The Baptism of Jesus

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If everyone has their Bible, I'd invite you to take it out and turn to the Gospel of Mark as we continue our verse-by-verse study of this Gospel.
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And as I have said in weeks previous, I do want this to be in the vein of a Bible study, so I do want you to feel like you can interject with questions and comments, ask anything that you may want to ask, and I don't promise that I will always have an answer.
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There are sometimes questions that nobody knows, or at least I don't know, but I do enjoy engaging, so I want to do that.
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Tonight we're going to be focusing only on a few verses.
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I was looking at the potential of what we could do, and what we are coming on the end of now is, as I said many times in the Gospel of Mark, what we have is Mark takes this sort of very quick, immediate move from one thing to the next, and what we're seeing in the Gospel of Mark is we're seeing him go from one narrative to the next to the next to the next so quickly, and it would be easy for us to read it that way and to study it that way, but if we do that, I have a fear that we're going to miss out on some very important things, so what I've decided is I'm just going to go as slow as I want to go.
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I don't have anywhere to be, and the only thing that would stop us anyway is if the Lord comes, so I'm just going to keep going as slow as I want to go, and my original intention tonight, and you'll know, I don't know if you know this or not, last week I was supposed to get all the way through Jesus's temptation in the wilderness, and as I was looking at it, and I was saying, you know what, I don't even think I'm going to get there tonight.
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I think tonight we're just going to focus on verses 9 to 11, which I realize is only three verses, but there's enough in these three verses, if we compare these to the other Gospels, there's enough in here for at least the time that we have tonight, and as I said, there is just no reason to rush, so with that in mind, let's read, and then I'm going to ask the Lord to bless our time of study.
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So in Mark chapter 1 verse 9, it says, Father, I pray that you would keep me from error as I teach.
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Lord, you know that I have the capacity for error, and I don't want to preach that which is untrue.
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My fear of my life is to preach things about you that are wrong, so I pray that you would stop me from any of that, and I pray, Lord, that you would open up the hearts of those who are here to understand your word, and Lord, that tonight as we examine the anointing of the Lord Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit and the initiation of his ministry at the baptism of the prophet John, Lord, I pray that we would seek to better understand this very important and pivotal moment in the life of Christ and his ministry.
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And I pray this, Lord, in Jesus' name and for his sake.
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Amen.
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Alright, I'm going to ask a few of you to read some scripture tonight, so I'm going to assign these passages so you can go ahead and go look for them.
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Stephen Berry, I know you're far in the back, but Stephen, will you look up Hebrews 4.15 for us? Caleb, would you look up 2 Corinthians 5.21? And if you know it by heart, you don't have to look it up, I know a few of these are fairly common.
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Let's see, who else would like to read? Caleb, would you like to read? Okay, 1 John 3.5, and lastly I have one more.
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Dave, you want to read something for me? Okay, 1 Peter 2.22.
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And the reason why I'm having you guys look at these verses is I thought it would be a good thing for us to hear them, because the very first thing we're going to address tonight is the question of why was Jesus baptized.
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Because when we consider the fact that Jesus was in fact baptized, that often creates some confusion in the minds of believers, especially new believers who may not understand what all is happening, but they do know this one thing.
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John has identified his baptism as a baptism of what? More so, we talked about last week, a baptism of repentance.
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Remember we said last week, John came preaching, repent and be baptized for what? The forgiveness of sins.
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Well that's where we're going to get to the verses, because all of those verses I just handed out are to talk about that.
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And we're going to get to those in a moment, but before we get to those, I want to tell you a story.
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Years ago, there was a mini-series that came out about the life of Jesus.
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And there's always, just like right now, The Chosen is the big thing, and a few years ago it was The Passion of the Christ, and a few years before that it was this and that.
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They had the one with the Gospel of John, that was the whole Gospel of John, you know, that was set to film.
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And every couple years there was a new Jesus movie.
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Well in the late 90s, there was something called Jesus the Epic Mini-series.
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Now does anybody remember Jesus the Epic Mini-series? It was like a four night event, where they went through the life of Christ, and it was very well acted, the actors were professionals, I mean it wasn't cheap or cheesy, but there was a scene in the TV movie that I will never forget.
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Jesus, the actor portraying Jesus, goes to John the Baptist, and he says, I need you to baptize me.
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And John the Baptist, the character in the TV movie, says, only if you repent of your sins, I will baptize you, but only if you repent of your sins.
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So, even though the film was well done, when you think about production value, and professional actors, and all these things, but there was an underlying thought in the film, and that is the reason why Jesus was baptized, was because he was a sinner.
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And there are people who believe that.
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In fact, Brother Bert and I were talking the other day, there is an entire theology that is called adoptionism.
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And didn't you say it was in the Dakes Bible? And the idea is that Jesus was not the son of God until he was baptized.
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That he was not the son of God until he was adopted by God in his baptism.
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And that was the moment, you know, because he does say, this is my beloved son, the idea of that theology, which I would say is an errant theology, but the idea of that theology was that Jesus wasn't the only begotten son of God, but he was the adopted son of God, and God adopted him in the moment of his baptism.
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I would say that's not only a bad theology, that's a dangerous theology, because it construes the character and nature of who Jesus is.
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So with that being said, I want to for a moment, looking at these four verses regarding the nature of Christ, I want us to just consider what we are told about Jesus in regard to his nature, as whether or not he was a sinner.
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Stephen, would you read Hebrews 4.15? And that's, of course, referring to Jesus.
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We have a high priest, or he says we don't have a high priest who has not been tempted as we are, but in every way as tempted as we are, yet without sin.
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Now some people have an issue with the temptation in that passage, because they say, well, what does it mean he was tempted? Does that mean he actually considered sin? And that gets to the question of peccability versus impeccability.
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That's an entirely different conversation.
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I tend to believe Jesus is impeccable, meaning not only did he not sin, I don't believe he could have sinned, but that's an entirely different conversation, not necessarily one that we have to tackle tonight.
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But it does tell us he was without sin, very clearly, referring to Christ as our high priest.
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Okay, 2 Corinthians 5.21, Caleb, one of the most important passages in all the Bible when explaining the gospel.
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God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us.
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How is it that Christ could become our sin? Because he had none.
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How is it that he could take our sin? Because he didn't have any of his own, he didn't have to pay the penalty for himself, so he could pay the penalty for us.
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God made him who knew no sin.
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So Hebrews 4.15 and 2 Corinthians 5.21.
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That would be enough, two witnesses, right? That's what you need.
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But we have more than that.
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We have 1 John 3.5, Caleb.
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Isn't that clear? He appeared to take away sin, and in him is no sin.
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Now you may feel like, well that's enough, but I got one more.
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Go ahead, brother.
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That's right, and the reason why I put that one last is not necessarily because it comes last in line, but I want you to think of who's speaking.
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Peter is speaking, and in the last one, John was speaking.
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Both of these men knew Christ intimately.
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John rested his head upon the breast of the Savior on the night of the Last Supper.
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Peter walked with Christ as the mouthpiece of the apostles in many ways.
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The one with the foot in his mouth, but still the mouthpiece of the apostles.
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The one who was, in many ways, a leader among men.
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And both of these men clearly describe Jesus as being sinless.
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And if anyone would have known that was untrue, it would have been the men who were living with him day in, day out, every day for three years of ministry.
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So, we have Jesus being baptized, and to answer the first question of why was he baptized, we know this, it was not for sin.
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Jesus was not baptized because he was a sinner.
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No matter what the Jesus Epic miniseries might have people believe, that is not the case.
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But that leads to another question, and one that some might consider to be a difficult question.
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Well, if he wasn't being baptized as a sinner, what would be the reason? Now, one of the most common answers, and one that I don't particularly agree with, but I want to deal with it first, is that Jesus died as an example.
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Or, I'm sorry, not died, baptized as an example.
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And many of you have probably heard that, maybe you've even said it yourself.
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Well, Jesus didn't have to be baptized for sin, because he wasn't a sinner, but he was baptized because he was an example to us.
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He went and was baptized to show us that we need to be baptized.
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Now, again, I'm not saying that that idea is absolutely wrong, or that if you believe that you're a raving heretic, I'll call you that for something else.
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But I don't think that that is enough.
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I don't think that that gives us the heart of the answer.
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How many of you have heard that though? How many of you have heard that Jesus died? I keep saying Jesus died.
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I know he did, but not here.
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That Jesus was baptized for an example.
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Well, what I want to do, is I want to turn our attention to Matthew chapter three.
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Because, again, Mark gives us so precious little in this passage, it behooves us to jump over and get a little bit more in the gospel of Matthew, because Matthew does tell us something that Mark doesn't tell us.
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So if you have your Bibles, turn to Matthew three and go to verse 13.
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Okay.
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In Matthew three, 13, it says, then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John.
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These are almost the exact same words as Mark and his gospel.
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He says, in those days, Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee.
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Mark is a little more, tells us a little more, from Nazareth in Galilee.
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Matthew just says 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.
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And do you come to me? Right away, this is something that Mark completely doesn't mention at all.
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Mark's gospel has no record of this interaction between Jesus and John.
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And by the way, this throws the whole Jesus epic miniseries thing out of the water.
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And this is how it should have been.
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If you're gonna make a Jesus movie, make it right.
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And put the right words in his mouth.
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Because John's attitude to Jesus was not, you need to be baptized for your sins.
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His attitude was, I can't baptize you.
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I need to be baptized by you.
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How in the world can you come to me and ask me to baptize you? You're the Messiah.
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If anybody needs to be baptized, if there's a greater and lesser in this relationship, and we're gonna see that in a minute because John does say, I must increase, or Jesus must increase, I must decrease.
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If there's a greater and a lesser, if there's a greater than and a less than, you're the greater than, I'm the less than, and I ought to be baptized by you.
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But Jesus' next words are so important.
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He says in verse 15, 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.
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Now, just for a moment, we ask the question, why was Jesus baptized? Jesus does give us an answer.
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Go ahead.
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We're gonna get to the reason, but I'm saying, in the simplest of terms, he tells us, we are doing this, and he says, for us, to fulfill all righteousness.
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So the reason why he's baptized is to fulfill all righteousness.
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Now, we're gonna interpret that, what that means, but we would say, when people say, well, he was baptized as an example, that's not the reason Jesus gives.
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That's the point I'm making.
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Jesus didn't say, baptize me as an example to my followers.
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He didn't say that, and remember, we wanna be textual and accurate to the text.
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Jesus said, my reason is to fulfill all righteousness.
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Now, the big question is, what does that mean? Well, what does it mean to fulfill all righteousness? I have three thoughts that I wanna share with you about this in regard to how this action, on behalf of John and Jesus, remember he says, for us to fulfill all righteousness, how this works on behalf of both of them.
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One, and I'm gonna write these on the board.
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One, I think this affirms John, because what was John's role according to last week? Remember we studied last week, John was prophesied by the Old Testament, Malachi and Isaiah, as the forerunner of the Messiah, the one who would make his pass straight, the one who would announce him, right? So John has a role in all this.
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John's role is to be the herald.
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Just like in the ancient world when a king would go into a city, whether he was going to conquer or whether he was going to make peace, he would send his emissary before him and that one would go and that one would pave the way, as it were, for him to come.
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He would go in and make his path straight.
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He would let everyone know the king is coming and he would make the announcement.
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John is the announcer.
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John is the herald.
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John is the one whose job it is to let everyone in the world know.
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You realize his ministry probably only lasted maybe a few months, maybe six months or so.
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You know, John doing this, it was only for one purpose, to get everybody ready for the king.
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He lived his whole life to prepare for this one moment where he would begin being the voice in the wilderness, crying out into the wilderness, make the path straight and this is Jesus is affirming that he's the one.
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This is the guy.
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So he's coming and he's affirming what he's doing is right.
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He's affirming that what he's doing is in accordance with God's righteousness.
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God has commanded that this be done.
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Jesus is affirming John as his herald.
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The second thing he is doing is he is initiating Christ's ministry.
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In fact, if you want to say this, affirming John's ministry, if you're taking notes, and then he's initiating Christ's ministry.
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Now this one is going to take a little longer because we say he's affirming John's ministry by being baptized by him, but he's also initiating, it's initiating Christ's ministry because Christ is undergoing, in this rite of baptism, he's undergoing something much more than just the baptism.
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Christ in being baptized also experiences something else right as the baptism is completed.
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What does he experience? Anointing.
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Anointing, right? The anointing of what? The anointing of the Holy Spirit.
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The Bible says the heavens open, God speaks, the Spirit descends, and there is an anointing that happens at Jesus's baptism.
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Now I want you to in your mind think, what types of people in the Old Testament were anointed? There are three types.
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Kings, prophets, and priests.
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Kings, and that is why we call Jesus Messiah or Christ, by the way the Greek word Christ simply means the Hebrew word Messiah, and it's the word anointed one.
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The anointed one.
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Jesus is prophet.
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In fact this is in our Confession of Faith.
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If you look up the 1646 Confession of Faith, it has an entire section where it talks about Christ.
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Why do we need a priest? Because we need someone to represent us to God, and Christ is that.
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Why do we need a prophet? Because we need someone to represent God to us, and Christ is that.
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Why do we need a king? Because we need someone to give us commands and direction and law, and he is all of those things.
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Christ is prophet, priest, and king.
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All three of those anointed offices, Christ receives that anointing, which if you look at all four Gospels, what you find is in all four Gospels, Christ's ministry has all started the same way.
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At his baptism.
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Because this is the initiating point of his ministry.
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His anointing is the point where he starts.
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We don't know what Christ did up until now.
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The only thing, we get a few glimpses in the synoptic Gospels, we get Jesus at 12 year old teaching in the temple.
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When he's in John's Gospel, we get other events, a few things.
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In fact, John's Gospel, just to mention this, and we're going to read this in a few minutes, because I do want to show this to you tonight.
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John's Gospel doesn't mention Jesus' baptism.
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It's actually the only Gospel that doesn't say that Jesus was baptized.
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We're going to look at why in a minute.
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But it's insinuated, or the better word is inferred, that's the more theological proper word.
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It's inferred that he was baptized because John makes mention of him being the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
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John makes mention of him as, John says, I saw the heavens open and the Spirit descending on him.
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So even though his baptism isn't mentioned in John's Gospel, his anointing is.
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The fact that he saw the Spirit descend upon him.
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So this is an affirmation of John and an initiating of Christ in this moment of baptism.
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Now the third thing, and I do think this is also important, is that we see identification with, and I'm just going to put us, but the us there would be those he came to save.
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Christ is identifying with those he came to save.
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So again, not an example, that's not the term I'm using, but he is identifying with us.
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He's identifying as the one who came for the purpose of saving those who would believe on him.
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And what do those who believe on him do? Be baptized.
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All right, so he is not a sinner, amen? He was not baptized for sin.
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He was baptized to fulfill all righteousness.
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And again, the way that I would understand that, and I'm not saying I'm perfect, but I think that these are legitimate considerations, is that he's affirming John in his ministry.
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He is initiating his own ministry through the anointing of God.
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And John is acting as a prophet.
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I keep going back to number two, because it's so important.
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John is acting as a prophet here.
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You understand, he's an Old Testament prophet.
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If you weren't here last week, I pointed this out.
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John is the last Old Testament prophet.
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He is not really in the new covenant in the sense of the new covenant is initiated in Christ's blood.
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John is dead before that happens.
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John is at the end of the old covenant.
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He is the last Old Covenant prophet.
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And just like Samuel anointed Saul and David, and just like in, I was looking these up earlier, I was just looking for different places where kings were anointed.
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There's a place where Elijah anoints a king in 1 Kings 19.
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And there's all kinds of places where we see the prophets anointing kings.
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Christ is baptized by John, anointed from heaven.
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So I do think this one is very important.
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And then, of course, he identifies with us as his followers.
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Now, with that all in mind, I wanna now just consider the differences that we see in Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John.
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We've already looked at Matthew, but let's look very quickly, you're still in Matthew, I hope, beginning at verse 16.
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As he says, Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.
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Then he consented, verse 16, Again, you can look at Mark's gospel, it's almost the same.
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In fact, the one thing I wanna distinguish in Mark's gospel is in Mark's gospel, there's a different word used for the heavens being opened.
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And I remember when I was reading this, I try to read as much in the original language as my limited ability allows me to.
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And as I was reading in the original language, I noticed the word schizomenos.
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Schizomenos is the word that's used for the torn open.
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Mark, when you read it in Matthew, it says, it says, Behold, the heavens were opened.
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And I know, I don't know if you've ever thought about that.
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You just kind of think of the clouds open up or maybe the sky clears, right? But if you go back to Mark, that word schizomenos, the idea, and that's why the ESV translates, torn open.
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And I think it was much more of a stellar event than what we often picture.
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And I think Mark is sort of giving us an indication of that.
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There's something happening here that's gonna get the attention of everyone around.
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And what does it say in the King James in Mark? Either one of you guys.
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In Mark chapter one, verse 10.
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Sorry, I had you in Matthew.
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That's interesting because it doesn't really distinguish there with that word.
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Think of this in your mind though because schizomenos, you understand, it's where we get the word schism.
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It's where we get the word ripped or torn.
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You've heard of the great schism.
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Or even a pair of scissors.
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The idea of something that's cut or ripped.
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And Mark includes that idea.
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And I think the ESV does correct by indicating that.
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And this is one of the things about Mark.
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The reason why I bring this up.
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Mark is an interesting way of going really fast and missing a lot of details but adding in specific details that the other ones don't.
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And so even though we're gonna see as we study through this book.
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Like he didn't say anything about what John said to him.
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He didn't say anything about the Pharisees who come to.
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And we talked about that last week.
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How the Pharisees were there.
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And Matthew talks about that.
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Luke talks about that.
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Mark doesn't mention any of that.
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But he does mention this one little thing about the heavens being torn.
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And I just think that's an interesting addition that Mark is including in this section.
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And again, one that we wouldn't even notice if we either weren't looking at the original languages or maybe weren't looking at a particular translation of the original languages.
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So I just think that's.
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This is why I do recommend even if you have an affinity for a particular translation of the Bible.
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If you don't have the ability to look at the original languages.
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And most don't.
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So please don't feel like that's necessarily a hindrance.
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Because most people don't have the ability to read the original languages.
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But if you don't have the ability to read the original languages.
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Having multiple translations will sometimes help you pick up these little nuggets that maybe one or two won't be.
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Sometimes it'll confuse you.
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You gotta figure it out.
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But sometimes you'll see things that you wouldn't have seen otherwise.
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I have.
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I never hardly ever use it.
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But I have a Bible.
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And the reason I don't use it is because you could choke a camel with it.
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It's this big.
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But it's a parallel Bible that has the King James, the New American Standard Bible, and another two translations all in columns.
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So literally you can read one, jump and read the next, jump and read the next.
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And you can.
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It's easy at that point to pick up little verbal differences.
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Again, I don't need that anymore because I have it on my computer.
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And if you have a computer, you can do it on, what was he saying? Yeah, you can do it on your phone.
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Yeah.
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My favorite, by the way, not that this is really a big deal, but BibleHub is a terrific resource.
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And they do a lot of good stuff with the original languages.
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You can go on there and you can look at the Septuagint.
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You can look at the Masoretic text.
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You can compare it to different.
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And all that stuff is there and it's free.
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It's amazing.
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So BibleHub, there's Blue Letter Bible, there's other ones, but definitely your phone can do that.
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All right, so we see this.
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Now let's look at it from Luke's perspective.
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We've seen Matthew's perspective.
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We've seen Mark's perspective.
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And I did say I wasn't gonna do a full harmony of the gospels, but I can't help but just want to do.
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This is my favorite thing to compare these and see what one gives and what one leaves out.
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Luke is in chapter three, verse 21.
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Very similar to Mark.
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It's short.
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All right, in Luke chapter three, verse 21, it says, Now when all the people were baptized and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heavens opened and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove and a voice came from heaven.
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You are my beloved son.
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With you, I am well pleased.
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All right, for a moment, did anybody notice a difference? What's the difference? Hmm? He prayed, right? That's something that Luke indicates to us that we didn't see in Matthew and we didn't see in Mark.
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In fact, it's almost as if Luke separates the baptism from the anointing.
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Because here again, it says, Now when all the people were baptized and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, it was almost like he had been baptized and he went over and was praying and then the heavens were opened.
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Now, I don't think that's how it happened, but I'm saying if all we had was Luke, we might assume that there was some time separation between what happened in the water and what happened in the anointing.
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But I do think these are concurrent.
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And, yes, sir? Exactly.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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That was actually Mark.
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Mark loves that word immediately.
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He uses it over 40 times in his gospel.
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He's big into movement and the word immediately.
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So you're right.
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And that's why we need these multiple witnesses to get a picture.
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I think Jesus came out of the water praying.
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I think Jesus came out of the water praying and God in that moment, and I don't know if his hands were up or if his hands were like this.
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I've seen plenty of Jesus films and it's always different.
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You know, the old Jesus film, the one from the 70s, the Jesus film project, Jesus is like this.
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He's praying and the heavens open.
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And, you know, some he comes up and his hands are, we don't know.
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Speculation is not important.
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But we know this.
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Luke gives us this little additional detail.
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Jesus comes up, he's praying, and God in that sense responds with the anointing.
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But notice also the things that are consistent.
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John is the one doing the baptism.
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Jesus is being baptized.
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He's being baptized in the Jordan.
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These are all consistent things.
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Remember when we talk about harmony and I know Miss Jackie, you were in the class, we talked about the New Testament and the Old Testament and how sometimes stories will seem to conflict.
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The first thing we should look at when we see conflict is we should look at where they agree.
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And a lot of these things are, the one thing that agrees across the board is what God said.
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You are my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.
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What a wonderful thing to know that all the gospel writers, nobody said anything different.
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That was what God said.
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And God initiates Christ's ministry with this confirmation.
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Not that today you became my son, as the adoptionists would argue, but you are my beloved son.
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Yes, sir.
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No, but I will say this.
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There are times in the synoptics especially, that's the three, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the synoptic gospels.
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And I talk about this in my New Testament class.
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There are times where there seems to be some conflict about what was said.
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But this is one of those, this is not one of those times.
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And that was my point.
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Yeah.
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Sure, yeah.
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And I would agree with that for sure.
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Yeah.
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And so we have these three confirmations.
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Now I want us to look at John because John again doesn't even mention the fact that Jesus was baptized.
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I find that utterly fascinating.
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And this is gonna be the last thing we look at tonight because we're getting close to our end of time.
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Not the end of time.
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That may come.
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I said last Sunday, it could be 10,000 years, right? But to the end of our study time.
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Go to John chapter one and verse 19.
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Actually, you know what? Just for the sake of time, let's go to verse 29.
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I marked it at verse 19 because verses 19 to 28 is John's message.
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And it's also people asking him, who are you? And all those things.
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But we really don't have time to get into that tonight.
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So let's just go down to verse 29 because this is the comparative passage to the rest.
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This is the parallel passage.
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It says in verse 29, the next day he saw, oh wait, no wait, I'm sorry.
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We do need to go up because we need to say, we need to start verse 24.
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Or verse 25.
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Because what comes before that? These people being sent from the Pharisees to ask John questions.
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Verse 25.
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They asked him, why are you baptizing? If you're neither the Christ nor Elijah nor the prophet.
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John answered them, I baptize with water, but among you stands one you do not know.
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Even he who comes after me, the strap of whose sandal, I am not worthy to untie.
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Now that's very similar to something he said in the other gospels, right? He said, I'm not worthy.
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These things took place in Bethany across the Jordan where John was baptizing.
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The next day, he saw Jesus coming toward him and said, behold, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
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That could be a whole sermon by itself.
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But then he goes on to say, this is he of whom I said, after me comes a man who ranks before me because he was before me.
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By the way, again, wish I had time to really break all this down.
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Jesus wasn't before John by birth.
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John was born before Jesus.
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So when he says he was before me, he's referring to the pre-incarnate Christ.
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John stresses Christ's pre-incarnate nature from the very moment of the book.
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In the beginning was the word, the word was God, the word was God.
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All those things are expressions of the pre-incarnate Christ.
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And here John even says, he was before me.
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He says something a little difficult to understand in verse 31.
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He says, I myself did not know him, but for the purpose I came baptizing with water that he might be revealed to Israel.
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Now, a lot of people have issue with that because they say, wait a minute, John's Jesus's cousin.
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We learn about that in the gospel of Luke.
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How did John not know him? The term no here could be understood in different ways that he maybe he didn't know that he was the Messiah.
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Maybe he did not know him by, the way John Gill understands this is that he didn't know him by face, that they grew up separate.
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So he didn't know him to look at him.
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And there's different ways to understand that word no.
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And I'm not telling you I know all the answers to that.
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I do think that's a difficult one because we know John knew him in the womb because when Jesus was in Mary's womb and John was in Elizabeth's womb, John leapt, right? So he knows who Jesus is, but he's saying in some way he doesn't know him, whether it's by face, maybe he's never seen him, maybe because they grew up apart or maybe he didn't know until now that he's the Messiah.
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These are different ways of understanding this passage.
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But the key point is this.
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He says, I did not know him, but for this purpose I came baptizing with water that he might be revealed to Israel.
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I know now this is my purpose.
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I know now that the very purpose I'm doing this is for him, that he will be revealed to Israel.
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This is my reason for being.
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John had one singular purpose in life and that was this short time of ministry where he would herald the Messiah.
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John understood his role.
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I think sometimes, and again, I don't want to take too much time, I think sometimes we get very dissatisfied with life.
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Oh, we don't get what we want, we don't have the things that we want.
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What if God just wants us to proclaim his son and that was all he called us to do? Wouldn't that be enough? If our job, if the only thing we were ever to do was to proclaim Christ.
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As the old poem says, only one life will soon be passed and only what's done for Christ will last.
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No matter if you have big cars and big houses and big bank accounts, none of that's gonna last.
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Christ will last.
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And he said, this is the very reason that I'm doing all this is to present him to Israel.
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And John bore witness.
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This is the part I was trying to get to, verse 32.
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I saw the spirit descend from heaven like a dove and it remained on him.
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I myself did not know him, but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me, he on whom you see the spirit descend and remain, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit and I have seen and have borne witness that this is the son of God.
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First of all, just powerful.
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But what I wanna point out, notice nowhere in there was Jesus' baptism.
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John is speaking about the anointing of Jesus, which happened at the baptism, we know this from the other gospels, in the past tense.
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Notice again, look at it, he says in verse 32, and John bore witness.
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I saw the spirit descend.
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So we don't even get in this gospel a narrative of the event.
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We get the event from John's memory.
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I saw the spirit descend on him.
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And then that confirmed to me because the one who sent me to baptize, which of course is God the Father, said that when I see the spirit descend upon him, I will know this is the one.
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You see, this is John's perspective and John doesn't even mention the fact that he baptized him.
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But he does mention the anointing.
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He does mention what happened at the baptism.
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And therefore, we can see it all come together when you have all four gospels and you look at them in harmony.
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Look at verse 35 very quickly and we'll close with this.
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The next day John was standing with two of his disciples and he looked at Jesus as he walked by and said, behold, the Lamb of God.
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What a wonderful, wonderful truth.
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And John points to Jesus as the Lamb of God.
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Now next week we're going to continue in Mark's gospel as we do follow Jesus from the banks of the Jordan into the desert where Jesus demonstrates himself to be impeccable by receiving threefold temptations from Satan and standing against all of them.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank you for your word, for your truth, for your gospel, and for your son.
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Lord, may we grow in our understanding of him as we continue to study this gospel, the gospel of Mark, as well as the other gospels that speak to this wonderful life.
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In Christ's name, Amen.