He must increase, but I must decrease.
He that cometh from above is above all,
and he that is of the earth is earthly,
and speaketh of the earth,
he that cometh from heaven is above all.
What is he saying?
I'm not the main character.
And John the Baptist was awesome.
I mean, he's the greatest, was born of women.
I mean, he's a great prophet, preached the word of God.
We're talking about him 2,000 years after,
but why is that?
I'll tell you why, because he understood,
I must decrease that he may increase.
He understood that Jesus Christ was the preeminent one.
He's the most important person of the story.
You understand?
And when you start making it about yourself,
you start increasing yourself,
then you know what, when you do right,
it's gonna seem as though it doesn't work
because you think it's all about you.
It's not all about you, okay?
It's not all about you, and obviously,
I preached this morning about accomplishing things
and making sure we have goals,
but this is so we can become more effective for the Lord.
Because at the end of the day,
you know, we might live 80 years in this world,
but 80 years is only allotted for us
so we can serve God and lift Jesus up, not ourselves.
He's the most important person.
He, you know, beginning of Moses and all the prophets,
he expounded unto him in all the scriptures
the things concerning himself.
The whole Bible's about Jesus, not about us.
My name's not in the Bible.
My character's not in the Bible.
Your character's not in the Bible.
You know, and even the characters who are in the Bible,
they get a certain little section there,
and it's all for the purpose of lifting up
the Lord Jesus Christ.
That's who it's all about.
And you know, sometimes people become disillusioned
with the Christian life
because they think that it's all about them.
They want, you know, they wanna reap the benefits.
They wanna be the star.
They want God to bless them.
And there's nothing wrong necessarily with those things,
but just keep in mind that if it doesn't work out,
it's okay because it's not about you anyways.
Whatever it is that you get that's good in this world,
in this life, it's just a cherry on top, right?
I mean, we got salvation.
Shouldn't that be enough?
We have eternal life.
Shouldn't that be enough?
Everything else on top of that is just an extra.
If we get married, if we get kids,
if God blesses us financially,
if he blesses us with possessions,
if he blesses us with material things,
if he blesses us with talents and gifts,
these are all extras.
We don't deserve them.
And they're given to us
so we can serve the Lord more effectively,
so we can glorify God.
What I'm saying is that he must increase
and we must decrease.
You know, we're not even like an extra in God's movie.
You know what I mean?
We're not even like a light guy.
We're not even the ones doing the lighting.
We might be like the water boy
if there's even a water boy on a movie set or something.
We're the guy who's not even on screen.
We don't get our name in the credits either.
That's how insignificant we can be.
Now, here's the thing.
Obviously, we play a major role in God's plan, right?
We are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus
unto good works.
And obviously, we desire the praise of God
more than the praise of man.
We want God to recognize us for the things that we do.
And he is gonna recognize us
and he does recognize when we do good things.
But what I'm saying is this,
is that it's not all about us and our works.
It's about the Lord Jesus Christ.