"The Righteousness of Christ" Matthew 3:13-15 Sunday Morning Worship Service

Let me invite you now to open your Bibles to the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 3.

Matthew 3 · chapter mention

Continue our study in Matthew's Gospel.

I feel like it's Christian Disneyland today.

Baptism, communion, singing, about the righteousness of God what we have in Christ, and now our chance to look at the Word of God, and not just any passage, but uh the passage we look at this morning, Matthew 3, verse 13, is the first appearance of Jesus Christ in the Bible.

Matthew 3:13

This is where he enters the stage, so to speak.

Matthew being the first gospel written, it's the first New Testament book written, and Jesus being prophesied throughout the Old Testament.

In Matthew chapter 1, he is the genealogy, appears there saying this is the gospel of Jesus Christ with the genealogy.

Matthew 1 · chapter mention

Matthew chapter 2, he's a baby and flees to Egypt, and you don't see him in Matthew chapter 3 until this verse.

Matthew 2 · chapter mention Matthew 3 · chapter mention

So imagine, if you will, that it's August already, which I cannot believe, but reliable sources have told me it's August.

If you started reading in Genesis chapter 1 on January 1st, is your Bible program.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

Bless your heart.

You've been reading all year.

You're plowing through, you are in the New Testament right now, you might be somewhere around right here.

Imagine reading the Bible for this long.

This is the first time you see the man, Jesus Christ, speaking, saying anything, doing anything.

This is his introduction to the Bible.

And you can just draw that out over the centuries, the thousands of years of Israel's history, from the fall of Adam in the garden, where God prophesies that I'll send a savior through the seed of Eve who will crush the head of the devil, all the way through Abraham, and all the way through the patriarchs, all the way through the Torah and the law, all the way through the prophets and the kings, and all the way through the exile of the 70 years in the wilderness again, and all the way through the return and Daniel and Ezra and Nehemiah and Esther, and then you've got the those prophets at the end of the return with Malachi and Haggai.

And now finally you get a genealogy.

That's like the long line of Disneyland.

And now you see Jesus.

And what's interesting when he walks onto the pages of the New Testament, he is met in like classic Yahweh, classic Jesus style.

He's on the pages for one verse and he immediately meets a follower who doesn't like what he's doing.

That is the way it always goes.

Matthew 3, verse 13, Jesus came from Galilee.

Matthew 3:13

We don't know anything about his time there.

He'd been living there.

Remember, since Joseph returned from Egypt, he was afraid of the ruler in Jerusalem, and so he didn't go back to Bethlehem.

He went up to Nazareth where they lived in relative anonymity.

Now Jesus is coming from Galilee to the Jordan.

He's going to John.

Remember, Jordan, where they are out there, is not on the way to anywhere.

It is remote.

It is desolate.

It takes a journey to get there.

Jesus goes out intentionally to find John.

John is baptizing tens of thousands of people out there.

This was a massive revival, so to speak.

He was baptizing Jews, which was humiliating because baptism was confessing that you didn't have a spiritual leg to stand on, remember?

He was baptizing Gentiles that wanted to hope in Israel's Messiah.

Massive crowds out there.

That's where Jesus goes.

And he goes out there to be baptized by John, it says in verse 13, that you don't have to read his motives, no secret motives.

Matthew tells you, he's going there to be baptized by him.

John would have prevented him.

John sees him coming.

John declares, when you take the account in the gospel according to John, John the Baptist declares, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

So John the Baptist identifies who Jesus is, knows him.

They're cousins, remember.

This is not the first time he's seen him, obviously.

He knows him.

He's stunned that he's coming to the waters of baptism to be baptized like some kind of spiritual leper, to be baptized by some kind of, like some kind of Jew whose sin is separating them from God.

Here comes Jesus in the line of people to be baptized.

John says, No.

I could be baptized by you.

John says, sign me up for that.

I could be baptized by you, but why are you here from me?

Jesus tells him in verse 15, let it be so for now.

And I love that line.

Jesus doesn't say, oh no, John.

Remember John saying, You're so much greater than I back in verse 11.

He says, I'm not worthy to untie the sandal strap of Jesus.

Like I can't, I'm not worthy enough to untie his sandal strap.

And now he tells that to Jesus.

And Jesus doesn't say, oh no, John, we're we're just compatriots here.

We're brothers in arms.

There's no greater or lesser than here.

We're all equal at the foot of the cross.

You're right.

You know, we're the same.

I could baptize you, you could baptize me.

It doesn't really matter.

Let's baptize each other.

He doesn't say that.

He says, you're right.

I am greater than you.

I do outrank you.

In John's Gospel, John 1, remember John the Baptist says, the one who comes after me was before me because he outranks me.

He outranks me because he was before me.

And John was born after Jesus chronologically.

I mean, John was born before Jesus chronologically.

So when John says he comes after me, but he was before me, he's talking about the eternality of Jesus Christ.

Be like a younger brother saying to his older brother that he existed before I was born.

That's true, of course.

But what about the older brother who says, My younger brother existed before I was born?

That's weird.

That's what John says.

He existed before me.

He existed in eternity past.

And Jesus says, You're right.

But for now, this is fitting to fulfill all righteousness.

It's a very complex line.

Why is John reluctant to baptize Jesus?

The answer is in verse 11.

Draw your eyes back up to verse 11.

We looked at this our last time together.

I baptize you with water for repentance.

Remember the humiliating nature of baptism in the Jordan River was a filthy river.

They weren't baptized wearing clothes.

It was exposing.

It was humiliating.

It was confessing your sins before the world.

It was predicated on how Naaman was supposed to wash in the river.

Naaman the Syrian leper.

He was an enemy of Israel and he kidnapped a Jewish girl as a slave.

And then he had leprosy, and the Jewish girl had sympathy on him and said, Go find the God of Israel.

Naaman didn't know the God of Israel, but he went to go find him, and Elisha is where he ends up, and Elisha tells him to go be baptized in the river, and he says, I have better rivers in Syria.

And sure, maybe his cleaner rivers in Syria by EPA standards or whatever, but he's not going to get saved through any kind of Syrian religion.

So he has to humble himself, disrobe, get into the water, the dirty Jordan River, and confess that he is a leper and has no relationship with the God of Israel apart from submitting to this right.

That's what John is taking.

That's what John is doing.

Being baptized by John, he says, is a baptism of repentance.

It's saying, I am a sinner.

Jesus is going to repeat this message throughout the New Testament.

In the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter 5, remember, Jesus breaks down the gospel this way: you can't get to the kingdom of heaven unless you are broken over your sin.

Matthew 5 · chapter mention

You're spiritually bankrupt.

Blessed is the poor in spirit.

You recognize I am a sinner.

I don't have any spiritual capital.

I deserve judgment.

If I had to stand before God on my own, I have nothing to offer him.

That's spiritual brokenness.

It's saying, I'm broken.

I'm a sinner.

I deserve judgment.

You hunger.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.

You hunger for a righteousness outside of yourself.

You're saying, God, I don't have anything of my own.

I deserve judgment.

I need a righteousness that's outside of me.

You confess to your sins.

You beg God for forgiveness.

You plead with him.

And the person who puts his faith in God, confesses their sins, will have their sins forgiven.

That's what baptism is the confession of.

So when Jesus shows up, the whole thing here is predicated on somebody coming and saying, I am a broken sinner.

I don't have any righteousness of my own.

I deserve God's judgment.

I deserve hell.

I'm stuck here as a sinner, and I know I'm gonna die, and I'm gonna be judged by God, and I don't want to be.

I need salvation.

That's a baptism of repentance.

Do you remember the Pharisees came?

They showed up, and John wouldn't baptize them.

He says, Who told you to repent from sins?

Pharisees?

Come on.

They're not confessing their sins.

Hey, you haven't seen a Pharisee over there saying, Oh, I'm such a sinner and I need God's forgiveness.

That's not right there out there.

So John wouldn't baptize them.

He says, Go away until you learn what repentance is.

Next in line is Jesus.

So what's John supposed to do now?

Baptize Jesus?

Isn't that confessing?

Wouldn't that be saying that Jesus is a sinner who is spiritually bankrupt, poor in spirit, who needs a righteousness outside of himself, who has no spiritual leg to stand on, who's desperate before God, like Naaman the leper, and he's seriously seeking some kind of forgiveness of sins from God.

Isn't that what baptism would demonstrate?

That's what it does when we do it.

When we're baptized, when Luke's in the water a few minutes ago, that's that's the bottom line of his testimony is I got an awareness of the fact that I was a sinner and I needed salvation.

I've never had somebody in the water with me who says, takes their testimony out.

I was raised in a Christian home, and you know what?

When it boils down to it is I'm pretty good.

Like I finally figured it out.

I got I I'm a spiritual guy.

And so I'm just gonna be just a small step into heaven when I die.

Here's heaven, here's me, just a little step.

That's what I'm here to thank Jesus for making me so good.

I wonder what I would do.

I wouldn't baptize him.

Leg sweep.

That would be a baptism.

It's just, I don't know.

What's John supposed to do with Jesus showing up for baptism?

That's why he says, I uh no.

I can't do it.

But Jesus says it's fitting to fulfill all righteousness.

The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world needs to be baptized by John the Baptist.

Why?

So it's a huge short phrase.

Jesus says it's his first, it's the first red letters.

It's fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.

He does the first person plural, you gotta like that.

He tells tells John, you're right, I do outrank you.

But it's fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.

He kind of puts his arm around him here and says, We're in this together, though, John.

We're gonna fulfill all righteousness here.

What does that mean?

So understand this passage.

I want you to step up a little bit.

We're going in an airplane, 30,000 feet, 36,000 feet.

We're a satellite today.

We're going however high they are.

Zoom out a little bit.

Story of the Bible, two paths to eternal life.

I know you always hear it said there's only one way to eternal life, and that's that's practically that's true.

But technically, not true.

There are two paths to eternal life.

It's important to understand why there are two paths for you to understand why the second path is called the gospel.

So, two paths to eternal life.

When you understand these two paths, you'll understand what's happening in Matthew chapter 3 with Jesus' baptism.

Matthew 3 · chapter mention

The first of these two paths is law.

Law.

And when we started our series in Matthew 3, remember I said there's different functions of the law, different things is meant by the word law in the Bible.

Law can mean just Torah, the first five books.

Law can mean any command of God, and that's how I'm using it here, that God gives commands to people.

And God, in some of the first commands to people, in Genesis chapter 2, tells people, Adam and Eve, that if they obey God's law, they will live.

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

They will have fellowship with Him, they will have eternal life.

If they obey the commands of God, they will have eternal life.

And you remember Adam and Eve's life back then?

Walking with God, fellowship with God, intimate fellowship with God, walking with him in the garden.

I don't know what that means.

They were walking with God in the garden.

Please don't ask me between services.

I don't know what it means.

But they were doing it.

What a precious relationship that came through their law-keeping.

That's the way God designs the world.

Was law that he gave them.

He repeats that in Leviticus 18 to the Israelites.

He says, Leviticus 18, verse 5, if you have this law and you keep this law, you will have life by this law.

Leviticus 18:5

This is the rich young ruler who comes to Jesus and says, What must I do to have eternal life?

And Jesus says to him, Keep the law and you have eternal life.

That's the first pay path to heaven.

That's the highway to heaven here is to keep the law.

You have eternal life when you keep the law.

And by keeping the law, I'm gonna have a list of five things here, but you can make your own list this week if you want to, or you can write down this one or take a picture with your phone.

I don't care, but you can expand your list.

These are just five things I thought of as it relates to keeping the law.

This is the commands that God gives.

Do not eat the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

That's what he tells them.

That's a command.

Subdue the earth, that's a command.

Have no other gods except Yahweh, that's a command.

Don't take Yahweh's name in vain, that's a command.

Don't make for yourself idols, the second commandment, that's a command.

The fourth command, honor the Sabbath, the fifth command, honor your father and your mother.

Don't murder, that's a command.

Don't commit adultery, that's a command.

Don't steal, that's a command.

Don't lie, that's a command.

Don't covet, that's a command.

Keep those and live.

Or works, you can say it more actively, works.

When you're doing some effort or energy to obey God's commands, you are meriting eternal life.

That's the word merit.

When you do something good for God, you are accumulating merit for eternal life.

It's the concept of merit.

You're deserving something because of how you're doing work, because of how you're obeying the commands of God.

That's the way God vows to enter into relationship with people is through their complete obedience.

You obey what God says, you're expressing a relationship with Him, that relationship is an expression of eternal life.

That relationship produces righteousness.

This is what the word righteousness means in the Bible.

That when you are leading a righteous life, it's a life of obedience and good works.

So you're accumulating righteousness and good works.

This is the commands that God gives people.

And if you do this, you will live by it.

God is our judge.

God didn't need to make the world this way.

He didn't.

There's a gymnastics controversy right now in Paris with an American gymnast finished fifth.

The coach appealed the difficulty rating given to uh the American gymnast.

The judges got together and added like one millionth of a point or something insane like that, and that jumped her from fifth to third, which I find humorous in like a haha sort of way.

It's like one one thousandth of a point, or I don't know what it was, but some fraction of a point, and it jumps them from fifth to third.

And the Romanian girl who was gonna have the third place medal gets it ripped off of her neck and given to the American.

And I picture a big fight on the podium.

I don't know if they actually fought, or I don't know how it really worked out in real life, but that's what I like to imagine.

I think the Americans would beat the Romanians in a fist fight with our gymnasts.

They do have a communist background, though, so I don't know.

But also I don't really care.

I don't like gymnastics that much to actually care that much.

I don't know who was robbed.

I don't know.

The American in me goes, oh, those Romanians, I'm sure the Romanians are like, I don't know, invading Liberia or something right now as we speak.

But I don't really care that much.

I'm not a judge.

You're not a judge in gymnastics, you don't need to sort it out.

Could God not have made the world in that way?

That he made the world and we just do our thing like the gymnasts and we sort it out amongst ourselves.

Why does God have to be the judge of us?

Why does he make himself the judge of our works and then say that he'll reward obedience in that way?

He didn't need to make the world that way, but that's what he does.

And he enters into an agreement with Adam and Eve that if they keep the law that he gives them, they will live.

Now there should be an immediate problem with this path to eternal life.

It doesn't work.

Right away, God's son Adam failed.

He was given one command, basically.

Don't eat from that tree.

And he ate from it.

And what happens?

He gets kicked out of the garden, banished, loses his expression of eternal life with God, put into the literal wilderness.

God's son Adam failed.

God's son Israel failed.

Moses brings the Torah off of Mount Sinai and immediately finds the Israelites worshiping an actual golden calf.

He was gone for five minutes, comes back, they made an idol in their worshiping.

And he breaks the law, remember, and God says, write that thing again.

He has to write it again.

Their disobedience doesn't nullify God's command to them, it just enforces it.

Moses thought they disobeyed.

The whole thing is null and void.

No, the whole thing is not null and void.

The curses of the covenant are still there.

They just forfeited the blessings.

As soon as he rewrites the law, remember the next verses?

They find a guy gathering sticks on the Sabbath.

They put him to death.

This becomes Israel's story.

They don't even get to enter the promised land.

God kills every one of them.

Except two.

This is the truth of the human relationship with God.

All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

You have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

You can blame Adam.

Sure, you have Adam's sin nature.

That makes you sin.

Okay.

Before we go around assigning blame, recognize that you have fallen short.

God's pathway for eternal life is through works.

You have closed that pathway by your own sin.

And you think, this is the basic way people think when they're confronted with this reality.

They say, but I have more good deeds than bad.

They might express it differently.

And if you're being honest, and I would ask you to be honest with yourself right now, if you're being honest with yourself, you probably have some variation of that in your heart.

Like honestly, when it all boils down to it, I probably do do more good than bad.

I'm probably a better person than I am an evil person.

And we just can rest on that and we say, I actually do deserve some kind of reward for God because of how good I am.

But please understand that's not the way judgment works.

We get that it doesn't work that way on a human level.

You know, if you get a speeding ticket, you can't go before the judge and say, Your Honor, I want you to know I am only speeding 75% 75% of the time I'm not speeding.

25% of the time I'm speeding, I grant it.

But 75% I'm not, and that should work in my favor.

The judge raises his eyebrow.

Okay, 72% of the time I'm not speeding.

A murder suspect before the judge.

Your Honor, I just want to submit to you a list of all the people I haven't killed.

Does that work in my favor?

Have you sinned once?

You violated the covenant with God.

How many times, ask yourself this question, how many times did Adam sin before he got thrown out of the garden?

One How many idols did Israel have to make in the fire before Moses broke the law?

One.

How many Sabbaths did the dude have to collect firewood on before he was executed?

One.

All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

If you sin a single time, you have violated that relationship with God.

All have sinned and fallen short.

This is the problem with a rich young ruler.

What must I do to be saved?

Jesus says, keep the law.

And remember what he says?

It's gotta make you laugh.

I've done all of it since I was a youth.

Really?

What's the ninth commandment again?

You're lying right now.

It's impossible to keep the law.

Which leads to the second.

Way of salvation, which is the gospel.

Remember, the law is designed to convict you of sin.

The law is designed to show you that you cannot earn righteousness on your own.

That your righteousness is nullified through sin.

And so the Lord responds in his providence of the second way to have eternal life, not merely by lawkeeping, but a second way is through the gospel.

And here's just contrast, and you can come with your own contrast too.

These aren't inspired, this is just my thoughts, these ones underneath here.

Just my thoughts on this.

You could add that list to your own way or make your own contrast.

But the point is that there is a contrast.

The gospel comes through faith, not by works.

If you're trying to reach God through your own works and your own effort and being a good person, that's works, which are nullified by your sin.

The gospel comes along.

It's not based on your works, it's based on faith.

Your faith is credited to you as righteousness.

So you put faith in God and in his message of salvation, you put your faith in the person of Jesus Christ.

Your faith is what activates salvation, then not your works.

That means that salvation is through grace.

You don't deserve it.

God gives it to you freely, which is in contrast with merit.

If you're accumulating righteousness through your own works, that's meritorious righteousness.

That you merit it, you deserve it.

It's not this.

It's not this.

This is a different way.

This is grace.

You don't deserve it.

The gospel comes through repentance, not through obedience.

Lawkeeping is expressed through obedience.

The gospel is expressed through repentance.

Now, of course, repentance leads to obedience.

This is where the cart and the horse have to be in the right order here.

You got hooves going every which way.

If you say that obedience leads to repentance, you nullify the gospel.

That's the wrong path.

No, repentance leads to obedience.

Righteousness through the life of somebody else is the gospel.

Not through your own works.

That's the law.

In Catholicism, they have what's called the treasury of merit.

Many of you are raised Catholic, I'm sure you know this, many of you were.

Treasury of merit is this idea that the saints, when they died, when somebody is, you know, canonized as a saint, they had excess merit.

They had more good deeds in this life than they needed for eternal life.

That merit is stored away, like in a Swiss bank account kind of thing, stored away.

Mary, of course, maxes out that.

She has all kinds of merit in there.

Um, and you can draw on that merit in your time of need.

That concept, I think, is helpful to think about this.

But the concept, there is a treasury of merit, but it's not merit through the saints, it's not merit through Mary, it's not merit through the lives of people, it's merit through one person and one person only, Jesus Christ.

It's merit from another person.

It's his obedience to the law that fills the treasury of merit, which gives us righteousness through faith.

In other words, Christ versus commands.

The Old Testament law is seen through the commands.

The gospel is seen through Christ.

Now, the commands point you to Christ.

You're supposed to celebrate the Passover every year.

Obviously, that's a picture of Jesus Christ.

The commands are supposed to show your disobedience and your need for a savior, which point you to Christ.

The purification rituals are supposed to express to you that you are a sinner through reasons you can't even control, namely Adam's imputed sin to you.

And so you need a purification ritual to make you able to approach God.

That's supposed to point you forward to Christ.

This is why the gospel is good news.

You have to recognize that the law closes that highway for you to appreciate the gospel.

The gospel means good news.

Last night I was driving back from, I was in this week at a Bible camp up in uh New York with my family.

We got home late last night driving through Baltimore.

I had forgotten about this.

It was a big deal a while ago, but do you remember the bridge fell down?

Um that was my favorite way to go, so I didn't have to drive through the tunnel.

So the bridge fell down, alright.

I'm going through Baltimore.

The tunnel closed last night.

A little sign, tunnel closed.

Now there was this like secondary tunnel that they had opened.

The sign said tunnel closed, don't even try it.

Ha ha ha, good luck out there.

I actually made up that last line.

That's what it felt like reading it.

But they had a secondary tunnel that was open.

I didn't even know that thing existed.

That was the good news, that tunnel.

Otherwise, I wouldn't have even cared about that secondary tunnel, but lose the bridge, lose that tunnel.

Good thing they got that other one.

Whew, I was excited for that other tunnel.

Didn't even know it existed 24 hours ago.

Your disobedience closes your access to salvation through the law.

You have to be convicted by the fact the bridge has fallen over before you appreciate the pathway that God opens.

So when Jesus comes, he's leading a sinless life.

He's been 30 plus years leading a sinless life.

He's fulfilling the law from the inside out.

The word he uses here back in John, or back in Matthew's gospel, verse 15, fulfill.

That's a word for bringing something to completion from the inside out.

It doesn't just mean closing it.

He's not just closing the gospel, he's fulfilling it or completing it from the inside out.

He's coloring it in, is another way that word is used.

He's completing the law by connecting all the dots and then coloring the drawing in on the inside for our little kids that are here.

That's what he's doing.

He fully completes it.

The law existed to highlight the person's need for somebody from Eve to be a savior because somebody from Adam cannot earn righteousness on their own.

Jesus comes through the virgin birth being from Eve.

He completes the law by obeying it in its entirety.

He brings it to completion.

Paul says it this way in Galatians: the law was given to us as a schoolmaster or as a tutor to watch over us until the bell rings.

And then you're free to go home.

The law was supposed to watch over people until Jesus comes.

The bell has rung.

That road is closed now.

You cannot earn salvation through obedience.

The road is closed.

You go to Christ now instead.

Jesus didn't only keep the law, he fulfills it.

This is the song, His Robes for Mine, that we often sing.

His robes for mine, a wonderful exchange.

My sinful life I can disrobe from, and the righteous life of Jesus Christ, I can be robed in his merit, in his works, in his life.

There's a sense in which we do have salvation by works, but it's just not our works.

It's the works of Jesus.

Amen?

God's son Adam failed to keep the covenant.

God's son Israel failed to keep the covenant.

God's son Jesus not only kept it, but fulfilled it.

He goes, having completed the law to baptism.

Now he will continue obeying and fulfilling the law the rest of his ministry.

He'll heal lepers in his ministry, fulfilling the commands about laws of cleansed lepers.

He will fulfill every part of the law throughout his ministry.

So it's not that all of it is done here, but this is the capstone, so to speak.

His baptism here is summing up all the ministry of the prophets.

The prophets, remember, call people to repent for the law.

John is like the prophet Elijah, preparing the way for the Savior, calling people to repent.

Jesus comes to bring John the Baptist's ministry to a close.

Jesus will tell them later, John was Elijah if you would listen to him.

Their prophets prophesied until John.

John's prophetic ministry is brought to a close when he baptizes Jesus, in other words.

All of the Old Testament points forward to Christ, and here he is.

And what does he do when he walks onto the pages of the New Testament?

Gets baptized by the last Old Testament prophet.

Fulfilling the law from the inside out.

Yes, he's greater than the law, he's the lawgiver, but he doesn't fulfill it because he's greater than it.

He fulfills it from the inside by obeying it and keeping it perfectly.

And he fulfills it all the way up to the top.

Every other person John baptized was a baptism of expression of the gospel.

Except Jesus.

His baptism is an expression of the fulfillment of the law that points to the gospel.

And that could be a subtle difference, but hear me out this way.

When you're baptized in the water, you go under because Jesus in his death goes under.

You rise because Jesus in his resurrection has risen.

That's true in Jesus' baptism, except when you and I are baptized, it's the proclamation that somebody else died and was buried and rose from the grave.

When Jesus is baptized, it's his own death.

When we're baptized, it's repenting from our own sin.

When Jesus is baptized, it's fulfilling the law from his own obedience.

It's the same law, but he fulfills it, we break it.

Jesus had faith in God just like we do, but it's a different kind of faith.

For us, faith is trust in the grace and mercy of Christ.

Relying on that faith to give us a salvation that comes from the works of another.

For Jesus, that faith is in the mission that God gave him to do on earth, to fulfill the will of his Father in heaven, to die on the cross, to be the sacrifice.

His faith isn't in some other sacrifice.

He is the sacrifice.

And so that's why it's fitting for him to be baptized.

You need to interact with the law that way.

Have you been broken by the law?

Let's go through the Ten Commandments again.

Have you ever worshipped something or someone other than God?

Have you ever sought fulfillment in life through something other than Christ?

Sports, money, marriage, family, wealth?

Have you ever lived a hypocritical life?

That's the third commandment.

Have you ever withdrawn yourself from the worship of God's people, withdrawn yourself from contemplating that God's the creator of the universe and worshiping him because of it?

That's the fourth commandment.

Have you ever dishonored, disobeyed, or distrusted your parents?

Have you ever hated somebody in your your heart?

Called somebody a fool?

Have you ever looked at somebody with lust in your heart?

Sexual lust?

Have you ever stolen something?

Have you ever lied?

Have you ever wanted something that wasn't yours?

Do you understand how this works?

If you answered yes to any one of those ten questions, that has closed your opportunity for eternal life through the law.

It's closed.

Forever.

And if you're like the rich young ruler and you hear the list and go, I've done that for my youth, you can go backwards to the list and turn them into positive commands.

Have you ever failed to be content with what God has given you in life?

That's the tenth commandment.

Have you ever failed to tell the whole truth when required?

That's the ninth commandment.

Have you ever failed to be generous with everything that you have?

That's the eighth commandment.

Have you ever failed to lead an entirely sacrificial life for your wife?

That's the seventh commandment.

To pursue her purity in every way?

Have you ever failed to want what is best for your neighbor?

That's the sixth commandment.

Have you ever failed to have absolute complete trust and honor of your parents to seek a way to honor them even when nobody's expecting it?

That's the fifth commandment.

Have you ever failed to see the creator nature of God in every area of life?

That's the fourth commandment, including your worship.

Have you ever failed to be transparent about your relationship with the Lord?

That's the third commandment.

Have you ever failed to find your contentment entirely in Jesus Christ?

That's the second commandment.

Have you ever failed to build your whole life on the foundation of Christ?

That's the first commandment.

You can go forward or backwards.

But once you say no, once you break one of these ten commands, you've closed that road forever.

That should drive you to the second path to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Edsel Boulevard, getting on to 395.

I've lived here now for 12 years.

For the first like nine of those years, the on-ramp to 395 was on the right-hand side before the freeway.

I see lots of people nodding.

You know what I'm talking about.

They moved the off-ramp further down the road.

I cannot tell you how many times to this day I end up in DC when I'm trying to go to Woodbridge.

That off-ramp used to be right here.

That's right, I wanted to go this way.

When they closed it, they put dirt all over it, but the dirt was in like such a perfect straight line, it looked like the road, especially at night with headlights on.

I can't tell you how many times I saw cars stuck in the dirt there.

Some of you, I won't ask for a show of hands, but some of you were those drivers.

And so one day, a few years ago, somebody rolled like this giant tractor tire, like a huge tire, onto the middle of that dirt road and put plastic roses in the middle of it.

Do you remember those roses?

I looked this morning.

They're not there now.

Now there's three tires with like daisies, but they're all overgrown with weeds or whatever.

Many of you may see on the way home from church today.

But for a long time there was that wheel there with the roses growing out of it, the plastic roses growing out of it.

I never saw another car go the wrong way ever again.

Because you would have to hit this massive tire and go through the flowers.

That tire brought that chapter to a completion.

Yeah, I guess the dirt path is still there.

You can still see where the dirt used to be and where you could conceivably drive there if you're in a monster truck, I guess.

But the roses close it out.

The baptism of Jesus Christ is like that.

It closes out the covenant of works.

It closes out this idea that you can earn salvation through the keeping of the law.

It brings it to completion by fulfilling it from the inside out.

God, we're grateful that you have convicted us of sin through your law and driven us to the person of Christ.

We're thankful that you show us mercy through him.

I pray for anyone here today who has never been convicted of their sin.

I pray that today their hearts would be broken and they would trust you.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now, for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to TMS.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.