‘Behold, the Lamb
of God’
ide
o amnos tou theou
College Study
103rd teaching
3.15.2015
“Beloved Son”
Luke 3:15-22
“Now
as the people were in expectation, and all reasoned in their hearts about John,
whether he was the Christ or not, John answered, saying to all, ‘I indeed
baptize you with water; but One mightier than I is coming, whose sandal strap I
am not worthy to loose. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His
winnowing fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clean out His threshing
floor, and gather the wheat into His barn; but the chaff He will burn with
unquenchable fire.’ And with many other exhortations he preached to the people.
But Herod the tetrarch, being rebuked by him concerning Herodias, his brother
Philip’s wife, and for all the evils which Herod had done, also added this,
above all, that he shut John up in prison.
“When all the people were baptized, it came to pass that Jesus also was
baptized; and while He prayed, the heaven was opened. And the Holy Spirit
descended in bodily form like a dove upon Him, and a voice came from heaven
which said, ‘You are My beloved Son; in You I am well pleased.’
Tonight’s study is entitled “Beloved
Son”.
Last week we began this third chapter
in Luke and took a close look at the character of John the Baptist,
specifically the challenging boldness with which he addressed the people he
ministered to. His is an example of directness and straightforward-ness that we
should seek to emulate when we talk with others about spiritual things: no
beating around the bush, no dominating fear of offending, just the plain truth
(and let’s not forget: that’s truth in love).
Now contained in Luke chapter three is
the entirety of John’s career. The chapter opened with the words that harkened
back to the careers of the ancient prophets of the Old Testament, “the word of the Lord came to John…”, and
the chapter later concludes that same ministry of John the Baptist. We’re
seeing the entire span of his career from the moment he was called by God to
preach to the moment that preaching ended and he was imprisoned by Herod.
Obviously, the culmination, the whole
reason for John’s ministry was not just to get a bunch of people dunked in the
Jordan, nor was the point of John’s ministry ultimately the preaching of
repentance. The point of John’s ministry was that he become that “voice crying
out in the wilderness: prepare the way of the LORD”. The point of John’s
ministry was to point to the arrival
of Jesus Christ upon the public scene. Therefore, John’s ministry ends once
Jesus’ ministry begins, or as John the Baptist himself reflected: “He must increase and I must decrease” (John 3:30).
Everybody was looking at John. The
nation was focused on him. Now all John had to do was shift that focus from
himself and onto Jesus. Remember that John didn’t confuse himself with Christ;
he didn’t mistake himself for the Savior. He was a minister and servant and a
preacher, but the real Redeemer was stepping onto the scene. Thus once Jesus
was baptized and John had the famous occasion to spot Christ in the crowd and
say the words “Behold the Lamb of God!”, then John’s purpose was fulfilled. But
before this wild wilderness man exits the stage, he has these words to say
about the character of Christ’s ministry:
v.16
Who is this One that is coming? John
describes Him as mightier, One whose “sandal
strap I am not worthy to loose”. There’s some ancient phraseology that’s
lost on us in our modern times. The Jews considered the feet to be among the
dirtiest places on the whole body, and the removal of someone’s sandals by
another would be a dirty task for servants. Here’s what Spurgeon said on the
matter, ever eloquently: “This putting on, and taking off and putting away of
sandals, was an office usually left to menial servants, it was not a work of
any repute or honor, yet the Baptist felt that it would be a great honor to be
even a menial servant of the Lord Jesus. He felt that the Son of God was so
infinitely superior to himself that he was honored if only permitted to be the
meanest slave in His employ. He would not allow men to attempt comparisons
between himself and Jesus, he felt that none could, for a moment, be allowed.”
John felt so far below Christ that removing his sandals he considered to be too good for him.
Now the bizarre thing to note then is
that Jesus Christ, this One who was infinitely superior not just to John but to
everyone, to the Pharisees, to the sinners, to His disciples, would later Himself adopt the dirty task of a
servant and He was His own disciples feet. There the roles are reversed. Jesus
came to serve and He demonstrated that, even though He should have been served
by others, by cleaning the filthy toes of each of His disciples.
Next, John draws a distinction between
himself and this One who is coming, Christ, and between their two separate
ministries. And how much more of a contrast can you imagine than “fire and
water”? John says he baptized the people with water, but the One who is coming
will baptize with fire.
John’s ministry, characterized by immersion
in water, baptism, could do the best that any man, any ritual or any religion
could do: clean the outward man. John
could wash those he baptized in water and simply recognize their repentance but
that’s it. He couldn’t help work out that repentance. He couldn’t produce the
fruit of repentance in someone’s life. The best sermon that John the Baptist
ever preached (and he was quite a preacher; remember many went out to hear him
and be baptized by him), the best words that John could share could never come
close to what Christ could do by baptizing with the Holy Spirit and fire.
John could only encourage people to
repent. The Messiah can actually offer forgiveness. John could clean up a man
on the outside. Jesus can clean a man on the inside, in the heart. John could
baptize and preach that a man should cleanse his habits and the do right. Jesus
can cleanse a man’s heart and enable him to do what is right. John was a great
preacher, but he could never come close to the ministry that the Holy Spirit has
inside each believer in transforming us into the very image of the Messiah,
sanctifying, purifying. John could shout “bear fruit worthy of repentance”, but
only the Holy Spirit can actually produce that fruit in a believer’s life.
Commentator Matthew Henry wrote: “John
can do no more than baptize with water, in token that they ought to purify and
cleanse themselves; but Christ can, and will baptize with the Holy Ghost; he
can give the Spirit, to cleanse and purify the heart, not only as water washes
off the dirt on the outside, but as fire clears out the dross that is within,
and melts down the metal, that it may be cast into a new mould.”
The best preaching, the best religious
systems, the best moral codes, the best ceremonies or rituals, typified by the
human ministry of John the Baptist, can never make a person new. They can
merely patch up, fix up or wash off the old, until we get dirty again. But in
Christ, we are a new creation.
He will baptize with the Holy Spirit,
a promise fulfilled years later at Pentecost, when the Spirit was poured out
upon the believers gathered together in Jerusalem.
v.17
Emphasizing the “fire” of the
Messiah’s ministry, John describes a purifying that will come along with it.
Doesn’t fire do just that: purifies, even destroys? Fire wipes things out and
transforms. Christ in you and in me is the most destructive force in the world.
Not only is He the God that can obliterate the world with a thought, or
recreate it on a whim (as He someday will according to the book of Revelation),
but in us He can do what no mere religion can: transform sinners into His
likeness, purify sinners into the sanctified. He is a consuming fire (Hebrews 12:29), and He can demolish our
bad habits, our evil thoughts and our wicked hearts and transform them into
righteousness, love, peace and holiness. Holiness is only produced by the fire
of Christ.
But what the heck is a winnowing fan?
I looked it up. It’s an agricultural tool from ancient times. It’s basically
used in the chaff-removal process. Understand that when you go to the grocery
store and buy something like rice (which you should do often because rice is
delicious), that this rice has undergone some preparation before it makes it to
your local grocery store. As modern Americans, we are severely removed from the
actual process of preparing food. When you go out and get a cheeseburger, you
hardly give it a moment’s thought to imagine the bovine that went under the
butcher’s knife, that gave up its own milk, to make that cheeseburger.
Thus, understand, that for preparing
rice for consumption what has to be done is separate the actual rice-grain from
the rice-husk. Basically, you could put the rice in this winnowing fan (which
looks curiously like a cradle and a basket) and raise it up to allow the husks,
the chaff to fall to the ground and separate from the grain or the seed or
whatever needed separating.
The agricultural metaphor is that
Christ has this tool in His hand, and He will clean out the chaff, the husks,
and take the wheat into His barn whereas the worthless chaff will be taken and
burned in the fire. Don’t underestimate the severity of the situation. You’ll
end up in either one of two places, gathered up to Christ or set apart to
unquenchable fire. What’s more, the things that we do for Christ will last,
whereas the selfish deeds, the things we did in our flesh, the lust, the greed,
the hatred, the resentment, the indifference, the misplaced motivations and
priorities will all be burned and have no eternal value.
As Pastor David Guzik pointed out:
“The Messiah will also be the one to divide the true from the false, to
separate the wheat from the chaff… Judas is set apart from Peter; one thief
blasphemes, another believes.” Which side will you end up on?
v.18-20
The close of John’s public ministry.
With characteristic directness and
boldness, John rebukes one of the most powerful men in the region: Herod the
tetrarch for stealing his brother Philip’s wife, as well as for all the other
evil that Herod did. What an example
there of preaching without fear.
The full story of John’s rebuke of
what seems like Herod’s very soap-opera-like life is found in Mark 6:17-29. Turn there and check it
out, if you like.
So just like his predecessors, the
prophets, before him, John the Baptist has served the Lord, run his course, and
finished well, though the world responds to him with rejection. Tradition holds
that Isaiah was cut in half with a wooden saw, that Joel was bludgeoned with a
staff, that Amos was tortured, that Habakkuk was stoned by the very people he
ministered to, Jeremiah also was stoned to death, Zechariah was killed in the
temple where his own blood was sprinkled on the altar. Even those prophets who
died in peace, of old age, knew careers that were marked by rejection, by
wandering, by cold, hunger and thirst, by hardship. Was John any better than
they?
Was John any better than our Lord, who
Himself was rejected by the world too? John
15:18-20. Jesus reminds us: “If the
world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would
love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the
world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A
servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will also
persecute you…”
v.21-22
This is Luke’s version of the Baptism
of Jesus, which marks the beginning of Christ’s public ministry in Israel.
There’s probably no better symbol than baptism to mark the beginning of the
Messiah’s ministry, since baptism symbolizes the death of the old life and
rising up to new life for the believer today, but for Jesus on that day, this
moment represented the death of His old life of carpentry and living with His
family to rising up to the new life of public ministry, of the healings and
exorcisms and sermons that paved the road to the cross. This is the moment that
marked the change in the course of His life, thus far.
All four gospels reference this event.
Let’s take a look at the four different records and see what we can discern
from the various details.
A volunteer for Matthew 3:13-17. What is different from Luke’s version?
A volunteer for Mark 1:9-11. What else differs from
Luke’s version?
A volunteer for John 1:29-34. What’s different from Luke’s
version?
What Luke points out is unique is he
mentions that Jesus came to be baptized “when
all the people were baptized”, whether that means at the end of that day or
if it means that was going to be the end of John’s career, Jesus came last to
be baptized. Again, this signaled the end of John’s ministry.
Also, Luke is the only one to record
that Jesus was praying during the event of His baptism.
Now the big is this? Why did Jesus get
baptized? And why did He get baptized by John who was specifically we’re told
preaching a baptism of repentance? What did Jesus have to repent of? He was a
Jewish man, who according to His childhood events, grew up keeping the law and
observing the religion of his people, and what’s more being the sinless, impeccable
Son of God, He had no sin to repent of at baptism! In fact, Matthew reported
that John even protested against Jesus, recognizing that Jesus didn’t need
John’s water-baptism, John needed Jesus’ fire-baptism.
There are several good reasons why
Jesus was baptized: He was endorsing John’s ministry, He was providing an
example of obedience for His followers, He was undertaking initiation for His
own priesthood, but most importantly Jesus went where the sinners went. Even
beyond this moment, He went where the sinners went: in the cities, into their
own homes, in the streets, in the fields. He went where the tax-collectors, the
frauds, the hypocrites, the prostitutes, the corrupt, where all of them went.
So too, He went where sinners went and was Himself baptized among them.
Did people misunderstand and malign
Him for that? Did people speak against Him for befriending crude and rude
people? Sure they did. People talked behind His back all the time. But He would
rather do what was right and still be misunderstood and maligned. He chose to
reach out to the lost, to the unloved and the unlovely, and allow Himself to be
rejected.
Jesus did not come to an ivory tower.
Jesus went among people and we’ll see that as a mark of His ministry, right
from its very outset here in the waters of the Jordan. Jesus went among people,
built relationships with people, spoke with people, laughed and wept with
people, and eventually the Son of God went where all sinners go: to their
deaths. Jesus went where sinners went, even to the grave. Paul said he preached
Christ crucified. That’s it. That’s the core message. That’s the thing for the
church to get excited about. That’s the thing to share with the world. That’s
the amazing shock that the Perfect One, the pristine Man, came into the world
flawless as a white diamond, and was stained with the mud of the Jordan,
stained the poisonous word-traps of the scribes, stained with the strikes of
his enemies, stained with the company of liars and hypocrites, sullied with the
tears of harlots, and finally drenched in the blood and sweat of his own body
as He bore the weight of the iniquity of the entire race up the hill of Calvary
where that pristine Man of God died in the lowest possible place that any man
could die. Don’t ever cease to be amazed by that.
And, ladies and gentlemen, identified
with sinners though He never became one of them, yet how remarkable that we who
are sinners find it so difficult to empathize with, sympathize with and
identify with our own kind: sinners of the world. Jesus, thank God, didn’t
think of Himself as too good for sinners, so why should we?
God help us to live the life of
Christ.
Look again at these verses. Another
important dynamic we’re seeing in this report is the dynamic of the Trinity.
Three distinct Persons are here: the Son being baptized by John, the Spirit
descending in visible, bodily form like
a dove, and the voice from heaven, the voice of the Father saying the words “You are My beloved Son.”
If Jesus thus far in His earthly life
had never heard the audible voice of His Father before, than this moment would
be monumental. He is about to undertake a three-year ministry that would lead
Him to the cross, this voice from His Father would be a tremendous
encouragement. The Father was commending the life of Christ, saying not just to
Jesus but to everyone who heard it that this was the Messiah, the Son of God.
The Father said “In You I am well pleased.”
Just like in Isaiah 42:1, the Father
says of the Son that He delights in Him.
Jesus is the perfect Son, perfectly
obedient, even to death, perfectly sinless, perfectly faithful. It amazes me
that this is how the Father sees His own children, you and I His adopted sons
and daughters, in Christ. By His grace and because of Jesus’ faithfulness and
obedience, the Father looks upon you and I and says “I am well pleased because
I am well pleased in Jesus”.
But I’ve got a question: Why is the
Spirit here depicted like a dove? Note that it wasn’t a real dove. It may not
even have looked perfectly like a physical dove, but it was like a dove. By why like a dove? The Spirit takes many different forms throughout
Scripture. At Pentecost, there were tongues of fire above the heads of those
who received the Spirit.
Consider that the dove is a bird which
the Bible itself associates with peace, hope and innocence (see Matthew 10:16, for example). Or
remember how Noah sent out the dove over the floodwaters and it brought back
the olive leaf, the hope of dry land? The dove suggests all these things in the
minds of those who saw the Spirit. As John Piper wrote: “It was not majestic
like the eagle or fierce like the hawk or flamboyant like the cardinal. It was
simple, common, innocent, the kind of bird poor people could offer for a
sacrifice”.
Just as the voice from heaven
describes Jesus as the Son of God and as pleasing to the Father, the fact that
the Spirit descended specifically like a dove also speaks of the kind of
ministry that the Messiah would have: innocent, gentle and full of hope,
bringing peace.
This too is a fulfillment and a mark
of Isaiah 42:1-3, a prophecy about
Jesus and the kind of ministry He would have: “Behold! My Servant whom I uphold, My Elect One in whom My soul
delights! I have put My Spirit upon Him; He will bring forth justice to the
Gentiles. He will not cry out, nor raise His voice, nor cause His voice to be
heard in the street. A bruised reed He will not break, and smoking flax He will
not quench; He will bring forth justice for truth.” In other words, He
would be gentle, meek, tender toward the weak and the brokenhearted. Jesus
Himself said, “Come to Me all you who
labor and are heavy-laden and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and
learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for
your souls. For My yoke is easy and
My burden is light” (Matthew
11:28-30).
Why a dove? Because a dove marked the
kind of character this Savior would have in His earthly ministry. Does that
mean He was never righteousness angry? No. Does that mean He never spoke with
directness and boldness, like John for instance? No. But it means that the
general character of His ministry was symbolized by the dove.
Finally, in closing turn to Leviticus 14:1 to find something
amazing. (the sacrifice for a healed leper was two clean birds, one killed and
the other set free, alive)
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