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I don’t know how it is, dear saints, in your mind when you picture the baptism of Jesus, but I always think of John the Baptist, this old, grisly man with his big, gray beard and crazy hair standing there in the middle of the Jordan River. I have to remember that he was only 30 years old, maybe 31. Jesus was 30.
And Jesus comes down to him as John is preaching to the whole, in fact, the whole of Judea was coming down to hear John preach and was going to be baptized by him to have their sins washed away. “Repent, the kingdom of heaven is at hand,” John was saying, baptizing the whole crowds down there in the Jordan River. And in the midst of the crowd now comes Jesus, who presents himself to John for baptism. And John sees him, and he recognizes him, and it’s amazing that John already knows so much about him, that Jesus not only is his cousin, but also that Jesus is the perfect one, the Holy One, the one who never sinned.
John was preaching, “Repent and be baptized.” Jesus is the only person in the whole history of the world who didn’t need to repent. He didn’t need to be baptized. He didn’t need to have his sins washed away because there was no sin to wash away. So Jesus presents Himself to John to be baptized, and John says, “You want to be baptized by me? I should be baptized by you.” And John was right.
But Jesus says, and this is just to make note of it, these are the first words that we hear Jesus speak since He was 12 years old; these are the first words that He speaks as an adult in the gospel, but they are words of such calm clarity and authority. Jesus says to John, “Let it be, let it stand. Let it be so now, for thus it’s right for us to fill up righteousness.” That word is enough. John says, “Okay,” and so Jesus goes into the water with John, and John baptizes him there in the river.
Then Jesus comes up out of the water. It’s probably best to think not of Jesus coming up out of the water like He was under the water and He stands up if He was submerged, but rather He comes up out of the water, and He goes onto the bank of the river. When He’s there on the bank of the river, the heavens open, and the Holy Spirit descends in the shape of a dove, and a voice comes from heaven; it’s the voice of God the Father, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”
That’s the first of only three times that we hear the voice of God the Father in all the New Testament, in all the Gospel. It’s there, that first sermon by God the Father, and then at the transfiguration of Jesus when God the Father also preaches the same sermon, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” He added to the little verse, “Hear Him.” And then the last sermon the Father preaches is in Holy Week when Jesus is praying, “Father, glorify Your name,” and the Father answers and says, “I have glorified it and I will glorify it again.”
But here in the Jordan, God the Father preaches, “This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased,” and Jesus there begins his work as the Christ. Now, that’s the main thing of the baptism of Jesus. His baptism is his ordination. His baptism is when he is put into the office of being the Messiah or the Christ. We confess in the Creed, “I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ,” those three things, Lord and Jesus in Christ. But to think of it this way, Jesus is Lord from eternity. “Today I have begotten you,” we heard that in the intro from Psalm 2. Jesus is eternally the Lord, but he’s given the name Jesus when he’s eight days old in 2 BC. But now, in his baptism, he’s given the office of Christ, the anointed one, the Messiah.
If you would have met Jesus before his baptism, he would have said, “I’m Jesus.” If you met him after, he said, “I’m Jesus Christ.” It’s when he takes up the office. Now this is important for a lot of reasons, but I think maybe one is, this always is challenging me. I think it challenges us in our modern way of thinking because we don’t think about the world in terms of office. We think about it more in terms of person. And that’s fine, and we look at people as individuals, and so they are, but the Bible and the Lord himself would have us have kind of an office-centered way of looking at the world.
I think this is one of the reasons why the way that we think about things in the church and the way that people think about things not in the church rubs—there’s friction there—because we think about things very differently. For example, we know that when we’re born we become people, and the Lord in fact gives us an office as soon as we’re born. We have the office of child to our parents, but the Lord will add offices to us. So as we grow up, we’re given the office of Christian in our baptism, we’re given the office of public witness to the faith in our confirmation. If the Lord grants it, we’re given the office of husband or of wife when the Lord gives us the gift of marriage, and then if the gift of children come, we have the office of parent. Some people are put into the office of preaching. Other people have different offices and different callings in this life.
And what you are authorized to do before you are in the office is different than what you are authorized to do after you’re put in the office. Just as an example, you won’t see Vicar Davis standing at the altar and speaking the words of institution for the Lord’s Supper until he’s ordained. But the moment that he’s ordained, you’ll find him at the altar consecrating the Lord’s body and blood because that gift of the public distribution of the Lord’s Supper belongs to the office.
And maybe this is where this kind of hits our culture and our society the clearest is when it comes to marriage. When two people are married, they’re put into the office of husband and wife, and look at what happens. What’s a sin on the morning that you’re married is in fact a good work on the night of your marriage. And what changed? I mean you didn’t change that much; you’re 12 hours older. But the Lord has put you into the office of husband or of wife, and that gives us a totally different way of acting and engaging with the world.
This is just important for us to think of things in terms of office and to ask the question, “What office do I have? What am I called to do? Where has the Lord placed me in this life?” And with that office comes duties and responsibilities. Most of you are confirmed. That means you came and you confessed your faith, and the pastor that confirmed you laid his hands on you, prayed for the Holy Spirit; that puts you into the office of public confessor of the faith. You most visibly confess your faith when you come up here to the Lord’s altar and receive the body and blood of Jesus.
Some of you have the office of husband and wife; all of you have the office of child; some of you have the office of parent. The Lord has put you in that office. And maybe the second thing about it is that we see that when Jesus was ordained into this unique office of Messiah, the Lord gave the gift of the Holy Spirit, and that’s also true for you. The Lord knows that these offices that he’s called us to are difficult, but he has not left us alone in them. This is the most important thing that we confess about the Holy Spirit: that the Holy Spirit comes on us to help us and give us strength to go faithfully about the work that the Lord has given to us.
You wouldn’t think that Jesus would need the Holy Spirit. After all, he’s God in the flesh, right? But this is how it works. When the Lord calls us to an office, he gives us the Spirit. That’s why when there’s an ordination, the church is decked in red and we lay hands on. The same at confirmation. We lay hands and pray for the Holy Spirit. The same is at marriage. We lay hands on the husband and wife and pray that the Lord would give them the strength that’s needed. I think sometimes we also should do that whenever the Lord gives us the gift of children. We should lay hands on the new parents and pray that the Lord would give them strength. And then maybe again when the kids are teenagers, we could lay hands on again and pray for the Holy Spirit.
But this is the point. All of us have difficult callings. You all have difficult callings. I know that, you know that, the Lord knows that, which is why he has promised you the Holy Spirit for the work that he’s given you. If your marriage is difficult, if you’re called to be single and the Lord has put you in that office, if your grandparents and kids haven’t been baptized yet, or if you have work and it’s tough getting along with the people at work or your neighbors or whatever, the Lord knows that difficulty, and he’s not left you alone in this; he’s given you the Holy Spirit. So that our prayers are something like, “Lord, you’ve given me this calling, you’ve given me this office, you’ve given me this duty, this vocation, and I need your help. Give me your Holy Spirit, fill me with your Spirit, so that I might have strength to act in love and wisdom and serve the people that you’ve given me.” The Lord loves to hear that prayer. The Lord has promised to answer it. So you have the Holy Spirit.
Now, this helps us to understand what was going on in the baptism of Jesus, because he was being anointed. It says it in Psalm 45; we had that on Friday night. Psalm 45 says, “You have anointed him with the spirit of gladness above all of his fellows.” While we receive the Holy Spirit in measure for all of our vocations, Jesus received the Holy Spirit without measure for the work, for this unique work, and for this unique calling of being the Savior of the world, of being the Messiah. So his baptism is very unique; he is set apart as the Savior of the world.
And it’s amazing that it happens in baptism. It’s really quite stunning that while the Lord was using baptism to wash away the sins of everybody else, the Lord uses baptism to give Jesus the office of starting to carry all of those sins. The sins that the Lord washes off in baptism have to go somewhere. Your sins that were forgiven in baptism have to end up somewhere, and in His baptism, they end up on Jesus.
I think I told you all that when I was 19-ish, I lived in this really remote village in Fiji. It didn’t have running water or electricity or anything. There was a little river that ran around the village, and so the people would bathe in the river. I mean, the river was kind of everything in this place. But I noticed one day that the people, they were right there by the river, but instead of just going like 10 feet to bathe in the river, they would walk way up the river to bathe or to clean dishes or whatever. I asked them one time why, and they looked at me like I was a real fool, and they said, “Well, do you want to be downstream of everybody else bathing?” The stuff that you wash off has gotta go somewhere, so you want to be upstream of all that.
Well, that’s kind of how baptism is. The Lord takes us upstream to wash our sins off, but when Jesus is baptized, he’s downstream, so that all the stuff that’s washed off of us is collected by him. I have this picture. I think I’ve preached this before; I just don’t have a better picture. If you can imagine John the Baptist there in the river, and just imagine all the people, instead of people, just imagine them as sheep, as lambs there on the side of the river, and they’re just disgusting and filthy. They smell bad, their teeth are dirty, and they’re bloody and biting each other. It’s just a dismal crew of sheep. And John the Baptist takes them and he dips them in the water, and they come out glowing, radiant, and they smell like roses and fresh-brewed coffee.
One after another, John is just dipping and washing these sheep, and the dirty come out clean, the filthy come out washed, the sinful come out forgiven, the weak come out strong. But in the midst of this gross crowd of sheep, one comes to the edge that has not a single speck—so clean, so radiant that it looks like all the dirt from all the other ones is bouncing off of him. And this one comes down to the water’s edge, and John says, “You don’t need this,” but this sheep says, “Let it be so to fulfill all righteousness.” Okay, so John takes him, and when he dips this one into the water, all the muck and nastiness and filth of all the other sheep that’s floating in the water like an oil slick goes onto him.
And John puts this one on the bank and points to him and says, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” Do you see? So that in his baptism, Jesus begins this work of carrying our sins and carrying our sorrows and carrying our guilt and bearing our shame and being in our place, not only under the condemnation of the law but also of the anger of God, so that all of our sins are taken off of us and placed on Jesus until he is at last crucified for us. That’s why we sing of baptism as a crimson flood, because the power of baptism is the blood and suffering of Jesus. That’s how our sins are taken away. They’re not just washed off; they’ve got to go somewhere, and they go to Jesus, who carries them for us.
Which is why, dear saints—and this is quite wonderful—it’s why although the Jesus’ baptism is so unique, it puts him into the office. The same thing that happens after Jesus is baptized also happens now for you. When Jesus came up out of the water and he stood there and the Holy Spirit descended upon him and God the Father looks down at his son and he says, “This is my beloved, my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased,” when you are baptized, the Lord says the same thing—if you can believe it—he says the same thing to you. You are his beloved son; you are his beloved daughter. He is well pleased with you. That’s the promise—the promise of the baptism and the crucifixion of Jesus, the promise of your baptism.
And that’s what you’ll hear on the Judgment Day. So we give thanks to God for the baptism of Jesus. And we give thanks to God that he gives us that baptism as well. In the name of Jesus, amen. The peace of God, which passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
