Bible Passage: Luke 3:21-22
Pastor: Joel Jenswold
Sermon Date: January 12, 2025

Bulletin – January 12, 2025

In the name of, and to the eternal glory of, Jesus,

We have to be very careful with our identity nowadays, don’t we?  We hear much about “identity theft.”  There are bad actors in this world who will steal your information, your name, image, likeness, and use it for bad things.  They might become “you” and get a credit card and run up a huge bill.  They might become “you” and buy all sorts of stuff on Amazon.  They might create “you” or your voice using AI and make it look or sound like you were doing something you never did.  We are learning to be very guarded with our identity.

No one ever had an identity like Jesus.  He was true God and true man in one person.  He was holy and pure and perfect.  His reputation was impeccable.  No one could say a word against this young man from Nazareth.

That is why what he does in our text is so remarkable and so profound.  In our text we are told that when all the people were coming out to John the Baptist to be baptized, Jesus was baptized too!  Imagine!  Jesus is willing to “identify” with all these people!  All these people, sinful, unwashed, broken in so many ways.  All these people coming to be washed!  All the people being baptized…and Jesus!

Our text takes place when Jesus is about 30 years old.  Until this time he has lived in Nazareth working as a carpenter.  We know this because as Jesus begins his ministry some people will remark, “Isn’t this the carpenter?”  (Mark 6:3) But now at 30, his life will take a new direction.  God had not become flesh to make furniture.  The time had come for higher things.

Jesus comes to his relative, John the Baptist, where he is baptizing people in the Jordan River.  This was John’s ministry.  He prepared people for the coming of the Messiah.  He told people to turn from their sin and turn to the Lord for forgiveness.  Many listened to John’s preaching.  They were cut to the heart.  They confessed their sins and their need of the Savior.  John baptized these penitents in the river.

That’s why it seems so strange to see Jesus coming to John to be baptized!  John’s baptism was for SINNERS.  It was for men who drank too much and loved their wives too little.  It was for women who hated their marriage and coveted the life of their neighbor’s wife.  It was for liars and slanderers and deadbeats and lazy.  It was for the foul-mouthed and filthy-minded.  Jesus was none of that!  Jesus had none of that!  If Jesus gets down there in that water, it’s going to look like he does!  He’s going to look like a sinner, just like all the people.

And that’s the point!  It is very significant that Jesus’ public ministry begins this way.  Jesus’ work is to be the substitute for sinners.  He is going to LIVE a perfect life for us.  He is going to DIE an innocent death for us.  To do this work, he cannot stand aloof from us.  He cannot stand apart from us to do this work.  He cannot be a “virtual savior.”  And so Jesus gets right down in that water with sinners.  Sinful husbands and wives.  Sinful dads and moms.  Guilty teens and naughty children.  And there is Jesus with them!  His baptism says to them, to us, “I am here with you.  I am here for you.”

This willingness of Jesus is all well and good, but what if Jesus is a wanna-be?  What if God had other plans?  Moses once thought it was time to step up and be God’s leader.  He stepped in and killed an Egyptian who was beating a Hebrew slave.  Perhaps Moses was thinking, “The deliverance has begun!”  It hadn’t.  Moses had to run for his life.  It wasn’t God’s time.  So how did you know if you were God’s man?  How did you know if it was God’s time?

God had a way of making it very clear.  Anointing.  God’s man would be anointed with a special oil at the time God determined.  God did this for prophets and priests and kings.  And he did it with Jesus.  As Jesus comes up out of the River, heaven is opened and the Father anoints Jesus.  The Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove. (v. 22)  God the Holy Spirit was the “anointing oil” used on Jesus.  Jesus’ entire ministry would be guided and powered by the Holy Spirit.  And just so the world would have no doubt that Jesus was God’s man and this was God’s time, the Father beams from heaven, You are my Son, whom I love.  I am well-pleased with you. (v. 22)  Those are the words of a proud Father!

Those words are a stark contrast to words we will hear on Good Friday when Jesus hangs on a cross.  From the cross Jesus will cry in agony, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?  What has happened?  Why does Jesus address him as “my God” and not “my Father”?  Where is the happy Father in heaven smiling at his Son?  Why has he forsaken his Son?  What has come between them?  Sin has come between them!  Your sin and mine.  But this is the work Jesus was baptized to do!  This is the work Jesus was anointed to do.  He came to bear our sin and take it away.  He came that the Father might forsake him…and adopt you!

Do you know where to find Jesus’ death and resurrection and adoption into God’s family?  You can find it in your baptism!  Isn’t that something?  There is Jesus in the water of baptism.  Jesus waits for us there with his cross and empty tomb.  Paul put it this way:  Do you not know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?  We were therefore buried with him by this baptism into death, so that just as he was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too would also walk in a new life. (Romans 6:3-4)  Baptism gives you a new life!  A new identity!  A “Jesus-identity.”  An identity sealed by the Father:  “You are my son/daughter!  With you I am well-pleased!”  A new identity, a baptism identity, which makes us sing, “God’s own child I gladly say it!  I am baptized into Christ!”

Amen.