Luke 3:21-38 "Baptism of Jesus"

No one is interested in the solution to a problem they don’t think they have. People driving by all our NewChurch signs out there—they probably don’t think about what we’re doing in here at all, but if they did, if they had to honestly say something about it, what do you think they would say? If we told them we were in here giving thanks to God because He forgives our sin—what would they say to that? They don’t think sin exists. They don’t really think God exists either.

“So you people are thanking your invisible, magic friend because he forgives you of sins that don’t actually exist? Good luck with that, whack jobs!”

Salvation doesn’t make any sense unless you know what you’re being saved from. The sin of mankind is a cancer that rots the foundation of the earth from inside out. Your sin is a poison that’s killing you and staining your soul with darkness. Your sin is breaking your life, your relationships, and your sanity. And there’s nothing you can do about it. Anything you try will only make it worse. Without Jesus, it’s completely hopeless. That’s the bad news.

If we don’t understand these things, we can’t even hear the Gospel—the good news. The Gospel is everything God does for us in Jesus that we can’t do for ourselves. 

Prayer: Father in heaven, help us to understand our need for Jesus and everything He did for us—everything He continues to do for us. Increase our faith today. AMEN.

We’re reading through the Gospel of Luke verse by verse—today is a big day. We’re looking at the official beginning of Jesus’ ministry and the day God reveals Himself to be Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—One God in three persons. This is the baptism of Jesus.

When all the people were being baptized, Jesus was baptized too. And as he was praying, heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.” Luke 3:21-22

That’s all Luke says about it but there’s a lot happening here. John the Baptist is calling people to repentance, preparing the way for the Messiah to show up, John’s baptizing them for the forgiveness of sin. People step into the water, John washes them with water—he’s been doing this for a while, maybe a couple of years. The people go into the water stained with sin and come out clean. Their sins are forgiven. Picture it like this: an entire army of filthy soldiers using the same bathtub and bathwater for two years. The water just getting nastier and nastier—but everyone going in dirty and coming out clean anyway. How does that make any sense?

Because one day Jesus walks up and tells John to baptize Him. He has no sin. He has nothing to repent of. He never will. He gets in the dirty water as the one holy, clean person who has ever lived—and guess what? He makes the water clean. He’s the only one who goes in clean and comes out dirty. That’s going to be His entire ministry—everything He touches will become holy. Clean. Healed. Forgiven. Alive.

Jesus didn’t get baptized to repent or have His sins forgiven. He was baptized to connect Himself to all of us and all our baptisms—to sanctify water and Word so we could all be connected to Him. To His holiness, His righteousness. All those baptisms John did were connected to Jesus’ baptism—that’s why they went in dirty and came out clean. All of our baptisms are also connected to Jesus’ baptism. Our baptism connects us to everything Jesus did for us—from His baptism to the cross, to the resurrection and ascension back to heaven. 

The baptism of Jesus is one of the most important things that ever happened in the history of the world. This is the day that Jesus became Jesus Christ—The Messiah. “Messiah” means the “anointed One,” which in Greek is the word “Christ.” He is officially “anointed” as the Christ at His baptism. Christ is a title, not His last name.

Luke tells us that Jesus was praying as John baptized Him. 

There are two big theological ideas that separate Christians from heretics—separate real Christians from unbelievers. The two natures of Jesus Christ, and the Holy Trinity. All false religions are some kind of wrong teaching about one of these doctrines.

See, here’s the problem: The Bible tells us there is only one God—worship Him alone. Then Jesus comes along and says He and the Father are one. Jesus says He is God. His disciples worship Him and the Father. Jesus accepts their worship. Are there two Gods?

So, why was Jesus praying? Was He talking to Himself? We just celebrated Christmas where Jesus was born—that’s He’s the Son of God. So, did He not exist before that? 

And then Jesus told His disciples to baptize in the name (singular. name.) of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (isn’t that three names?). Why would He want us to baptize in anything other than God’s name?

These are questions that lead people to all kinds of problems. Here’s the simple answer, but it takes the whole Bible and a lot of faith in the mysteries of God to hear it.

Jesus has two natures. He has a human nature that was born in the womb of the Virgin Mary—conceived by the Holy Spirit. A human nature without sin but still 100% human. He is not less human than all of us, He is more human, because He wasn’t born with the twisted, demonic, iniquity-infested nature that we were all born with. He also has a divine nature—the essence and substance of God. The Son of God has always been the Son of God—that didn’t start with the conception of His human nature in the incarnation. The Son of God is eternally begotten of the Father. There was never God the Father without God the Son. Jesus has two natures, He is 100% God and 100% man. Equal with God according to His divinity and submissive to God according to His humanity. Any attempt to explain how this works will get us into trouble. We believe the mysteries of God by faith. 

Then there’s the Trinity. A word that isn’t found in the Bible—but then again, fun fact, neither are any of the English words we use to talk about God. Haha. Trinity means Three in One. One God, Three persons. Same in essence or substance—meaning the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all God. God who is holy and separate from anything and everything in His creation. The Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Father, the Holy Spirit is not the Son, the Son is not the Holy Spirit, and so on. They are three distinct Persons who coexist in mutual love and perfect unity. They are also One God. The Three in One. The One in Three. All analogies will fail us. Logic will fail us. Don’t break your brain. Any attempts to explain how this works will get us into trouble. We have to believe the mysteries of God by faith.

Back to Jesus’ baptism: So, Jesus was in the water, John was washing Him, Jesus was praying when all of a sudden “heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”

The Son is in the water. The Holy Spirit descends like a dove. The Father speaks.

This is why we baptize in the name (name! Singular. I never get tired of pointing that out) of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 

The heavens were opened. This is like the call of Ezekiel and Isaiah—except we’re not told what the people saw. The veil was pulled back, though—they saw something. This is a theophany, a word that means “an appearance of God.” When these happen, something big is always going on.

The Holy Spirit descended like a dove. Why “like a dove?” Not like a hawk or an eagle, I guess. Like a dove—not threatening, gracious. Luke says “in bodily form” because the Spirit is by nature invisible, but He can appear when He wants to. This should remind us of creation in Genesis chapter one when the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. The word for “hovering” is a word that means “fluttering” like bird wings. This is a new creation. God spoke and His Word created everything from nothing. It should also remind us of Noah and the flood—when the flood was over he sent a dove and it returned with an olive leaf. God is starting over with a new humanity. This new humanity starts with Jesus. And just like how His conception only had to do with His human nature, Jesus is now receiving the Holy Spirit in His humanity. This is why we’re able to receive the Holy Spirit in our baptism—because of our connection with Jesus’ baptism.

This is the moment when Jesus assumes the title of Christ. The anointed One, the Messiah. 

And a voice from heaven speaks, “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.” 

This was to the ears what the dove was to the eyes. This man Jesus is special. He is different from the rest of us. He is the eternal Son of God. The God-Man. The second person of the Holy Trinity. 

So, the Son of God, now also a human being, is presenting Himself for the work He came to do—and Jesus is “the Beloved Son” that Psalm 2 talked about. Upon His human nature, the Spirit himself is bestowed for the great task. And all this might have happened between the Father and the Son without any witnesses. But God made sure John the Baptist and all of us could know about it. We see the Holy Trinity: the Father speaking from heaven—the Son standing in the Jordan—the Spirit as a dove descending out of heaven. But even here, we only see a little of what it all means, only as far as it has to do with our redemption and salvation. The deeper mysteries of the Trinity are still hidden from us. We’re only shown enough of the mystery so we can know something about how God saves us. It certainly doesn’t answer all our questions about the Trinity.

So, because of His connection to all of us through His human nature and His being of one substance with God through His divine nature—this is the basis for everything Jesus will do for us. This is the foundation of the Gospel. This is why you can be connected to Jesus, washed clean, forgiven of your sins, made holy, be filled with the Holy Spirit, and adopted as a beloved child of God. This is why all these things can happen—it all started in His baptism.

He still has all the work to do. Overcome temptation, continue to live a sinless life, teach us what following Him is going to look like—and of course, die in our place on the cross as a punishment for all the sin of humanity that He took on Himself. The past sins of the Old Testament and all the future sins of the New—including yours and mine. His baptism is where He is connected to our baptisms and to us, but He still has to die for His people so He can rise from the dead. So He can go back to heaven. So He can return at the end of time as Lord and Christ. But this was the day He officially started His position as Christ. This baptism will lead to His bloody baptism on the cross where He will die for all those sins He took upon Himself. 

God the Father wanted to greatly encourage Jesus as He started this long journey. “I love you, Son. I am very happy with You. This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.”

Then we get a genealogy. It might seem strange that Luke puts it here, but God just told us Jesus was His Son, so Luke wants to back that up with a little ancestory.com. 

Verse 23:

Now Jesus himself was about thirty years old when he began his ministry. (The man named Jesus was about thirty, the Son of God had coexisted with the Father and the Spirit from eternity, as the next line insinuates.) He was the son, so it was thought, of Joseph, (Everyone thought Jesus’ biological father was Joseph, the husband of Mary. Because of the way Luke says this, most people think this genealogy isn’t really the genealogy of Joseph—what would be the point? It’s a little different from Matthew’s genealogy. So most people think this is actually the ancestry of Mary. I’m just going to read it, and mispronounce most of the names with confidence. Jesus was the grandson of) the son of Heli, the son of Matthat, the son of Levi, the son of Melki, the son of Jannai, the son of Joseph, the son of Mattathias, the son of Amos, the son of Nahum, the son of Esli, the son of Naggai, the son of Maath, the son of Mattathias, the son of Semein, the son of Josek, the son of Joda, the son of Joanan, the son of Rhesa, the son of Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, the son of Neri, the son of Melki, the son of Addi, the son of Cosam, the son of Elmadam, the son of Er, the son of Joshua, the son of Eliezer, the son of Jorim, the son of Matthat, the son of Levi, the son of Simeon, the son of Judah, the son of Joseph, the son of Jonam, the son of Eliakim, the son of Melea, the son of Menna, the son of Mattatha, the son of Nathan, the son of David, (That was a lot of people you’ve probably never heard of until we got to King David. God promised the Messiah would be one of David’s descendants but the rest of the list was a lot of nobodys.) David was the son of Jesse, the son of Obed, the son of Boaz, the son of Salmon, the son of Nahshon, the son of Amminadab, the son of Ram, the son of Hezron, the son of Perez, the son of Judah, (again, God had promised the Messiah would come from the tribe of Judah, even though he was a total turkey, and speaking of turkeys) the son of Jacob, the son of Isaac, the son of Abraham, (And that’s where Matthew’s genealogy stops because he just wanted to prove to the Jews that Jesus was the fulfillment of the promise made to Abraham, but Luke keeps going) the son of Terah, the son of Nahor, the son of Serug, the son of Reu, the son of Peleg, the son of Eber, the son of Shelah, the son of Cainan, the son of Arphaxad, 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 Mahalalel, the son of Kenan, the son of Enosh, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God. Luke 3:23-38

That’s pretty impressive. When I did 23andMe they couldn’t even figure out who my biological father was—let alone trace me all the way back to Adam.

One thing this genealogy does for Christians is put down all the pagan myths about the origin of man once and for all. God created the human race, He started with Adam and it goes from there. No cross-species theory of evolution can be in harmony with what God told us.

Another thing it does is show how Jesus closes the gap between all people being a child of God through Adam and Jesus being the Son of God through the miraculous conception of Mary—the only “begotten” Son of God—and offering His special relationship with God to all of us. You are connected to Jesus and adopted as a beloved child of God. A beloved “son” in whom He is well pleased. Traced all the way back to Adam, the son of God.

And we’re off to the races now. Jesus is going to get to work doing all those things for you that you can’t do for yourself. The next thing He has to do is go face to face with the devil—the same serpent that tricked our father Adam into breaking our relationship with God in the first place. He’s going to tempt Jesus with a lot more than forbidden fruit. You’ll have to come back next week to find out how it goes.

Today’s message got into some of the finer details of theology and doctrine that most people go their whole lives without thinking about. I get that. I also understand that the people who are driving by outside looking at our NewChurch signs don’t care about any of this.

But they do care about how the world is broken. How all their relationships are fragile. How they struggle with hopelessness and meaninglessness. How divided people are. About how difficult it is to believe anything or anyone. Everyone seems to be selling something. Everyone has an angle—an ax to grind. An agenda.

The things we talked about in here today are the solution to all of this. Jesus is how God is fixing the world, restoring relationships, giving life meaning and purpose. Jesus is the basis for any hope that anyone will ever have. He is the one sure and trustworthy thing in all of creation.

He showed up in a world that was divided into its smug little corners, too. A world that had rejected God and was going to reject Him, too. He stepped into the dirty water for us. He made it clean so you could be washed and forgiven. Remember your baptism. Remember how it connects you to the baptism of Jesus. Remember how it makes you a beloved child of God and gives you the Holy Spirit. Remember who you are and be the person God created you to be. AMEN

Let’s confess the words of the Nicene Creed, which deals with a lot of the things I talked about today:

I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth and of all things visible and invisible.

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of His Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made; who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary and was made man; and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate. He suffered and was buried. And the third day He rose again according to the Scriptures and ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of the Father. And He will come again with glory to judge both the living and the dead, whose kingdom will have no end.

And I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified, who spoke by the prophets. And I believe in one holy Christian and apostolic Church, I acknowledge one Baptism for the remission of sins, and I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Amen.