Baptism: The Defining Act of Allegiance | Luke 3:21-22 | First Baptist Church of Kamloops

There's a telling moment that happens whenever you encounter something truly magnificent. That moment when you realize this is really good. You can't you just can't keep it to yourself. It's happened for every single one of you in this room. Perhaps you've discovered a master craftsman whose work just takes your breath away. Or perhaps you've been gazing on a a work of art and you've you have some familiarity with the effort involved in painting it and the brush strokes and all of the different complexities and mixing oil and paint and you see something truly beautiful on canvas and you can't help but turn and admire it, in all of those moments, [00:04:00] (40 seconds)  #ShareTheAwe

what invariably happens is you find yourself turning to a friend or turning to someone in the room next to you and you say to them, hey, check this out. Or hey, you have to look at this. Or hey, isn't this wonderful? Isn't this awesome? The reason for that is because genuine admiration, the kind that grips your soul, always speaks forth. It refuses to stay silent. And yet, here's what's strange for you and me. We've somehow convinced ourselves here in twenty first century Canada, here within Western Evangelical Christianity. We've somehow convinced ourselves that our devotion to God works backwards from that. It's opposite of that. [00:04:40] (48 seconds)  #AdmirationSpeaks

We treat our worship of the Lord like it's a private affair, a personal reverence of him that can stay safely just between him and me, locked away in my heart, that I might have a private time with him, and that that in all of these things, I don't have to declare him publicly to those around me. We've made Christianity into something that you can practice without anyone really knowing it. And then we come to Luke chapter three, and we come to the Christ, Jesus himself. And we watch him dunking in the Jordan River. Here is Jesus going down into the water, getting baptized with sinners even though he is not a sinner. [00:05:28] (58 seconds)  #FaithIsNotPrivate

Here he is with the crowds going to John being immersed with the crowds. Don't let that be lost on you this morning. Jesus comes up out of the water, and the heavens are open, and the Holy Spirit descends upon him in bodily form, and God speaks and says, this is my son in whom or with whom I am well pleased. And so this morning, as we're gonna look at this text, what I need you to understand is that God was not ashamed to publicly proclaim to all of those people and to you and me today that this is his son, and God is proud of him, and God is pleased with him. God does not hesitate to rend the heavens and to proclaim to us that Jesus is Lord, king, the one that God has pleased in. [00:06:27] (58 seconds)  #GodProclaimsJesus

God affirms that. You and I, we have this idea of a very private, very personal, very quiet, nonpublic religion. But Jesus came to the River Jordan to be numbered with us and to be seen as being numbered with us. He wants to be in your corner. He wants to be with you. And now the question is this, He comes and he gets baptized. He didn't keep his mission private. He didn't say, I'll identify with sinners in my heart. I don't need to make it public. He waded into that water. He got into the Jordan, and he said, I'm gonna pursue righteousness on behalf of these people, and I'm gonna be counted among these people. Now are you counted as one of his own? Jesus is the radiant son of God, the one in whom the father is well pleased. [00:38:01] (78 seconds)  #BeCountedWithChrist

The word presume carries two important shades of meaning here in Matthew chapter three. The first is that take something for granted as true in the absence of any proof to the contrary. So you just accept something as true, you just embrace it because no one has told you directly that it's not true. The second way you understand this word presume is that you're gonna venture somewhere without authority or permission. Right? How many of you have ever heard the expression better to ask for forgiveness than permission. If that's you, and if you've ever undertaken an action that you were suspicious and maybe even pretty sure you weren't supposed to, [00:21:24] (49 seconds)  #DontPresume

It was clearly understood John is the last of the prophets of the old covenant, the greatest of all the prophets, the forerunner of the Messiah. We've seen this time and again. He comes and in the tradition of law and the tradition of the old covenant, he's telling people, make your hearts ready, make straight paths, get ready for the Messiah. If you're a righteous person and you're interested in the kingdom, you are interested in the kingdom of God coming and the king coming, you go to John and you get dunked in the water. That's what you do. God has clearly anointed this man as a prophet, and this man is saying, if you want the king, and if you want the kingdom, and if you want the righteousness of God in your life, you go in the water. [00:31:38] (44 seconds)  #PrepareForTheKing

When we look at Christ then, he comes to John and he wants this baptism not because he's a sinner, not because he needs the forgiveness of sins, but because this is what God has said through the prophet. Thus saith the Lord. Get baptized if you're interested in the king. Make straight the paths of the Lord. If you wanna be righteous, this is how you pursue it. Jesus will have perfect righteousness. He isn't coming because he is a sinner. We have two ways of understanding sin. We have sins of commission. This is when you do things that are wrong. You do things that are presumptuous. You do things without consulting God. But then there are sins of omission, where God clearly expects you to do certain things. [00:32:22] (50 seconds)  #FulfillAllRighteousness

He doesn't in any way criticize John. He doesn't say, you're wrong for trying to stop me. You're you're sending war right now. He doesn't say that. He says, let it happen. Why? Notice what he says. For thus, in this way, it is fitting or it is proper for us to fulfill all righteousness. And then it says, last phrase, then John consented. John wasn't gonna do it. When it says he would have prevented him, these are strong words. I'm not doing this. And he says, essentially what the text is telling us that Jesus had to kind of argue with John a little bit. He had to persuade him. Let it be this way because in this way, we will fulfill all righteousness. [00:30:30] (50 seconds)  #JesusPersuadesJohn

These are powerful displays building towards the reality that one day, guess what guys, every single one of us, if we're alive at the moment that it happens, every single one of us one day will see in the same way the heavens opened, and we will see Jesus coming to this earth for a second time. In Revelation chapter 19, John the apostle says, then I saw heaven opened and behold a white horse. And the one sitting on it is called faithful and true. And in righteousness, he judges and makes war. All of this points back to the prayer that is prayed throughout the Old Testament and poetically written down for us by the prophet Isaiah. [00:10:59] (50 seconds)  #HeavensWillOpenAgain

This is his prayer. This is his cry. God, I want to see you that you would just tear the sky apart and be here. And what's fascinating is in the gospel of Mark. Again, you don't have to flip there, but just listen. This is what Mark says about the baptism of Jesus. It says, in those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and he was baptized by John in the Jordan. Verse 10, when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens being torn open. Notice that phrase. Jesus comes up out of the water, and immediately the sky is being ripped apart. [00:11:59] (47 seconds)  #HeavensRippedOpen

Well, the Pharisee the name Pharisee means literally the separated one or or the holy one. Their origins probably trace all the way back to the Hasidim during the Maccabean revolt in the second century. There was a lot of corruption in Israel, and they wanted to be separate, and they wanted to themselves out. And from that decision, it becomes sort of a nationalistic separatist impulse. You get a lot of groups that are offshoot of this. For example, the Essenes, they come out of that. And so what we have here in scriptures, scriptures, we have the Pharisees presented to us, and they're held in high esteem. They're generally well respected amongst the people. [00:17:38] (39 seconds)  #PhariseeSeparatists

And what the Pharisees do is they are so concerned to be holy and to be apart unto God that when they take when they see scripture, scripture gives these very basic commands and they will put a whole bunch of commands around it. An expression applies here, hedging the law. So if it says keep the Sabbath holy, the Pharisees will say, you're gonna keep the Sabbath holy and we're gonna give you another 200 rules on top of that in terms of how you are to keep it holy. And they essentially built this enormous structure around scripture. In other words, if this is how you wanna obey God, these are the things you have to do. And they would make a great show of presenting themselves to the Jews as observing all of these rules and these restrictions. [00:18:17] (44 seconds)  #HedgingTheLaw

Jesus is right there in the thick of the crowds. You know, you got hundreds, maybe thousands of people waiting into the river. And in the midst of this multitude, Jesus is in the midst. They're coming to John. Poor John. He's probably dunking one guy after the other. He's probably done hundreds of them at this point. His arms are about to fall off. Jesus walks forward. In that moment, John knows who he is. He says, stop. What is his concern? Now if it's me and I've just baptized several 100 or several thousand people, my concern is, finally, I get a break. It's all about me. Right? [00:28:32] (34 seconds)  #JohnRecognizesJesus

I remember for for most of you, you're aware, I used to serve in the United States Marine Corps. And way back in 2001, fresh out of boot camp, as a young whippersnapper who knew absolutely nothing but was convinced that he was on top of the world as a freshly minted United States marine, me and a bunch of friends determined that we were gonna go get a tattoo. [00:23:04] (24 seconds)  #BootCampTattoo