Mark 1:9-11-The Baptism of Jesus.
The Gospel According to Mark • Sermon • Submitted
0 ratings
· 37 viewsThe importance of the Baptism of Jesus
Notes
Transcript
Handout
Last week in the message titled The Forerunner in the Wilderness, the first thing we were reminded of is that fact that when God us a task to accomplish, we need not worry about the attacks of the enemy. It doesn’t matter how severe they may be, because as long as we are yielded and surrendered to the Lord, His Hand of protection is upon us. To illustrate this point, we looked of the Biblical account of Elisha and his young servant in 2 Kings. They were surrounded by an enemy army, but God had surrounded them with His own protective army, which included chariots of fire. By the way, as I was thinking back through that account later on, something dawned on me, now I can’t say this with complete certainty, because I don’t know of anything in Scripture that would confirm this, but when Elisha prayed that God would blind the eyes of the enemy army, I believe he was showing great compassion on them. Let me explain to you why I believe that to be true. If you look in Scripture to a similar account, when Jerusalem was surrounded by an army of around 150,000, when Hezekiah was the king of Judah, 1 single angel of God killed the entire army in one night. In the account of Elisha, Elisha and his young servant were surrounded by an entire army of angels. If one angel could kill an entire army, this angelic army could have done the same thing. Instead, Elisha prayed his prayer of compassion, and the army, while humbled, was not destroyed. Our compassion can be a very powerful tool!
The other things we looked at last week was,The Identity of the Servant King, His Name, Title and Lineage. Then we looked at John the Baptist and how he was the Forerunner in the Wilderness, who was there to Prepare the way for the coming King. Which included Preparing the Hearts of the People, who were far from ready for the coming Messiah. We closed out by looking at the incredible humility of John the Baptist, which culminated with his understanding that he was not fit to untie the strap on Jesus’s sandal, a task that in Jewish homes was reserved for the lowest servant of the house.
This morning we are going to take an in-depth look at the Baptism of Jesus and why this act was so important for us as believers.
Now, to begin with this morning, I want us to take a moment and consider what is taking place: Next Slides
Looking Through the Eyes of John the Baptist. John 1:33
To do this, I want you to think as if you are John the Baptist. When I was a kid in elementary school, there were times my teacher would say “Now I want you to put on your imagination caps for a moment.” Of course that meant we were supposed to put ourselves into the scene. That’s what I want you to do right now.
It is late in the afternoon on a hot summer day, and you’ve been by the Jordan River preaching and baptizing people since early in the morning. To be honest, your getting pretty tired, physically, but spiritually, well there is nothing you would rather do than what God has called you to do, so you keep on preaching and as the people are moved by the words God gives you and as they repent, you move from the hillside into the water of the Jordan to baptize them. The Spirit of God led you to begin this daily routine about 6 months ago, it was quite an adjustment for you, because the vast majority of your life, you’d been kind of a loner living in the Judean wilderness by yourself since your parents death, and since you were born when both of them were well past the child bearing age, you’d been mostly alone since your teenage years. You were just shy of 31 at this time and this last 6 months had been a whirlwind of activity.
Then there was this morning, when you woke up this morning, you just had this sense that today would be different than any other day. You could’t really pinpoint what it was, you just had a sense it would be different. Then, as you made your way to the same hillside you had been at for the last several day, as had been your habit from the very start, you prayed as you walked, prayed seeking God’s wisdom on what to preach, prayed for God’s wisdom on what His plans were for this day. That was a big deal for you each and every day, the last thing you wanted was for your days to be filled with doing good things, your only desire was that every day was filled with doing God things, to be about His business, not yours. Next Slide
The last thing John wanted was for His days to be filled with doing good things, his only desire was that every day was filled with doing God things, to be about God’s business, not his own.
Well today, as you were praying, God let you know that this was in fact going to be a special day, a day unlike any other. The only problem was, He didn’t let you in on the details. One thing you did know, was that you were a forerunner to the Messiah, your job was to prepare the hearts of the people for His appearance. You also new the 2 of you were related, 1st cousins if you remembered correctly, but you had no idea if the 2 of you had ever met. Maybe when the 2 of you were 2 or 3, but about the time He was 2, his parents wisked Him away to Egypt for a couple years, and when they returned, they relocated to Galilee, which was a long way from the Judean wilderness. You really had no idea what He looked like. But you had this sense that you would know when you saw Him.
So, here you were in the cool Jordan river baptizing people for the remission of sin, when all of the sudden, just off to the ride side, Someone stepped into the water, honestly, when He stepped into the water, it took your breath away, you instantly knew....this…this was the long awaited Messiah. He walked right up alongside of you in the water, you thought to yourself, perhaps He has come to baptize me? Then He spoke; “John, I’d like you to baptize me.”
“Wait…what? Me Baptize you? I’m the one that needs to be baptized by you, I mean my baptism is for the remission of sin, sin is not something You have never done!”
Jesus responded; “John, let it be so now, for thus, it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.”
Reluctantly, but joyfully, you baptised the Messiah, then, as He was coming up from underneath the water as you baptized Him, your eyes were unexplainably drawn to the sky and as you looked up, you saw the heavens opened....did I say opened, it wasn’t just opened, the heavens were torn open like you might tear apart a garment. Then, from heaven, something began to descend down upon Him....it…it wasn’t a dove, but it descended in the same way a dove would descend…just kind of gracefully descending upon Jesus. It was at that moment that my thoughts regarding Him were confirmed, this was, indeed, the Messiah, because God had spoken to my heart and let me now that the One on Whom the Spirit of God descends like a dove, is the Messiah. But it didn’t end there, Oh no, it didn’t end there…the best was still to come…all of the sudden, through the heavens that had remained opened since the Spirit of God had descended..a Voice from heaven breaks through the silence and begins to speak.....it was the very voice of God, God Almighty, the One Who created…well everything…the Voice of God speaks; “This is My beloved Son, with Whom I am well pleased.”
Yes, this was a day unlike any other.
So, there we have it, as if we were looking through the eyes of John the Baptist, and now that we have looked at Jesus baptism through the eyes if John, let’s now look at:
Next Slides
The Significance Of Jesus Being Baptized. Mark 1:4-5; 9; & 10-11; Matthew 3:14; Jer. 23:6; Is. 64:6
The baptism of Jesus had at least a 2 fold purpose.
The first purpose is seen in verses 4, 5 & 9 as well as Matthew 3:14. We see in verses 4 & 5 that John was baptizing for “repentance for the forgiveness of sin…confessing their sins”. Then in verse 9 that “Jesus…was baptized by John in the Jordan.”
So, what gives here? Why would the spotless, sinless Lamb of God Who takes away the sins of the world need to be baptized, especially with the baptism of John which was expressly for confession of sin and repentance? Clearly He had nothing to confess!
Obviously this was something that John struggled with as well because we read in Matthew 3:14 “John would have prevented Him, saying, “I need to be baptized by You, and do You come to me?”
The beauty of why this had to take place is profoundly powerful.
If you have listened to me much at all, you know that I love studying The Names of God. One of my favorite Names of God is Jehovah Tsidkenu, which means The Lord our Righteousness(Jer. 23:6). We learn in Isaiah 64:6 that “all our righteousness is like filthy rags.” In other words, Isaiah is saying that the best we have to give, the very best we have to give is nothing more than filthy rags. Now, I don’t want to go into to much detail on this, but if you want to understand what Isaiah is talking about here, well then you will need to talk to a woman, because women have a far better understanding of what this means than us men do. Keep in mind that one day we will stand before the judgement seat of God, and if we stand there clothed in our own righteousness, we’re in big trouble. But if you place your faith and trust in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, if you surrender your life to Him, when you stand before the judgement seat of God, you won’t be clothed in your righteousness, you will be clothed in the righteousness of Jehovah Tsidkenu, The Lord our Righteousness.
John MacArthur writes “In the first act of His ministry, the One who had no sin publicly identified Himself with those who had no righteousness.”
This brings us to the first purpose in why Jesus had to be baptized with the baptism of John, a baptism of confession and repentance. Because in His baptism:
Next Slides
Jesus Deliberately Identified Himself with Sinners.
Taking His place with them in order that, as their representative, He might redeem them.
I love the way Kent Hughes puts it in his book, Mark: Jesus, Servant and Savior.
He writes: “Because Jesus was sinless, He needed no baptism of repentance. But in His baptism He associated Himself with us sinners and placed Himself among the guilty -- not for His own Salvation but for ours -- not for His guilt but for hours and -- not because He feared the wrath to come, but to save us from it. His baptism meant the cross!”
In other words, you could say that just as the believer will be clothed in His righteousness when we stand before the judgment seat of God, he was clothed in our sinfulness on the cross, and Jesus, in this moment of baptism is setting the course for the cross to take place.
Or as John MacArthur puts it; “Symbolically, Jesus’ baptism looked forward to the cross, just as Christian baptism now looks back to it.”
That brings us to the second purpose for Jesus baptism, it was; Next Slides
The Coronation of The Servant King. Mark 1:10-11; Luke 3:21
We spent a great deal of time last week looking at the fact that John the Baptist was the forerunner, the advancing herald of Jesus, Jesus the King. We talked about how, in the Roman Empire, anytime a king, or an Emperor would come to town, the forerunner would precede him, to make sure the city was spruced up and prepared, and then he would march ahead of the king to announce his arrival. Well in this instance, not only did John the Baptist announce the arrival of Jesus the King, the God of the Universe did so as well. In both the Holy Spirit of God descending like a dove, but also in the voice of God from heaven announcing; “This is My beloved Son, with Whom I am well pleased.”
Now, I want you to picture what is taking place here. In Luke 3:21 we find out that as Jesus was coming up out of the water, He was praying. Well as He was praying we find out here in Mark that “He saw the heavens being torn open”. To give you an idea of what is taking place here, let’s look at another passage in Mark that uses the same Greek word for torn. We find it in Mark 15:38 Next Slide
38 And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.
What we are seeing taking place here is a violent tearing open of the heavens. It is God emphatically placing His seal of approval on what Jesus is about to do. In fact Isaiah the prophet prophesied this was take place when he writes in Isaiah 64:1:
1 Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains might quake at your presence—
The rending of the heavens took place at the beginning of the Jesus ministry, here at His baptism. But rather than God sending an earth quake at the point where the heavens are torn open, instead, with beauty and gentleness, “the Spirit like a dove” was “descending upon Him” “The third member of the Trinity gracefully descended to alight upon the Son, providing a visible symbol of divine blessing, authentication, and empowerment at the outset of Jesus’ ministry.” (John MacArthur)
The mountains quaking at His presence took place at the end, when the earth quaked at His death.
As you can see from our time this morning, there is incredible significance in the baptism of Jesus, and the beauty of why this had to take place is profoundly powerful, with deep meaning for us. First, in His baptism:
Jesus Deliberately Identified Himself with Sinners. Jehovah Tsidkenu, The Lord our Righteousness, took upon Himself our unrighteousness as His baptism charted the course for the cross.
Second, in His baptism, God the Father, and the Holy Spirit both were actively directing:
The Coronation of The Servant King.
This is the One Whom we have as our focus this week as we prepare for the celebration of the empty tomb this coming Easter Sunday. I pray that you will be greatly impacted this week by the course of action Jesus put into place in His baptism, putting Him on a collision course for the Cross, which He chose “For the joy set before Him”.
Let’s pray,