Luke 3:15-20 – A Faithful Minister

One of the first effects of faithful preaching of God’s Word is that it gets people thinking – thinking about spiritual things. They may hate it or they may love it, but they are at least thinking about it. Their apathy has been dissolved. This is what happens to the Jews as they hear John’s preaching – they start thinking.

A faithful minister always exalts Christ. It might be easy for John not to clear up the people’s misunderstanding of who he is. He could have just let them go on thinking that he is the Messiah. But he doesn’t. He points them to Christ. This is the job of every minister, not to set himself up as saviour, but to point men and women, boys and girls to our Lord Jesus Christ.

Even the best and most godly ministers can’t compare to Christ. We need to keep this in our mind, because we can have a tendency to exalt our ministers and follow them rather than follow the Christ they preach. Our ministers can’t save us. Going to church and sitting in the pew won’t save us. There is nothing inside the minister himself that makes him able to change an unbelieving heart. Only God has the power to change our hearts, hear our prayers, and forgive our sins.

John is a faithful servant of God. He boldly proclaims the truth about the Lord Jesus Christ, about who God is, and about what God wants. And what is the result? He is thrown in prison and later beheaded. God often does not reward His servants until Heaven, but when they get there they will find that it more than makes up for whatever they have had to suffer on earth.

Questions
1. What effect did John’s preaching have on the people?
2. What happened to John?

Prayer Points
1.Pray for our minister and elders.
2. Use prayer points from your congregation.
3. Pray for family matters.