Luke 3:21-38 - Jesus' Baptism

Again, church, we'll be in Luke chapter 3.

Luke 3 · chapter mention

Luke chapter 3.

Luke 3 · chapter mention

And we'll be looking verses 21 through 38.

So remind you that this is God's holy and precious word.

Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus had been baptized and was praying, the heavens were opened, and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove, and a voice came from heaven.

You are my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased.

Jesus, when he began his ministry, was about thirty years of age, being the son, as was supposed, of Joseph, the son of Heli, the son of Mathat, the son of Levi, the son of Melchi, the son of Jenna, the son of Joseph, the son of Matathias, the son of Amos, the son of Nahum, the son of Ezli, the son of Nagi, the son of Math, the son of Matia, the son of Simeon, the son of Joseph, the son of Jodah, the son of Joannon, the son of Resa, the son of Zerubul, the son of Shiltiel, the son of Neri, the son of Malchi, the son of Addi, the son of Kosim, the son of Elmadam, the son of Ur, the son of Jo Joshua, the son of Eliezer, the son of Joram, the son of Mathat, the son of Levi, the son of Simeon, the son of Judah, the son of Joseph, the son of Jonah, the son of Eliakim, the son of Neliah, the son of Menah, the son of Matatha, the son of Nathan, the son of David, the son of Jesse, the son of Obid, the son of Boaz, the son of Salah, the son of Nashan, the son of Aminadab, the son of Admin, the son of Arnai, the son of Hezron, the son of Perez, the son of Judah, the son of Jacob, the son of Isaac, the son of Abraham, the son of Terah, the son of Nahor, the son of Sea Rug, the son of Rue, the son of Paleg, the son of Eber, the son of Sheila, the son of Canaan, the son of Araphaxid, the son of Shem, the son of Noah, the son of Lamech, the son of Methuselah, the son of Enoch, the son of Jared, the son of Mahalel, the son of Canaan, the son of Enos, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.

All these genealogies, these names, these men follow what is this pivotal moment in verses 21 and 22 of the baptism of Christ.

Now just imagine for a moment that you're just there.

The scene is happening, you have very little context to what's going on.

You've heard about this guy, John the Baptist, and he's been going around preaching that people should repent.

He lives in the wilderness, he wears these weird clothes, eats honey and locusts.

He's going around telling everyone to repent and to be baptized as a symbol of their cleansing, their washing.

And this guy, John, uses a pretty strong language as he tells people that he's preparing the way for the Messiah to come.

And then one day John is doing his work and the guy shows up to be baptized.

This Messiah.

And John says to everyone, hey, this is the Messiah.

This is him.

This is the one.

Jesus says, I'm here to be baptized.

John says, Well, and this is according to Matthew's account, John says, No, no, I'm not.

Why you need to baptize me?

Jesus then says, No, I must be baptized to fulfill all righteousness.

So John the baptizer baptizes his cousin, Jesus Christ, the God man.

And when Jesus comes out of the water, the heavens are ripped open, and a voice and a dove come down, and with a voice booming.

God the Father saying, This is my Son, and with him I am well pleased.

The Holy Spirit, in the form of a dove, there as well.

The three members of the Trinity come down all together.

And you're just there taking this in.

It's a lot to take in.

There's some major stuff going on there.

And then you have to go, you know, just like we do back to work.

You gotta do your job, you gotta fix dinner, wash dishes.

Imagine seeing all that.

You would never forget it.

You'd be talking about it for days and days and days.

What was that?

What just happened?

I say this often that as if you've grown up in the church, you've been a Christian a long time, one of the greatest dangers that we have is that we become so familiar with these stories.

We become so used to this story.

We know it.

It just doesn't feel like a big deal anymore.

Like we know it is a big deal, but it doesn't feel like a big deal anymore.

And that's not because there's necessarily a sin that's doing that.

We just heard it so many times.

It's like when you say to someone, I love you.

Like when was the last time you said I love you to someone?

Right?

Well, for everyone that you say I love you to, at some point in your life it will be the last time you say it.

Right?

There will come a time when everyone you say I love you too, there will be a last time you say that.

It will be gone.

I tell my wife and kids every day that I love them, but one day I will have, and I have no idea when that day is, but it will be the last time that I say that to them.

So this familiarity, we just we mean it when we say I love you.

But we need to feel it.

We need to be intentional, present, mindful, and clear when we say, I love you.

Because we mean it.

So as we approach well-known passages, and we know they're especial, we know they're important, but we need to work, to be focused, to understand the seriousness, the weight of these things.

This is an incredible moment here in these verses in redemptive history.

So it's focus in and be intentional and clear and see the amazing thing that God has done for us.

And before I zoom in on verses 21 and 22, I just want to go back for a second and get a big picture of the Bible, the meta-narrative, if you will, of the Bible and what's going on.

So a little note here, just in case you don't know, we believe that the Bible is all connected.

And it works to communicate the primary message of the gospel, that Jesus Christ has come to save sinners.

So both the Old Testament and the New Testament are all about this.

The mountaintops of Romans, and the details in 1 King about how the temple was to be built.

All this is getting after one major narrative: God's plan to redeem his people.

God called Abraham and told him that from him would come many nations, one of which God would separate out and make them his own people.

Eventually we're given the Ten Commandments.

We are given the law and the temple for the people to sacrifice in and to worship in.

And then the Israelites are given clear instructions on how to follow God's ways.

And in a sense, God will bless them for their obedience as they follow Him and as they glorify Him.

Israel's job, in a sense, was to point the rest of the world to God.

Their task was to be a people that pointed everything to the creator God.

But Israel kept rebelling, a king was finally given to them, David, and a promise was made to David that from David's line would come the Redeemer.

That God would set his people free, that God would conquer Satan and sin and the consequences of sin, which are death.

Now Israel has her ups and downs, mostly downs, for about a thousand years.

Thousand years.

And then there's this guy.

It's really coming down out there, isn't it?

There's this guy who comes out of the wilderness saying the Messiah is coming.

And what I want us to see and understand this morning is how awesome God is and how intentional He is at redeeming his people.

Again, looking at verse 21, we get this picture of Jesus' baptism.

We know why John was baptizing people.

John came saying, you need to repent of your sin.

And people's response was interesting.

Some would say, Well, what do we need to do?

How should we respond?

But it made sense that John was going out and calling people to repentance.

That made sense.

People were living in wickedness, they were not following God's ways.

But then Jesus comes, and why is it that Jesus needs to be baptized?

Now, if you're able to quickly turn to Matthew, the Gospel of Matthew, go back to Matthew chapter 3.

Matthew 3 · chapter mention

Matthew gives us a more of a filled-out picture of this scene.

Beginning in verse 13, Matthew chapter 3, beginning in verse 13.

Matthew 3 · chapter mention

Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan, to the Jordan and 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.

So Jesus comes.

No need for him to repent, no need for him to be cleansed, but he comes to be baptized.

Why?

Well, he says to John, to fulfill all righteousness.

Well Jesus is saying, I'm here, one, to fulfill all the Old Testament prophecies.

I'm here also to affirm John the Baptist's ministry as the forerunner of the Messiah.

And I'm coming to be like those whom I am redeeming.

He became like us, identifying with us, with sinful man.

2 Corinthians 5, 21 says, For our sake, him meaning Jesus, or he meaning Jesus, for our sake, he made him to be to know sin.

Excuse me, let me start over with this verse.

Verse 21.

For our sake, he made him to be sin, who knew no sin.

So that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

I just want to tell you, church, you can spend eternity and you will not plumb the depths of this verse.

We pray that we will spend that you will spend eternity plumbing the depths of this verse.

Or trying to at least.

For our sake, for your sake, for my sake, God the Father made God the Son to be sin, who knew no sin.

He did not know it, never defiled, never sinned, did not have the original sin of Adam.

That's why we believe in the virgin birth.

That's why you believe this.

If you deny the virgin birth, you're not a Christian.

Okay?

You cannot deny the virgin birth and be a Christian.

Because to deny that is to mean that Jesus has original sin.

But he knew no sin.

But he became sin.

That we might become the righteousness of God.

That we might take on the righteousness of Christ.

So we have a God who entered into our brokenness and identified with us and is redeeming us.

He has fulfilled all righteousness by taking on the mission that God the Father has sent him on, redeeming his people.

This act of obedience.

And so God the Father opens up heaven and says, not just to the crowd and to John the Baptist, but to God the Son, to Jesus Christ, this is my Son.

This is Him.

The Holy Spirit comes down and we see this amazing affirmation of the Trinity.

You know, we sometimes you get to see some amazing things in life.

Maybe you get to witness some kind of historical event.

You're at some kind of thing, and it's, well, the history books are going to be written about this.

Sometimes those are wonderful things, sometimes those are tragic things.

Sometimes maybe you've lived through a wild natural phenomenon.

There's just been a hurricane year or a tornado or something that just is an amazing natural thing and you've lived through that.

But I dare say that if we could be there watching the heavens ripped open, ripped open.

And God the Father speaking.

There would be nothing like it.

That God would then affirm to everyone there, and reminding them that, affirming that John's ministry is true by saying, No, this is my son.

And with him I am well pleased.

And sometimes we understand the deity of Jesus Christ, that he is God.

And we know that yes, he is human, but we don't understand how that works out.

Helpful language is that he's fully God and he's fully man.

So this affirmation from his father, heading into temptation, heading into public ministry, heading into all the hardship he's going to face, would have been a sweet, sweet, precious gift from the Father to the Son.

And it's affirming to everyone around what God, what the Trinity is doing.

They've come to redeem.

He's come to redeem his people.

JC Ryle gives this wonderful reminder and insight regarding this passage.

He says, listen to this, all three persons in the Godhead are equally concerned in the deliverance of our souls from hell.

The thought should cheer us when disquieted and cast down.

The thought should hearten and encourage us when weary of the conflict with the world, the flesh, and the devil.

The enemies of our souls are mighty, but the friends of our souls are mightier still.

The whole power of the triune Jehovah is engaged upon our side to deliver us from hell.

Your salvation is no small thing to God.

You being lavished in God's grace and his mercy, your heart being made new, you being forgiven, your sins of your sins, and you being made right with God, the Creator God.

These are not insignificant things to God.

God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are equally and intimately concerned and involved in your salvation, the deliverance of your soul from hell.

Amen.

And this changes the whole thing.

I mean, for thousands and thousands of years, God's people kept missing the mark.

Their focus was not primarily on worshiping God because he was holy and just and the sovereign creator of the universe.

No, their focus was on behavior, primarily external behavior.

Act this way, and you'll be good and get to heaven.

Act that way and you'll end up in hell.

Now, after a thousand years from David and thousands of years of struggling, they kept putting works first and God second or third.

Now God has come to them.

He does not come to give them commandments.

He's given them the commandments.

He has come not just to give them instruction, he's given them instruction.

He has come and he has given himself to us that we might be redeemed, that we might be saved.

There's a song that was a hymn we often sing.

We didn't sing it this morning.

If I was a better planner, we would have.

It's called In the Valley.

And I want to read this for you this morning.

With a path that I feared is the way he has set.

And I long to give in in retreat.

Still to Jesus I hold as I face every step.

For the Lord, he will give me his peace.

Bless the Lord, he will give me his peace.

Bless the Lord, he will give me his peace.

And if I should remain in the valley today, bless the Lord, he will give me his peace.

When the road that I tread fills my heart with despair, and it seems like my grief has no end.

Still to Jesus I hold, who will walk with me there, and the Lord will give me his strength.

Bless the Lord, he will give me his strength.

Bless the Lord, he will give me his strength.

And if I should remain in the valley today, bless the Lord, he will give me his strength.

On the road that you walked with the weight of the cross, all my pain and my sorrows, you held.

So to You I shall hold my redeem, or you redeem every loss.

For my Lord, you have given yourself.

Bless the Lord, for he has given me himself.

Bless the Lord, for he has given me himself.

And if I should remain in the valley today, bless the Lord, for he has given me and you himself.

We have a God who has come for us and who has given to us himself.

He has come for us.

He's taken on flesh, faced every temptation we faced, has taken on the struggles and the weaknesses, and he has taken on himself my sin and your sin.

He's taken on our sin.

And we have a God who has given to us himself.

Himself so that no longer are we without hope or joy.

So no longer are we slaves to sin.

No longer do we walk in darkness.

No longer do we worship empty, broken things of this world.

We have a God who has come for us and who has given himself.

And this pleased the Father.

Church, again, God, the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit cares about your salvation, has come for you, and has given himself to you, so that no longer do you walk in brokenness.

No longer are you a slave to sin.

No longer are you looking for the thing you're supposed to worship and give yourself to.

He's come for you.

And so many of us, all of us, we just go through our days frustrated, wanting something different, wishing our life was just a little bit different.

If we just had a little bit more money, if I just had a spouse that was a little bit more patient for understanding, if I had a job that was a little bit more fulfilling.

We just want a little bit more of something better.

And we miss the fact that the Creator God has come for us and loves us and has given himself for us so that we might have joy and life abundant for eternity.

Amen.

Jesus has come for us.

No longer are we slaves.

So Jesus, fulfilling all righteousness, is taking on your place and my place, standing where we could not stand, paying the price for our sin that we could not pay.

So that we belong to him.

We are his.

Then Luke, the historian, transitions into all these names, this genealogy, the lineage of the Messiah.

And he points out the age of Jesus when he began his ministry, about 30 years of age.

And he lists all these names.

And there's lots of different opinions about these names and whose names, and compared to Matthew's account, and how they add up, and there's some discrepancies, and what does that mean?

And I don't have all those answers, but here's what I've discovered, and I feel confident is that the account from Matthew is tracing Joseph's lineage.

This is what some people think, Joseph's lineage.

And then one is tracing Mary's lineage.

Because Matthew is written for the Jewish perspective.

Matthew wrote to the Jews in mind.

And so he wants to make sure that they understand that the Messiah came from Abraham.

And Matthew's genealogy in Matthew 1 stops at Abraham.

And he's making this connection that the Messiah is Abraham's offspring.

And Luke, whose genealogy goes all the way back to Adam, and he's speaking to the Gentile crowd, so to speak, is making this connection.

One, this goes all the way back to Adam.

This isn't just for the Hebrews.

This isn't just for Abraham's descendants that the Messiah has come.

He's come for all people, and he makes this connection back there.

Now here's the explanation for the discrepancies that people say.

Well, one is tracing, Matthew's tracing the royal line.

All the kings of Israel, this royal line.

Well, Luke traces the physical line.

Now, either way, David, it's the line of David, and it's kept and it's unbroken, and prophecy has been fulfilled.

What's remarkable is that the amount of energy and time, which I'm very grateful for, godly men and women who study these things.

But if we're not careful, we get headlong into this debate or this conversation, and we just miss.

But why did Luke put all these names here?

Why are all these names, which some are really weird and hard to pronounce, why are they all here?

Well, I want to make the case for you that life is frail.

It's short.

That even as Jesus here in this scene, being baptized, fulfilling prophecy, taking on his public ministry, if you will, he knows the fragility of life.

How quickly it goes.

All these men listed here, they really lived.

They made decisions, they conducted businesses, they they or business, they had families, they worked, they died.

Their life was over.

And in this, we're not gonna spend much time there.

If you know the Bible, you'll know some of these names and you'll know the stories.

And most of these men were unfaithful.

They were not righteous before the Lord, they were unfaithful.

And yet God used them.

And yet, God fulfilled his plan.

This is because God is sovereign.

I don't know how God could set out and say to Abraham that from you I'll make many nations, and from you will come a seed, and from that seed will come the Redeemer.

He's not sovereign.

I don't know how God could say to David that from your line will come the Messiah, if God is not sovereign over all things.

And how God could say in Genesis 3 that the Son will crush the head of a serpent if God is not a sovereign God.

So just looking through these names and all these different people who lived and did life and got old and died, God is sovereign.

Our life is precious.

And so we need to be taking in the understanding that God has come to redeem us.

Not just to increase our happiness in this world by a little bit, not just to fulfill our temporal dreams here.

But he has come to redeem us, to bring us salvation, so that our life will be full and our time on earth will be spent adoring him.

There's one more reason I think that Luke gives this genealogy all the way back to Adam.

That Jesus is the last Adam.

That Jesus is the better Adam.

This Adam, Jesus Christ, he kept the commandments.

As the first Adam gave in to the sin, to the lie.

He was deceived.

He was separated from God.

He blamed his bride, shifting blame and running from responsibility.

This last Adam, this better Adam, does the opposite of everything the first Adam does.

The last Adam, through his perfect life and death, never gives in to sin, does not give in to the lies of the serpent, and will crush the serpent's head.

The last Adam never, never forsakes his bride.

And he will make her perfect.

The last Adam does not have separation from God, but brings his redeemed to God, unifying his people.

Luke is saying, remember the first Adam and all the descendants, all the men who knew the law, who knew the commandments, and failed.

Whom even God said that God made covenants with them, with Abraham and David, all these failed, failed, failed, came up short again and again and again, all the way back to Adam.

But this, the true and better, the last Adam, he will set all things right.

And he in him is the hope of the nations.

In him is the glory of God, and in him is salvation that brings us and makes us right with God and puts us on earth, on mission to worship God, to enjoy God, to glorify him.

That God the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit would come for you and for me.

That we would walk then in obedience, joyful obedience, because God has come for us.

So as we look at this passage that for many of us we're so familiar with, may we see the glory of the Trinity coming for us.

May we see how small and silly and dumb just our little sins that we hold on to are.

When you have the majesty and the power and the glory of God coming for us and a God who has given himself to us.

Oh, may we forsake all the things that just entangle.

And may we just encourage one another and pray with one another more and more to forsake these things.

That our conversations will go something like, man, isn't it amazing that God has saved us?

Let's study the Bible more.

Let's memorize God's word more.

Let's pray for the things that God's called us to pray for more.

Let's love the church unconditionally.

Let's be diligent in showing grace and mercy.

Let's take the gospel.

This good news that God has come for us.

And let's share that with others.

See, when you understand what God is doing in redeeming his people, and when you can step back and see that we're living for eternity, not for today, not for tomorrow, not for the rest of the school year, or for the career season, or until the kids get in the house.

We're living as Christians for eternity.

And that should have its imprints all in our lives.

In how we spend our money and how we talk to people, how we spend our time, and how we forsake sin.

And how we fight sin.

And how we are quick to repent when we fall into sin again and again.

It's so much easier to live for God's glory.

We have our eyes fixed on God.

I'm not saying it is easier, I'm just saying it's a lot easier.

And we have it fixed on ourselves.

We have a God who has come for us.

Let that just this week sink deep into your soul.

And God has come for you.

And He's given Himself for you.

He's given Himself for you.

Let's pray.