Sunday Sermon: The Baptism of Jesus to Fulfill all Righteousness (Matthew 3:13-17)

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You are listening to the teaching ministry of Gabrielle Hughes, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas.

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Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday on this podcast we feature 20 minutes of Bible study through a

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New Testament book. On Thursday is a study in the Old Testament and then we answer questions from the listeners on Friday.

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Each Sunday we are pleased to share our sermon series. Here's Pastor Gabe. We continue our study of the life and time of Jesus Christ in our study of the book of Matthew.

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Last week, having looked at the ministry of John the Baptist preparing the way, and today we get to the baptism of Jesus in Matthew chapter three, beginning in verse 13.

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The word of the King. Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John to be baptized by him.

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John would have prevented him saying, I need to be baptized by you. And do you come to me?

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But Jesus answered him, let it be so now for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.

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Then he consented. And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water and behold, the heavens were open to him.

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And he saw the spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him. And behold, a voice from heaven said, this is my beloved son with whom

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I am well pleased. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, as we come to this passage today, may we understand what is being said here when

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Jesus said to John, this is being done for it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.

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What does this mean? That our Lord Christ and even his baptism has fulfilled all righteousness.

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May we come to know and understand this so that we behold the work of our God and King with all the more reverence what he has done for us.

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Lord, prepare our hearts today also as we hear this word and we sow it upon our spirits that we are also preparing our mind and heart to gather at this table, at the

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Lord's table this morning to partake in communion. The body that was broken for the forgiveness of sins and the blood that was spilled for us with Christ's death on the cross.

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We think fondly also of one another for we come to this table together as equals.

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There is no one above or below each other for we are all sinners in need of the righteousness of our

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Savior, which was given to us at his cross. We think also of our brother and sister,

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Dave and Vicki, as this will be the last Lord's supper that they partake in with us, at least as far as David's position goes as elder with us here at this church.

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And as you are guiding them on to the next chapter of their lives that they're getting things finished and accomplished here in this church, at home, and as they're about ready to hit the road.

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But we pray and ask that the work that they have done so faithfully here in this church continues to echo for generations as we remain faithful to the word of Christ.

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It's in his precious and holy name we pray and all God's people said, amen. Thank you. You may be seated.

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So I was baptized as a teenager. I was, I had given my life to Christ at a very, very young age.

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I've shared my story with you before in that I was four years old when I got on my knees in my bedroom.

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I was alone. Nobody else was around. I didn't even tell my mom and dad what I was doing, but I got down on my knees and folded my hands and looked up at my bedroom light because I didn't know where else

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I was supposed to look. But I said to my Savior, I said, I believe in you.

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You are my Savior. You have forgiven me of my sins. And I said, please take my life and do with it what you will.

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I don't know that I fully understood everything that I was saying. I certainly didn't have much of an understanding of sin and repentance.

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I had some understanding of it. My parents had talked to me about it. I'd grown up in church. I'd heard it talked about by my

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Sunday school teachers and other things. But what child at the age of four really understands what it means to die to yourself and to live to Christ?

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So any work that was being done in my heart at that time would certainly have been the Holy Spirit. It definitely wouldn't have been anything according to my will or knowledge.

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There were certainly selfish periods that I entered into in my life, but all through my life, I was constantly being convicted by the

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Spirit. There was never a time even when I would fall into these patterns of evil and sinfulness that I thought to myself

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I was doing something right. The Spirit was always convicting my heart and telling me, you know what you're doing is wrong.

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You know the precepts that your parents raised you in, the word of God that you were taught from a young age.

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I knew those fences that had been put up around me and that I was operating outside of those boundaries.

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And so I'm grateful to the Lord that he had given a spirit in my heart to not only be convicted of the sin that I would enter into, but that I would be so convicted to even turn from it.

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And to turn from it with weeping and with tears. To be so convicted over what it is that I had done in rebellion against God that I, as Peter did,

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I wept bitterly and asked for God's forgiveness. And it was in times like that that verses like 1

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John 1 -9 became such a wonderful solace. If we ask forgiveness for our sins,

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God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

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What a wonderful joy it was to pick myself up off the ground and know that I could stand before the

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Father spotless and righteous without my sins being held against me.

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Not because of anything that I had done, but because of what my Savior had done for me.

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Even though I gave my life to Christ at a young age, I was not baptized until I was a teenager. And then even truly understanding what it was that this represented.

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I was being buried with Christ in my sins and I was risen with him to new life. The pastor who baptized me, his name was

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Wayne Wilson, was a wonderful, meek man and a great preacher to grow up under.

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This was one of those guys who loved the three -point sermons. And I could still remember Wayne Wilson holding his

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Bible. Like me in my early pastoral ministry, he didn't stay behind the pulpit. The pulpit was up there on the stage, but he didn't stay there.

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Eventually, his Bible would end up in his hand like this and ever so slowly, but surely, he would creep out from behind that pulpit and end up over here somewhere.

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And when Pastor Wilson would make his points, it would be point number one and his hand would come out there like that and it would shake.

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Point number one. It would just tremble up there with point one. And then he would give his point and go through the scriptures.

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Point number two. And that hand would just tremble up there as he just emphatically, with every muscle that was in his arm, tensed up to make that next point.

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I remember the way he preached all the way through that. It was a pleasure to have been baptized by him and something that I think of fondly.

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My sister was baptized on the same day, but my sister and I went to completely different paths.

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She would eventually renounce her faith. As for me, the

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Lord has been faithful to keep me in that path of righteousness. I had gone astray as much as my sister had, falling into sin, but I am thankful that it didn't overtake me, but that I listened to the conviction of the

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Holy Spirit. I consistently remember my baptism. I know the church where I was baptized.

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I've taken my kids by it and I've pointed at it and said, that's the church where your daddy got baptized.

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The layout of the sanctuary wasn't too much different than this. There's a baptismal right behind the pulpit, just like this one.

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And I constantly in my mind, come back to remembering being dunked under the water and coming up again as an action, a declaration of my faith that I had been washed in the blood of Christ.

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There is no magical property to baptism. There's nothing about the water that makes you a different person when you came out as when you went in.

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You're still exactly the same person. But the Apostle Peter talks about baptism as being an appeal to God for a clean conscience.

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As in this action, just like in prayer, prayer itself is an action.

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But in the action of baptism, you would be making an appeal to the Lord, clean my conscience of the evil and the sin that I've done against you so that I may know with confidence my sins are forgiven.

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And in Christ Jesus, I stand before God brand new. An illustration that I often bring people to, and I talk about this with couples that I'm counseling before being wed, before a marriage.

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I will say to the groom, I will say, your wife is going to come down that aisle dressed in white.

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Why is it that the bride traditionally comes to the groom dressed in white? It's because as she comes down that aisle to you, she is spotless.

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And there is nothing in her past that you can hold against her. Just as when we come to Christ, he holds nothing in our past against us.

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We are washed and made brand new before the Lord by the forgiveness that we've been given because the price has been paid for us by Christ's death on the cross and his resurrection from the grave.

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And we remember that resurrection. We remember the fact that we've been raised from death to life in this act, in this practice of baptism.

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Now I've been explaining to you here at the start of this sermon, our baptism.

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And most of you probably could have articulated an understanding of our baptism similarly to the way that I just explained to you or when

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I talked to you about it last week as well when we were talking about the baptism of repentance that John the Baptist gave.

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But what does it mean for Jesus to be baptized? We know why we need to be baptized.

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We've been sinful. We've been wretched before a holy God. And it's by Christ's death and faith in his finished work that we've been made brand new.

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Christ was perfect. He was sinless. He was spotless. He doesn't need to be cleansed of anything.

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So why was Jesus baptized? Matthew chapter 3 verse 13,

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Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John to be baptized by him.

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Now before I go on, we see two locations mentioned here.

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Jesus came from Galilee. So he came from the northern portion of Israel down to the southern area in Judea to the

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Jordan River where John was doing his ministry. That's the second location. We have Jordan.

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He comes from Galilee to the Jordan. You know, there are many people that think that in order to have a right and proper baptism, we need to go to the

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Jordan. Usually it's celebrities, right? Some celebrity claims that they've found

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Jesus and so what do they need to do? They need to go over to Israel and they need to be baptized in the

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Jordan River. And boy, this just becomes a public tabloid event practically with all kinds of photographers there and it's going to wind up in the news feeds and you're going to see it on the internet or Facebook or something like that.

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So -and -so just found Jesus and went to the Jordan River to be baptized. But like I said to you a moment ago, there's nothing magical about the water when we go into it and when we come back out.

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So there is nothing more holy about the waters of the Jordan than there is about the water that's back here in this baptismal.

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Now we've not cleaned out this baptismal in a little bit. So the Jordan might actually be a little bit cleaner than this baptismal here.

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You have to stir up the chlorine in there, which we do every time that we do a baptism because otherwise it just kind of sits there on the top of the water.

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And we get spiders that get in there and they die and so if you've ever looked in there, you've seen the dead bugs. We need to do a baptism soon so we can get that cleared up there again.

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So the Jordan River is nothing more holy about that water. I do think that it's very fascinating to be able to go over to the

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Holy Land and look at that and to see the land, to kind of get the basic layout of things and see some of those what are called tells, the archaeological sites where those cities, those ancient cities that once were there are still being excavated and uncovered.

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We call those digging sites tells. You can go there and, well, this tell was that city and this tell is this city and here's the

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Valley of Megiddo, which we refer to in the book of Revelation as Armageddon, you know, when that battle is going to be symbolized or the symbolism of that battle that's happening in that particular valley.

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It's neat to stand there and look at all of that and get kind of an idea of what it would have been like during the life and time of Jesus.

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That's certainly interesting, but there's nothing mystical or magical or overly powerful or even pious or holy about the waters of the

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Jordan. It's just water. And this thing that people like to do to want to go over there and get baptized there as if that baptism is going to be better than any other kind of baptism.

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I tell you, I would say the baptism in your local church is better than going over to the Jordan and getting baptized there.

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But it comes back to that thing that the Apostle Paul even rebuked in 1 Corinthians 1, where he says, some of you are saying, well,

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I am of Paul and I am of Apollos and I am of Christ. And it's everybody using these names to one -up the other guy.

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I am of this teacher who's better than this teacher. Well, I am of Christ, which is not even being said in a reverent way.

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It's to be said, I am more Christian than you are. I remember there was a man who was upset at me for certain things that I was teaching.

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And so he left this church and he wrote a 9 ,000 -word diatribe against all the problems that he had with Pastor Gabe and had posted it on Facebook.

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And one of the things that he did right off the bat at the very beginning of his diatribe, he referred to himself as a

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Christian, capital C -H -R -I -S -T, lowercase

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I -A -M. And that's how he referred to himself over the course of the document, as if to say, I am a better Christian than this man.

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What hurt my heart was not really the things that he was saying about me, but it was that he would consider himself so highly and that I hope that the

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Lord eventually did humble his heart and that he repented before God. But we should not ever think of these things as being greater than another's.

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My baptism was better than your baptism or something like that, because I was baptized by so -and -so, this famous person.

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That has nothing to do with it. As the Apostle Paul said, are we divided? Am I not of Christ?

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Is Cephas not of Christ? Is Apollos not of Christ? So then all who are baptized are baptized not into a preacher.

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When you're baptized, you're not baptized into the Jordan. You're baptized into Christ. We looked at that last week reading from Romans chapter 6.

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We've been buried with Christ, and we've been risen with him to new life. So it doesn't matter whoever this person is who has administrated this baptism.

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The baptism is Christ's, and we are in Christ. Every once in a while, I'll have somebody that will come to me, and they will say, well,

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I was baptized in such and such a church. Is that okay? Is my baptism still legitimate?

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And in those cases, it depends. And there are some baptisms that are non -Trinitarian, meaning that you are baptized in a church where they reject the

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Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. They just think God appears in different modes. Sometimes he's a father, sometimes he's a son, sometimes he's a

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Holy Spirit. And we refer to this as modalism. They would deny that God is

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Trinity, that he is one God and three persons. And in that case, you probably not received a legitimate baptism.

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But then there are other occasions where a person might say to me, well, I was baptized, and I don't feel like I was a

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Christian when I was baptized, but I feel like I'm a Christian now. And I want to test them on that because there should be a difference between who you are now and who you were when you were baptized.

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You're probably going to look back at that immature individual and go, boy, what was wrong with that guy?

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Or what was wrong with that girl? It still didn't even know even half the things that I know now as a maturing

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Christian. So there's certainly going to be a difference. There's certainly going to be a growth and a maturity. So we can evaluate those things and determine whether or not that baptism was legitimate or not.

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But we shouldn't just automatically think that because I felt a certain way about my baptism back then, and I feel different about baptism now, that somehow that delegitimizes my baptism.

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Or another one that I'll receive is that I was baptized by a pastor, and that pastor has since left the faith.

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So now is my baptism delegitimized? No, because you weren't baptized into that pastor.

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You were baptized into Christ. The real question is, where are you in the midst of this process, in this sanctification, in the growth in your faith?

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Not what happened to that guy, but have you legitimized your baptism by confirming your calling and election?

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Peter goes through that in 2 Peter 1. Now confirm your faith. So that's just to make the point that our baptism is not legitimized by location or by the person that does it, but we are baptized into Christ and in Him alone.

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Jesus came to the Jordan, to John, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying,

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I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me? Now, when

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I was studying this earlier this week, reading in verse 14, John would have prevented him.

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My mind went to Matthew chapter 16, so 13 chapters after this, when

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Jesus explains to his apostles that he's about to go to the cross and die.

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But he explains to them, fear not, I'm coming back to life again. Three days later, he even says that to them.

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But what was Peter's response to Jesus' explanation about his death and his resurrection?

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Peter stands before him and goes, no, Lord, I would never let you do this.

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I would never let such a thing happen to you that you would go to the cross and suffer and die. Peter would have prevented him.

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Same sort of statement made there about Peter's intentions as with John's. But Peter had a little bit different thing going on than John did here, for Jesus does not rebuke

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John. Rather, he explains to John. Why is that? Because John had a different approach.

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He asked this question of Jesus. I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?

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Had John not received his explanation, he would have prevented Jesus from being baptized.

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It was out of ignorance that he would have done so. Peter's intention was quite a bit different, for he was thinking with the mind of a man and not with the mind of God.

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And that was exactly what Jesus rebuked Peter for. John here desires to follow what it is that God has intended for the sake of righteousness.

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That's what he wants to do. So that's why he wanted to be baptized by Jesus. But Jesus explains to him, verse 15, let it be so now.

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For thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.

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Now, you may not have given much thought to this. There's certainly various periods in my life, even as a pastor, that I've come back to this and have thought, what does this mean?

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And as I come to you in explaining this today, this is not the end all, be all understanding of what it means to fulfill all righteousness.

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There is more to study, there is more understanding to come to, but we're going to develop the best picture that we can, at least as far as this morning goes, as far as the next 20 to 30 minutes go, in understanding fulfilling all righteousness.

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And when Jesus explained this, John consented. And Jesus was baptized, and immediately he went up from the water.

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And behold, the heavens were opened to him. And he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, coming to rest on him.

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And behold, a voice from heaven said, this is my beloved son, with whom

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I am well pleased. So let's come back again to understanding what this means for Jesus to be baptized, and it is fitting to fulfill all righteousness.

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Let's understand righteousness, this concept of righteousness once again. Righteousness is doing what is right.

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I have asked my children that various occasions when we've done our family devotions, I've said to them, what is righteousness?

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And they've now gotten used to this question, they can answer it correctly and quickly. But the first five letters to righteousness explain to us what righteousness is,

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R -I -G -H -T, it's right, it's doing what is right. But not just doing what we think is right, specifically it's doing what

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God says is right. Throughout the Bible, the words righteousness and justice are interchangeable.

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When we get to Matthew chapter 6, we're soon gonna be entering into the Sermon on the Mount. And when we get there to Matthew 6,

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Jesus says, a verse that you probably memorized when you were very young, when you were in Sunday school. He says there, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these other things will be added unto you as well.

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There are some translations you will find that say, seek first the kingdom of God and his justice, and all these things will be added to you.

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It's not that there's a variant translation that's going on there, but the words righteous and justice are interchangeable.

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God desires what is right, and he will accomplish his righteousness.

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The act of putting his righteousness into effect and making right that which is wrong is justice.

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It's the justice of God being enacted upon a wrong and sinful world to bring about righteousness.

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So with that in mind, when we come here to Jesus saying, it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.

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Jesus saying, it is fitting for us to make right that which is wrong.

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And remember again that when John the Baptist, as we looked at this last week, in chapter 3 verses 1 through 12, when

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John the Baptist came with the ministry of baptism. His baptism was a ministry of repentance.

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It was calling people to repent, and it was preparing them for the king who was to come.

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For they were gross, sinful, filthy people. Unworthy to stand in the presence of the king, and they had to be washed.

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And so John comes with this ministry of baptism. A ministry that was reserved for Gentiles when they made a conversion from Gentile to Judaism.

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They were baptized. Jews didn't get baptized, Gentiles did. But now here John the Baptist comes to the land of Judah saying, you all must be baptized.

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Prepare the way of the Lord. Make his path straight. John the

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Baptist making right that which was wrong. Bringing people back to an understanding of God's word and his holiness, and needing to be prepared and right in the presence for the king when he came, the

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Messiah who was to come. And so John the Baptist even came, preaching righteousness.

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Jesus Christ has not yet begun his earthly ministry here when he comes to be baptized by John.

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But even all of this is in preparation for what is to come. Remember the first words that John the

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Baptist preached, Matthew 3, 2, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. What is the first words that Jesus will preach when we get to chapter 4, verse 17?

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Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. John the Baptist is preparing the way for the king.

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Jesus is the king who comes, proclaiming righteousness. And so as our advocate before the

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Father, as one who is going to declare us innocent of wrongdoing for those who have faith in Christ, it is necessary for Jesus to go through all the manner and measure of things that we also will go through when we come to him.

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We read in the book of Hebrews that Jesus is a great high priest.

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And it says we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the

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Son of God, so let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.

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Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

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Whenever the priest was about to go into the holy of holies to sacrifice on behalf of the people, he would be baptized.

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He would be drenched with water from head to toe and be clothed in fresh white garments.

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Then on Yom Kippur, which was the day of atonement, he would go into the holy of holies and he would sacrifice and sprinkle the blood on the top of the altar for himself.

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Then he would come out and he would take off those linen clothes, which are now covered with the blood that he had just sprinkled on the altar, and he would be baptized and clothed with new white linens, and he would go in and do it again.

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This time, he's sacrificing for all of the priests. Then he would come out and he would take off those garments, once again covered in the blood that he had just sprinkled on the ark, and he would be baptized a third time.

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And he would go in again, this time to sacrifice for the sins of the people.

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And so just as this was for the priest to do this, and Jesus is our high priest who presents a sacrifice before the

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Father on our behalf. So here he is baptized before his earthly ministry begins, and this, to fulfill all righteousness.

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Jesus had nothing that he needed to be cleansed of, but we did. And Jesus is our advocate as a minister on our behalf, is baptized for us, and doing this to fulfill all righteousness.

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And Jesus was baptized, and the blessing of the Father was demonstrated in the voice of heaven that says, this is my beloved

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Son in whom I am well -pleased, and the Holy Spirit of God coming to rest upon him as a dove.

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And so we see in this way, Jesus becoming our representative, even by his baptism.

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We must be baptized. Jesus was baptized for us. There's another way that we come to understand this baptism.

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I want to mention this, and then I want to explain a little bit further what it means to understand Jesus as our prophet, priest, and king.

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But another way that we understand this baptism with John the Baptist is this was a foreshadowing of an even greater baptism that Jesus was going to undergo on our behalf.

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And that was his death and burial in the ground, and then resurrection from the grave.

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For like I said, when we're baptized, we remember and we symbolize this as being buried with Christ and risen with Christ.

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The Apostle Paul is saying, I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer

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I who live, but Christ who lives within me. That declaration is even demonstrated in our baptism.

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But all of this symbolizing, why do we go under the water? Why do we come back up again? Why is this the ritual that we practice as Baptists, as Christians?

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And it's because it symbolizes being buried with Christ. I was once dead in my sins, in my transgressions.

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I have been risen to new life in Christ Jesus. And this is foreshadowing the death that Christ is going to undergo for us as an atoning sacrifice and his resurrection from the grave.

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For Jesus to say to John, let it be so now for thus it is fitting to fulfill all righteousness.

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This is the beginning of his earthly ministry that culminates with his death.

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And all throughout his earthly ministry, even from his birth, Christ always had the cross in view.

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For it's why he came. Jesus said, the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.

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Even Christ's baptism here is pointing to that. But as I said, we know

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Jesus as our prophet. We know him as our priest and as our king. What does this mean?

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What does it mean to call Jesus our prophet, priest, and king? Last week, I talked a little bit about the prophet in the

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Old Testament times and how John the Baptist was that last prophet before the coming of Christ.

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So then, what is a prophet in the Old Testament sense?

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Or how does Jesus fulfill that role as a prophet as we've seen the prophet of God speaking the words of God, even from the times of the

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Old Testament? Jesus is anointed by the Spirit of God to proclaim the word of God. Now, he has this anointing of the

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Holy Spirit even before he comes to John the Baptist and is baptized in the River Jordan.

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But it is most certainly symbolized by the descending of the Holy Spirit from heaven on to Christ to show to everybody who was there that this man has the

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Holy Spirit of God. He has a filling of the Spirit unlike anyone has ever had a filling of the

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Spirit, for he himself is God. Now, one of the things we don't often talk about regarding this baptism is that it was witnessed by a lot of people.

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This wasn't just Jesus and John standing in the River Jordan. For what was

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John doing there? He was preaching, and people were coming out to him to hear him preach. And he was baptizing them when he was telling them, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

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And so it was the case when Jesus came to him. There was a large crowd there to hear John. And here comes Jesus through the crowd into the water, and John is totally perplexed by this.

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Why are you coming to me? I need to be cleansed by you. And Jesus teaches him even what had been prophesied from the prophets of old, that this would happen, that this would be done to fulfill all righteousness.

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And John did so to the witness of many who were standing there.

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If you go to the book of Acts, you don't have to do this now, I'm just saying hypothetically. If you go to the book of Acts, and you were to look at the process that the disciples underwent in Acts 1 to pick the disciple who was going to replace

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Judas. Remember that Jesus called 12, Judas Iscariot betrayed

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Jesus, he hung himself, and he's gone, he's out of the picture. So now there's 11, but there still needs to be 12.

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For it is through the apostleship fulfilling a picture that was given in the Old Testament through the 12 tribes of Israel.

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So now there needs to be 12 apostles. They need to pick one. They need to pick a guy who's going to fill

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Judas' role. How do they pick that guy? Well, let's have several guys stand up and deliver sermons, and we'll take the best pastor.

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Is that how they picked it? They narrowed it down to two men. And what were the qualifications that those two men shared?

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They had seen the ministry of Jesus from his baptism all the way to his crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension into heaven.

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And only two men fit the bill. They were Matthias, and was it

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Justice was the other one? Okay, I'm getting a head nod. I wanted to make sure it wasn't Matthias who is also called

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Justice, and I was describing the same name to both guys, or two names to one guy.

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Anyway, these two men qualified because they had been there from the time of Jesus' baptism.

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All the rest of the disciples who will be called by Jesus to follow him were here at the baptism of Jesus.

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They all saw it. So all of them had been witness to the voice of heaven saying, this is my beloved son.

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So it was more than just Jesus calling them to follow him, and they're going, oh, okay, we're going to follow this guy.

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I don't know who he is, I don't know where he came from, but he said come follow me, so we're going to go follow him. They knew that this was the one whom

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John the Baptist proclaimed about, the spotless lamb of God who came to take away the sin of the world.

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They knew that because of what had been seen and witnessed and spoken about, testified to regarding the baptism of Jesus in the

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Jordan River, and hundreds of people could testify to it because hundreds of people were there. Jesus is our prophet who proclaims the word of God, and he preaches the gospel of God to the people.

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Same word again that John the Baptist preached, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

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Jesus preaches when he begins his earthly ministry. Jesus is the prophet that was foretold by Moses.

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Deuteronomy chapter 18, there is one who is coming to you who is like me and you will listen to him.

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In Acts chapter 3, 22, it is said by Peter who was preaching at Solomon's portico that Jesus is the fulfillment of this prophecy that was made by Moses.

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He points specifically to Christ. And then in the book of Hebrews, which I've already read to you from partially, it is proclaimed there that Jesus is the greater

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Moses. So he is the fulfillment of that prophet who was prophesied to come. In this way, we know that Jesus is our prophet.

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He promises the coming kingdom. And unlike many of the nation's leaders at this time, you think of Herod in particular, you even think of Pontius Pilate eventually,

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Jesus practices what he preaches. He even as a prophet does what he says.

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What he tells everybody else to do, he does it. But not so with the

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Pharisees and the scribes and the other teachers of the law. Jesus said of the Pharisees, when they teach you the law, you must listen to them.

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Because they're the ones that have been granted the oracles of God to teach the people of Israel what it is that God has said to his people.

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So listen to them when they teach you. But Jesus said, do not do what they do. For they're hypocrites.

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They say one thing and they do something else. Listen to the words they teach you insofar as what they say comes from the word of God.

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But don't follow their actions. They're a bad example. Jesus, on the other hand, was a fantastic example.

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And so as our prophet, he stands as our example. He tells to us what

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God has said and then he demonstrates it in his actions. And there has never been in human history ever a person who was so perfect and consistent in his word and his action as Jesus.

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He is our prophet. He embodies all the qualities that the word of God says for us to demonstrate.

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We see it in the person and work of Jesus Christ. You know, when we get to the Beatitudes, when we get to Matthew chapter 5, blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

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Blessed are they who mourn for they shall be comforted. Jesus embodies all of that. So what we're supposed to be as Christians and followers of Jesus, Jesus is that.

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He is our example, proclaiming the word of God and following the word of God. Furthermore, when

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Jesus will get to, in Matthew chapter 5, even loving your enemies. You've heard it said, love your neighbor and hate your enemy, but I say love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you.

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Did Jesus not do that very same thing? And so shouldn't we also follow the example of our

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Lord Christ? So these are just some of the ways that Jesus is our prophet, when we call him our prophet, priest, and king.

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How about priest? How is Jesus our high priest? Well, I had already mentioned to you that he is the one who goes into the

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Holy of Holies for us on our behalf as that sacrifice for us, so that all who have faith in Jesus have their sins forgiven and we may come before God.

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But how hesitant are we to come before God? This is something I'm consistently convicted about in my

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Christian walk. How quickly I am to go to Twitter or Facebook, but how slow

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I am to come to the throne of grace. Thomas Watson, a

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Puritan who said the following, Christ went more willingly to the cross than we do to the throne of grace.

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There's many people today who are just aching and itching for the Super Bowl this afternoon.

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But man, they roll their eyes at the thought of the prospect of going to church on Super Bowl Sunday. There are people who will say, a pastor friend of mine just said this this morning, so that's why this thought is fresh in my mind.

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He said, there are people who will say, people just don't have the attention span anymore to sit and listen to a 45 -minute sermon, and yet they invite all of their friends to gather at their house for a four -hour football game.

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Jesus suffered and died for us as our priest, and he did this willingly.

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Hebrews 12 says he did this to the joy of the Father. He died and suffered and died to the joy of the

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Lord. Can you imagine that? And so you can sit and listen for 45 minutes as Gabe jumps around all over the place in his sermon to the joy of God.

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I speak with tongue and cheek there. How willingly we need to come before the throne of grace because Jesus has made that way for us.

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He has given us access to the very throne of God himself.

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And this is even symbolized here in the book of Matthew when we get to the crucifixion of Christ. At the moment he dies, the curtain in the temple is torn in two.

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That place that separated the holy of holies from the other place, you know, where everybody else had to stand.

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Only the high priest could go into the holy of holies, and only on the day of atonement could he go in there.

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But God tore that curtain that separated the holy of holies from the outer parts to show that God no longer dwells in temples made by human hands.

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He dwells in the heart of every person who believes in Christ as Savior, who is our priest before God, who has sacrificed for us so that we may enter into his presence.

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And whenever we're slow to do that, or whenever we have this attitude of, like, I don't need

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God right now, you might consciously say that, or you might just demonstrate that in your action.

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I can take care of these problems or my situations on my own. I don't need God for this. When you do that, you are actually demonstrating or saying to God in whatever passive or aggressive form that you're doing that.

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You are saying to God, the way that you have made for me isn't good enough for me. I can make my own way, and my friends, we can't.

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No one could ever make a way good enough to come into the presence of God.

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When you heard the gospel proclaimed to you, maybe you had a friend that sat across from you at a table with a napkin and drew a little picture on a napkin.

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Anybody receive the gospel this way? You have a chasm on one side, and you're over here, and there's this chasm on the other side, that's where God is.

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And this gap that is between, you can't cross it. There's nothing that you can do to get to the other side.

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Down here under the gap, that's hell. When you try to cross, you're just going to fall right in, and you will burn for all eternity because our ways are not

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God's ways. We have no holiness to get from this side to that side. And then as this person was explaining this on the napkin, they drew a cross that spanned the gap and says, but Christ has made that way.

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With his death on the cross, with his resurrection from the grave, we now can get from here to here.

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We won't perish, but we will have everlasting life with God. Maybe somebody proclaimed the gospel to you that way, but it was demonstrating, even though they may not have been using the theological terminology, but was demonstrating how

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Christ is our priest who has made a way to God. Previously, we were under the wrath of God because of our sinful rebellion against him, but Jesus didn't leave us dead in our sins, but made us a way to get to the

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Father. Jesus humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross,

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Philippians 2 .8. God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law,

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Galatians 4 .4. Jesus said in John 10 .18, no one takes my life from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.

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Jesus was obedient to the point of death by one act of righteousness, by one man's obedience in his death, many will be made righteous,

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Romans 5 .18 -19. In this way, we know that Jesus is the priest who gives us life.

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So we've looked at how he's our prophet, we've looked at how he is our priest, and finally, we understand how

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Jesus is our king. Through his baptism, even, we come to understand

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Jesus Christ as king. We started our study in the book of Matthew this way, knowing that Jesus is the king who was promised to come, one who would sit on the throne of David, one who would establish the kingdom of God forever.

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The glorious Son of God became a man and dwelt among us.

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And at Jesus' baptism, the Father proclaims him as his royal

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Son. This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.

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Another way that that's translated, or another way that might read, this is my Son, the

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Beloved, with whom I am well pleased. The one whom

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God had been placing his affections on, and we read about even over the course of the

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Old Testament. At our psalm study on Thursday night, which we have at my house, we read a psalm, we've read several psalms, in which this righteous one is being proclaimed as receiving the love of the

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Father. Who is this righteous one that God loves so much? It's his own

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Son. The psalms foreshadowing the giving of the Son. And whoever believes in him and is adopted into the family of God, my friends, we likewise receive that same love that the

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Father has for the Son. He gives it to us as well, and we become the righteous one that God so loves.

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That was one of the most mind -blowing things for me to think about when I was a kid, that God loves me with the same love that he loves his own

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Son. J .I. Packer said that adoption into the family of God is the highest privilege of the gospel.

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The traitor is forgiven. He is brought in for supper, and he is given the family name.

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So when we gather here at this table this morning, we are gathering at the family table because we've become adopted sons and daughters of God through Jesus Christ, our

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Savior. Jesus is the King who has given this adoption.

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We were murderous traitors. We were treasons, treasonous criminals against the

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King, and yet he forgave us and gave us his righteousness and adoption, and we've become fellow heirs of the kingdom of God.

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Yet the righteousness that is talked about here in Matthew 3 goes even deeper still.

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The supreme work that the Father requires of the Son, he has given to his people.

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I said this to you many times when we were going through Romans. When we were going through Galatians, I said to you this.

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The thing that God requires of us, he gives to us. In Matthew 5, verse 48, very last verse in Matthew 5,

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Jesus said, You therefore must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. Whoa.

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You have to be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect? As Dave has been teaching through 1

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Peter, you had read in 1 Peter 1, Be holy as I am holy. The word that was given to the

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Israelites, given to us as Christians even today. We have to be perfect as God is perfect. But wonderful news, my beloved brother and sister.

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The thing that God requires of you, he gives to you. He requires righteousness of you, he gives righteousness to you.

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And so when we read that this is to be done to fulfill all righteousness, it is so that we understand the righteousness that God requires of us, he gives to us in the

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Son. So that he sees us no longer as sinful, treasonous wretches, but as wonderful, beautiful, spotless, beloved children in Christ.

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The Father endows the Son with the Holy Spirit. We see this demonstrated in his baptism here.

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And so we are also given the Holy Spirit of God. Jesus is the

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King to whom all of creation has been given. We read in Colossians 1 that he is the firstborn of all creation.

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That doesn't mean that he is the first created thing or being. Jesus Christ is not created, he is eternal as the

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Father is eternal. But to be called the firstborn of all creation means that God has given the

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Son all the rights of the firstborn. Just as the firstborn Son would receive all of his

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Father's goods and possessions, property and everything, all of the inheritance would go to the

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Son, the oldest Son, the firstborn. So Jesus is the one who receives all things.

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And here's more wonderful news even attached to that, my beloved brothers and sisters, he gives all things to us.

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For as Jesus said in Revelation 3, he who endures to the end, I will give a place for him to sit with me on my throne.

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And we will reign with him forever in glory. We become fellow heirs of the kingdom of God.

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The triumph that Jesus declares over death is our triumph.

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And death does not conquer us, but we likewise with Christ will live again and will reign with him.

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Even as Christ's death comes up out of that grave, as his body comes up out of that grave, so we also, our bodies will be risen and made brand new.

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Philippians 3, he will transform our lowly bodies to be like his glorious body by the power that enables him to subject all things to himself.

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When the Bible refers to Jesus as the firstborn of the dead, it just means he's the first to rise from the dead and many others are going to follow after him.

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Everybody who is in Christ will likewise rise from the dead. The son goes to the cross to save the sinners that he came to save.

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And he accomplished that work victoriously and totally. And it never needs to be done again.

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And so all who are in Christ have victory. It's why we sing in the old hymn, victory in Jesus, my savior forever.

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He loved me and bought me by his redeeming blood.

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Our prophet, our priest, and king. And this is done to fulfill all righteousness.

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And so my friends, knowing that Christ is righteous and he has given his righteousness to us, may we continue in righteousness in service to our king.

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If you ever listened to Todd Friel in the wretched broadcast that he does, I'm not calling his radio show wretched.

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I'm saying that's the name of his show. It's called wretched. At the end of every broadcast, he concludes with this.

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Those of you who know the program, you know exactly where I'm going with this. Now go and serve your king.

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Thank you for listening to our weekly sermon presented by First Southern Baptist Church of Junction City, Kansas.

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For more information about our church, visit fsbcjc .org.

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On behalf of our church family, my name is Becky, inviting you to join us again this week, growing together in Christ when we understand the text.