I was always taught that it's rude to point. Well at least, pointing at someone is impolite, but pointing to somebody is completely different. The bees who made John the Baptist's wild honey did dances on the honeycomb to point their friends to the pollen. John himself knew that he had been born to prepare people's lives for the coming of the Messiah and to send them on to Jesus. He had been baptizing people for maybe a couple of years, when Jesus turned up in the queue. It took John a little while to recognize Jesus. They were related and their mothers knew each other, so they could well have met a few times as children, but John grew up in Judea and then left home to go to the desert; Jesus' early life was also in Judea (in Bethlehem), but he was taken south to Egypt after a couple of years and then his family moved him to Galilee in the north.
However, as Jesus stepped forward, John realized who he was and that he was the Messiah - the one about whom he had been teaching. The apostle John, in his Gospel, tells us that John the Baptist had been at pains to tell people that he himself was not the Messiah, but only his herald. Luke and Matthew go on to say that John had been proclaiming that Jesus was so much greater than him that he wasn't worthy even to untie or carry Jesus' sandals. Yet here Jesus was, coming to be baptized. John protested at first but, after Jesus had explained, he happily baptized the Son of God. Certainly, no one else ever had that privilege! John then was one of the witnesses to the Holy Spirit coming upon Jesus as a dove - and staying on him - and the voice of God sounding from Heaven to say that Jesus was his son. After this, there was no question for John, or presumably the other people present, who Jesus was.
John the Baptist was the greatest man ever born before Jesus, but never sought to take the glory for himself.
After this, John made sure that he let people know that it was Jesus whom he had been speaking about previously. He described Jesus as the lamb of God, who would take away the sin of the world. This might imply that he understood that it was through Jesus' death that we would receive forgiveness, which he could well have gleaned from some of the Old Testament prophecies, but may have also been told directly by God as well. He told two of his own disciples about Jesus, and they started Jesus' own core following. John never tried to hold on to the glory for himself.
He kept on baptizing for a while after Jesus had started his own ministry, continuing to point the way to Jesus. John's team, though, became a bit concerned when they realized that Jesus and his friends were also baptizing people and that the crowds were migrating that way. John had to explain to them that he had always made it clear that he was not the Messiah and could do only what was required of him by God. He said that, just like the friends of the bridegroom rejoice when they hear the voice of the bridegroom as he arrives, so his joy had been made complete by the arrival of Jesus on the scene. He went on to add that Jesus' ministry was going to increase while his own would decrease. He pointed out that Jesus was the one who had come from Heaven and that only through him was there eternal life for those who would believe in him as the son of God - and the consequences of God's anger for those who would not.
John took his job very seriously. He was born to usher in the Kingdom of God and direct people to Jesus. His message was that the Kingdom had arrived and Jesus was the Messiah, through whom there would be both salvation and judgment. He was totally humble, recognizing that his role was to support that of Jesus, not to have a ministry of his own which would remain centre stage. We too need to recognize that our role is simply to worship Jesus and show others the way to him, whatever form that might take.
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