not as God measures or values it.  You and I, we are called to live faithfully in all seasons of life and leave the rest to God.  O, that takes a lot of faith!

“And blessed is anyone who does not take offense at Me” (7:23).  Well, who would ever take offense at Jesus?  Lots of people, and not just in Jesus’ day!  Just try talking to five different people about Jesus, and see how far you get before resentment and rejection emerge, or just a change of subject.  The miracle is that these are not always the response we meet, but we’ll never know it, never see it, if we don’t keep talking about Jesus, no matter the response we fear we shall get.

In response to John, Jesus does not say I am.  He does not say I am not.  He says to John’s representatives, go and tell what you have seen.  The testimony of someone you know is far more powerful than the testimony of someone with whom you have no real relationship.  Yes, John and Jesus were cousins.  That doesn’t mean they had a real relationship.  You can be related and have no relationship!  When someone you know and trust says, “Here is what I know about Jesus . . . how will it hurt to try?” we might just think about it.  At the simplest level, all evangelism boils down to Pascal’s wager: belief leads to life beautiful and abundant beyond our ability to imagine; rejection leads to grief and anguish beyond any rational desire to experience.  In the unlikely event that it turns out God does not exist, what have you really lost by living as if He did?  Far more is lost by rejection than by receiving Jesus.  This is not meant to be persuasive reasoning for the faithful but for those who, though they don’t believe, are not adamant in their unbelief.

Crowds crowded around Jesus, the Gospel accounts tell us.  Crowds crowded to John at the Jordan.  But why?  Because they all believed!  Because God’s Word had quickened faith in them all!  No.  Have you ever gone to the county fair, a concert, a circus, or rally?  Oh, there’s the main act, the headliner, of course, but also so many other things and people to see: sideshows.  Some go for the badge.  Some go just for the sideshows.  Jesus asks the crowds, “What did you go out into the wilderness to see?” (7:24).  All y’all went a long way out of your way to go to John at the Jordan.  No corn dogs, no midway, no lemon shake-ups.

Had they come out to see “A reed shaken by the wind?” (7:24): one whose message turns this way and that as the prevailing “wind” blows—I was against it until I was for it!  That was true until it was false!  Why does marketing rely so much on polling data?  Public opinion is huge!  Now, how to put Scripture in relation to public opinion?  Yes, that has been the trick for a very, very long time, indeed.

“But what did you go out to see?  A man dressed in soft clothing?  Those who are splendidly clothed and live in luxury are found in royal palaces!” (7:25).  Not to pick on Joel Osteen—but then again, why not?—but did you know he has his own clothing line?  Did you know he makes—this is a conservative estimate—around $11 million a year?  Some 45,000 people come to Lakewood for services each week.  He’s doing something right . . . from a certain angle.  Yes, we want to have our best life now—that would be great!  Jesus does not tell us, ever, that we can or will have our best life now.  We can have him: he is the way, the truth, and the life.  What way?  The way to our best life, hereafter, with God forever.  What truth?  That in this life there will be trials and temptations, and that we will not—indeed, cannot—be victorious, except in Christ’s victory.  We can have peace now, we can know grace now, we can get glimpses of glory now, but continual happiness now, no woes or worries, just one good thing after another?  But Christ’s isn’t a message designed to win friends.  Jesus isn’t proclaiming the power of positive thinking.

“But what did you go out to see?  A prophet?  Yes, I tell you, and one who is more than a prophet” (7:26).  There were those who had no idea what was going on: they just liked to be wherever a crowd was gathering.  There were those who went out to roll their eyes, frown grimly, make comments under their breath, and feel comfortably superior to all the rubes around them.  There were those who went to gather information for a formal report to the authorities: name names . . . with dates, times, and suggested charges.  And there were those who went to John, just as there also were those who came to Jesus, because something they couldn’t shake was telling them this was real, this was true, this was God.  The answer to their emptiness, the answer to their sorrow, the answer for their hope, the answer to what, as it turned out, had been their prayers, their Spirit-guided prayers.