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After this conversation, Jesus went on with his disciples into the Judean countryside and relaxed with them there. He was also baptizing. At the same time, John was baptizing over at Aenon near Salim, where water was abundant. This was before John was thrown into jail. John’s disciples got into an argument with the establishment Jews over the nature of baptism. They came to John and said, “Rabbi, you know the one who was with you on the other side of the Jordan? The one you authorized with your witness? Well, he’s now competing with us. He’s baptizing, too, and everyone’s going to him instead of us.”

^27-29 John answered, “It’s not possible for a person to succeed—I’m talking about eternal success—without heaven’s help. You yourselves were there when I made it public that I was not the Messiah but simply the one sent ahead of him to get things ready. The one who gets the bride is, by definition, the bridegroom. And the bridegroom’s friend, his ‘best man’—that’s me—in place at his side where he can hear every word, is genuinely happy. How could he be jealous when he knows that the wedding is finished and the marriage is off to a good start?

^29-30 “That’s why my cup is running over. This is the assigned moment for him to move into the center, while I slip off to the sidelines. (The Message)

How do we cope when God blesses someone else’s ministry more than He blesses ours? John the Baptist points the way:

”A person can receive only what is given them from heaven” (22, NIV).

John recognised that true success is God-given. In His Sovereign purposes, the Lord does give to some more than He gives to others. That is His business.

Richard Baxter of Kidderminster, who saw a huge turning to God in his town, once said, ‘O what am I…that God should thus abundantly encourage me, when the Reverend Instructors of my youth, did labour fifty years together in one place, and could scarcely say they had Converted one or two of their parishes!’

John, of course, had no problems with the ‘success’ of Jesus because he knew his place. He did not confuse his own role with that of the Messiah. When I got married, I trusted my best man implicitly. I knew he would do his job well, and I never expected for one moment that he would run off with the bride! If people were moving in the direction of Jesus, then that was what John wanted. It was what he lived for. His words, in verse 30, should be written on the heart of every preacher: ”He must become greater; I must become less” (NIV).

After this conversation, Jesus went on with his disciples into the Judean countryside and relaxed with them there. (The Message)

A lady who spent much time in prayer was asked what she was doing when she prayed. She replied, ‘Oh, I look at Him, and He looks at me!’

Thought for the day: I am prone to focus on how much I want, and need to spend time with Jesus, and am liable to forget how much He longs and loves to spend time with me.

 After these things, Joshua son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at the age of a hundred and ten. ³⁰ And they buried him in the land of his inheritance, at Timnath Serah in the hill country of Ephraim, north of Mount Gaash.

³¹ Israel served the Lord throughout the lifetime of Joshua and of the elders who outlived him and who had experienced everything the Lord had done for Israel.

³² And Joseph’s bones, which the Israelites had brought up from Egypt, were buried at Shechem in the tract of land that Jacob bought for a hundred pieces of silver from the sons of Hamor, the father of Shechem. This became the inheritance of Joseph’s descendants.

³³ And Eleazar son of Aaron died and was buried at Gibeah, which had been allotted to his son Phinehas in the hill country of Ephraim. (NIV)

The statement in verse 31 speaks to me about the power of godly influence. We know, having come to the end of this great book, that Israel did not ‘serve the Lord’ perfectly during this time. There were hiccoughs. They stuttered and faltered along the way. Nevertheless they pressed through to tremendous victory as they sought to obey God under the faithful leadership of these men. We should also note, in terms of spiritual leadership that there is no substitute for personal experience of God. This adds weight and authority and credibility to a leaders words. Joshua and the elders exercised enormous influence over the nation under God.

Writing in ‘A Quest for Godliness’, J.I.Packer refers to ”…Richard Baxter, who ministered at Kidderminster from 1641 to 1660, with a five-year break during the Civil War. Kidderminster was a town of some 2,000 adults, and most of them, it seems, were converted under his ministry. He found them, he tells us, ‘an ignorant, rude and revelling people for the most part…they had hardly ever had any lively serious preaching among them.’ But his ministry was wonderfully blessed.”

God can give to men and women very great influence, if He so chooses.

But the greatest must die: ‘Three burials are described in these verses. The first was Joshua’s burial in the place of his inheritance, Timnath Serah (Joshua 19:50). The writer adds that Israel obeyed the Lord during the lifetime of Joshua and those leaders who had experienced everything the LORD had done for Israel (verse 31). However, the next generation of Israelites would be very different (see Judges 2:10-15).

The second burial was that of Joseph – Josephs bones (verse 32). Before his death in Egypt, Joseph had asked that his ”bones” be carried to the promised land (Genesis 50:24-25; Exodus 13:19). This demonstrated Joseph’s great faith that God would fulfill His promise to give Canaan to the Israelites (Hebrews 11:22). And the burial of his bones symbolized God’s faithfulness to His promise. Joseph’s bones were buried right there in Shechem, the very tract of land that Joseph’s father Jacob had bought many years before (Genesis 33:19). The burial of Joseph’s bones was a fiting end to the long story that began with the call of Abraham (Genesis 12:1-3).

The third burial was that of Eleazar, the son of Aaron. Eleazar had served Joshua as Aaron had served Moses. With Eleazar’s death, the entire generation that had taken part in the Exodus came to an end.’ Tom Hale

 After a long time had passed and the Lord had given Israel rest from all their enemies around them, Joshua, by then a very old man, ² summoned all Israel—their elders, leaders, judges and officials—and said to them: “I am very old. ³ You yourselves have seen everything the Lord your God has done to all these nations for your sake; it was the Lord your God who fought for you. ⁴ Remember how I have allotted as an inheritance for your tribes all the land of the nations that remain—the nations I conquered—between the Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea in the west. ⁵ The Lord your God himself will push them out for your sake. He will drive them out before you, and you will take possession of their land, as the Lord your God promised you.

⁶ “Be very strong; be careful to obey all that is written in the Book of the Law of Moses, without turning aside to the right or to the left. ⁷ Do not associate with these nations that remain among you; do not invoke the names of their gods or swear by them. You must not serve them or bow down to them. ⁸ But you are to hold fast to the Lord your God, as you have until now.

⁹ “The Lord has driven out before you great and powerful nations; to this day no one has been able to withstand you. ¹⁰ One of you routs a thousand, because the Lord your God fights for you, just as he promised. ¹¹ So be very careful to love the Lord your God.

¹² “But if you turn away and ally yourselves with the survivors of these nations that remain among you and if you intermarry with them and associate with them, ¹³ then you may be sure that the Lord your God will no longer drive out these nations before you. Instead, they will become snares and traps for you, whips on your backs and thorns in your eyes, until you perish from this good land, which the Lord your God has given you.

¹⁴ “Now I am about to go the way of all the earth. You know with all your heart and soul that not one of all the good promises the Lord your God gave you has failed. Every promise has been fulfilled; not one has failed. ¹⁵ But just as all the good things the Lord your God has promised you have come to you, so he will bring on you all the evil things he has threatened, until the Lord your God has destroyed you from this good land he has given you. ¹⁶ If you violate the covenant of the Lord your God, which he commanded you, and go and serve other gods and bow down to them, the Lord’s anger will burn against you, and you will quickly perish from the good land he has given you.” (NIV)

As we come to look at this chapter, I find Warren Wiersbe’s words instructive:

‘No matter how great leaders may be, they cannot last forever, although their work is never lost (1 John 2:17). Like his predecessor Moses, Joshua gave a farewell address, first to his leaders (chap.23) and then to the people as a whole (chap.24).

He magnified the Lord and not himself. No one would question that Joshua was a gifted leader and a great general, but he gave the glory to God…

…You are writing your own ”farewell speech” right now. What will it sound like?’

Someone said, ‘Death is the ultimate statistic: one out of one dies.’ No matter how great a person’s achievements under God, that individual will not go on forever. We cannot hold back time. As Joshua came to the end of his days on earth, his focus was on the Lord and on what He had done, and on what He would still do for His people if they remained true to Him. He was God-focussed.

PRAYER: Lord God, please keep all of our hearts and minds stayed upon you, for your Name’s sake.

For the director of music. With stringed instruments. A maskil of David.

¹ Listen to my prayer, O God,
    do not ignore my plea;
²     hear me and answer me.
My thoughts trouble me and I am distraught
³     because of what my enemy is saying,
    because of the threats of the wicked;
for they bring down suffering on me
    and assail me in their anger.

⁴ My heart is in anguish within me;
    the terrors of death have fallen on me.
⁵ Fear and trembling have beset me;
    horror has overwhelmed me.
⁶ I said, “Oh, that I had the wings of a dove!
    I would fly away and be at rest.
⁷ I would flee far away
    and stay in the desert;
⁸ I would hurry to my place of shelter,
    far from the tempest and storm.”

⁹ Lord, confuse the wicked, confound their words,
    for I see violence and strife in the city.
¹⁰ Day and night they prowl about on its walls;
    malice and abuse are within it.
¹¹ Destructive forces are at work in the city;
    threats and lies never leave its streets. (NIV)

When someone once said to me that they wished they could run to some place far away from their problems, I felt I had to gently reply, ‘But you wouldn’t get away from them. You would still carry those things inside you.’ There is a saying, ‘Wherever you go, there you are.’

But it’s not always the wrong instinct. A pastor observed that ‘Change of pace plus change of place equals change of perspective.’ Many of us have proved the truth of that.

In David’s case it was an understandable desire. It would seem that his life was in danger. It is thought that Psalm 55 belongs to the time of Absalom’s rebellion, and the betrayal of Ahithophel (see 2 Samuel 15). The latter was one of David’s closest advisors. David was forced to flee from Jerusalem…

…But this Psalm shows him fleeing to God. Once again, David points the way to a life of prayer in all circumstances.

Whatever it is, take it to the Lord in prayer.

 “This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn’t go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again. Anyone who trusts in him is acquitted; anyone who refuses to trust him has long since been under the death sentence without knowing it. And why? Because of that person’s failure to believe in the one-of-a-kind Son of God when introduced to him.

^19-21 “This is the crisis we’re in: God-light streamed into the world, but men and women everywhere ran for the darkness. They went for the darkness because they were not really interested in pleasing God. Everyone who makes a practice of doing evil, addicted to denial and illusion, hates God-light and won’t come near it, fearing a painful exposure. But anyone working and living in truth and reality welcomes God-light so the work can be seen for the God-work it is.” (The Message)

It is generally thought that the words of Jesus in this third chapter conclude at verse 15, and that the two paragraphs under consideration today are the comments of John the evangelist, the author of this fourth gospel.

Wouldn’t you like to hear a political leader define our real crisis? That would indeed be ‘radical’ politics – getting ‘to the root’ of our problems:

 “This is the crisis we’re in: God-light streamed into the world, but men and women everywhere ran for the darkness.

Here is one of the great realities we have to reckon with, and we see it everywhere: people prefer their sin to Jesus. It suits them to live in unrepentance and to go there own way. They are ”addicted to denial and illusion”. When it comes down to it, it is not about how credible the claims of Christ are, but that people do not want this Man to reign over them.

”In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (1:4,5)

While this is gloriously true, it is also the case that ”the darkness” hates it. There are only two types of people in this world: those who love ”the light” and want to walk in it; and those who ‘hate’ it

 “No one has ever gone up into the presence of God except the One who came down from that Presence, the Son of Man. In the same way that Moses lifted the serpent in the desert so people could have something to see and then believe, it is necessary for the Son of Man to be lifted up—and everyone who looks up to him, trusting and expectant, will gain a real life, eternal life.

^16-18 “This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn’t go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again. Anyone who trusts in him is acquitted; anyone who refuses to trust him has long since been under the death sentence without knowing it. And why? Because of that person’s failure to believe in the one-of-a-kind Son of God when introduced to him. (The Message)

The experience of the supernatural new birth is only possible because Jesus died on the Cross, in our place, out of great love for us. He ‘had’ to die. It was a necessity. But our salvation is not automatic. There has to be a response on our part. We have to receive the benefits of the Cross by faith.

The one-sentence summary of the gospel contained in John 3:16: ‘…is the most famous portion of Christian Scripture, and probably the most often-memorized and often-quoted portion of any holy text in human history…God loved mankind enough to send His Son to save them, but those who reject Jesus remain condemned.’ (BibleRef)

It is characteristic of John to refer to Jesus’ death as a ‘lifting up’. He probably uses this expression in two senses: a.) Jesus was physically lifted up on the Cross; b.) but also the Cross is His supreme glory. What was generally regarded in those times as the ultimate in shame God sees as Jesus’ greatest glory.

We also note that the death of Jesus was wonderfully and beautifully prefigured in the story of Moses and the bronze snake (See Numbers 21:6-9). It is awesome to see how the entire Bible hangs together with the Cross at the very centre.

 Nicodemus asked, “What do you mean by this? How does this happen?”

^10-12 Jesus said, “You’re a respected teacher of Israel and you don’t know these basics? Listen carefully. I’m speaking sober truth to you. I speak only of what I know by experience; I give witness only to what I have seen with my own eyes. There is nothing secondhand here, no hearsay. Yet instead of facing the evidence and accepting it, you procrastinate with questions. If I tell you things that are plain as the hand before your face and you don’t believe me, what use is there in telling you of things you can’t see, the things of God? (The Message)

I remember reading a commentary in which the author said, ‘When people raise questions about the Christian faith you need to bear in mind the ‘RH Factor’: Is it a red herring or a real hindrance?’ That came to mind as I read Jesus’ words highlighted in bold text above. There are people whose questions are in fact a smokescreen. They have no intention of facing up to the evidence.

What Jesus has to teach us about eternal/spiritual realities can be trusted. He knows what He is talking about. People looked up to Nicodemus as someone who knew what he was talking about. The language used in verse 10 may suggest that he was the foremost teacher in Israel. Yet Jesus implied that Nicodemus didn’t know as much as others thought he did; didn’t know as much as he thought he did.

All of us who hold any kind of office/role in the church where we teach others, need to humble ourselves and acknowledge that there is so much we do not know. Let us place ourselves at the feet of Jesus, recognising that He, and He alone, is the supreme Teacher. Real insight comes from listening to Him.

” Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” (Jesus, in Matthew 11:29)