The Baptism Of Jesus Series

We are continuing on with the series we call The Story. The Story is God’s story as told through the people, places, and events of the Bible. For the last six months, we have been looking at the story as told through the Old Testament. Hopefully, you gained a better understanding of the Old Testament. This week and actually for the remainder of the year, we are going to be looking at God’s story as told through the New Testament. Specifically, the story of Jesus, his ministry, and his miracles, as well as the start of the church. You may recall last week we closed out the history of the Old Testament by telling the story of the Jewish people who were away in captivity in Babylon returning back to Jerusalem to build their temple. Then Nehemiah coming along and noticing that the temple was without walls, so he started this building project to build the walls, and the temple became secure. That is the good news. The bad news is that 400 years later the Jewish people were still without a king. They were subject to the surrounding kings and kingdoms. At this particular time, in this particular place, it was under the Roman rule, particularly King Herod. This was upsetting for the Jews or at least troubling because they had been told in the Old Testament several times that the Jews would get a new king someday. A king that would have a dynasty that would be forever. A king along the lines of King David. We know that God is not one to not follow through on his promises. As we open up the New Testament, God does bring a new king into the picture. A king that would be unlike all the other Jewish kings. A king with a kingdom that would not line up at all to the expectations of the Jews. We know that that king is our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

As we open the New Testament, we know that there is about a 400-year gap between the closing of the history in the Old Testament to the coming of Jesus Christ. Even though there was a 400-year gap, there were people who still really held on to that promise. They knew that someday God would deliver on his promise to give an everlasting king. Sure enough he did deliver it. He delivered it through that event that we know as the incarnation, also known as the birth of Jesus Christ, and also known as Christmas. That is how the king comes into the picture. We know that when the baby Jesus was born there was a lot of speculation that indeed Jesus was the King of the Jews. So much so that when the three kings came around and asked Herod, they said “Where is the one who has been born King of the Jews. We saw a star in the east and have come to worship him.” The people were expecting this new king. They were expecting a new kingdom. Because I suspect that most of you are pretty well familiar with the Christmas story, what I am going to do is not begin the story of the New Testament in the Christmas story, the birth of Jesus. I am going to open the story in the New Testament with the baptism of Jesus. Probably next to the birth of Jesus, the baptism of Jesus was probably the most significant event in Jesus’ life. At the baptism is when Jesus is basically really introduced into the world. His ministry kind of kicks off. He begins to do his miracles. Most importantly, he begins to teach his disciples about himself, about God, about who they are, and to encourage them to be disciples of Jesus Christ. That is the bottom line in the New Testament. Through his words and through the messages found in the gospels, we are being encouraged to become full-fledged disciples of Jesus Christ. The story of Jesus’ baptism is actually found in variations in all four gospels. Today, I choose to read from the version from the gospel of Matthew. I am going to read through Matthew 3:1-17 and I will go back and hit on some areas. (Scripture read here.)

If you paid attention to the reading, and hopefully the video, you know that this guy John the Baptist, also known as John the Baptizer, he was pretty much a wild dude. This guy wore clothes made of camel hair. He ate bugs and honey. That was what he did. He went around yelling at people. As I thought about it, this kind of reminded me of the campus preachers that I used to encounter back at Portland State in the late 80s when I was in college out there. I remember going out during my lunch hour and sitting around the commons area and you would get these hippie types basically coming out and preaching up a storm and holding up those signs that say “Repent or burn” basically. John the Baptist reminds me of a character like that. But with the street preachers and the campus preachers, we were pretty much able to ignore them. Most people would ignore those types of guys. But John the Baptist was not one that could be ignored. It goes on to say in Matthew 3:1-2 that “In those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the desert of Judea and saying, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.’” We will talk about this more in the next few weeks. We know that as you read through the gospels, some of the writers refer to the kingdom of heaven and others speak of it as the kingdom of God. We will talk about that in the next few weeks. Right now, I just want to consider this notion of kingdom. We are not used to using the word kingdom very much. It doesn’t come up in our common vocabulary. The reality is that we all have our own personal kingdom. A kingdom is basically a domain, an area of influence, an area of responsibility that we have. Pretty much every one has some sort of a domain. Even if you are single and stay at home and all you have is a cat and a dog. That is basically your domain. You have a family and the family becomes your domain. Then you go out into the work world and people have their domain. You know that in the work world people have certain areas they are responsible for and you better not step into their area. That is their domain. That is their kingdom. You can take it farther. You can go into the community and into the nonprofits and into the city governments and into the world governments and you have people that basically do have kingdoms. That is the thing to remember. We all have a personal domain.