Greater Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church

By utilizing the transcription and editing instructions provided, a clean verbatim transcript was generated for the "The Dawn of a New Day" episode of the Greater Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church program.

Mike Wesley Jr.: It is my privilege to introduce my daddy, my mentor, my father, my pastor, my brother, my friend, counselor, and even when I need a tear wiped from my eye, I’m glad that I got a father named Reverend Dr. Michael Wayne Wesley Sr. Come on, let’s give it up for Pastor Wesley.

His bio is written inside of the program, but he is so much more than a bio. He’s a man who is of age, who’s been out on the gospel battlefield for quite some time. The good thing that I love about my dad is that he ain’t through yet. He’s just starting in a new chapter.

For over 40 years serving as pastor here at the Greater Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church, having served in the Birmingham public school system for many years and retired in the year 2003 to go full-time in the ministry. He’s married to the beautiful Vanita Burks Wesley, my mama. Everybody say, “Hey First Lady.”

From that union came two sons: myself being Mike Jr. and now my brother, Pastor James Wesley. Come on, give it up for James. But more than anything, my dad loves God. As a child, we grew up in the house trying to wake him up early in the morning, but he would be up before us.

We’d come into the den and he’d be on his knees praying. We’d be jumping on his shoulder, “Get up, Daddy, get up, Daddy,” and Mama would come running, “Let him alone, let him alone. He’s praying.” It is his prayers that got us here today.

The next voice you’re going to hear on today is none other than the highly esteemed, world-renowned Reverend Dr. Michael Wayne Wesley Sr. Everyone raise your hand and say, “Pastor Wesley, preach the word. Pastor Wesley, preach the word.” The next voice you will hear is none other than the highly esteemed pastor of this great church, Reverend Dr. Michael Wayne Wesley Sr. Let's give him a hand.

Dr. Michael W. Wesley Sr.: Truly, Father, I am so grateful for the things that you have done, for the victories that we have won. I’m grateful for every good and perfect gift that we have received, for we know that it has come to us from above, from you who are the father of lights and in whom there’s no variableness or turning.

Thank you for this day that you have made. Lord, we will rejoice and be glad in it. Our hearts are glad, our hearts are overflowing. I pray now for your mercy, for your peace as we come to this preaching moment that you would once again lift your human out of self and fill us with the Holy Spirit and speak to us with clarity and with truth.

We know that with you, there will be a word. Without you, there is no word. I pray now, Lord, that you would take this moment, bless your people in the way that only you can. Bless now the words in our mouth and the meditations that are on our heart, that it may be acceptable in your sight. Oh Lord, our strength and our redeemer. For we ask it all now in the name of your son, the Lord Jesus Christ. In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen. Thank God.

To say that I’m grateful would be not enough, but it’s all that I can say. My mothers used to say to us that people don’t have to say nice things about you and they don’t have to do good things for you. When they do, you at least should say thank you. So I want to say to all of you, thank you.

Thank you for the service. Thank you for the support. Thank you for the love. Thank you for the uplift. Thank you for every good thing that we have done. I want to thank my wife, want to thank my family, children, grandchildren, siblings. I want to thank each one of you for all of your support.

You’ve been an amen corner. You’ve always been. I could look to the right and I could see you there and I could know that we were there together. I remember once having to preach in a white church, and we were the only black people there. Nobody said a word, and I’m preaching out of my heart.

Vanita, my wife, said, “Amen! Amen!” When I got through preaching, the pastor came up and he said, “Brother Wesley, you warmed our hearts.” So we pray that God will warm our hearts. The word of God today comes to us from the New Testament book of the Gospel as recorded by John, the third chapter. I want you to look there.

John chapter three. I want to put the setting of the scripture text in its context, so I want to read a little bit of it. Verses 22 through 36 is the text for the day, and I guess I need to read it before explaining it so that we can have an understanding of what we’re talking about.

“After these things came Jesus and his disciples into the land of Judea, and there he tarried with them and baptized. And John also was baptizing in Aenon near to Salim, because there was much water there. And they came and were baptized. For John was not yet cast into prison.”

“Then there arose a question between some of John’s disciples and the Jews about purifying. And they came unto John and said unto him, ‘Rabbi, he that was with thee beyond Jordan, to whom thou bearest witness, behold the same baptizeth, and all men come to him.’”

“John answered and said, ‘A man can receive nothing except it be given him from heaven. Ye yourselves bear me witness that I said I am not the Christ, but I am sent before him. He that hath the bride is the bridegroom, but the friend of the bridegroom which standeth and heareth him rejoiceth greatly because of the bridegroom’s voice.’”

“‘This my joy therefore is fulfilled. He must increase, but I must decrease. He that cometh from above is above all. He that is of the earth is earthly and speaketh of the earth. He that cometh from heaven is above all. And what he hath seen and heard, that he testifieth, and no man receiveth his testimony.’”

“‘He that hath received his testimony hath set to his seal that God is true. For he whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God, for God giveth not the spirit by measure unto him. The Father loveth the Son and hath given all things into his hand. He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life. And he that believeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him.’”

This is the word of God for the people of God. I want to preach this afternoon from the subject “The Dawn of a New Day.” Basically, we have entitled that as the theme for this year with our church, knowing that this moment was coming, that there would be a change in the leadership of the Greater Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church.

That change represents the dawning of a new day. Now, we knew that the day was coming, we just didn’t know who would be the person. We had a feeling, we had a belief, we had a succession plan, and we followed it. The congregation embraced it, and so here we are.

But in the process of a new day, there has to be the diminishing of the old day. I want you to know that’s always tough. It’s very, very difficult for me personally, and I know for many of you. I know for the general public, in a sense, who has witnessed and has been a part of and attentive to the ministry that God has allowed us to bring in the old day. But a new day dawns.

A new day physically for me, a new day spiritually, and a new day emotionally. A new day in every dimension of the word is dawning. A new day is dawning in America. We don’t like it, but a new day is dawning. If we’re not careful about the new day that’s dawning in America, we’re going to wish for the old day because this new day can be destructive.

So, the dawning of a new day can either be a positive thing or it can be a negative thing. What I think makes the difference is our real understanding of what should happen in the new day. Anything that has two heads becomes a monster. So, we need to make a transition, and we need to make it clear and clean so that as the new day dawns, the direction of the church is not in question.

And that’s what this installation service is all about. Scripturally, it’s here right before us in the text. As we look at the passage of scripture, here is John the Baptist. Now, John the Baptist was the greatest person Jesus said that had ever lived up to that point. That included a lot of people.

John was great because John from his mother’s womb was filled with the Holy Spirit. He was whooping in the womb when Mary came to visit Elizabeth. The scripture says that the baby in her womb leaped when he heard Mary’s voice. He was already there. So, he had a divine birth. The angel had announced John’s birth.

John had an unusual call on his life. He not only was the last of the Old Testament prophets, but he was the greatest of the Old Testament prophets. There, when Malachi put down his pen, there had been no word from heaven for 400 years. The next thing you know, John was out in the wilderness, preaching and teaching and baptizing.

People were coming from everywhere wanting to know, “Who are you?” John said, “I’m just a voice crying in the wilderness, trying to make straight for one who’s coming.” Then the day came when his important role became manifest and he said, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”

He wasn’t just an introducer of somebody to come. He actually was the one who had the unique responsibility and opportunity of presenting Jesus. He was the forerunner of Jesus. John the Baptist was a great man. He had great influence. People came from everywhere to hear John preach.

They came out into the wilderness from the religious circles. They came from the Pharisees, the Sanhedrin Council. They came from every circle of life to hear John, and some even repented and received the baptism of purification. What was so odd about that was because the Jewish people did not receive baptism.

Baptism was something that was done for a proselyte, a person who was going to come out of Gentile world into Judaism was the one who received baptism. But the Jews came to John to receive baptism. John was a bad man. John was the greatest man Jesus said that had lived up to that moment.

He was a fiery preacher. He had a strange lifestyle from the time of his birth. After he was born, he went away into the wilderness of Judea and his diet was locusts and wild honey. I don’t know about your menu items, but that would not make mine. Locusts and wild honey, no.

John dressed like a wild man, loincloth girded about him. But he was effective. He was God’s man for the moment, and all of the world recognized that John was God’s man. But here comes Jesus. For a while, John and Jesus knew one another. They were cousins. Physically, biologically, they were cousins. Mary and Elizabeth were kin.

They were six months apart because Elizabeth was six months pregnant with John when the angel showed up to Mary to tell her she was going to have a child. To give her the confirmation that it wasn’t just a phenomenon limited to Mary, the angel told her, “Go visit your cousin Elizabeth. She’s already six months in.”

So, we see the relationship. But now while John is in the wilderness, Jesus is in the city. Grew up in the carpenter’s shop, minding his own business. Didn’t do anything to demonstrate that he was of supernatural origin until the age of 12 and he was there in the temple answering and asking questions among the doctors and the lawyers.

But now, fast forward. There’s about a 25-year gap. The next thing we know, we hear John the writer, the apostle, saying, “And there after these things, there came Jesus and his disciples into the land of Judea, and there he tarried with them and baptized.” Now Jesus has been in the opening days of his ministry in Jerusalem.

But he leaves Jerusalem now and he goes into the wilderness and there he is baptizing. Look at this at verse 23: “And John also was baptizing in Aenon.” Aenon was in the area of Samaria. John is baptizing. He’s known as John the Baptist not because he was a member of First Baptist Church. He was known as John the Baptist because baptizing was what he did.

It’s like the boys in the community. He’s Tom the Pusher. She’s Sally the Prostitute. He was John the Baptizer because that was his trade and that was what he was doing. But the ministries of John and Jesus overlapped for just this brief moment and it created a problem.

John has given up the territory that he was in, in the wilderness of Judea, and he has gone into Aenon in Samaria where there’s water. But Samaria was also a forbidden place, and John has had to resort to an unpopular place to conduct his ministry while Jesus is now in the territory that John has been in.

What makes matters a little worse here is that both men are baptizing and both men are baptizing a baptism of purification. They’re getting people ready to receive the Messiah. So, as John is baptizing and he’s teaching people, “There’s one coming after me who’s mightier than me, the latchet of whose shoes I’m not worthy to unloose,” he’s getting them ready for somebody.

Jesus is also getting them ready. One of the men, perhaps a group of Jews that had been near the baptism of Jesus, had connections with some of the people who had been baptized by John. There arose a question, or a discussion, or an argument among the two camps about whose baptism or whose ministry was more important.

The people from the Jesus camp are saying to the people in the John camp that the baptism of Jesus was superior to the baptism of John. It brought up the question of purification. So, the people from John’s camp go back to John, and that’s where the text picks back up.

When they come back to John, they say to John the Baptist, “Listen, the one you was with in the wilderness over there in Judea, the one you pointed to, you said he’s going to take away the sins of the world, he’s over there baptizing. And all of the world is coming to him.”

Now, what is happening here is there was a jealousy that had arisen from the two ministry camps. We have to be careful in the middle of a transition that we don’t get played, that we don’t fall into camps where jealousy begins to arise and difficulty begins to make ministry virtually impossible because of the narrowness of our minds and the misunderstanding of the work and will of God.

So, John says here to these men when they come to him, “Listen, you boys know that I said all along that I’m not the Christ. I made it very clear from the beginning. I’m just a voice crying in the wilderness, trying to make ready for him who is coming, because there was one coming after me who is mightier than me, the latchet of whose shoes I’m not worthy to unloose.”

My point here is they came to John with the intent of trying to provoke jealousy in him concerning the ministry of Jesus. Now, let me help you because I want you to understand this wasn’t new. It happened in the Old Testament in the book of Numbers, chapter 11. The most humble man that ever lived, you’d be surprised, his name was Moses.

There were two preachers that showed up in the Israelite camp. One is Medad and the other is Eldad, and they both are preaching because they have been authentically given the Holy Spirit by God. They are authentically preaching. The report comes to Moses: “Moses, there are these two men here in the camp and they are preaching.”

Joshua, the son of Nun, Moses' long-term minister, heard the conversation. Joshua speaks to Moses and he says, “Moses, make them stop. Make them shut up.” See what happened here was while they were trying to make Moses jealous, Joshua bought the Kool-Aid. You might not be able to mess with me, or you might not be able to mess with James, but somebody in these camps can buy the Kool-Aid.

Before we know it, we can have a division that’s not even necessary. So, I want to make sure that we’re real clear here today. I want to help you understand that the idea was to provoke Moses to jealousy. But look at Moses. Moses said, “No.” He said, “I would to God that all of the men were preachers.”

He said, “Everybody needs preaching, and I wish that everybody was a preacher.” You just can’t make an humble man jealous. They couldn’t get to Moses in the wilderness, and they weren’t able to get to John the Baptist here. John comes up with a classic illustration as we come back to the third chapter here.

He says here to these men, “You know, the bridegroom has the bride, but his best man stands with him and he rejoices in the voice of the bridegroom.” Now, you’ve got to know that there was a long, drawn-out process. When a man was going to get married, he would choose his best man.

His best man would be with him and would listen to and provide instructions to his best man, and his best man would carry out the instructions. On the day of the wedding, it wasn’t the best man who was to receive the bride. It was for the bridegroom. But the best man could be happy for the bridegroom because he was his friend. Are you hearing me?

So, John was saying there’s no need to be jealous of Jesus because he is the bridegroom and I am the best man. I am his friend, so I rejoiced when I heard his voice. Now he comes to the place of where ministry begins for all of us. He says, “I must decrease and he must increase.” There has to be a stepping away, a diminishing of one in order for the elevation of another.

The one who steps away doesn’t have to be envious of the one who’s coming along. So, you don’t have to worry. I’m not going to clip your wings. I’m not going to trip you up. I’m not going to get in the way. We want you to be able to do what God has called you to do.

So, what we’ve got to all understand is that we must make sure that we understand, and especially in ministry, that the number one job or criterion for a minister is humility. Don’t you miss that. The minister has to humble himself so that not the minister, but Christ can be elevated.

The minister ain’t nobody. The ministry is given as a grace. None of us deserve to be in the position that we’re in, but we’re in the position that we’re in because of the grace of God. John had sense enough to understand that he had been selected, pre-selected in the eons of time to be the introducer of Jesus. But he understood at the same time that he was not to be Jesus.

So, don’t misunderstand. You’re not Jesus and you’re not going to be, and every preacher needs to understand. We tend to have that Messiah mentality to think that we can solve every situation, but you can’t solve it. All we are are the pointers. We point people to the solution.

People will jack you up. They will make you think you’ve got something that you don’t have, or make you think you’re somebody that you’re not. But you’ve got to be wise enough to understand that it’s in being humble, being the one who decreases and allowing Christ to be the one who increases.

I recently heard just the other day on the news about a young man, 42 years old, same age as my boy in Huntsville. Young pastor in deep trouble because he took the church's money and he bought him an Audi and he paid off his credit cards and he spent more than $400,000 of the church’s money.

Now, let me just digress one minute. That’s what I was trying to prevent for Greater Shiloh when I was talking about a succession plan. We could have been that church because we could have got somebody who comes in here and they look good and they dance and they do everything and folk be falling all out the seats and say, “Yeah, that’s the one,” and that’d be the same one we’d be talking about he need to be arrested. Are you hearing me?

I’m just trying to help you understand. The minister must decrease, Christ must increase. What I like about John’s statement here, it is more than an axiom, it is more than a maximum, it is a true understanding. It points out his reasoning for saying he must decrease and Christ must increase because in that statement and in what follows in verses 31 through 36 is John has a very clear Christology, a very clear understanding of the ministry and work of Christ. Therefore, he says, “I can decrease as long as he increases.”

I want to help you with just five little brief things here to take a look inside of the Christology of John the Baptist in his clarity of understanding who Jesus is. Now, you’ve got to know John wasn’t educated. People call people great for different reasons. People call people great when they come from the right family. People call people great when they got a little money. People call people great when they got right education, been to the right schools.

John didn’t come from a great family—priestly family, yes, Zechariah and Elizabeth—but wasn't well-known. Certainly didn’t have money because he dressed like he was a pauper. He didn’t have a gourmet chef providing his food if his diet was locusts and wild honey. So it meant that Jesus had a different standard of understanding what greatness is other than what human beings say.

John demonstrates his greatness by showing us his clarity of who Jesus is. First and foremost, look at verse 31 there. He says, “He that cometh from above is above all.” What he sees in Jesus, he sees that his origin is that he came from heaven. You’ve got to always be able to see that Jesus came from heaven.

Everybody else are earth-born. Jesus came from heaven. You can’t get out of Matthew’s Gospel without understanding he came from heaven because the angel showed up to Joseph and said, “Joseph, don’t be afraid to take Mary to be your wife. This thing that’s with her is of the Holy Spirit. And thou shalt call his name Jesus for he shall save his people.” Saying his name shall be called Emmanuel, which means “God with us.”

When Jesus had fed the 5,000 in John’s Gospel, chapter six, Jesus said several times that, “I am from above. Your fathers ate manna in the wilderness and they are dead, but I am that bread that came down from heaven.” So, he made it clear that he was from heaven.

Now, John demonstrates his earthliness later on, even though he gives this clear Christology testimony of Jesus, when later he was put in prison. When they put him in prison, John sent messages, “Go and ask Jesus, ‘Are you the one, or do we look for another?’” because his humanness had gotten the best of him. It’s one thing to tell everybody, “I love the Lord. He heard my cry.” But when trouble knocks on your door, it will send you to Doubtville.

John’s humanness had gotten the best of him, but he could always want Jesus to increase because he was from above and everybody else is from the earth. Keep your eyes on the prize. Let everybody know that the savior that you’re lifting up is the one who is from above.

The second thing in John’s Christology, and I wish I had time but I won’t take the time today to give you all of that, but the second thing is in the next verse. He says, “And what he hath seen and heard, that he testifieth.” Now, the testimony of Jesus was a first-hand knowledge of God, of heaven, and of eternity. No one had to teach him any of that. Everybody else got to be taught about God, got to be taught about heaven, got to be taught about eternity.

But John, this uneducated preacher, saw clearly into who Jesus is. So, he could say, “Yes, I must decrease because he is the one that must increase.” Because he came from above and his testimony nobody had to teach it to him because what he saw he told us. What he heard, he told us about, and he understood things that no one else could understand.

His Christology continues in the next verse as he says not only that, he says, “For whom God has sent speaketh the words of God, for God giveth not the spirit by measure unto him.” Jesus did not have a limitation of the Holy Spirit on him. He just lived in the spirit. He just walked in the spirit. He didn’t have to get in a trance when he wanted to talk to Father. He just closed his eyes, sometimes looked up.

He said, “I know you hear me because you hear me always. You and I are one.” He already knew what he had. He already knew who he was. Here is a Trinitarian understanding of the doctrine of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost wrapped up in one in terms of the power and the presence of the Holy Spirit. In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. The same was in the beginning with God, and he had the Spirit of God in him from the beginning without measure.

So, when you talk about him, you’re talking about somebody who can save anybody. No matter who they are, no matter where they come from, no matter what they have done, no matter how long they have done it. Let him be the one who increases and you be the one who always decreases, and your ministry will always be on track.

Lastly, in the Christology of John, John could declare that, “I must decrease because here is somebody who’s better than me. Here is somebody who’s from above. Here is somebody who has been in heaven, who has seen time and eternity. Here is somebody who, when you speak of him, he is truth, and people believe the testimony that you give. Their lives are going to be sealed that God’s word is the truth. Here is somebody who has the Spirit without measure.”

In Old Testament, nobody had the Spirit without measure. They had measure on it. God gave Saul, Israel’s first king, the Holy Spirit, but he took it away from him because Saul was disobedient. David when he sinned, David cried, “Take not thy Holy Spirit from me,” because he didn’t want to lose what God had given him.

But since Pentecost, believers have the Holy Spirit, but we have it in a measure. So you minister according to the measure of the Spirit that you had been given. But Jesus didn’t have no measure. He didn’t have no limit. So he could speak to rocks and rocks would move. He could speak to winds and winds would sit down. He could speak to storms and storms would stand up. He could speak to the dead and the dead would get up. He could do anything but fail because he had all power in his hand.

Why did he have all power? And that’s number five: because the Father had put all things in his hand. Jesus had all power because you only get power one or two ways. Either you got it or somebody have to give it to you. And the Father put it all in his hand.

So, today as I leave the pulpit, the Father is going to put it in your hand and you’ll be able to do what you need to do if you walk with the Lord. Don’t be no big-headed person. Don’t get egotistical about the size of the congregation or the finances of the church or any of the external things that men look at.

Build your hopes on things eternal and hold to God’s unchanging hand. If the world from you withhold of its silver and its gold and you have to get along with meager fare, just remember in his word how he feeds the little bird, and take your burdens to the Lord and leave it there.

If you leave it there, if you trust and never doubt, my testimony to you is he will surely bring you out. Oh, God will! God will! God will! God will walk with you. God will talk with you. God will rock you. God will hold you. God will help you. God will keep you. God will speak to you. God will speak through you. God will lift you. God will do anything but fail. He has put it all in Jesus' hand. If you let him be the one who increases and you be the one who decrease, you’ll always be the one who God will allow the glory to rest upon and the blessing to be upon.

God is. He’s the joy and strength of my life. He moves all pain, misery, and strife. Promised to keep me, never to leave me. Never, never come short of his word. I’ve got to fast and pray, stay in the narrow way. Got to keep my life clean every day. I want to go with him when he comes back. I’ve come too far and I can’t turn back. God is! God is! God is! God is! God is! Joe’s hope. Doors of the church open. Somebody might want to come. Come on, sing.

God is! Somebody believe that today. I believe that today. He’s my protection. Oh, God is. He’s my all and all. Oh, God is. He’s my light in darkness. Oh, God is. He’s my all and all. Yeah. God is. My joy in the time of sorrow. Oh, God is. My today and tomorrow. Oh, God is. He’s my all and all. Oh, God is the joy and the strength of my life. God is! Promised to keep me, never to leave me. He’s never, never come short of his word. I’ve got to fast and pray, stay in the narrow way. I’ll keep my life clean every day. I want to go with him when he comes back. I’ve come too far and I’ll never turn back. God is! God is! God is! God is! God is! Yes he is, yes he is, yes he is, yes he is! God is! Yes, he is. God is!

We want to thank God for each of you. We’re going to continue now with this program as we move now into the installation. Amen.