The Path to the Cross Inaugurated Matthew 3:13-17

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There's a website known as gotquestions .org, which
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I commend to you. And the website exists to answer questions that people have about the
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Bible and theology. And I was recently listening to David Wheaton's program, radio program,
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Christian Worldview, where he read off the list of the top 10 most questions they have received.
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This is an interesting list, and I'm gonna read not all 10, but some of these to you. One of the questions was, what happens after death?
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Will my pets be in heaven? Who was Cain's wife? Can a
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Christian lose their salvation? What does the Bible say about tattoos? Top 10 questions.
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Who would have known that? And I think you're good, Grandall, as far as I know.
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And the number one question asked is, what does the Bible say about female pastors?
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These are all very common questions that people ask. One pastor friend of mine was even asked the question, did
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Adam have a belly button? Now, there are funny questions, and then there are serious ones.
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Now, today we are going to look at another question that is commonly asked, and that is, why was
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Jesus baptized? Ever thought about that? As we continue our sermon series through Matthew this morning, we will look at that question.
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As sinful humans, we know why we need to be baptized, but why was
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Jesus, the sinless one, immersed into the waters? Today, as we see
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Jesus start his ministry, we will see the significance of his baptism. So at this time,
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I encourage you to turn with me to Matthew chapter three. We'll be looking at verses 13 through 17, and if you're using a red
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Bible in the pews, it's on page 961. This sermon is titled, The Path to the
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Cross Inaugurated. And our big idea, our proposition is this.
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The baptism of Jesus was necessary to begin his ministry. The baptism of Jesus was necessary to begin his ministry.
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And we'll see two reasons why this morning. The first reason is, his immersion symbolized his association with sinners.
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And we'll see this in verses 13 through 15. But before we jump into our text this morning, let me give you a little recap of last week's sermon.
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We looked at John the Baptist prepare the way for the Messiah. And what he told the people is that the kingdom of heaven is at hand, right?
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It's right in front of them. The Old Testament described this King coming, and now he was in their midst.
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But before the Christ could establish his kingdom, something needed to happen. Something very important needed to happen, and that is repentance.
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People needed to recognize their sin, feel sorrow for it, and turn from it.
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This tells us what kind of kingdom God is establishing. In the future, when Jesus reigns on the earth, the kingdom will be a place of purity.
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What John the Baptist was telling the people is that if you are going to inhabit this kingdom, there needs to be repentance.
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God needs to give you a new heart. So he called everyone to repent that they would know that they have a right relationship with God.
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We saw many people listening to John the Baptist's call for repentance when people turned from their sin and they were baptized.
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But there was also another group, the Pharisees and the Sadducees, who saw no need to repent, and for different reasons.
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The Pharisees thought they were good enough to earn their own way to heaven. The Sadducees lived only for this world.
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Remember, they were the secular ones. And so they saw no point in repenting. What we saw in the text last week is the repentant and the unrepentant, right?
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There's two types of people in this world, the repentant and the unrepentant. The call for each person in this room, of course, is to be among the repentant.
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A judgment is coming where Jesus will gather the wheat into the barn, but the chaff will be burned.
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And my prayer is that everyone in this room would be among the wheat in the barn who enjoy forever bliss with God in his presence.
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This leads us to our text today. John the Baptist is still on the scene, but the one he prepared the way for now enters the picture.
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Let's begin by reading verses 13 through 14. This is a small text today, but there's a lot to see here.
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Verses 13 and 14. 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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Let's stop right there. What the beginning of verse 13 tells us is that Jesus came from the region of Galilee.
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If you look at the map of Israel, I have one in my office if you're interested. The Jordan River connects the
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Sea of Galilee, which is in the north, with the Dead Sea, which is in the south. So there's this river that connects both of them, the source in the north and the mouth in the south.
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And Jesus comes to the Jordan River. We don't know the precise place he came to in the Jordan River. If you go to Israel today,
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I don't know this because I've never been there, but a lot of the locals try to make it sound like this is where Jesus was baptized, or this is where Jesus was baptized, because that's going to bring in tourists, which is going to bring in money.
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But we don't know the precise location where he was baptized. He was baptized somewhere in the
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Jordan River. What we just saw in our previous text is a multitude of people from all over Judea were coming to John to be baptized.
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And the only way they could be baptized is if they first repented. So you can see why
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John is baffled that Jesus came to him after all of these people were being baptized.
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The Bible is very clear that Jesus never sinned. What 1
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Peter 2, verse 22 says about Jesus is that he committed no sin.
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Neither was deceit found in his mouth. We saw several weeks back in chapter one that Jesus was born of a virgin.
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He wasn't born in sin as we were. We are sinners by nature and by choice, while Jesus is not a sinner by nature nor by choice.
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What the synopsis of Christ obviously means is that he has no need to repent. There are no sins to turn from, and therefore, he has no need to be baptized.
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This is why this text is so peculiar. Now the text says in the first half of verse 14 that John tried to prevent him from being baptized.
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And we think, okay, of course John should do that, right? Why does he need, why does Jesus need to be baptized?
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And what John the Baptist tells him is I need to be baptized by you. And you want me to baptize you?
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John is saying, I am the sinner, not you. I'm the one who needs to repent, not you.
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I need to be baptized, not you. So how does Jesus respond? Does he say, you know what?
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You know, I'm mistaken. You know what? I probably shouldn't have even asked to be baptized because I'm perfect and you're not.
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No, he doesn't say that. Not at all. This is what he says in verse 15.
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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, John the Baptist, consented. What we see here is a remarkable response from Jesus.
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He tells John, let it be so, or another way to say it is, let's go through with this.
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Jesus came to John on a mission to be baptized and there is a reason for this.
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He tells us this reason in the second half of verse 15. He tells John it is appropriate for him to be baptized to fulfill all righteousness.
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What does that mean? As I mentioned in the introduction, when Christians read their
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Bibles, right? One common question that is asked is why did Jesus need to be baptized? Jesus tells us the answer right here in the second half of verse 15.
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He says to fulfill all righteousness. Let's take a little time to figure out what
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Jesus means by this. There's so much significance in what Jesus says here.
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What we first need to see here is that Jesus is endorsing John's ministry and this is significant and this is so because as we saw last
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Sunday, the Jewish leaders, these are the ones who have the power in Jerusalem and in all of Israel, that these
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Jewish leaders, the Pharisees and the Sadducees, what we saw last week is that they did not endorse
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John's ministry, right? They didn't see their need to repent and so Jesus comes to him and he endorses his ministry by saying, baptize me.
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Jesus shows that John is the one truly from God and not the
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Jewish leaders by going to be baptized, thus endorsing his ministry. He endorsed the two realities we saw last
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Sunday. First, when John says the kingdom is at hand, he's right.
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And secondly, when John says that the way to God is through repentance, he's right.
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The people who, the Pharisees, what we have to understand about the Pharisees is these were people who studied their Bibles.
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They knew the Old Testament in and out, but they misunderstood it, right?
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What the Bible teaches us is that the Holy Spirit has to give you sight to see for you to have a proper understanding of what
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Scripture says. Even though they knew the Bible well, they didn't see that you come into a relationship with God through repentance, through faith, through recognizing your sin, through turning from it, through trusting only
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God alone. They relied on themselves. They saw the law and they said, you know what, we can do this and we're going to show it and God is going to be impressed and he's going to let us into his kingdom.
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That's not at all God's design. And so Jesus endorsing John's ministry here is huge to see.
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Now the difference here is that John is preparing people for Jesus, pointing them to him, while Jesus will be pointing people to himself since he alone can save people from their sins.
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To look to Jesus in repentance is God's way. And so John and Jesus' ministry are pointing toward the same goal.
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Jesus is endorsing the repentant as the way to be right with God. There's also a second way that Jesus fulfills all righteousness and that is by pursuing baptism.
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Jesus is identifying with sinful humanity. He's identifying with sinful humanity.
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What's so remarkable is that God identifies with us by becoming a man.
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Jesus was born of a woman, just as you and I were. Jesus had a childhood, just as you and I have.
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And if you're a child right now, you're going through that. Think about that. Jesus grew up in Nazareth.
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He was a child. God knows what it is like to be a human because he became one.
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As we have said before, Jesus is fully God and fully man. As one who is fully man, he knows what it is like to be one of us.
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He knows about the joys of life in this world, the blessings that come from life. He also knows about the sorrows.
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He knows what it is like to get sick. He knows what it is like to feel pain. He knows what it is like to die.
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He knows what it is like to be rejected. Living in this fallen world is not easy.
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Hebrews 4 .15 says concerning Jesus, we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses.
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He is able to empathize with us because he once lived in a non -glorified body just as we do.
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And his death proved the weakness of his body. God is not some far -off deity who cares nothing for his creation.
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He is intimately close with us, with the world that he created, so much so that he became a man and walked among us.
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There was an old song in the 90s. Maybe you remember this. I'm not commending the song, but I'll mention it.
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What if God was one of us? Do you remember that song? I remember listening to that on the school bus, going to school.
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They didn't have Christian music back then. Even back then, right? When we rode the school bus. But now that I think about it,
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I'm thinking, he was one of us. And truly, right now, he's in heaven.
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He's a man. And he always will be. The second person in the Trinity will always be a man.
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And I'm amazed. I mean, think about it. When you look up at the stars at night, and you see the planets, and you see the stars, and you look up at the moon, and we can see the galaxy that we live in.
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And it's just one of so many galaxies that are out there. The one who created all of that became a man.
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I mean, think about that. I can never get over how wonderful that is. And we never should.
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We are his image bearers, and he became the creature that bears his image. What this text is zeroing in on is an important way he associates with humanity.
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He identifies with humanity by identifying with sinners. Not just becoming one of us, but he's identifying with sinners, even though he never sinned.
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Romans 3 .23, of course, says that, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
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What we have seen is that Jesus came to reign. He came to reign over a people on this earth forever.
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But before he could reign with this people, he needed to save them. Right? The future kingdom is gonna be populated with holy people.
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Not sinful people, but holy ones. It's interesting, when people, sometimes you hear secular people talk about heaven, and this person's in a better place, and the heaven they're envisioning is not a real heaven, because the real heaven is a holy place.
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We must understand that. Jesus could not leave people in their present sinful state and reign over them.
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The future kingdom of God will be a place of purity. And what Jesus needed to do for humanity is become their sin bearers.
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This is what Scripture teaches Jesus did when he went to the cross. Isaiah 53, verse 12 predicted what he would do 700 years before he came to earth.
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The prophecy says, he poured out his life unto death and was numbered with the transgressors.
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For he bore the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors.
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For Jesus to do this, he had to become a man. I read this passage this morning in the call to worship.
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Hebrews 2 .17 says, he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.
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What baptism represents is a picture of salvation. Just as the
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Lord's Supper is an image of salvation, right? What Christ did on our behalf. When Jesus goes down into the water in the
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Jordan River, as he goes down into the water, his baptism symbolizes what he would later do when he went to the cross.
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When one believes in Jesus, he or she dies with Christ. And you are raised to new life in Christ.
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And when you are raised to new life, the power of sin no longer has dominion over you. Romans 6, verses 1 -4 explains this.
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The meaning of Christian baptism. This baptism at the beginning of Jesus' ministry symbolizes what
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Jesus would accomplish for sinners at the end of his ministry. By becoming the sin bearer for future sinners, it can be said that he fulfills all righteousness for them.
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What we are going to see throughout Matthew is that Jesus is on a mission. This is the beginning of Jesus' ministry right here today.
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And the first thing he does in his ministry is identify with sinners.
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With you and me. Anyone who has a personal relationship with Christ must see how sweet this is.
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And if you don't, my prayer is that you would see how sweet it is and believe in him today. From the beginning of Jesus' ministry, his focus was on the prize.
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I know that some of you know that I'm a runner and have run many races in my life.
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And Jordan, of course, has run many races. And we think about what a runner does, what a racer does, is they visualize the race before you even run it.
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Because running is every bit as much mental as it is physical. You can take yourself out of a race if you're not in a good mental state.
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And the race could be over even before you started. I've seen runners psych themselves out because they're thinking about too many things.
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But if you can visualize the race ahead of time and visualize yourself running well, it's really very effective.
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It doesn't guarantee the race is going to go well, but more times than often, when you visualize the beginning, how things are going to go, it's going to go well.
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And Jesus here, as He starts His ministry, He's visualizing what He's going to do.
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He knows He's going to go to the cross. And so with this plan of Him accomplishing this mission in the future of going to the cross, what does
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He do right from the start? He says, I'm going to be baptized to do what this is going to symbolize right from the beginning.
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It's a beautiful picture we see here. And throughout His ministry, what
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Jesus was calling people to Himself. He was raising up disciples who would later preach
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Christ. Preach Christ and Him crucified. That was His whole plan right from the beginning.
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And He wanted people to believe in Him because He knew what He would do later on when He went to the cross, when
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He would accomplish their salvation for them. So Christ's eyes were on the prize right from the beginning of His ministry.
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We need to praise God for sending Jesus to be our sin -bearer. As we have seen over the last couple of weeks,
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He is the only One who could ever take away our sins. If you have trusted in Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, for your salvation, then indeed,
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He is your sin -bearer. And you are no longer separated from God, but brought into joyful fellowship with Him, bringing you truly to righteousness.
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And this is not a righteousness of your own. It's a righteousness that's been given to you because of what Jesus has done on your behalf through His finished work.
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So what we see here is the baptism of Jesus was necessary to begin His ministry. And the first reason why is
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His immersion in the waters symbolized His association with sinners.
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The second reason why the baptism of Jesus was necessary to begin His ministry is
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His identity was authenticated at this event. We'll see this in verses 16 and 17.
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We're about to see an incredible scene here. Now when Jesus was baptized, something happened that happened at no one else's baptism, right?
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This hasn't happened to us at Sconewood yet, but we're about to see here. And this is so since Jesus is the
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Son of God. So let's see what happened at His baptism in verses 16 and 17.
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And when Jesus was baptized, immediately He went up from the water. And behold, the heavens were opened to Him.
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And He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and 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. Once John finished baptizing
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Jesus, he walked to the shore. Jesus walked to the shore. And when He arrived to the shore, we see this remarkable picture take place.
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The first thing we read is that the heavens were opened to Him. Others in Scripture experienced the heavens being opened.
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The prophet Ezekiel in Ezekiel 1 .1, we saw this this morning at Sunday school, said the heavens were opened to Him and He saw visions of God.
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Then down in verse 4 of Ezekiel 1, the prophet described what he saw. He said, as I looked, behold, a stormy wind came out of the north and a great cloud with brightness around it and fire flashing forth continually.
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And in the midst of the fire as it were gleaming metal. Words fail to describe what he saw.
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What an awesome sight Ezekiel experienced. After Jesus was raised from the dead and ascended to heaven, a follower of Christ, one of Jesus' early disciples,
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Stephen, had a similar vision as he was being stoned to death. This is what Stephen experienced in Acts 7 .55
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-56. The text says, he, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God.
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And Jesus standing at the right hand of God. And he said, behold, I see the heavens opened and the
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Son of Man standing at the right hand of God. This past week,
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I wrote an article for our newsletter on the blessed vision of God that all believers will experience when they enter
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God's presence. What every vision in Scripture has in common is there is a bright light that represents the glory of God.
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This beautiful, dazzling light that comes with God's presence.
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The brightest and most beautiful light that anyone has ever seen.
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Think about a beautiful sunset. That is nothing compared to this sight. Ezekiel and Stephen experienced this.
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Now what we see in our text is the same mention of the heavens being opened. And so we are right to assume that John the
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Baptist, as he looked on, saw what Ezekiel and Stephen saw. John saw the glory of God.
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This bright light representing His presence in the clouds. And then in the second half of verse 16, he sees the
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Spirit of God descending on Jesus like a dove. What this means is a literal bird, a literal dove comes upon Him.
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And I say this because Luke 3 .22 says this, that it's a literal dove that comes upon Him. And this dove represents the third person of the
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Trinity. The Spirit. The Holy Spirit. So what we see here, we see the
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Trinity here. We see the Father in this text. We see the
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Spirit. And we see the Son. The first person of the
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Trinity, the Father, says this from heaven in verse 17, a voice came from heaven and it said, this is
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My beloved Son with whom I am well pleased. I imagine it was a deeper voice than mine.
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Maybe I should have had Mark come up and read that verse for us. We see the three persons of the
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Godhead here at the baptism of Christ. God the Son is being baptized. The Spirit comes on Him like a dove.
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And God the Father endorses His Son as the Messiah by speaking concerning Him from heaven.
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We need to put ourselves in John's shoes here. He sees the glory of God in the heavens.
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Sometimes after a storm has passed by, the sky looks incredible.
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The sun appears and light shines through the clouds. And you may even see a rainbow.
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The sight of the heavens being opened as John the Baptist experiences will be so much greater than this. Something only a few people in all human history have experienced.
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The Apostle Paul experienced this too on the road to Damascus. Jesus appears to him and says to Paul, why are you persecuting
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Me? And the light was so bright that Paul was blinded for a few days.
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And he had to be led away by someone else. So we see here too that John sees a dove rest on Christ.
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This also would have been quite an experience. And then to add even more to this awesome experience, I think the most frightening part of all of this, and this is a good kind of fear, right?
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It's a trembling. When you're in the presence of greatness, there's a certain trembling that comes with it.
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If Jesus were to walk through those doors right now, all of us would fall down and be speechless because of His greatness in our presence.
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Could you imagine a voice just coming from the sky out of nowhere?
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That's what John experienced. It's similar to what Peter, James, and John experienced on the
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Mount of Transfiguration when Jesus was transfigured before them. The voice says, this is
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My beloved Son with whom I am well pleased. It's always such a sweet experience when you see a father proud of his son.
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The son accomplishes something or grows up into a good man. God made fathers to be so proud of their son.
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And daughters too. Definitely daughters too. But I'm focusing on sons here because that's what the text is taking us.
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My son Isaiah, he's almost nine months old. And yet, I'm already telling him,
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I'm so proud of you. I'm well pleased with you. You are my son. In the case of God the
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Father, He has every reason to be pleased with His Son. His Son Jesus is perfect.
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His Son Jesus reflects His purity fully. His Son is the greatest man who ever walked this earth.
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You couldn't be more proud. Try to imagine how hard it was for God the
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Father to give up His Son on the cross so that we might be saved. Now what is taking place at this baptism is that Jesus is endorsed as the
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Messiah. And He got the best endorsement from anyone. The only endorsement that matters.
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Right? When you're called to be a pastor, what the Bible says is that you are made an overseer.
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So Mark, Rob, and myself, we are made overseers of this church by who? The Holy Spirit. So God gives us that endorsement.
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So nobody can just call themselves to ministry. It has to be a call of God.
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And the endorsement that Jesus is giving here, it's coming from God.
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John knew, and many in the world would come to see, that Jesus is the Messiah. The main character of all of world history.
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And this God -man is the one through whom God would accomplish His plan of redemption through. And in the future, this world would come to an end and God's kingdom will be ushered in.
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And Jesus will reign. And God gives Him this endorsement and is saying that I'm going to accomplish all of these things through My Son.
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And everyone is going to know it. And even if you don't believe in Christ, you're still going to know it because what the
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Bible teaches in Philippians 2, verse 12, is that at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow, every tongue will confess before Jesus Christ to the glory of God the
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Father. So God the Father is glorified through His Son and He endorses His ministry. This is
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Jesus' identity. He's God's Son. He's the Messiah. He's the sin -bearer. Do you believe
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Jesus is who God the Father says He is?
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In our world, there's lots of opinions out there about who Jesus is.
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Is He just a teacher? Was He just a religious leader? Just like Muhammad?
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Just like Buddha? Just like... You pick a name.
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Is He just like one of those people who came and went and is gone and is dead? And the answer is no.
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Jesus is entirely unique. He is God's only
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Son sent from the Father. And what you do with Him determines everything.
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We need to get... The world needs to understand who Jesus is. He is who the
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Bible says He is. We can't just pick and say, you know, we like what He says here.
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We don't like what He says here. We should love everything He says because He's from God. And we should believe
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He is who the Father says He is. It doesn't matter what the world says about Jesus.
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God spoke from heaven. And John the Baptist is our witness and Matthew who wrote this is our witness.
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And what they say here is that what God said from heaven is this is my Son with whom
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I am well -pleased. We need to take God at His word and reject all of sinful man's false claims.
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The baptism of Jesus was necessary to begin His ministry as we've seen. And the second reason why is that His identity was authenticated at this event, at His baptism.
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So to summarize what we've seen this morning, we've seen the significance of Jesus' baptism.
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We've seen why it is so important. We've seen two reasons why His baptism was necessary to begin
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His ministry. The first reason is that His immersion symbolized His association with sinners.
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And the second reason as we just saw is that God the Father authenticates His identity.
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That He is His Son and He is the Messiah. The Lord has marked this event, this baptism event down as the beginning of His ministry.
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And I pray that we see the importance of this event in the life of Christ.
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We know why He was baptized and why it wasn't just, you know, it's optional.
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He needed to do this to start His ministry. This was the event that God chose for Him.
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And Jesus was on a mission and this is how He started His ministry. By associating with sinners,
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He paved the way for what He would do for sinners at the cross. And by receiving this endorsement from God, who never lies, who always tells the truth,
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He declares to the world that Jesus is the King of kings and Lord of lords. And may everyone in this room praise the
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Lord for sending Jesus as their sin -bearer. He's the sin -bearer of anyone who will believe in Him.
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He's the sin -bearer of His people. Now next Sunday, I will be gone and we are going to have a pastor from the outside come in, which is always a special treat to hear from someone else.
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You hear from me a lot, so it's always good to hear from someone else. We're going to have Pastor Paul from New Life Church in Dresser come preach.
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He's one of their pastors there and I know that'll be a treat for you to hear from him. And two
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Sundays from now, we will look at the temptation of Jesus. When Satan tempts
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Him in the wilderness. And there's so much to look at there and so I can't wait to open that with you.
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Two Sundays from today, if the Lord wills. Let's pray together.
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Father in heaven, I thank you for the word of God. I thank you for the opportunity
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Lord to be able to study the Bible and to see what is here.
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Lord, if we don't sit down and study the Bible closely, we are going to miss so much and that's why you call pastors to study the
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Bible to help unfold what's there. And I pray that all of us would, together, would read the
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Bible carefully and try to pull out here what we need to see, what You want us to see, what the
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Holy Spirit has inspired. And so today, Lord, I pray that we would take away these truths about the importance of Jesus' baptism, what
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He did on our behalf, and how important it is, Lord, that He is our sin bearer and He is who
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You say He is. And we rejoice in that today. And I pray for this in Jesus' name, amen.