The Baptism of Jesus, Part 2

Seeking the Spirit's Ministry for Understanding God's Word

0:02 This sermon was preached on Sunday morning, September 4th, 1983, at the Trinity Baptist Church in Montville, New Jersey. We have confessed in the singing of this hymn that it is the Spirit who brings the truth of God's Word to light. Our Lord Jesus said, If you who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him? And James said, You have not, because you ask not.

0:46 What a crime it would be that we should come to the Word and leave the Word today, having had no conscious ministry of the Spirit with the Word, because we did not ask. And our barrenness was God's judgment upon our unwillingness to ask. Let us then again seek the face of God and ask Him to grant us His Holy Spirit in fresh measure.

1:20 O Lord, we do indeed fear that it should be said to us, You have not, because you ask not. And our Father, in that fear and in that dread that we should be left at the mercy of our own resources, we pause to seek Your face. We pause to cry to You that You would send Your Holy Spirit upon us in copious and gracious measures, that our eyes may be open to behold wondrous things out of Your law. And even as we, as we ask for the Spirit's ministry in conjunction with the opening up of the Scriptures, we recognize that we are engaged in a spiritual warfare, that all of our own notions of what is reality, of what is truth, are notions which, if not framed by Scripture, stand in opposition to You and need to be brought captive to the obedience of Your Son. Humble then every proud and erroneous thought and bring every thought captive to Your Son as He speaks to us in His own holy and infallible Word. Hear us as we make our plea

2:49 in His worthy name. Amen.

Recap of Primary Significance: Identification, Equipping, and Encouragement

2:58 Now may I urge you please to follow in your Bibles as I read from Mark's Gospel, chapter 1, the Gospel of Mark, chapter 1, verses 9 through 11. And it came to pass in those days that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized of John in the Jordan. And straightway coming up out of the water, He saw the heavens rent asunder and the Spirit as a dove descending upon the earth. And a voice came out of the heavens, You are my beloved Son, in You I am well pleased. Now perhaps just a word of explanation is in order for our visitors in particular. We are engaged, Lord's Day mornings, in a verse-by-verse study of the Gospel according to Mark. And in the course of that study, we came last, Lord's Day, to these verses that have been read in your hearing.

4:19 And as we did, we attempted to do two things. First of all, to have fixed very firmly and clearly in our minds the basic facts recorded by Mark in verses 9 through 11. Fact number one, Jesus comes from Nazareth as a full-grown man of 30 years of age and is a man of God. And is baptized by John in the Jordan River.

4:48 Verse 10 sets before us the fact that as He is coming up out of the waters of Jordan, the heavens are split asunder and out of the open heavens the Holy Spirit descends to use the language of Luke in bodily form, the very form of a dove and alights upon the Lord Jesus. And then according to verse 11, that open heaven then becomes the very portal out of which a voice speaks. And that voice speaks directly to Christ a word of identification, You are my beloved Son. And then a word of approbation, In You I am well pleased or in You I was pleased. Now having said that, we sought to grasp the basic facts as given to us in these verses, we then went on to examine what I call the primary significance of these facts. And resisting the temptation to answer all kinds of questions that no doubt were raised in many of our minds, and also resisting the temptation to expand on the many, many lessons that are contained in these verses, we attempted to hone in

6:16 on the primary significance of these epical events in the life of our Lord Jesus. And I suggested these three primary things as constituting the heart of this passage. First of all, our Lord's baptism in Jordan formally and publicly identifies the heart of this passage. the heart of this passage.

6:42 It identifies Him with His people. And though there is so much of rich biblical teaching involved in that simple statement, I'll resist the temptation to re-preach last Sunday's message and leave it there. Christ's baptism in the waters of Jordan formally and publicly identifies Him with His people. His first public appearance, breaking the 18 years of silence, is an appearance in the company of sinners being baptized, that is, undergoing a sinner's ordinance in the company of sinners.

7:23 And our Lord is thereby declaring formally and publicly that His mission is to be understood as a mission of identification with sinners, not in their pollution, not in their commission of sin, for He was holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners, but as the representative of sinners. He will take upon Himself all of their liabilities, and He will answer to the law of God for the sins of His people. And then secondly, His anointing with the Spirit powerfully equips Him for the work He is to perform on behalf of His people. No sooner does He publicly and formally identify Himself with His people than that the heavens are rent and the Spirit of God comes upon Him to anoint Him in order that He may accomplish all that He has now taken upon Himself. That His human nature would be sustained and strengthened and upheld by the power of the Spirit as He takes His place as the great prophet, priest, and king of those who are God's people. he came to save. And then finally, his heavenly identification and approbation encouraged

8:49 him to go forth in his task on behalf of his people, assured of success. It was a word primarily to him, perhaps and most likely heard by John, but the text in Mark says that God spoke to him, you are my son, my beloved one, in you I am well pleased. These then I suggest constitute the primary significance of this trilogy of epical events in the life of the Lord Jesus. But now what we want to do this morning is to consider together several of the secondary lessons contained. In this very same passage. The third question of the Shorter Catechism asks, what do the scriptures principally teach? And the answer is, the scriptures principally teach what man is to believe concerning God, and what duty God requires of man. Well, there is much

Convincing Confirmation of Gospel Writers' Integrity

9:59 in this passage with reference to what we are to believe about God, and what God requires of us that goes beyond the primary significance of the meaning of the passage. Having established now, I trust, to your conviction, the primary significance of the passage, what else is there in the passage which teaches us vital lessons about God, vital lessons about our own duty? Well, let me seek to lay some of those things before you. First of all, these verses constitute a convincing confirmation of the honesty or the integrity of the Gospel writers. These verses constitute a convincing confirmation of the honesty of the Gospel writers. As we have already seen, Mark totally bypasses the principle of the birth narratives as given to us in Matthew and in Luke. He does not take us back into

11:13 the mysteries of eternity as John does in the opening chapter of his Gospel. But Mark, in common, with Matthew, with Luke and with John, passes over in total silence the eighteen-year period from the time we last see our Lord. Up at the time that we were born, we are to Lord, up at the temple or down at the temple with the doctors of the law and then going back up into Galilee to the city of Nazareth and there in Nazareth all we are told is that he was subject unto his parents, grew in wisdom and in stature in favor with God and man. And then there is total silence. There is not a word of revelation from the pen of Matthew, Mark, Luke or John until 18 years later we find him coming forward publicly and formally to be identified with sinners, to be set apart for the work that he came to accomplish. And I say that these facts constitute a convincing confirmation of the truth.

12:32 Of the integrity of the gospel writers. Surely they were made of the same stuff of which you and I are made. And no doubt they had many questions when they were in the presence of eyewitnesses. Mark, of course, constantly in the presence of Peter and then, of course, in the presence of Paul the Apostle for many years.

12:57 No doubt Mark had many of the questions that you and I have. What was Jesus? What was Jesus like as a teenager? How did he relate to his brothers and sisters?

13:07 How was he in his father's carpenter shop? Was he better with heavy work or with light work? Was he meticulous about detail? Was he fast?

13:17 Was he efficient? We have all kinds of questions. How did he relate to his neighbors? How did he react when he was out playing a game and someone cheated and lied about him?

13:28 Did he think it necessary to vindicate himself? Did he maintain the consciousness of his own sinlessness? We can raise a thousand questions, none of which is illegitimate or impudent. And no doubt those questions were raised in the minds of the very eyewitnesses of the life of our Lord Jesus.

13:48 And whether the Lord Jesus ever told them anything about those matters is a moot or debatable question. But this much is clear. That the gospel records are utterly silent. They pass over all of that period in total silence, and they bring us the Lord Jesus in his full manhood as a thirty-year-old man standing in the waters of Jordan.

14:18 And this should constitute to us not an infallible proof that the Bible is the Word of God, for that ultimate conviction, as our Confession states, comes directly from God. It comes by the Holy Spirit. But surely it ought to be a convincing confirmation to us that when we pick up these gospel records we are not following cunningly devised fables. For all you need to do is read some of these pseudo-gospels that write page after page about the youth and the infancy of Jesus, and there you sense you are in the climate of cunningly devised fables.

14:59 The Bible is the Bible. The Bible is an odd text of biblical tutaj. It is not as if Christians do even read the Bible. I don't even believe that tries to suffocate the stimmtion of any kind.

15:29 the evangelist respecting this period but what eloquence is in their silence may we not find in their very reticence a wisdom and an instruction more profound than if they filled many volumes with minor details in the first place we may see in this their silence a signal and striking confirmation of their faithfulness we may learn from it that they desired to tell the simple truth and not to construct an astonishing or plausible narrative that Christ should have passed 30 years of his brief life in the deep obscurity of a provincial village that he should have been brought up not only in a conquered land but in its most despised province not only in the despised province but in the most despised province of the world and in the most despised province of the world and in the most despised province of the world and in the most despised province but in its most disregarded valley that during all those 30 years the ineffable brightness of his divine nature should have tabernacled amongst us in a tent like ours and of the same material unnoticed and unknown that during those long years there should have been no

16:44 flash of splendid circumstance no outburst of amazing miracle no sevenfold chorus of hallelujahs and harping symphonies to announce and reveal and glorify the coming king this is not what we should have expected nor what anyone would have been likely to imagine or to invent we should not have expected it but it was so and therefore the gospel writers leave it so and the very fact of its contradicting all we should have imagined is an additional proof that so it must have been you see if the gospel writers were conceiving a story that would answer to men's expectations it would not be one in which they begin by saying this is the incarnate god and then they allow god incarnate to be buried in obscurity for 18 years and not a shred of evidence that he did anything that would have indicated that he was the incarnate god except the pattern of his life no doubt impressed itself upon all who were near him that there was

18:03 something radical and fundamentally different in the whole matter of his relationship to the problem of sin and so canon for our rightly underscores this great principle that i trust is weighty in your own conscience that here in this narrative that we have read where we leap over all of those years of silence and out of the obscurity of nazareth the lord jesus appears publicly in the waters of jordan i say they should constitute for us a convincing confirmation of the integrity of the gospel writers but then in the second place they constitute a powerful proclamation of the doctrine of the gospel and the doctrine of the gospel and the doctrine of the gospel and the doctrine of the trinity these verses constitute a powerful proclamation of the doctrine of the trinity now the god revealed in the bible is the god who is revealed as the one true and living god everything else is an idol and paul says in first corinthians eight four an idol is nothing

Powerful Proclamation of the Doctrine of the Trinity

19:24 an idol is a zero someone may make that which it calls the pool but the making of it in the calling of it does not constituted like an idol is nothing there is no one true and moving goths this is the create overarching truth of the bible would respect to go on however the same bible little icon to Use Us but there is no room to leave leading the bottom of the post us, that that one true and living God has three subsistences or persons in his glorious being, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and that this God who is one in three and three in one is the one true and living God. Now, God has always been Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God has always been, he has no beginning, he has always been Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and ever shall be. However, however, the revelation of that fact did not come to us all at once.

20:45 Amidst that sea of idolatry in the Old Testament. God was primarily concerned to maintain the purity of true monotheism, the fact that there is but one true and living God. And the great concern of God's heart in his dealings with the nation of Israel was not to reveal to them the mystery of his being as the three in one and the one in three. He always was the one in three and the three.

21:20 But his great concern was to reveal to that nation and to have that nation shine as a light amidst all of that pagan darkness, asserting this great truth, there is but one true and living God and his name is Jehovah. That was God's great concern. Now, looking in the Old Testament, we find passages that can make, we can make no sense of the apart from the doctrine of the Trinity, we find a certain angel called the angel of the Lord. He is worshiped, sacrifices offered to him.

22:02 He is regarded as a divine being and he receives worship and encourages worship. And we say something doesn't quite fit if there is but one true and living God and that God is spirit. Who is this angel of Jehovah? And we say, could it be that this is a pre-incarnate manifestation of the Lord Jesus?

22:28 And we find references to the spirit that cannot mean simply an emanation or an influence, an impersonal power put forth from God. But references to the spirit that can only mean he is a personal spirit who is divine, who is God. And so there are hints and suggestions. And looking with the light of New Testament revelation, some very clear assertions of the doctrine of the Trinity in the Old Testament.

22:57 But follow carefully. It was not God's purpose fully to reveal that truth in the Old Testament. His great concern was to herald to the world through the nation of Israel, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one. There is but one true and living God.

23:18 Now it is with the coming of the second person of the Godhead to take human personality, to take human flesh upon himself. Follow closely. It's in conjunction with the actual salvation of men that God unfolds with greater clarity the truth that he is the one in three and the three in one. And it is in conjunction with the actual coming of the second person of the Godhead to assume human nature that the doctrine of the Trinity as far as its revelation takes a tremendous leap.

24:02 You remember the incarnation? The power of the Most High shall overshadow thee, the angel said to Mary in Luke 1. And that which is conceived in you shall be called the Son of God. Here you have the Most High.

24:24 You have the Holy Spirit who is going to impregnate Mary. And you have that which is to be born of her, designated Son of God. And in a sense, all of the Old Testament hints and suggestions burst upon us at the intersection. Incarnation of the second person of the Godhead with tremendous brilliance.

24:48 But now here at the waters of Jordan, the revelation takes a quantum leap.

24:55 Look at the data. There in Jordan's water, or on the edge of it, or standing on the bank dripping wet, is a man who came out of Nazareth in Galilee, who had all the appearances of a true man and nothing but a man. There's nothing. There's nothing to indicate that as he made his way out of Nazareth to Jordan, there was a halo above his head.

25:20 Nothing to indicate that little fat naked cherubs fluttered all around him, as you see in some of the so-called Christian art. Had you passed him going the other way that day, you would have simply nodded your head and said, Good day, sir. And if you were a good Hebrew, you probably would have said, Shalom. Now there may have been something in his eye that you would never forget.

25:44 There may have been something about his countenance that would have impeded an imprint upon the mind never to be erased, but you would have known that you passed a man for all appearances an ordinary man. And if you'd been so arrested by something in his eye that you stopped and you followed him, and you were to see him go down to the banks of Jordan, you were to see him enter that brief discussion with John and then see John plunging beneath the waters of Jordan and bringing him to the banks of Jordan, and bringing him up again, up until that point you would have said, Here is this man with the captivating look in his eye who is joining all of the others in this baptism of repentance. Up to that point, everything points to a true, real, substantial, ordinary human being.

26:36 But no sooner does he come up out of the water than a strange thing happens. Mark, with his unusual vigor, does not merely say the heavens open. The heavens were rent. They were split open.

26:51 And from those split open heavens, in a bodily form, the Spirit of God, the personal Holy Spirit, called in Mark, the Spirit, called by Matthew, the Spirit of God, called by Luke, the Holy Spirit, that personal being, comes down upon the Lord Jesus. And no sooner are we confronted in the record of Mark with this strange thing than a voice comes out of the same heavens, obviously the voice of God, saying, This one is my Son, the Beloved. You mean the God of heaven has a son. And he doesn't say, This one has now become my son. This one, he has at this moment taken upon himself a relationship to me as son. He says, No, this is, you are my son, the Beloved One.

27:57 In you, I have been pleased, as we noted last week. In you, my pleasure was indeed set from eternity before you ever became incarnate in the womb of the Virgin. Now what do we make of this? A man, standing on the banks of Jordan.

28:18 The heavens opened. The personal Holy Spirit, assuming a visible, corporeal form, bodily form, comes upon the Lord Jesus as a dove. And a voice speaks out of heaven, a voice of identification. This is my Son, the Beloved One.

28:38 The eternal God has a son. The Son who has always been the object of His pleasure, and His delight. What else does this passage constitute but a powerful proclamation that the living God, the one true and living God, is the God who is one in three, and three in one. There is no way to collate the material, but in the historic Christian doctrine of the Trinity, that our God is the God, the God of the world, who is indeed the one true and living God, but He is the God who in His own mysterious being is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And it was not the Father who came upon Christ in bodily form, but it was the Spirit. But it wasn't an impersonal Spirit. It was the Holy Spirit.

29:38 It was the Spirit of God. And it was not the Father standing in Jordan's water, or on the banks of Jordan, or on the banks of the Jordan River. It was the Son. And the Father could say to the Son, You are.

29:53 And the Son could consciously receive the message, I am. And if I am the beloved Son, I am the beloved Son of You, my Father. And yet if He is Son of God, not Son in terms of procreation, but Son in terms of shared essence, then He is God. God is speaking to God.

30:17 God the Father speaking to God the Son, upon whom God the Spirit has come to rest in power. For you see, the human nature of our Lord Jesus could not be sustained in the work of redemption by a mere impersonal force. That human nature had to be upheld by divine power. And it was the very power of the divine Spirit that came upon Him.

30:45 It is very interesting that in some of the early controversies about the Trinity, one of the favorite sayings of the Orthodox to those rationalists who said, like the modern Jehovah's Witness says, How can you make sense out of this? Three in one, one in three. They said to the rationalists of their day, Go to Jordan and learn the doctrine of the Trinity. That was one of their catch words.

The Trinity's Revelation for Our Salvation, Not Speculation

31:14 Go to Jordan, and learn the doctrine of the Trinity. And so I say one of the major secondary lessons of this passage is that it constitutes a powerful proclamation of the doctrine of the Trinity. But now by application, I want to underscore something that's very vital. And perhaps I can do it no better, at least begin to do it, than by quoting from Lenski, the Lutheran commentator, who on this passage comments as follows, The Eternal Son is the Father's elect for the great task.

31:52 This Son, now incarnate and presenting Himself for the task, is thus the Beloved One. Upon the human nature of this elect and Beloved One, the Spirit Himself is bestowed for this great task. Now listen carefully. All this might have transpired between the Father and the Son without other witnesses.

32:18 But it took place so that John the Baptist and all of us might know. Thus, in what took place beside the Jordan, we have one of the clearest and most complete revelations of the Trinity. The Father speaking from heaven, the Son standing incarnate at the Jordan, the Spirit as a dove descending out of heaven. Now follow again.

32:42 Yet here too, we have this revelation only in a limited degree, only in so far as these three divine persons are engaged in our redemption and salvation. The deeper mysteries of the Holy Trinity remain hidden from us. God is, as it were, compelled to reveal this much in order that we may know how our salvation is wrought. Even this much.

33:17 Even this much. Even this much. Even this much of the Trinity is beyond mortal comprehension. Its revelation has only one purpose indicated and was never intended to answer the curious questions which rationalistic intellects may raise.

33:37 Where did this great burst of increased revelation about God being three in one and one in three come? Did it come in the temple where the philosophers and doctors of the law were gathered? No. God would not accommodate Himself to their intellectual games.

33:59 It came where a bunch of sinners were being plunged in the river Jordan and coming out confessing their sins. It came when the One upon whom their salvation rests underwent the same watery rite marked out for sinners. And it was when the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was born again. And it was when the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was born again.

34:19 And it was when the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was born again. And it was when the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was born again. And it was when the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was born again. And it was when the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was born again.

34:23 And it was when the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was born again. And it was when the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was born again. And it was when the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was born again. And it was when the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was born again.

34:27 And it was when the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was born again. And it was when the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was born again. And it was when the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was born again. and marked out as the Beloved One, the One upon whom all the goodwill and pleasure of the Father terminated.

34:38 It was in this context that the doctrine of the Trinity took a quantum leap. What is God saying? He's saying the redemption of sinners can only be detected by the contrary activity of the Triune Godhead. As dear Pastor Blaze used to say, it takes the whole Trinity to save one sinner.

35:07 That's what God's saying in Jordan.

35:11 And that's why we must never allow this precious doctrine to come into the arena of philosophical speculation or argumentation with people who in their arrogance and no sense of need dare trifle with such sacred mysteries. The last discussion I ever had with a Jehovah's Witness occurred when I saw this principle and was determined to put it into practice. And when the woman in her arrogance who came to my door wanted to debate the doctrine of the Trinity with me, I refused to debate and I said, Ma'am, I want to ask you one question.

35:55 What is it? I said, it is this. Have you ever taken the place of a vile, guilty, helpless, hell-deserving sinner, in the presence of a holy God? And at that she grabbed her partner and said, Let's get out of here.

36:15 Why? Because she had no felt need of the commitment of the Triune Godhead for her salvation.

36:25 You begin to take seriously what you are as a sinner who has offended not human majesty and human courts and human laws and human governments, but you defy them. The government of heaven, you deserve wrath. It is the wrath of God. It is infinite wrath.

36:47 Because it's wrath that comes from an infinite God whom you have offended as a finite creature.

36:55 You begin to wrestle with how can God ever be just and do anything other than crush me into hell? How can God be just and yet justify sinners? Oh, what good news it is to hear that the very God who has a controversy with me, has clothed himself with a human body and a human soul, that in the mystery of the theanthropic person, the God-man Christ Jesus, there might be rendered to the law the infinitely holy pure law of God, complete satisfaction that will answer to all the claims of deity. I want a Savior who brings to His salvation nothing less, than the worth and the power of undiluted deity.

37:49 But I want a Savior that I know is truly identified with me in my condition, who lived in my condition and kept the law in my condition and died the death I should have died in my condition. My heart desperately needs a high priest who can sympathize with me because He's been with me. He's been with me. He's been with me.

38:13 He's been with me. He's been with me even in my condition. And thank God the Lord Jesus is such a Savior. And I need a Holy Spirit who can take the virtue of His work, accomplish the work of Christ once for all upon the cross and apply it with such illuminating and liberating power that I shall become in my own experience a monument of the grace and power of Almighty God to forgive and liberate a sinner.

38:46 I don't want some impersonal influence. I want a personal Holy Spirit who can take up residence in this human personality and where sin has wrapped its tentacles around soul and mind and spirit and affections and will. He can come and break the tentacles and enwrap me in motives and dynamics of grace that will make me the willing bond slave of Jesus Christ forever. I say I need the commitment of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost if I'm going to be saved.

39:23 And my friend, you do too.

39:26 Do you see why the revelation of the Trinity is made here? The Lord Jesus is formally identifying Himself with sinners. And God is saying at that point in time, now's the time not just to pull back the veil another three inches, six inches. God, as it were, pulls it back three feet.

39:46 Three feet. Rips it open even more and says your salvation is effected by the God who is one in three and the God who is three in one.

Visual Illustration of Christ's Purpose: To Save Sinners

40:01 Then I must hasten on to underscore that in this passage we not only have a convincing confirmation of the integrity of the Gospel writers, a powerful proclamation of the doctrine of the Trinity, but these words constitute a visual illustration of the purpose of Christ's coming. A visual illustration of the purpose of Christ's coming. One of the most frightening commentaries on the perverseness of the human heart is to see how quickly men can distort and confuse the most elementary facts concerning the question why did Jesus Christ come to earth? If you want a sad commentary on the human heart and its perversity, just ask any ten people at random why did Jesus Christ come to earth?

40:59 Well, amidst this scene by Jordan, there is a tremendous amount of that which is sensual and physical. And I mean sensual not in the sense of illicit sex, but in its classic sense, its dictionary sense, that which impinges upon the senses. That which can be seen in particular. And when you and I stand, as it were, with our mind's eye by the bank of Jordan that day, what do we see?

41:31 After Jesus is plunged into the river, and as he's coming up out of the river, either in its shallows or upon its banks, what do we see? We see an ordinary man, dripping wet with water, hair plastered to his head. If he had a beard, plastered to his face. I saw Mr. Clark's beard, down for the first time at the conference a couple of weeks ago. And it came to my mind, as I was speaking now, and trying to imagine. Use your imagination when you read the scriptures. Coming up out of the water.

42:07 God didn't bring down a huge blow dryer to dry him off. When he came up out of the water, he came dripping wet. Head, beard, if he had one, robes, dripping wet. And standing there, dripping wet, suddenly, the heavens are over.

42:23 Out of the heavens comes down this form of a dove, the personal Holy Spirit in this form, bodily form of a dove. And then a voice speaks, Thou art my Son, my Beloved. Now, is all of this that impinges upon the eye and recorded in the Bible for us, is that all arbitrary and capricious? Could the Holy Spirit just as well have descended in the form of a dove?

42:55 A mountain of fire? Or in the form of some other beast or bird or fowl? Could the Lord Jesus have been brought formally and publicly to his ministry in some other way than undergoing this watery ritual by Jordan's river? May I suggest there's nothing arbitrary or capricious in this.

43:17 You know what God is doing? He's doing precisely in this collation of physical circumstances what he's doing. He's doing precisely in this what he's done in giving us the Lord's Supper. By bread and the fruit of the vine God is saying to us precisely what he declares in the word of the gospel.

43:37 We have the visible word and the spoken word. And here by the banks of the Jordan God is very powerfully proclaiming to us by means of visual illustration why Jesus Christ has come. Think of it. This is his first public appearance.

43:58 Eighteen years buried there in Nazareth in total obscurity for all we learn from the biblical records. Now he stands dripping wet by the bank of the Jordan. The spirit is a dove coming upon him. What does it say to us?

44:15 I submit that it says by way of visual impingement exactly what the gospel declares by way of oral impingement. What does it say? Well the word of the gospel says this is a faithful saying worthy of all acceptance Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. He himself said I did not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance at his conception the angel declared thou shalt call his name Jesus he shall save his people from their sins.

44:54 What is the purpose of this? His purpose of his coming is primarily and essentially to rescue sinners not only from the word but stand by Jordan. See him wet and you approach him and say to him Sir, why are you dripping wet? I've undergone this watery ritual.

45:17 Ah, but it's not this watery ritual for sinners. Are there not people all about you confessing their sins? Why have you undergone a ritual intended for sinners? In disaster, the answer would have been because I have become the representative sinner.

45:33 I stand here dripping wet with the vivid and visual reminder of what I've done to make it plain my purpose is to save and I can only save by being identified in covenant oneness with my people. It is as I take their obligations upon me that I will bear them away as the Lamb of God. You see, if his primary purpose was to be a teacher he would have appeared in a library. He would have appeared amidst the doctors of the law.

46:12 If his primary purpose was to be an example he would have appeared on a pedestal. But he appears in the waters of Jordan because his purpose is to seek and to save sinners. To become so identified with sinners. That he takes upon himself their guilt, their liabilities.

46:35 Furthermore, the Spirit of God comes upon him how? In the form of a dove. What does the Word of God declare? Thou shalt, I'm sorry, she shall bring forth a son.

46:48 I'm sorry, unto us a son is born. Unto us a child is given. And what is he called? One of his names.

46:56 Prince of Peace is Isaiah's word. In Ephesians 2 we are told he is our peace. In Romans 5.1 we read being justified by faith we have peace with God.

47:12 And the only real certain thing we can say about the symbolism of the dove from Scripture is that with that ancient reference in Genesis 8 it was the dove that came back you remember when let loose from the ark came back with the piece of the olive branch in its mouth. And it was the dove that came back in that way Noah knew that the waters of the flood the judgment of God had been abated so forever from that moment on in almost every nation the dove is the symbol of what? The symbol of peace. Particularly the dove with the olive branch.

47:46 You didn't know that had its roots in the Bible, did you? Well it does. It does. And surely whatever else was intended surely the Spirit of God taking not his normal manifestation as fire.

48:03 He was the pillar of fire. He came as clove and tongues of fire upon the disciples on the day of Pentecost. But he comes as a dove. Why?

48:13 Because God is saying my son has come to effect peace between heaven and earth. The dove comes out of heaven and rests upon Christ who stands upon earth. And it's when he identifies with sinners not before that the dove comes. And the peace that is effected between God and man is peace effected by the work of the incarnate God the Lord Jesus who becomes one with us.

48:45 And then there's the beautiful imagery of the open heavens. I love the language here of Mark the vigor of his language.

48:54 After Jesus is baptized we read straightway that word euthus immediately without warning delay coming up out of the water he saw the heavens rent. He no sooner identifies himself with sinners than the very word used for the rending of the veil in the temple is here used. The veil of the temple was rent. The way into the immediate presence of God that was rent when he died upon the cross in a sense is prefigured now.

49:27 He identifies himself with sinners in a watery rite. Which points to the awful reality of his death which he called a baptism. I have a baptism to be baptized with and how am I straightened until it be accomplished. And God is saying by this visual impingement that heaven is open to sinners because the representative of sinners is now identified with them.

49:54 He's entered into solidarity into covenant oneness in time and space on behalf of those for whom he came. And heaven is open as the gospel tells us. I am the way the truth and the life. No man comes to the Father but by me.

50:13 Would you have heaven open to you and the Father? Then you must come by way of the well beloved one. There is no other way. That's what the word of the gospel says.

50:23 God says it visually. Peter says he gave himself for us the just for the unjust that he might bring us to God. There in Jordan we see that. The open heavens.

50:35 Why? Not that he might know what's there. He was there from all eternity. But that you and I might be given an idea of how we can get there.

50:45 And the only way we can get there is through him to whom the Father turns all of our attention when he says this is my son. You are my son the beloved one. In you is all my pleasure. And we sinners say but oh, oh God in us natively and nakedly standing before you in us there is nothing but that which provokes your displeasure.

51:10 And God says yes. But you can be accepted in the beloved one as he has identified himself with you. If you are identified with him and joined to him by faith you are accepted in him. So I say this passage is certainly one of its secondary lessons sets before us a visual illustration of the very purpose for which Christ came.

Comfort for Believers and Warning for Unbelievers

51:37 And may I say for your comfort child of God are there times when you think of your sins and thinking of them you look at the mountain that is your sin and you try to take hold of such a verse as this Christ died for our sins. And you say Lord I know you mean what you say and your word says the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses from all sin. And you try to take hold of the naked word of the promise but somehow your grasp seems so feeble and it seems as though you say I do believe Lord but I can't seem to truly lay hold of it as I would like to. Lord I know it's your word you wouldn't lie the blood of Jesus cleanses from all sin. Lord I believe help thou my unbelief the word of the gospel that comes to your ear. My friend may I suggest you do something in your mind's eye with that word of the gospel ringing in your ear. Go back to Jordan.

52:39 Maybe your faith will be strengthened not by the audible word of promise but by the visual. Stand by Jordan and see your Lord going under its waters. See your Lord coming up out of the waters and standing upon the bank. Relive in your mind's eye the fact that the heavens were rent when he became a dead man.

53:03 Identified with sinners and their gaze upon an open heaven and say oh God I do believe that the blood of Jesus is adequate for even my sins. That his being identified with me in covenant oneness and solidarity taking my place as the last Adam. I do believe Lord and I hear your voice saying to him as it were now formerly laden with my guilt and sin this is my son my beloved one. Perhaps your faith will be strengthened not only by gazing at the word of the promise but by seeking in your mind's eye to come there to Jordan and have that visual illustration of the very purpose of his coming.

54:00 And I say to you who are yet in your sins if you can confuse the purpose of Christ's coming in the face of the plain word of the gospel and this visual illustration of the gospel there's only one reason you're determined to damn your soul by willful self-deception.

Helpful Explanation of Christian Baptism

54:21 From such determination may God deliver you. And now very briefly in closing these words constitute not only a confirmation of the integrity of the gospel writers a power a powerful assertion of the doctrine of the trinity this beautiful illustration of the purpose of Christ's coming but they also constitute a helpful explanation of the doctrine of Christian baptism.

54:51 A helpful explanation of the doctrine of Christian baptism. Pastor Nichols in his series on scrutinizing infant baptism as a practice demonstrated that there is a conjunction between John's baptism and the baptism of Christ and ultimately what we would call full-blown Christian baptism. We might use the imagery that the baptism of John is the seedbed out of which the full-blown plant of Christian baptism grows. Now there are differences as he demonstrated in the class in the previous hour but those differences must not be so conceived that to set up a radical line and a chasm between the baptism of John and the baptism of Christ and ultimately Christian baptism. And what do we learn very briefly about the doctrine of Christian baptism from this scene by Jordan? Well we learn something about the essential ideas that regulate baptism and the probable mode of Christian baptism. The essential identity it is to be found in this whole complex concept of Christ identifies himself with his people in baptism.

56:15 The new community that is being prepared for the Lord Jesus is being marked out by penitent believing expectant sinners who are baptized in anticipation of the coming one. And the Lord Jesus is baptized as it were into oneness with them. The whole concept of this whole baptismal circumstance finds its rationale in the notion of identification.

56:50 That's the heart of Christian baptism. We are baptized into the name singular. The one God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. By baptism we are confessing that we have become incorporated by faith into saving union with the one true and true and living God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

57:16 And you see in this instance it was an ordinance which was undergone by penitent expectant sinners on the one hand and by a full grown thirty year old Christ on the other. As these penitent sinners are accepting the obligations that will come when the promised one appears. Not obligations of entering the new issues of the burden to live of Israel who will come to Jordan and be manifested.

58:07 They are entering a baptism of remission or unto remission of sins. A baptism of repentance unto remission of sins. And the Lord Jesus comes and consciously identifies himself with the with them and makes it known that he is assuming their obligations and responsibilities before the law of God. And so the essential idea of Christian baptism is marked out in broad but bold lines here by the river Jordan.

58:41 And there is nothing in the subsequent unfolding of the doctrine of baptism in the New Testament that in any way alters those major lines. Greater detail are filled in but there is no radical alteration. And certainly there is no dismantling of that back to the framework of the old covenant in which your claim to the initiatory ordinance was mere birth.

59:10 Your claim to circumcision in the old covenant was simply to be born in the right bloodlines. That's all. That's all. And God promised a curse upon parents who didn't circumcise their infants.

59:24 But now the new covenant community is marked out not by bloodlines. That's why he said to those Pharisees don't think to say unity. It was enough to make you part of ethnic national Israel. But it's not enough to make you a part of the new Israel.

59:54 Repent and be baptized.

59:59 This is why I'm prepared to say that infant baptism is a Judaizing of the terms of admission to the new covenant. I am not saying that everyone who practices infant baptism is a Judaizer. I didn't say that. That would be untrue, unkind.

60:18 But I'm saying it is a Judaizing of the framework of the new covenant community in which bloodlines mean nothing.

60:29 Grace manifested in conscious repentance and faith alone. And that repentance and faith must be affirmed by a transformed life. And then it does tell us something about the mode of baptism. And it's very interesting.

60:51 In all the commentators, and I have probably, let's see,

60:55 there are at least 20 that I read in preparation for every message as I'm preaching through the gospel of Mark. And more comment is made by paedobaptist authors about the baptism in this passage than any Baptist authors. Proportionately. I've read a couple of Baptist authors and they pass right over and say very little.

61:19 But the paedobaptists write paragraph after paragraph they say now it may appear on the surface of things that Jesus actually went down into the water and that Jesus was immersed and that Jesus came up out of the water because the text does say, does it not, Jesus was baptized in or literally into the Jordan and coming up out of the water.

61:44 And then they go to explain away but it need not mean but apparently does say.

61:51 Well why all of this concern? Why this nervousness?

61:57 Why this nervousness? Well I'm convinced it's the nervousness of recognizing that there's an overwhelming pressure of the passage to indicate that John was baptizing by the Jordan and in the Jordan and into the Jordan because baptism by the very pressure of the language means to dip, to immerse and by the circumstantial evidence everything points in that direction. Now you see as Baptists we trust, I trust we don't make a God of the mold but we do love the God who has instituted a mold and he says if you love me keep my commandments and we believe when he said baptize disciples he meant to immerse them. Why? Because there is a connection between the thing symbolized and the symbol. And we believe that God who has instituted the thing symbolized that is union with Christ in the virtue of his death and his burial and his resurrection bringing cleansing and pardon and newness of life is most beautifully portrayed in that watery rite in which the sinner confessing his sins and his faith in Christ is temporarily plunged beneath the waters undergoes that temporary death and burial and is raised

The Intimate Connection Between Gospel and Baptism

63:26 to newness of life henceforth to walk to the pleasure of the God who has saved him. And I say that one of the secondary emphases of this passage is to set before us some of the principles by which we ought to regulate our doctrine of baptism. Now some of you may say well you know Pastor Martin I'm kind of disappointed you brought us to a glorious gospel climax in speaking of how the purpose of Christ coming is illustrated in the circumstances and then you descended to such niggling little details as baptism.

64:05 My friend if you think that way you're not thinking biblically because according to the Bible your professed embracing of the purpose for which Christ came so embracing it is to make him yours must come to expression when you are prepared to be identified with him and with his people in the way of his appointment. So you see the gospel and baptism are intimately joined in the experience of apostolic evangelism and the more we come into the thinking of the Bible the more we'll be prepared not to call everyone a Christian who makes unsubjective judgment about himself or who raises a hand or walks an aisle but when a person is prepared openly to identify himself with Jesus Christ and his people accepting all of the obligations and responsibilities of being identified with that community then and only then do we have biblical warrant to say with any degree of certainty that man is a brother that person is a sister may the Lord then write upon our hearts this portion of his word so rich with instruction about God and what duty God requires of us may we love him who is the focal point of it even the Lord Jesus who came to save sinners from their sin let us

65:34 pray our Father we thank you for the richness of your holy word and we pray that the portion studied this morning would be brought home to our hearts with power to those who need consolation oh may they derive it as they behold their Lord by Jordan as they see the open heavens and the descending dove and hear the voice of approbation out of heaven Lord as only you can do suit this word to the vast spectrum of need represented by this congregation this morning we pray that the great and final day will reveal that some marked this day as the day when Christ became to them their sin bearer when they by faith became joined to him oh Lord hear our cry may the blessings of your grace rest upon us and continue with us throughout this day and forever more through our Lord Jesus Christ we pray amen