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‘Jesus said, “I will come again” - John 14:3

A small boat with six crew members had been on a week-long fishing expedition in the Indian Ocean and they were returning to their home village with a sizeable catch. However, unknown to the captain of the vessel, the youngest member of the crew, the cabin boy, had fallen overboard and it was some hours before his loss was discovered. The captain quizzed the other crewmen, asking when last the young lad had been seen. He then turned the boat around and headed back on the same compass bearing, but at an increased speed. After four hours they reached the area where they thought the missing youth might be, and amazingly they spotted the youth floating on his back! After the rescue the captain asked the boy, “You must have been desperately worried, why didn’t you give in?” He responded immediately, “I knew you’d come back again!”

In In 1989 when Li Jingwei was just four-years-old, he was lured away from his home in a small village near the south-western city of Zhaotong in Yunnan Province, China. The child -kidnappers eventually sold him on to a family living over 1,800km away. In 2015, it was estimated that 20,000 children were being abducted each year in China! Amazingly, his memories of the village from which he was abducted, were so good, he was able to draw a sketch showing features like a building he believed to be a school, a bamboo forest, and a small pond. In December 2021 he posted his sketch on the internet, and the police matched it to a small village and a woman whose son had disappeared. Mother and son were reunited on January 1st, 2022! What joy! The son that was lost had been found. Didn’t Jesus say, “The Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was LOST.”

‘‘For this my son … was lost and is found.’ - Luke 15:24

- Luke 15:24

Imagine what a pathetic spectacle it would be if a child never grew. Physical growth is expected, and so too it is expected that a ‘child of God’ should grow spiritually. But how can spiritual growth be measured? D. L. Moody (February 5, 1837 – December 26, 1899) the famous American evangelist, collected quotes and anecdotes he could use in his preaching. On the subject of spiritual growth, he wrote, “Doctor Bonar once remarked that he could tell when a Christian was growing. In proportion to his growth in grace he would elevate his Master, talk less of what he was doing, and become smaller and smaller in his own esteem, until, like the morning star, he faded away before the rising sun. Jonathan was willing to decrease that David might increase; and John the Baptist showed the same spirit of humility.”  - ‘He must increase, but I must decrease.’ John 3:30.

‘… that ye may grow …’ - 1 Peter 2:2

“He must increase, but I must decrease” - John 3:30

The words above were spoken by John Baptist. He had in mind that his own ministry, that of proclaiming the coming Messiah, was drawing to a close. He had fulfilled Isaiah’s prophecy [40:3] and had been ‘the voice crying in the wilderness, preparing the way of the Lord!’ Christ would now be in the ascendancy and John’s voice would soon be still. Christ must INCREASE! In Daniel ch.2 we are introduced to Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, in which he sees a large human image symbolising four great world kingdoms that would dominate world history. This unusual statue is broken in pieces by ‘a stone was cut out without hands’: a picture of the Second Coming of Christ. ‘The stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and FILLED the whole earth.’ Isaiah anticipated this future global Messianic kingdom when he wrote, ‘of the INCREASE of His government and peace there shall be no end’ Isaiah 9:7

John Baptist, at first, was unwilling to baptise Jesus as he recognised that He, being sinless, had no sins to confess. Following His baptism, as Jesus came up out of the water, a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.’ William Barclay points out, ‘The voice which Jesus heard at the baptism is of supreme importance … That sentence is composed of two quotations. "This is my beloved Son", is a quotation from Psalm 2:7. Every Jew accepted that that Psalm as a description of the Messiah, the mighty King of God who was to come. "With whom I am well pleased" is a quotation from Isaiah 42:1, which is a description of the Suffering Servant …’ In a later chapter, the prophet Isaiah will reveal more about this ‘suffering Servant’ – ‘by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities.’ [Isaiah 53:11]. This takes us to the cross!

‘This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased’ - Matthew 3:17

‘It is another who bears witness concerning me’ - John 5:32

In legal matters, the principle set down in Deuteronomy is well accepted - 19:5 ‘At the mouth of two witnesses, or at the mouth of three witnesses, shall a matter be established.’ The Jewish people struggled to accept that Jesus of Nazareth was their long-awaited Messiah, so in John ch.5, the Lord appeals to a five-fold witness to His Person. (1) The witness of John Baptist v.33 ‘he bore witness’. (2) The witness of the miracles – v.36 ‘for the works … that I do, bear witness of Me.’ (3) The witness of the Father – v.37 ‘the Father Himself, who has sent Me, has borne witness of Me.’ (4) The witness of Moses – v.46 ‘for if ye had believed Moses, you would have believed Me, for he wrote of Me. But if ye do not believe his writings, how shall ye believe my words?’ (5) The witness of the Scriptures – v.39 ‘the scriptures [which you search], they it is which bear witness concerning Me.’ The nation was without excuse!