All right. Well, good morning, everybody. People are wishing me Happy New Year, not quite there yet.

Next week, I'll definitely say Happy New Year to everybody. But this week, we're continuing in Matthew.

So we're closing out the third chapter of Matthew here. But I wanted to start out by talking about just a little something here.

So if you really want to know what a church is all about, there's only one thing that you need to look at.

But even though there's only one thing you need to look at, a lot of times, you really have to look deep to find it.

You have to look beyond the surface of what's going on. And it's not the doctrinal statement or the statement of faith that we're concerned with.

That's important. But how many times have we seen a church have a doctrinal statement that they claim to hold to but don't actually function as though they believe it?

And it's not the liturgy. It's not the order of service. It's not the style of the service or the type of worship that they do.

Although if you look closely, sometimes those things can also clue you in to what a church really believes.

But the one thing that you have to look at and the one thing that you have to consider to truly understand what a church believes or what a church is, is what they say about who

Jesus is. But more so, you have to look beyond what they say about Jesus and look and see if that profession of faith actually affects the way they worship and it actually affects the way they live their lives.

And when you consider what a church says about Jesus, do they get all of their ideas and all of their concepts from Scripture?

Are they painting the full picture of who Christ is? Or is it just kind of this sort of blurry, hazy sort of concept of the stuff that's really easy to process?

The stuff that is easy to talk about and makes us feel good to talk about?

Do they sand off the rough edges? Take away the things that are less comfortable to talk about or the things that are harder to explain or even the things that are harder to rationalize?

I mean, there's plenty of stuff in Scripture that is difficult to wrap your head around.

It doesn't mean it's not true, it means that we can't understand it, but we also can't turn away from it.

Because it's in that full picture that we see what a church really believes about Jesus.

And that's why I say stuff like the worship style isn't really as important as the content of the worship.

You could have a full -on rock band up here singing songs that are doctrinally sound and faithful to who the person of Jesus is, and in the same way, you could have a huge choir and an orchestra just sort of dourly singing these songs that are full of beautiful truths looking like somebody kicked their dog.

So it's not the style. And while we say that Jesus is

Lord, and that's absolutely necessary, if one's life or the life of a church doesn't actually match that profession, then it shows what that church really believes about Jesus.

And the reason I go over this is to remind you why we do what we do and why we're doing what we're doing this way.

Why we are slowly, methodically, verse -by -verse walking through a gospel, and why we're walking through Matthew in particular.

Because something we know about Matthew at this point, even though we're just getting ready to start the last part of the third chapter, is that he was absolutely intent on demonstrating to his readers who

Jesus was, exactly who Jesus was. And even more specifically,

Matthew was intent on demonstrating that Jesus was the Messiah that was prophesied in Scripture.

Matthew was going to show the people who received his gospel that Jesus was the

Son of God. And not only that, Jesus was God himself. God made flesh to dwell with man and to save man from his sin.

And there's something from a couple of weeks ago that I think we need to be reminded of. And that's when

Matthew writes about what John was saying. And John quoted Isaiah 3 .3

and said, Make ready the way of the Lord. And we saw that the implication that Matthew was putting out there was that Jesus was

God. And when we combine that with John serving as the end times prophet, the promised

Elijah, which is something that we'll see even more in future weeks, we know that something truly remarkable is about to happen.

But up to this point, we've gone all the way up to chapter 3, verse 12, and we haven't really seen

Jesus in this gospel yet. We've kind of seen him, we've read about him, we've learned things about him, but it was almost second hand.

It was through the genealogy. Or it's through the stories and the actions of people in the gospel, like Mary and Joseph, Herod, the

Magi. All those people spoke to who Jesus was in their own way. But all that's about to change now.

So let's dive into our passage for today. We're looking at Matthew 3, verses 13 through 17.

So I'll just read all these and then we'll look at each one of them. Verse 13. And this brings us to the first time that we get to see

Jesus as an adult. We get to see Jesus preparing to start his earthly ministry.

And as you might expect, this is obviously a very significant event. And it's just punctuated by the fact that as we saw here, the entire trinity shows up to inaugurate

Jesus and to inaugurate him into his ministry. And they're there for what's about to happen. Now one of the first things that I want to make note about, verse 13, is it says,

Jesus arrived. And if that sounds familiar, it's because that's translated from the same word that we saw when

John showed up on the scene. It wasn't just that he's there. This is an official arrival.

This is a major event, just like John was heralding Jesus. Now Jesus has arrived.

Jesus is on the scene. And he made a pretty decent trip to get out here, right? We already talked about the fact that John was off in the wilderness, out in the middle of nowhere.

He's not in a city where everybody would want to come. He's sort of off the beaten path.

So for Jesus to come to him is significant. So Jesus traveled from Nazareth to John's wilderness, probably about 70 miles or so.

And again, that doesn't sound like a lot to us, but that would have been quite a trip. And it's not a trip that would have been undertaken just randomly or he just happened to stumble upon him and find him there.

But he was there with a very specific purpose. And we see that in the second half of the verse. It says he came to the

Jordan to be baptized by John. Now what

John doesn't know exactly is that Jesus is here to fulfill

God's plan. And this very specific baptism, this water baptism that John is giving to people, is a part of that plan.

But again, this is something that John doesn't understand.

Because after all, if you look at what we looked at last week, he just got finished telling people that somebody is coming after him, somebody who's mightier than he is.

And he's also telling them that the baptism that this person, this Messiah is going to give, is completely different from his.

He's given a water baptism to confess and repent of sins. But what's coming is entirely different.

And then, Jesus shows up. Jesus arrives.

And he wants John to baptize him. So, another thing that's interesting about this is that John and Jesus were cousins.

We see this in Luke. We see where Mary came and visited Elizabeth, who's John's mother.

We see a little bit more about John's birth in the Gospel of Luke as well. So, we know that they're related, however closely that might be.

But what we don't really know is exactly how well they knew each other, or what they knew about each other's ministries, because Scripture is silent on that.

And Scripture is silent on what happened in the years when they were growing up. So, we don't speculate about those kind of things.

So, we don't know exactly how well they knew. I'm sure Jesus knew everything about John. But one thing that we see that's pretty clear is that John knows who

Jesus is. And he knows that Jesus, however he knows this, is not somebody who needs the baptism that he's given.

So, we see this in verse 14, where we read, John tried to prevent him, saying,

I have need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me? And there could be a lot of reasons for this, but the most plausible one is what we just talked about.

If you step back to verse 11, John says, However it is that he knows, he absolutely knows that Jesus does not need a water baptism.

Jesus does not need a baptism to repent of sins that he has never committed.

Because John knows that Jesus is the one prophesied about. So, he knows that Jesus is without sin.

So, given all that, there's no reason for John to baptize

Jesus. There's no reason for him to give that same water baptism. But even more than that,

John recognizes that while Jesus doesn't need to be baptized by John, John does need the baptism that Jesus has to offer.

And he says so, because it's just ridiculous, right? It's ridiculous to him that he would baptize the

Messiah, that he would baptize Jesus. But in the next verse, in verse 15, we see that Jesus insists on this.

And then we see that John permits him, which is also an odd thing to think about.

So, let's pause here for just a second and consider why it is that this happened and why

Jesus would insist on this baptism from John. As I was reading up on this, one of the commentators put it in a way that I found particularly compelling.

So, he mentioned that this culture was a culture that put a tremendous amount of emphasis on honor and shame.

These are concepts that are very important. And that Jesus relinquished his rightful honor to embrace others' shame.

So, from the earliest moments of his ministry, it hasn't even really started, we see

Jesus humbling himself in order to identify with the sinners that he came to save. We see him doing something that he doesn't need to do, but there's a reason for doing it.

And in this sort of innocuous act of submitting to baptism to identify with the sinners he came to save with, this is a foreshadowing of something that's coming later, right?

This is a foreshadowing of the service that he would do later. He's identifying with the sinners that in just a couple of short years he would die for.

He's foreshadowing the time where he would bear the weight of all mankind's sins on the cross.

Where he would bear the weight of your sins, he would bear the weight of my sins on the cross, and he would stand between you and me before God the

Father so that we could be justified before him. And he would face the wrath of God in our place.

John MacArthur said it this way. He said that in this first act of ministry, he who had no sin took his place among those who had no righteousness.

That's also us, right? Jesus who had no sin came and took this water baptism and took a place among people who had no righteousness, who had nothing to offer.

And while it says that John permitted him, this is less an issue of permission and more an issue of John acquiescing to the will of God.

John doing what he knows he's supposed to do because Jesus has told him that he's come to do this to fulfill all righteousness.

And John at some level understands that he had a role to play in God's plan there. And just as a footnote, we'll talk about this a little later too, but this is yet another example of the humility and the servant -heartedness that John the

Baptist shows. It shows evidence of an obedience to God that we can all use as an example in our own lives.

Particularly, and this is always interesting for somebody in ministry to look at that, particularly when somebody comes along who might do something better than we do it or we need to be replaced or somebody's doing something that we feel like we should be doing but theirs is better, they're doing it.

And in the case of Jesus, this is obvious. And that's the same kind of example that we've already seen with Joseph, with Mary, and with the

Magi. So obedience is a huge, huge concept here. Each one of those people, including

John now, was seeking the will of God. They're reading, they're listening, but most important, they're doing the will of God.

And some of them are doing it even though they don't know exactly why they're doing it and even though they're not of the same faith like the

Magi, they're still doing the will of God. And while I personally don't believe that God speaks directly to us in the same way that He spoke to the prophets in the

Bible, we still have the will of God. And if you guys had a bingo card of things that I say, knowing the will of God comes to reading the

Bible, that would be one of them, right? You could mark it off just about every week. But to know the will of God is contained in the pages of Scripture.

And that was a real quick overview. And when we hit verse 15, we actually reach the end of the first of two sections that make up this passage.

And as if what we have seen so far with Jesus arriving and Jesus coming to be baptized by John to identify with sinners, if that isn't remarkable enough, it gets even better in the next two verses.

So let's look just at a little part of verse 16.

We're going to take a little break here. Verse 16,

So we're going to stop right there. Because this provides us an opportunity to talk about baptism and to consider the mode of baptism that we see here.

And mode of baptism is just a fancy word for the way that you do it. Okay? So we'll talk about some other issues related to baptism too, just to see if we can upset anybody.

Now, most translations of Scripture have some form of came up out of the water after Jesus was baptized.

Now, a lot of people, myself included, would suggest that this means that Jesus was completely submerged under the water.

After all, they were baptizing in a river. However, there are other traditions that would suggest to you that this simply meant that they were standing in a river.

And then John sprinkled water on his head, and then he walked up out of the water. Now, before we move on from this,

I will say, while everybody has their opinion and I have mine, one thing we have to acknowledge is that the

Holy Spirit did not see fit to explicitly state exactly how this baptism happened.

He did not say, and John dunked Jesus under the water, and then pulled him back up. And he did not say, and John sprinkled water on Jesus' forehead.

It doesn't say either one of those things. And while I will teach a specific mode of baptism here, and other traditions will teach another specific mode of baptism, this is one of those areas where we can't really be dogmatic, because Scripture does not say, this is how you do it.

We're relying on inferences, and as long as someone is acting in good faith, then we try to be charitable, even when we think they're wrong, as I look at that thing.

Now, speaking of inferences, let's dive into one. What I want to do is explain to you why

I believe that baptism by submersion is the one that makes the most sense as the mode of baptism that Christians would use.

And I'm going to look at three things to do this. The first is the Greek that the word baptism comes from.

The second is church history, and the third is the symbolism of baptism and what it stands for.

So, first let's look at the Greek word. So the Greek word is baptizo, and the way that we get the word baptized from that is actually through a process called transliteration.

And what that means is you took the Greek, baptizo, and you sort of translated the letters into English.

Not translated, but transliterated. So we replace the Greek letters with English letters, and we get a word that looks the same.

We get the word baptized. But this doesn't necessarily help us out with what the word means.

Transliteration is not translation. So in the case of this, what we would want to do is just a little bit of a deeper study of the word.

And you all can do this. This is something that any one of us can do. The tools are out there available.

So what you do is you take the word, and you get something like Strong's Concordance and Vine's Expository Dictionary.

These are two really common tools for looking up biblical languages.

And in fact, if you go to blueletterbible .org, you've got access to all this stuff for free.

You can look this up. What this will ultimately tell you is where else the word is used in Scripture.

So if you have a word that you don't quite understand, and you want to know how else it was used so you can try to grab some deeper context and some additional meaning, that's how you do it.

You go find where else this was used. This word was used probably 70 or so times.

And the way it was used falls into three categories. The first one is to dip repeatedly or to immerse or to submerge.

The second way it was used is to cleanse by dipping or submerging, to wash or to make clean with water, to wash oneself or to bathe.

And the third way it was used was metaphorically. And it was used metaphorically in the context of overwhelming somebody, overwhelming somebody with emotion or overwhelming them just with a situation.

But most significantly, when it was used, it was always used with the idea of an object being put into water.

It was not used with the idea of water being put onto an object.

And I thought that that would be enough and I thought that that would be done, but I was looking at blueletterbible .org and they gave an example that I could not pass up.

This, it involves pickles, and it's just, it's perfect.

So here's what it says. It says the word baptizo should not be confused with bapto.

So these, it's sort of a derivative of that word, but it's not the same. So the clearest example that shows the meaning of baptizo is a text from the

Greek poet and physician Nicander who lived about 200 BC. It is a recipe for making pickles and is helpful because it uses both words.

Nicander says that in order to make a pickle, the vegetable should first be dipped, bapto, into boiling water and then baptized, baptizo, in a vinegar solution.

So both verbs concern the immersing of vegetables in a solution, but the first is temporary.

The second, the act of baptizing the vegetable produces a permanent change. So again, and I know this sounds silly because we're talking about the act of making pickles, right?

But the reason we use this example was because it was written in Greek and it was using these terms to help understand why we look at this the way we do.

So if the word had been translated as opposed to transliterated, it might not have been quite as confusing.

But that's the way it happened. Now the second thing I want to do is look at church history. So we've looked at the

Greek, but now let's look at how the church has understood baptism for a long time. And as we get into this,

I want to acknowledge something. And that's the fact that looking at church history can be a slippery slope, right?

Because what the church has done historically does not always equal biblical doctrine.

And that's one of the biggest errors that any church or any denomination can make is elevating their traditions to the level of biblical doctrine, especially if they're not explicitly stated in scripture.

So on that note, let's look at the Catholic Church. I'm glad somebody understood.

So the Christian church, for the first several hundred to over a thousand years of their history, they didn't really practice any other type of baptism other than submersion or immersion.

And prior to the Middle Ages, they didn't use sprinkling. They didn't do any of this stuff.

That's when Rome started this. The Roman Catholic Church started sprinkling. But even this was a change. So Thomas Aquinas is a

Catholic theologian. You might have heard his name. Very well -known theologian. Even a lot of Protestants rely on some of the things that he wrote because some of them are very helpful.

He said this about baptism. In immersion, the setting forth of the burial of Christ is more plainly expressed in which this manner of baptizing is more commendable.

So even the Roman Catholic Church didn't recognize any other type of baptism other than fully dunking somebody under the water until the

Council of Ravenna in 1311. This is when sprinkling started.

And Lutherans and the Reformed Church followed along. The Church of England started sprinkling in 1645.

But before that, everybody, everybody used full immersion. And the Eastern Orthodox Church, sort of related to the

Catholic Church, but they feel like they're better than the Catholic Church. They have their own errors as well, but they do immersion only to this day.

So remember, church history is fascinating. And the reason that this is interesting is because if you go back 2 ,000 years to consider that the church only practiced immersion, these are the people that were closest to these things actually occurring, right?

These were the people that were closest to Jesus, closest to the time that he had his ministry and the time that he died.

But remember, church history never replaces Scripture. The principles never, ever, ever replace

Scripture. So now we've looked briefly at the Greek and we've looked at church history.

So now we want to look at what baptism symbolizes. This is getting, obviously, a little bit more subjective, but there's several things that we consider.

So if we look at that Thomas Aquinas quote, he references the burial of Christ. He talks about why immersion is closest to the burial of Christ and why it's a better mode of baptism.

Charles Spurgeon said, conscience has convinced me that it is a duty to be buried with Christ.

So it symbolizes the burial of Christ and our being buried with him. And at the same time, it's a symbol of our internal salvation, the process of salvation that's happened to us.

And then symbolically, it's a washing away of the sins on the outside. It's a cleansing.

Again, symbolic, but it's still a cleansing. Just as Christ cleansed our sins on the cross.

So given that symbolism, it doesn't make a lot of sense to sprinkle water on somebody to cleanse them of their sins or to sprinkle water on somebody to symbolize being buried with Christ.

So we'll leave off that discussion for now. I'm sure we'll get back to it at some point.

We still have two more verses to look at. Verses 16 and 17. Now we've got to cover the whole thing. So verses 16 and 17.

And after being baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water and behold, the heavens were open and he saw the spirit of God descending like a dove and coming upon him.

And behold, there was a voice out of the heavens saying, this is my beloved son in whom

I am well pleased. And this is remarkable too because the entire trinity is involved in the baptism of Jesus.

We see the spirit of God descending on Jesus like a dove. Obviously, Jesus is there. But the spirit of God.

R .T. France, the commentator, said this. Now there's several places that this occurs.

I just want to take a quick look at a few of them. One is Isaiah 11 .2. That says this.

The spirit of Yahweh will rest on him. The spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of Yahweh.

And then we've got Isaiah 42 .1, which we'll come back in just a little bit as well.

Isaiah 42 .1. And then one more that we'll look at is

Isaiah 61 .1. Isaiah 61 .1.

He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim release to captives and freedom to prisoners.

So we just looked really quickly at those three verses. But this just continues

Matthew's theme. How often does Matthew appeal back to the prophets to demonstrate that Jesus is the

Messiah that the prophets were writing about? This is all over Isaiah. So that deals with the spirit of God descending.

But the dove symbolism is also full of meaning. The dove symbolism is going to be reminiscent of Genesis when

Noah sent out the dove from the ark to see if the waters had receded from the earth. So what you have is a combination of prophetic scripture that the readers would have understood with these images that would have been full of meaning.

This is their life. The stuff that's in scripture, the stuff that's in the prophecy, the stuff that they had read would have been so familiar to them in a way that it's not familiar to us.

That's why we have to look so closely at these things. And then of course, in verse 17,

God himself speaks. And do you remember why this is significant? Because we talked a couple of weeks ago about how there was a 400 -year period where God was silent between the end of the

Old Testament and the prophets and the New Testament. And now after 400 or so years,

God's spoken. God has spoken audibly to everybody that was there to hear it.

And he's spoken to let everybody know who Jesus is. And not only that, but the use of the term son is very significant too.

J .C. Ryle says this. And John MacArthur again says,

This ministry was ordained before time began by the

Father, empowered by the Spirit to be carried out by the Son. And that's why we see all of them together here in this one scene in Matthew.

So what do we take from this? Well, the first thing is the importance of baptism.

So Jesus has given us two sacraments very explicitly in Scripture.

Two sacraments that are very important to the church. Obviously the first one is baptism. The other one is communion.

These are two things that we saw Jesus practice himself. And these are things that 2 ,000 some years later we still continue to do to honor

Jesus. And regardless of the mode of baptism that we consider, all different denominations and all different churches all recognize the importance of baptism.

They all do it in some form or fashion. And I think we'd be making just a huge mistake if we discounted the significance of a sacrament that Jesus himself gave us.

But not only that he gave us, a sacrament that he condescended to receive even though he didn't need to to show us exactly what it is and to identify with us on our level.

To show that he became man. To identify with us the very sinners that he came to save.

Just like the angel of the Lord said to Joseph in Matthew 1, right? His name will be Jesus and he'll come to save his people from their sins.

But while we emphasize the importance of baptism we have to make sure that we don't fall into a very particular error that's called sacramentalism.

You heard that word before, sacramentalism? What that means is that somebody who practices sacramentalism believes that the sacraments save you.

The sacraments do not save you. Baptism does not save you.

It comes after salvation. Okay? I just want to make sure that they were all clear about that.

Nobody goes home and says well, I don't know what Mattie thinks about whether baptism saves you or not.

We see the command to be baptized all over scripture, but understand, it is an external symbol.

It's an external symbol of an internal process that has taken place when the Holy Spirit has granted you the gift of salvation.

And that salvation has taken place in your life and again, not something you can do for yourself.

Not a decision, an act of the Holy Spirit. And it's also a symbolic representation of washing away your sin.

Because when you receive salvation and you repent of your sin and you believe in the work of Jesus on the cross, you believe that he has cleansed you of all your sin.

And this baptism is a public profession of your belief in that. You're a public profession of who you are as a

Christian, as somebody who believes and follows Jesus. And baptism is something that we celebrate.

And baptism also should be a public thing. And I hope that we will have baptisms here before too long, but guess what?

We're going to have to figure out some logistics before we can do baptisms here.

See? That's what I'm talking about. We might let the first people wait until it gets a little warmer.

Now, we talked about the mode of baptism, which is controversial enough, but we didn't talk about who gets baptized.

So we obviously don't have time to go into that right now. But I'll just summarize it real quick.

So this is what we will teach here. This is what I will teach here. Baptism is for believers.

It's for people who believe in the work of Christ. Because baptism doesn't save you, you are not in danger of losing your salvation because you weren't baptized.

You can't lose your salvation. That was the wrong word. You are not in danger of not being saved because you weren't baptized.

Sorry. That is a small difference, but it's very important. You can't lose your salvation.

So because of that, somebody has to have received that gift from the

Holy Spirit and understood it. So for that reason, we don't baptize babies.

Okay, good. All right. I know.

It's so interesting. And you know what? Respectable people disagree on that.

Theologians that I love and read disagree on that.

But that's where we are as a church because I do believe this is a symbol for believers.

It's not just something you do to cover your bases. It's not fire insurance or whatever it is that people want to say.

I hate that joke because it's making light of something that's so serious.

Oh, I'm coming to church to get my fire insurance. Nope. So that's the importance of baptism.

But something else that we see here in this passage are biblical examples of humility and obedience.

These are things that are so difficult and they're so difficult for us because it's so against our nature.

And these themes have appeared all over the first three chapters of this gospel.

But we have a couple of examples that are just glowing in how significant they are.

And the first is John the Baptist. Now we already talked about the fact that he's been telling people somebody mightier than me is coming along.

Somebody greater than me is coming. And he'll baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.

He knew somebody greater than him was coming. And I'll say this again because I think it's funny.

It's hard for a man to admit that somebody better than him is coming along. That is not something that's easy to do.

But it's when Jesus showed up, when He arrived, when He came on the scene, that's when we really see

John's humility in full because it's one thing to say something.

But it's another thing to see how people react. It's that, you know, actions speak louder than words kind of thing.

So Jesus came to be baptized. And I want to be honest here. I think that a lot of pastors would be thrilled that Jesus came to their church to be baptized.

They would say, He chose my church to get

His baptism. Take that, Mount Zion Baptist Church. And some pastors would probably be super psyched because they would raise the profile of their ministry so high.

Jesus came to my church. And some of us would just be flattered that Jesus thought enough of our ministry to show up and ask one of us to baptize

Him. But let's be honest. There's a reason why He picked John. Because John was truly humble.

Because John didn't say, Suck it, Pharisees. John said,

I have need to be baptized by you and you come to me? He's like, no. This isn't right.

It doesn't make sense. He knew that Jesus needed to baptize him.

And as we discussed before, John showed the humility and the humbleness of heart that marked him as a true servant of God.

Later, Paul would write this in Romans 12, 3. Something that we can always consider.

John didn't think more highly of himself than he needed to. John knew exactly where he stood with Jesus.

And a lot of us also need to know that. But it's not just humility.

John showed obedience as well. Despite the fact that Jesus came and was asking for something that made no sense and it was very uncomfortable, he played his role and he baptized

Jesus. Jesus told him to do it. He said no. Jesus told him again and he did it.

And that brings us to the example of Jesus. Jesus is probably one of the first people that any of us think about when we think about humility.

He showed us this in his baptism. He showed us humility when he came to get a water baptism that I already said over and over that he didn't need.

He did that, as he said, to fulfill all righteousness. He also does this.

He plays the role of something that's called the suffering servant. And we go back to Isaiah 42 .1

and we see why Jesus would come to get this baptism.

So Isaiah 42 .1 -4 says, Behold my servant whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom my soul is well pleased.

I have put my spirit upon him. He will bring forth justice to the nations. He will not cry out or raise his voice, nor make his voice heard in the street.

A crushed reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not extinguish. He will bring forth justice and truth.

He will not be faint or crushed until he has established justice in the earth, and the coastlands will wait expectantly for his law.

Jesus, though the Son of God, played his role.

He was obedient to God the Father. He was humble enough to serve us. He was humble enough to serve people that didn't deserve it.

And he left us with the sacrament of baptism. He left us with something that we continue to do until this day.

Now this is relevant to us because we all have these opportunities. We have them probably on a daily basis and probably multiple times in a day to choose whether we're going to follow these examples of humility and obedience or if we're going to turn our back on what we see in Scripture.

And it could be something small like the way you interact with your family. It could be something big, something public, something at work.

There's no telling what it is. But these things, they're not always simple and they're not pleasant and sometimes obedience to the will of God or humility to the place that God has put you is more challenging than anything else that you're going to do.

And that's why we have the examples that we have. We're not left hanging to say, trust

God and hopefully things will work out. We have Scripture to say, trust God because these things will all come together for God's plan and God's purpose.

So, I think I'm going to stop at two lessons this week even though just like everything else there's endless stuff that we could look at and there's so many things that we could talk about and for as long as we've already been going there's stuff that I still didn't get to cover that I really would have liked to talk about.

So, I'll close this way. Just so you know, we're saying

Happy New Year. I'm not really a resolution guy. I used to be but now

I'm not. I don't like it. I don't want to set an arbitrary date for doing something that I need to do.

If there's something that's worth me doing, it's worth doing now. So, again, not crazy about resolutions but at the same time,

I see, I notice that the start of the New Year is always a good opportunity to reassess.

Something psychological about the fact that the year has changed to a new number makes it an opportunity to look at our lives and to look at what's going on.

Finishing up a year is a good time to reflect on what you did or what happened or what could have changed.

But the point is this. None of us know what this next year has in store for us.

It could be victory. It could be tragedy. More than likely, it's going to be a mixture of both for all of us.

And, I said this at our Christmas Eve service but I think we should repeat it now.

None of us are promised another day. None of us know. We could have all the resolutions in the world and they could be gone like that because you don't know if God is going to take you.

And you don't know if God is going to take someone you love. These are things that we have to face.

So, when we think about some of those things, we start to ask some questions.

Questions that can be helpful. We'll start local.

As you begin the new year and you think about humility and you think about obedience, are you so wrapped up and thinking about yourself that you're damaging the relationship with the people that are closest to you?

Are you so concerned with your feelings that you're willing to hurt the people around you?

Are you so concerned with what other people think about you that you're willing to ignore people that love you and hurt that relationship?

Have you lost someone you love? And are you so focused on how you feel about it that you ignore everything else that's going on around you?

You pulled yourself out of life? All of these things, all the things that psychology will tell us is okay.

I mean, it's not that you have to completely stop thinking about yourself. But if you spend so much time thinking about yourself that you can't engage with anything else, or you spend so much time thinking about what other people say about you that you don't think about what

God says about you in Scripture, these are manifestations of pride. This is the very opposite of humility.

It's a reliance on yourself and not on God. So then from there, we think about this as we start a new year.

Are you prepared to stand before God today? Are you right with God?

Have you called upon the name of the Lord as it says in Romans 10 -13? For whoever calls upon the name of the

Lord will be saved. That was one of our, basically one of our theme verses for the last few weeks.

And if you haven't, if that's you, if you don't know where you stand with God, and you're looking at the potential of facing

Him without ever having called upon His name to be saved, you're facing an eternity in Hell.

Call upon His name. And if you have experienced salvation, if this is something that was given to you by the

Holy Spirit, are you continuing to walk in that gift? Are you continuing to live your life as though you have actually received salvation from the

Holy Spirit? Are you pursuing sanctification? Are you showing gratitude for what

God has done? Or are you taking it like an ungrateful child who just assumes that they're good enough to have these things even though that's not the way it works?

Are you acting like Christ is the Lord of your life or speaking like Christ is the Lord of your life but not acting like it?

Living like you control your own destiny? So as we consider the verses in this passage that we read today from Matthew, we look at who

Jesus is and what He did. We look at who John is and what He did. We see humility and we see obedience and we see the way it plays out in Scripture.

And if you want to make a resolution, make that your resolution. Take stock of your life.

Take stock of where you are personally with God because none of us can do it for you.

I can't do it for you. You have to do it yourself. We can help you and we can come around you but your relationship with the

Lord is between you and Him. So see how your life and your plans measure up to what

God has given us in His Word. Because Scripture shows us and tells us exactly what the fruit of a sanctified life looks like.

I'm going to close with just a few verses here. Jesus says this in John 14, 15. If you love me, you will keep my commandments.

1 Peter 1, 13 -14 says, Therefore, having girded your minds for action, being sober in spirit, fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ as obedient children, not being conformed to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance, but like the

Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves in all your conduct because it is written,

You shall be holy for I am holy. And finally, 1 John 5, 3

For this is the love of God that we keep His commandments and His commandments are not burdensome.

If you were here on Christmas Eve, we talked about Matthew 11, 28. He said, Come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

He's given you His commandments. You love God, you keep His commandments, and as it says,

His commandments are not burdensome. So that's my prayer for all of us, myself included, in the new year.

Will you all pray with me? Father, we thank You for Your Word.

Lord, we come before You as a group of people who know that You're offering something that we don't deserve.

God, we know that through Your grace and Your mercy, You're offering us a salvation, a salvation that we can't earn on our own, and a salvation that if we were left to our own devices and we didn't have

Your Word, we would reject. God, but in Your wisdom,

You gave us Scripture. You gave us Your Word, and You gave us

Your Son, and the life and the ministry that He lived so that we would have an example and we would have a physical, historical testimony of who

You are and exactly what Your love means to us, God. As we continue into this new year,

I pray that each and every one of us would call upon Your name. Whether we're saved or not, we would call upon Your name because it's right for each and every one of us to pray to You.

You're a Father. You hear us. You love us. We know our prayers.

God, we thank You for what You've given us, and we love You, and we pray all this in Jesus' name.