Our scripture text this morning is from Matthew chapter 3, Matthew chapter 3, verses 13 to 17. If you were with us last Sabbath day, we saw John the Baptist gathering those at the Jordan River to be baptized. We’ll continue with the second half of this chapter this morning. as Jesus Christ comes to John to be baptized. So this will be Matthew 3, beginning in verse 13, reading through the end of the chapter, verse 17. Hear the word of the Lord. Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him saying, I need to be baptized by you. And do you come to me? But Jesus answered him, let it be so now for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness. Then he consented. And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water and behold, the heavens were open to him. And he saw the spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him. And behold, a voice from heaven said, this is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased. Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.

Let us pray and ask him to bless that word that he has spoken to us. Heavenly Father, we thank you that through your Apostle Matthew, you have given us this account of your son’s life and ministry. We may know the Savior that you have provided for your people. We may know the King that has taken his seat on the throne of the universe. that we may know that one who was made to be like us, that we may in your glorious grace be made to be like him. So we pray in his name alone. Amen.

Well, if you’re around my age or younger, someone born in the 80s, you may remember from your childhood when you went to the dentist or the orthodontist, the doctor’s office, or the speech pathologist, or all the places that I was dragged as a young boy, finding the Highlights magazine there on the rack. If you remember Highlights magazine, I read it for the pictures, to be honest, kind of like I read Reader’s Digest for the jokes, but reading Highlights for the pictures, you had Goofus and Gallant, you had the ill-mannered boy versus the very squeaky clean boy to show young children how they were to behave, you had the the dueling pictures and you have to find the 12 things that had changed from one picture to another. Maybe the sun was in a different position in the sky or the boy had a hat on in one picture but not in the other. And then there was one picture activity that was to find the things that don’t belong in this picture. You remember that one? So there’d be a family gathered around the dinner table, and the father would have a knife and a fork, and the mother would have a dog bone or something, instead of a fork. You’d circle the things that were wrong. The child would have his shoes on his head and his hat on his shoes, something like this. So find the things that didn’t seem to belong in the picture. And we have one of those scenes, according to John, in this chapter today. John’s baptizing sinners. John’s warning people about the wrath to come, about being thrown into the fire. John’s warning hypocrites to stop being hypocrites. And in the middle of this scene comes the holiest man who ever lived to be baptized, to receive the same sort of ministry that John was giving to the others. And the first century highlights readers would have circled that and said, this doesn’t belong. John says you got it exactly 180 degrees backwards. He says I should be the one being baptized by you. As we will see, this is nothing like a wrong picture. This is precisely what Jesus had ordained and God the Father had ordained for you. Friends, if it weren’t for this text, we would have no salvation. we would have no hope of eternal life, no hope for struggle and temptation to actually have any power in that struggle, to have any success in our daily lives in this world. You see all of Jesus’ ministry is wrapped up in these five verses. So as we look at the end of Matthew 3, we’ll see simply Jesus’ ministry explained. for us in verses 13 to 15. But beyond the mere explanation, we’ll see Jesus’ ministry empowered in verse 16. And if that weren’t enough, we’ll see in verse 17, Jesus’ ministry endorsed by the very voice of God. So see Jesus’ ministry explained and empowered and endorsed. And by doing so, we will see that we have a Jesus who is not only ruling over us, but has been made like us so that forever we may be with and like him. Let’s begin by seeing how Jesus’ ministry is explained for us in these verses. As I said, only a week ago, we looked at the first half of this chapter, and we know what John the Baptist is doing. To review, look at verse 2. He’s telling people to repent. Verse six, people are confessing their sins. Verse eight, he’s telling them to bear fruit in keeping with their repentance. In verse 11, he says, I baptize you with water for repentance. And so these people were convicted by John’s preaching. They recognized their sin, they confessed their sins. They saw the need to repent and to turn from their sins. and they underwent the waters of baptism as a sign of their need for cleansing and being part of the true people of God and for new life. And in the midst of that, in verse 13, Jesus shows up, beholds the scene before him. says, yeah, I need that. I need that same cleansing. I need to be submerged into the waters of the Jordan River just like these other people, just like these sinners. And as I hinted at in my introduction, verse 14, John says, what? John says, wait, what do you mean by this, Jesus? John would have prevented him. John would have said, no, you may not come here. You may not submit to my baptism. John knows what’s up. He knows that he is the sinner. He had said in verse 11, I’m not even unworthy, I’m not even worthy to untie this man’s sandals. And now I’m supposed to baptize him? Now I’m supposed to give him the sign of cleansing and of new life and of status in God’s people? How could this be? This seems wrong. But Jesus is going to tell us why. Jesus is going to explain it for us and he does in verse 15 with this sentence. He says, let it be so now. He says, let’s, let’s get going on this for, because it is fitting for us. to fulfill all righteousness.” Fitting to fulfill all righteousness. He says it’s fitting, it’s suitable, it’s right, it’s proper, it’s appropriate for what the two of us are going to do here together to fulfill all righteousness, to fulfill it, to bring it to fullness and to completion and into plain view. Righteousness, that which accords with God in his character, that which matches who He is and what He has demanded of His people, His righteousness that is the scene in the world. Jesus says it is proper for us to bring to full view, to the ultimate degree, that righteousness of the Heavenly Father, that proper understanding of who God is and His holiness and His utter purity and righteousness. In other words, friend, Jesus is saying for God’s character to be fully revealed in this world and in his people, Jesus had to be identified as a sinner. The one who was without sin had to be counted among those who were with sin. And now perhaps you can see why we said this explains Jesus’ ministry. You heard the verse read earlier in the service from First Timothy that Jesus came to save sinners. And here’s the thing about saving sinners. It’s not something that you can do remotely over Zoom. It’s not something that you can do only theoretically. It’s not even something that you can do in a courtroom, because a courtroom is only where a sentence is declared. No, you actually have to go where that sentence is being carried out, and that is at death. What did Adam and Eve hear from the father all the way back in the garden? That when you sin, you will die. That’s the wages of sin. It is death. And you maybe are thinking, well, Jesus isn’t dying here. Jesus is only being baptized. But remember what scripture tells us about baptism. That it’s a picture of burial. That it’s a picture of suffering. That’s why Jesus will say later in the Gospels, I have another baptism that’s awaiting me. And you’re thinking, oh, Jesus isn’t anabaptist. He believes in being baptized twice. No. No, that’s not what Jesus means. He’s using it figuratively of his death, of his suffering, of the baptism of fire that he spoke about in the earlier part of Matthew chapter 3. And that fate, that sentence of death on the cross for the sins of other people, the sins that he did himself not commit, is sealed right here. Because when you accept the waters of baptism, when you say, yes, I am a sinner, I need to be cleansed, you accept all that being a sinner entails. Now, Jesus was not a sinner. That’s why he was able to take the sins of others upon him. But to be identified with them, to be counted as theirs so that they could be counted as his, he had to undergo this rite, this sacrament, this institution of baptism. He came to save sinners. To save sinners he had to be identified with them. But Jesus will say, as you probably know, I came not to call the righteous. I didn’t come to call those who think they’ve already fulfilled all righteousness on their own. Jesus, I think, is being sarcastic there when he says, I came not to call the righteous. He’s not saying, oh, there’s there there’s those out there who don’t need me. He’s saying there’s those out there who think they don’t need me. He says, I came to call sinners to repentance. John recognized his need, did he not? John recognized how the sandal should have been on the other foot. The question is, do we? Do we get offended when we say that Jesus came to save a sinner like me? Because no, I’m not that sort of sinner. I’m not the bad kind. I’m not the sin that leads to death kind. I’m the venial little white lie type of sinner that can kind of be forgotten and that’s the end of it. No, to call yourself a Christian, to call yourself one who loves the Lord is to have a frank self-assessment as a sinner. but it’s to have a clear assessment of one who came to be counted among the sinners for your sake. So friends, when we make little of our sin, we actually make a mockery of what Jesus has come to do here. We make little or ignore our sin, we say, ah, that wasn’t that important. Ah, Jesus really didn’t need to suffer. Ah, Jesus was wasting his time. Ah, Jesus could have stayed in heaven. When we truly confront and recognize our sin, we deepen our appreciation of just what Jesus is saying he has come to do in this text by identifying himself with us. To be identified with the King and the universe is to be identified as a saved sinner. So that explains Jesus’ ministry. If that’s his coming in a nutshell, these three verses, the question is how will he accomplish it? How will he carry out that which he’s been called by the Father to do? And that’s why verse 16 is so important. As he’s being baptized, the text says, immediately he went up from the water and behold, the heavens are open to him. He saw the Spirit of God descending on him like a dove. This phrase, like a dove, has tripped readers up at times. Some may picture an actual bird with flesh and feathers descending from the heavens, but the Gospels make very clear it’s like a dove. It’s in bodily form, or you can think of how the spirit is compared elsewhere to a wind, to something that flits around and moves the atmosphere. Just as the dove moves, so the spirit moves. Remembering that the word spirit itself means wind. You can imagine it flitting down from the heavens. The reason it’s important, the reason it is visible, is for the sake of the onlookers. That they could see that this man Jesus was clothed, was cloaked with the Holy Spirit. And this would have meant something to them. They would have remembered from their Old Testament that the Holy Spirit often came upon people for specific reasons. And you can read in the Old Testament how servants of the Lord, like Joshua, were baptized with the Holy Spirit. How prophets like Moses and Ezekiel were clothed with the Holy Spirit. How priests like Zechariah were clothed with the Holy Spirit. But particularly in the Old Testament, do you recall who What type of people were shown to have the Holy Spirit? It’s kings in the Old Testament. It’s even Saul or David were clothed with the Holy Spirit. And some of the people saw this and they remembered how servants of God, how prophets and priests and kings were clothed with the Holy Spirit. Now, when they see Jesus clothed with the Holy Spirit, they would say, ah, this is the servant. the Lord. This is the prophet come to declare the final word of the Lord. This is the priest come to come to offer the final sacrifice as himself for sins. And this is the king. This is the ruler of God’s people, clothed with the Holy Spirit. So it’s interesting when you start paying attention to how often the Spirit shows up in the ministry of Jesus. It’s all throughout the gospel. The very next chapter in chapter four, Jesus is led in and out of the temptation to the wilderness by the spirit to show that he is the true and better Israel, who succeeds or Israel failed, how he defeats Satan instead of being defeated by him. Chapter 12, quoting Isaiah 42, Jesus says, I will put my spirit upon him and proclaim justice to the Gentiles. And in his name, the Gentiles will hope. Jesus says people like us, people like us who are surely mostly or all Gentiles, have received the good news of Christ because the Spirit anointed the preaching of Christ. Or Isaiah 61, Jesus’ inaugural sermon in Nazareth, he quotes from that chapter where the servant of God admits, announces that the Spirit is upon him, and so what does he do? He gives sight to the blind, gives liberty to the captives, gives the opening of prison, and ultimately his great and final work of being delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification, Paul tells us that it was the Spirit through the blood of the eternal covenant and by the work of the Spirit that Jesus was offered up. That it was the Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead. This is why the one who was baptized by John was also baptized by the Spirit. Not merely to identify himself with sinners, but to save sinners. But here’s the really remarkable thing about this, this descending of the Spirit upon Jesus. In the Gospel of John, he includes the words of John the Baptist, where John announced to the crowd, this, that he who on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is he who will baptize with the Holy Spirit. This same Spirit that is now given to Christ is the Spirit that he gives you. So if Jesus could be strengthened in the midst of temptation and willfulness against Satan by the Spirit, that same Spirit is with you. When you face temptation, you have that same power of God in you, because that Christ has baptized you with his Spirit. That same Spirit who rose Jesus from the dead, is in you. And that’s why Paul can say, if the Spirit of God who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he will likewise give you life to your mortal bodies. Your hope of everlasting life your hope of saying goodbye to pain and to sickness and to the aches and groans of daily life and the bigger diseases and infections and ultimately whatever happens to kill each and every one of us will be done away with because the Spirit will give you life. And if Jesus rose from the dead because of that spirit given to him, that same hope is given to you through that same spirit. That’s why this verse 16 is not merely an empowering of Jesus for ministry, it’s the powering of his church for eternal life as he pours out that same spirit on you. So we could say it this way, if Christ in his first coming made himself like you in his baptism. He did it so that when he returns, he will make us like him. Paul says in 1 Corinthians, y’all, Church of God will have spiritual bodies, spiritual with a capital S, eternal life, powered by the same spirit given to Christ here. Jesus’ ministry is empowered by the Spirit. Your fight against the devil, your fight against temptation, your fight against sin, your fight ultimately against death, and your victory in those things are empowered by the Holy Spirit. And lest there be any doubt about who Jesus is and what he has come to do, we arrive at verse 17. where a voice from the heavens, a voice from the clouds, a voice from God himself endorsed all that we have seen in this chapter. Again, just as the Spirit descends in a way that people can sense it, they can see it, so the approval of the Father comes in a way that people can hear it. They can know that this is true, that Jesus truly has this status as my Son. My Son. We often say, hey, this is a great proof of the trinity of Father, Son, and Spirit. And it’s true. This is a wonderful way to see how God is three persons in one God. But it’s more than that. For what would the Israelites have understood God to mean to when they hear that this is my Son? What would that have meant to them? Well, you may not recognize or realize this, but in the Old Testament faith and life of the Israelites, this language, this title of my son was a royal title. It was the title that the Lord gave to those kings that he had anointed and appointed to rule over his people. So for instance, in that great covenant promises of David, given to David in 2 Samuel 7, that he would have a king forever on the throne, the Lord declares that that will be his son who will fulfill that purpose, just as it is David’s son. Or Psalm 2 says the same thing about the Son of God ruling as king. Or Psalm 89, I will make him the firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth, which Paul picks up in Colossians 1. Or Isaiah 11, the one with the Spirit is king, just like he is in Isaiah 42 and Isaiah 61 or elsewhere in the Old Testament. So when Jesus is declared to be the Son of God, the people gathered around him would have understood that to be his approval as king, his endorsement as the king of Israel, as the ruler of God’s people. Of course, we know it means more than that, don’t we? After all, who could really fulfill a promise to be a king forever? Who could fulfill a promise to be a perfect king, to never fail to dispense equity and righteousness and justice? Clearly the only one who could be a perfect king forever is one who shares the very traits of God, who himself is eternal. who himself is all-powerful and all-wise and all-knowing and all-good and all-benevolent to his people. And the only one who could fulfill these human promises of a perfect king is God himself as king. And those two come together perfectly in Jesus. The descendant, according to the flesh of David, but also eternally the very divine Son of God. We have a king who, as a human, came to defeat the enemies of his people like any good king does. But we have one who has the power of the Spirit as God to rule and reign over us forever. And oh, when, you know, rulers of this earth come and go, some good, some bad, most bad, regardless of which party you may prefer. To know that we have a divine, omnipotent, all-benevolent, all-caring, all-good king is such, such sweet news. such relief from the worry of who’s going to win the next election or who’s going to be impeached or who’s going to win control or this or that legislative body. To know that the final great royal son is the truly divine son is sweet news indeed. So friends, this declaration from the Heavenly Father, what was good news to those who were gathered around is good news for us as well. Because scripture tells us that Christ even now reigns and rules over us perfectly, tenderly, compassionately, ideally for his good and our good as well. So when you look at this text, yes, use it as a proof text for the Trinity next time you’re taking a theological exam. Good points for you. But no much more than that. This one who identifies with us, this one who saves us from our sins, this one who anoints us with his very spirit is our king. winning subjects to himself, winning people to himself, winning a kingdom to himself, winning a church to himself, that we may forever and fully be his. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you so much that we can come to you in the name of the King. Lord, what better pedigree could an ambassador have, Lord, than to speak on behalf of the King? to know that through Christ we come to you gives us such encouragement, such peace, such assurance of your perfect plan for all eternity, that we will be yours. We will live and reign with Christ forever. So we pray in his name and through his name alone. Amen.

Let us join together in the congregational prayer. Father in heaven, we thank you that we serve such a good God. We thank you for your goodness and your mercy to us. We pray that we would never forget how charitable you are to us in all the ways that we do recognize in the ways and especially the ways in which we don’t recognize. Help us to be a grateful people, grateful for the things in which you provide for us. But Lord, in that, we still have many needs in this life, many areas of our life that are in pain, many needs within this congregation. We pray for physical needs. being in bodily pain or sickness or deterioration, Lord. We pray for our physical bodies. We pray for emotional needs throughout the congregation as well, that you would help us in our ability to connect with others personally, Lord, that you would heal our broken personal our broken relationships and our needs in that area as well.

We pray for financial needs in the congregation, in the areas where people aren’t able to make ends meet. We pray for all these needs, Lord, these real needs that are often so difficult to deal with. We pray that as we read in Psalm 123, Lord, that have mercy on us. Oh, Lord, have mercy on us. But Lord, we know that we have a much more ultimate need as well, and that is a spiritual need, that we are sinners in need of a savior. As we read in 1 Thessalonians 5, that salvation is through Christ, your son, who died for us. We’re so grateful for his act of obedience, living the perfect life in which we were unable to do, obeying the law, we’re grateful for his passive obedience, dying a death on the cross for our sins. And that’s being able to take part of that great exchange where we receive Christ’s righteousness and Christ takes our sin. We are so blessed by that. And so Lord, for that, we do recognize that we do have this blessed hope. As we sang earlier in Psalm 32, blessed is he who is forgiven, that in the midst of all these difficulties and challenges and needs, that we have an ultimate hope in the new heavens and the new earth and that you would uphold us to to think rightly about these difficulties, not in any way minimizing them, but Lord, also realizing that these often are given to us to remind us of the next stage when the new heavens and the new earth descend, and that we live and are able to worship you perfectly. where we will no longer have these infirmities and we’re able to worship you in spirit and truth without the pains of this life, the anxieties and all those things. So Lord, we’re so grateful for your mercy, the salvation that Christ achieved for us. So Lord, in our guilt and our sin, we confess that and we receive that grace in which Christ gives us. And finally, Lord, we pray that we would live out of gratitude and that our ultimate need has been taken care of, that being the spiritual need, us being sinners that are in need of a savior. Father, we love you and we pray that we would be salt and light to all in which we come in contact with throughout this week and in our lives and the different arenas and different places that you have placed us in the other six days of the week, that we would give witness to that eternal hope, that blessed hope of being forgiven. that we would be ready to answer for that and give witness to that hope which is found in Christ only. We love you, Lord, and thank you. And it’s in your son’s name we pray, amen.