The Blessing

Jesus is essentially receiving from his Father this commendation. You could even call it an ordination. As his private life ends, his public ministry is now about to begin. And God the Father here, in human terms, think of it this way, he's just sort of cheering him on. This is your mission and I want you to know that even before you begin it, I'm going to applaud and cheer and root for you.

I'm already pleased with you. Has someone ever given you their blessing for something? Fathers sometimes give a blessing to their children.

Potential grooms might ask the bride's father for a blessing. In the Bible, God gives one particular blessing that's not only recorded in history, but sets the stage for history. What words of blessing did God the Father give to Jesus as he commissioned his son for earthly ministry? How did those words carry Jesus through the next years?

Welcome to Wisdom for the Heart. Today, Stephen Davey looks at the meaning of God's most powerful blessing of all time. Now, if you've been with us over the last few weeks, we've been out there by the river Jordan as John the baptizer is preaching and the entire nation, as it were, is crowding out to the Jordan to hear him. Those who have been willing to identify with the message of this Old Testament prophet, remember we're still in the Old Testament until the church is created and the spirit descends.

All those that go out there, they end up believing his message, identifying with it, and then wading out into the Jordan River to be baptized, baptized, immersed in the Jordan River as a sign of obedience, certainly hearkening back to the idea of Jewish ceremonial cleansing. Let's pick it up where we left off because Luke is going to interrupt this scene by telling us something that's going to happen in the future. We're now at verse 19 in Luke chapter 3 where we left off last Lord's Day. The text says, but Herod, the tetrarch, who had been reproved by him, that is by John, because of or for Herodias, his brother's wife, and for all the evil things that Herod had done, adding this to them all, that he ends up locking up John in prison.

Now I don't want to spend much time here because we'll deal more with John's imprisonment and death when we get to Luke chapter 7 in a couple of years. But for now, John is thrown into prison by Herod. This is Herod Antipas. This is one of the sons of Herod the Great. You remember Herod the Great was the one who ordered the killing of all the boys two years of age and under in order to try to stamp out Jesus, who was born king of the Jews, and of course he didn't succeed. He dies and his kingdom is divided up into fourths.

That's what tetrarch means. So this particular son is ruling over one of those fourths in the kingdom. He has begun an affair with his brother Philip's wife, his wife Herodias. And she, by the way, also happens to be that injured insult, his blood relative, his niece. And so Herod is guilty of incest and adultery. And John evidently doesn't hold back. Instead of doing what so many religious leaders in our day do when they get invited into the halls of power and effectively baptize leaders into the faith, he takes that opportunity to say, you know, you're actually in sin. You're involved in adultery and incest. And because of that, he's thrown into jail and Herodias, as you know later, will get her revenge.

More on that later. But now with that brief comment added, Luke rather abruptly returns to the current scene at hand here out at the Jordan River, verse 21. Now, when all the people were baptized and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heavens were open. Now, something visible is going to happen.

Something audible is going to happen. But before we get there, let's ask and answer a critical question. I've certainly been asked it and you may have it in your own heart and mind. Maybe you've even answered it as an older believer in the faith. And that's the question, why was Jesus baptized by the prophet John? He didn't have any sin to repent of. What's happening here?

Let me give you several reasons quickly. Number one, first, to respect the command of God the Father. Jesus in fact himself will tell us through Matthew's gospel that he was baptized, quote, to fulfill all righteousness. Matthew 3.15. In other words, here's God the Father commanding John to baptize people who will identify with his message. And Jesus is joining those who are identifying with those who are getting right. That's what righteous means, right with God. He's identifying with the crowd that is right with God by obeying the command of God the Father and identifying with the message of this prophet.

So you have the whole country is sort of moving out here in mass to the Jordan River. This is an unprecedented movement toward God and Jesus joins the movement, identifying with the truth of this Old Testament prophet's message. Secondly, Jesus was baptized to be recognized for who he was. John is gonna introduce Jesus in that account as, you remember, the lamb of God who's come to take away the sin of the world. John the Baptist will also say in John 1.34, chapter 1 and verse 34, that he, John, is bearing witness that Jesus is the son of God. You gotta understand, people have no idea about Jesus.

They're not looking at this guy going, well, he's it. Jesus doesn't have a name tag that says I am the Messiah. In fact, he's not even showing up here at the River Jordan with a halo over his head and angels singing in the background as he arrives. The idea that he's the son of God, you would have and I would have said, really?

Doesn't look like one. This is an ordinary peasant stonemason carpenter. In fact, it's interesting to me, through the centuries, the church, the medieval church in particular, romanticized this baptism scene and maybe you've seen some of those classic paintings of Jesus and they'll show Jesus as having this singular event with John. In fact, I saw in my study one more of those paintings came across in my research. It's kind of interesting to me because Jesus is standing in ankle-deep water and John has a little saucer over his head to sprinkle him. Nevermind John the baptizer, the immerser, but at any rate, this is another study and we've sort of covered it anyway.

But here in verse 21, Luke is making it clear that this isn't some singular event. In fact, Jesus is being baptized with all these other people. He's in line. He's in line with a lot of people and they would have never looked at him and said, here, you need to move up front. You're obviously the son of God.

There's something about you. You're the Messiah scoot on up here. No, he's in line. He's an ordinary individual, fully human, though fully divine and he waits.

Can you see him waiting to be baptized? I called Dr. Bookman, caught him as he was being taken to the airport in New York to head back this way. You may know Dr. Bookman. He preached for me a couple of weeks ago. He's a professor, New Testament here. And I said to him, I said, Doc, look, I've done all the research.

I've done all the reading, all the word studies I need to do. But I want to call you because you got things in your head and you know he's got a lot of things rattling around in his head. And I said, I want to give you a phrase and you tell me what comes to your mind. He said, OK. I said, the baptism of Jesus. And man, was it great to listen to him for about three hours.

I mean, about 15 minutes. It was great. And he said some wonderful things that tied in with the research. But he said something I had not come across. And he said, you know, most often we think of this as being his first act of public ministry.

And it isn't. It's his last act of a private life. This ordinary common peasant carpenter is stepping out with the common people, identifying with them as just an ordinary man. By the way, keep in mind that Luke here makes it clear nothing unusual happens until after Jesus is immersed.

This is where it becomes unusual. Let me put it into the outline as a third reason Jesus was baptized. Thirdly, to receive the blessing from his father. Let's go back to verse 21 again. Now, when all the people were baptized and when Jesus also had been baptized and everything was praying.

In other words, he's standing here, he's just dripping wet, he's praying. The heavens were opened. I would have loved to have seen what that meant. They saw it. But they just kind of scroll back and maybe they're given this vision more than likely is just a really bright light. But they see something. And then they see something else. Notice. And the Holy Spirit descended on him, Jesus, in bodily form like a dove.

In other words, you need to get this straight, so follow me here. The manner of the Spirit's descent was like the way a dove descends in the air. Now, I know this is going to ruin a lot of bumper stickers and a lot of T-shirts and coffee mugs, but the Holy Spirit didn't take the form of a dove. What Luke says here is that whatever the bodily form of the Holy Spirit took, and Luke doesn't tell us again what that bodily form or manifestation of the Spirit was, but it descended like a dove descends through the air.

This mysterious moment that they observed just sort of floating down. Now, back to verse 22. And a voice came from heaven. You are my beloved son. With you, I am well pleased.

Wow. We're going to dig into this, but first, this verse, we're told, was heard in other accounts by everyone. John specifically records hearing it, and you've got to wonder, what does the voice of God the Father sound like? So I did a little ransacking, and you find out that most often the voice of God, reference to God the Father, sounds like thunder.

It sounds like a clap of thunder. 2 Samuel 22, Psalm 29. Listen to the way that Job writes. Keep listening to the thunder of his voice and the rumbling that comes from his mouth. Job 37 verse 2. So you have this booming thunderclap of a voice that articulates these words. By the way, this event happens to be a wonderful expression of the triune God.

Don't miss it. If you want a good text on the Trinity, the fact that it exists, here you have it. You have God the Father speaking from heaven, Jesus standing there dripping wet, and the Holy Spirit in some form floating down upon Jesus. Now, let me just pause for a moment and say what we need to remember here is that Jesus is not only God the Son, fully divine, he is fully human.

And I'll tell you, I probably err as well in being so quick to defend his deity that I overlook some of the implications of his humanity. You know, I think we can do that with Mary. We don't want to deify her, we don't want to exalt her, but we often miss the beauty of her testimony. Jesus is fully human. He's grown up and he's sort of grown into this understanding of who he has been and who he was, his origin. He's been guided by the Holy Spirit. Theologians say he is vouchsafed by means of the Holy Spirit information.

He's been guided. He's learned the scriptures at home from Joseph primarily and Mary as they implement the passion of Deuteronomy 6 to model and teach the word of God. Jesus would have been instructed in the local synagogue. He would have been tutored along with the Jewish boys by the rabbis in the rabbinical school where the rabbis taught them the word. In fact, just a few years ago, a synagogue was discovered and excavated dating back to the days of Jesus and there in the front was this rabbinical school used to teach children, sort of similar to our idea of a day school today.

Just keep in mind that Jesus doesn't have Bible gateway and logos hardwired, that he never had to memorize anything. Now it is rather stunning to think about the fact that he's going to run off to the little synagogue school with the Jewish boys and he's going to be taught to sing songs about himself. But for the time being, understand he's human and he goes through the events of growing up. The last glimpse of him, the only glimpse part of this is when he's 12 and what's he doing? He's asking the rabbis, the teachers, really hard questions, probably questions that Joseph and Mary said, well, just wait, we're going to be at the temple.

Would you just hold that one and then ask when you get the chance? Like our kids stump us with questions. Now overnight he's 30. Suddenly he's 30. He has spent his entire life into his early adulthood years in absolute obscurity. One of the problems we have is as we protect his deity, we overlook and underestimate what it means for him to be touched, seized with all the feelings of our infirmities, to be weighed down with sorrow to the point where the prophet would say his nickname is a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. Hebrews 4 and Isaiah 53. Jesus didn't just taste humanity. He was human. In our well-meaning attempt to protect his divinity, we missed in the incredible joy that must have swept over him as he hears his father's blessing.

Now with that as the background, let's go back to this statement. You are my beloved son with you. I am well pleased.

Let me point out several elements that we ought to model in our own lives as we understand what it meant in his life. First of all, I see here the element of acceptance. You are my beloved son. You are right now.

I love that. Right now, you are my beloved son. You will be mine and I'll acknowledge you as mine publicly after you do some miracles, after you get through the wilderness. If you get through that test, okay, I'll tell people you belong to me. Here Jesus is being told you're mine in this special way. I publicly identify with you right now and all people know of you is you're a peasant. But to me, you're mine now. To our children, grandchildren, to one another in the body of Christ that we belong to the same family, not because we've done something great or because we didn't do something wrong, but because we're related.

What a model. I see here another element. It's simply love.

That's pretty obvious, isn't it? The element of love, loyal love. You are my beloved son. You just changed the sense of the word and he's essentially saying from heaven with this booming thunderclap, I love you. I love you. Now, you'd think, just pause. Jesus doesn't need to hear this, does he?

Evidently he does. And what a sweet gift of words this would have been to Jesus. I see here thirdly the element of encouragement. You are my beloved son. With you I am well pleased. Now, this is nearly a word for word quote from a messianic prophecy in Isaiah 42.

So it's deeper than at face value. This is related to the messianic mission of Jesus. So Jesus is essentially receiving from his father this commendation. You could even call it an ordination. As his private life ends, his public ministry is now about to begin. And God the Father here, in human terms, think of it this way, he's just sort of cheering him on. This is your mission and I want you to know that even before you begin it, I'm going to applaud and cheer and root for you.

I'm already pleased with you. And again, you would think that Jesus doesn't need to be encouraged. Jesus doesn't need to be patted on the back, but he is. We tend to forget that Jesus depends through his life on the same resources we depend on. He's going to depend on his father to meet his needs.

That's why he often thanks his father for his food, giving us a model to thank the Lord for our food. He's going to depend on the Holy Spirit to guide him through difficult times, Luke 4. He's going to depend on the Father to sustain him through difficult times, Luke 22. He's going to depend on the Father to give him the words to speak, John 8, 27.

He's even going to make this statement, which is really stunning if you think about it. He says this in John 5, 30, by myself, I can do nothing. Jesus depended on the Father and on the Spirit providing for us this wonderful model that as we go through life, guess what? We depend on the Father for our needs and our food and our strength and our guidance and our wisdom and our words, just like Jesus. So in a very real sense, beloved, I want you to hear God the Father cheering you on as well.

This is for you. Now Luke drops in the genealogy of Jesus appropriately here. He's going to prove his lineage.

I'll just drop in a couple of thoughts on this text. Luke gives the family tree here through Mary. Verse 23 mentions that Joseph is the son of Heli or Eli. This was Mary's father. Joseph was his son-in-law.

You might write that in the margin of your Bible. It's not unusual to leave out the woman's name in a Jewish genealogy and refer to the son-in-law as the son. This genealogy of Mary takes you all the way back through David.

She's related to David as well, though through Nathan, a lesser known son. It goes all the way back to Adam. If you look at the end of the chapter, called the son, little s, son of God, in that he was crafted by God without any human origin. Adam didn't have a biological mother.

Jesus doesn't have a biological father. Adam is the fountainhead of the human race. Jesus, who Paul calls the second or the last Adam, is the fountainhead of a redeemed race. But what Luke is emphasizing here in his genealogy going all the way back to Adam is to say don't forget Theophilus.

He's a human, fully human, a descendant of Adam, a member of Adam's race. So with this, Jesus is standing on the threshold of his public ministry. His private life is moments away from being over.

His carpentry vocation will be set aside, and he now prepares to enter the wilderness of temptation. And I want you to imagine with me this blessing now because as he goes into the wilderness to meet Satan's temptation, he has ringing in his ears the words, you are my beloved son, and with you I am well pleased. Acceptance, love, encouragement. When's the last time you passed along words like that to your spouse, your children, your grandchildren, your great grandchildren, brothers and sisters in Christ? The truth is everybody needs a blessing.

Everybody. And how do we know that? We know that because Jesus, even Jesus, a perfect human being, unless needed it to. And if he needed it, so do you, and so do I. Let me close by giving you the blessing from the Apostle Paul who delivered this to the congregation in Corinth. Now may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen. Thanks for being with us today for this time in God's Word.

This is Wisdom for the Heart. With this message, Stephen concludes a series from Luke 1-3 entitled, Good News of Great Joy. If you missed any of the messages in this series, or if you want to go back and listen to them again, we've posted them to our website. You'll find us online at wisdomonline.org. Right on the homepage, we have a link to the current day's message as well as the previous messages. Another area of that website you might want to explore is the teaching archive.

In the archive, you'll find the full-length version of each message. Because we just wrapped up this series, I'll also take a moment and mention that we can put this or any of Stephen's teaching series on a set of CDs for you. We can give you information about that if you call us at 866-48-BIBLE. If you'd like to send a note of encouragement to Stephen, he'd enjoy hearing from you. It's always encouraging to learn how God's using this ministry to bless you. Write to us at Wisdom for the Heart, P.O.

Box 37297, Raleigh, North Carolina, 27627. If the Lord leads you, please consider including a gift when you write. Thanks again for joining us today. We'll have another message from God's Word next time. Be with us here on Wisdom for the Heart.