The Round Church
at St Andrew the Great
Cambridge
A Sermon Preached
on Sunday 17th November 2002
by Mark Ashton
‘Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be
baptised by John. But John tried to deter him, saying, “I need to be baptised
by you, and do you come to me?”
‘Jesus
replied, “Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfil all
righteousness.” Then John consented.
‘As soon
as Jesus was baptised, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was
opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on
him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am
well pleased.” ’
A Voice
from Heaven
‘And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom
I love; with him I am well pleased.” ’ And don’t we all long to hear that? A
voice from heaven, a voice that speaks with ultimate authority: about human
life here on this earth – removing all doubt, clarifying all confusion, telling
us once and for all why we are here and what we are meant to do with our lives
on earth. A voice from heaven – wouldn’t that make your life simpler?
You see, human life doesn’t come with instructions,
does it? One of our children, many years ago crawled into our bed, with my
wife, early one morning and said, “Mummy, when I came out of your tummy
(parents, beware when a child starts a question like that!) did I come with
instructions?” But we aren’t born with a manual attached. We have to work life
out for ourselves. And how we would love to hear definitively from heaven!
Wouldn’t we? How this would clarify things for us here on earth!
In these morning services we are working through
Matthew’s account of the life of Jesus Christ, and we’ve got to this point. The
preliminaries are now over in Matthew’s Gospel.
We’ve had
Jesus’ genealogy, His birth, His infancy; and His cousin, John the Baptist,
appearing in the Judean wilderness with a preparatory message: “Repent,
for the kingdom of heaven is near.” And now, Jesus Himself steps on to
the stage for the first time as an adult.
1) Enter
the Star
I’ve called it ‘Enter the Star’ because the main
character is now in the spotlight – and He will be for the rest of the story: ‘Then
Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptised by John’ (v. 13).
It was a strange contrast with what had gone before.
John had created quite a stir: ‘People went out to him [John] from
Jerusalem and all Judea and the whole region of the Jordan. Confessing their
sins, they were baptised by him in the Jordan River’ (3:5, 6). And look
at verse 7 – even the canons from the cathedral and the theology professors
from the university went out to hear him. And John socked it to them: ‘But
when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to where he was
baptising, he said to them: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from
the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance” ’ (vv. 7,
8). But then in today’s passage, there’s a sudden switch: ‘Then Jesus came from Galilee to
the Jordan to be baptised by John. But John tried to deter him, saying, “I need
to be baptised by you, and do you come to me?” (vv. 13, 14). If those
Pharisees and Sadducees were not worthy of John’s baptism, it was John’s
baptism that was not worthy of Jesus. So John turned from stern command and
authoritative rebuke to humble amazement: “… do you come to me?”
The focus had switched suddenly from this fiery prophetic figure, with his
rustic appearance and strange diet (v. 4), to Another. And do you notice how
little we are told about this Other? ‘Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan
to be baptised by John’ (v. 13). Not a word about His appearance – all
of history would have loved to know what Jesus looked like. But we are given no
clue. John we can picture. Not Jesus – was He tall? Was He short? Was He good
looking? How was He dressed? The only clue the Bible gives us to His physical
appearance on earth comes in Isaiah’s prophecy: ‘He had no beauty or majesty to
attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him’
(Isaiah 53:2). How few artists over the centuries, or film-makers in more
recent years, have had the courage to be faithful to the Bible in that respect!
A striking appearance, physical attractiveness, were not a part of God’s
Messiah. Oh, no! God works in quite different ways to that. Jesus had no
physical beauty that we should be drawn to Him in that way.
Jesus replied to John by
reminding John that they were at a special moment in history: ‘Jesus
replied, “Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfil all
righteousness.” Then John consented’ (v. 15). Jesus’ baptism with the
Holy Spirit and with fire for which John longed (and to which he had referred,
as we saw last week, back in verse 11) would not be available until Jesus had
died and risen again. For now, Jesus must establish a pattern of total
obedience to God’s will, that would characterise His whole mission on earth. He
must ‘fulfil all righteousness’. ‘Jesus replied, “Let it be so now; it is
proper for us to do this to fulfil all righteousness.” Then John consented. As
soon as Jesus was baptised, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven
was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on
him (vv. 15, 16). Heaven opened – an extraordinary saying, isn’t it?
God touched earth. And at what point? It is like a lightning strike that hits
the tallest point, but here just a nondescript figure making His way back out
of the river after His baptism. But it says everything to you and to me. Where
does God strike the earth? Where does the divine lightning land? It arcs down
on to the figure of Jesus.
Forgive me a very ludicrous illustration; but I’ve
been trying to think how to illustrate this all week, and this is the best I
could come up with: here’s a picture of a tiny little figure and it’s as though
an enormous hand reaches down to say to you and to me, “That’s HIM!”
It may not be the figure you and I would want it to
be. It is without the glamour, without the sensation, without the novelty – not
as intellectually intriguing as some of us would want. He does not flatter our
pride nor tickle our senses, nor indulge our sentiment. But He is where the
Spirit of God lights. Beware a Christianity that gets beyond Jesus. I was
brought up in a religiosity that had gone beyond Jesus Christ – into man-made
religious traditions, with church ceremonies and religious observances that
owed little or nothing to Christianity’s founder, Jesus Christ Himself. And
that may be true of some of us here now. Others may be looking for truth, and
finding themselves bewildered and confused by so many rival truth-claims. Well,
don’t be confused: Christianity makes only one, and it is Jesus. Make your mind
up about Him. Not about Christians, or the Christian Union, or churches (St.
Andrew the Great), the Church of England, Christian philosophy . . . “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am
well pleased.” This is my Son, whom I love . . .
There is actually more in that heavenly pronouncement
than mere identification. It is not just that finger pointing and identifying
Jesus. It also answers the question that is our second and final point today.
Our sermon title was ‘Earmarked by Eternity’, but now my second point:
2)
Earmarked for What?
‘And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom
I love; with him I am well pleased.” ’ (v. 17). What sort of a remark is that?
Well, I don’t think it’s the expression of a choice. God is not expressing His
choice of Jesus out of all the human race. It’s not as though He’s saying,
“That’s the one I’ll have” – rather like we might say in a pet shop when you’ve
gone to choose a budgie or a hamster or a rabbit or a puppy or a goldfish. You
say, “I’ll have the one with the bright eyes and the waggly tail: that’s the
one that pleases me.” No, it’s more like the parent on the touchline, or in the
concert hall, as their child scores a goal or plays a solo – bubbling with
pride, nudging their neighbour and saying, “That’s my lad,” “That’s my lass,”
Think of all those parents you see around the centre of Cambridge on Graduation
Day, swollen with pride at their offspring, “Look! It’s my son!” “It’s my
daughter, dressed in all her finery there!”
But there is more to it even than that: God spoke
again in this manner at a later point in Jesus’ ministry – after Jesus had been
transfigured before three of His followers – a voice said, “This is my Son, whom I love;
with him I am well pleased. [Exactly the same words; but then these
three] Listen to him!” (Matthew 17:5). Those last
three additional words make the point here. This voice did not speak for Jesus’
sake; it spoke for ours: it is pointing Jesus out to you and to me. And the
words God used contain references to Old Testament passages; and you may
remember that there were no chapters or verses in the Old Testament of
Matthew’s day, so it was customary to refer to a passage by just quoting a
small part of it.
(a) Now those four words from
Psalm 2, “You are my Son,” speak of the kingly rule of God’s Messiah: ‘He
said to me, “You are my Son; today I have become your Father. Ask of me, and I
will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession.
You will rule them with an iron sceptre; you will dash them to pieces like
pottery” ’ (Psalm 2:7b-9). He is the One whom the nations will have to
reckon with, this nondescript figure on his way up out of the Jordan River.
America and China, Japan and Germany, Australia, the UK – they are all under
His rule, and in danger of being broken to pieces by it. And if the nations,
how much more each of us as individuals! If His rule can shatter nations, then
we are fools if we think we can ignore it in our lives. God has granted us a
certain freedom under Jesus’ rule; but if we think we can use that freedom to
rebel against Jesus, we are in for a rude awakening. We often say, “My time is
my own.” But it’s a nonsense: you’ll find it is not your own. My time is not my
own. It is God’s gift to me. This life I’m living is not actually my own life.
It came to me as a gift from another. I didn’t deserve it. I didn’t earn it.
It’s His gift to me – and to you. Woe betide us if we fritter away on our idle
fancies and ambitions those lives He’s given us – in defiance of His will. We,
too, will be broken in pieces, one day.
(b) But if Psalm 2 speaks to us
of Christ’s majesty, the echo of Isaiah 42 speaks to us of His meekness: “Here
is my servant whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I
delight; I will put my Spirit on him and he will bring justice to the nations
[but notice how He will do it:]. He
will not shout or cry out, or raise his voice in the streets. A bruised reed he
will not break, and a smouldering wick he will not snuff out.” (Isa.
42:1-3a). God’s Servant spoken of here is the One who will take our infirmities
and carry our sorrows; who will be pierced for our transgressions and crushed
for our iniquities. Why doesn’t He break the bruised reed, or snuff out the
smouldering wick? Because by His death He has made it possible to restore them;
so that the most feeble and the most troubled human life can know the touch of
God, the forgiveness of our sins and a new start with Him.
Have you realised that about Jesus Christ? Meekness and Majesty
Manhood
and deity
In
perfect harmony
The
Man who is God.
Awesome majesty, infinite tenderness in one Person,
the Man who is God.
If Christ shatters the proud-hearted (according to
Psalm 2), He also restores the broken-hearted (according to Isaiah 42). I don’t
know which you may be, whether, in Biblical terms, you are strong and
proud-hearted, or whether in spiritual terms you are broken hearted and weak.
I guess we are probably all one or the other: either
just a little pleased with ourselves, and confident that we have some grounds
to hold up our heads before God; After
all there a lot of people worse than us in Cambridge today, aren’t there? We’re
here, in church – and do we really need God that much anyway? Aren’t we doing
perfectly well without Him? So we keep Him in a little box in our lives;
perhaps giving Him the occasional nod, tossing a tiny scrap of our lives in His
direction from time to time. We’ll come to the odd service. But Jesus is God’s
Son, the Majestic Ruler, Who breaks nations in pieces, let alone the box that
you and I try to put Him in, in our lives.
Or we may be those who feel we are too morally weak
to take Christianity more seriously. The way life has dealt with us we could
never be any better, any different. We’ve tried and we’ve failed. Our faith
smoulders at the very, very best. It’s a bruised reed that would buckle if we
put any weight on it. Well, we need to hear those words, don’t we? “A
bruised reed he will not break, and a smouldering wick he will not snuff out.”
He is sufficient for the broken-hearted, He can heal, He can restore. He can
pick up the weakest among us.
I don’t know which of those poorly described
categories would approximate most closely to you. But God does. And I want to
end by saying this to you: He provides Jesus to meet your need: “This
is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”
You see, there has been a voice from heaven.
I don’t know if you’ve ever been in that situation in life where you’re waiting
to hear from somebody – a superior, your boss, the head, a supervisor – and you
can’t do something until they give you permission, or you’re waiting for an
appointment with them. I guess most of us have been in that position. It’s very
frustrating, isn’t it – when you’re waiting for somebody to give you
permission, or to tell you something? It is not like that with God. He has
spoken. We do not have to wait any longer. We have a word from heaven. And it
directs us to Jesus: “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am
well pleased.” If we want to take God seriously, we must take Jesus
seriously. He is God’s Ruler, and He is our Saviour and we have no other.
I don’t know how you should take Jesus more
seriously. It’s not given to me to know that about you. Perhaps you ought to
start taking His word a little more seriously in your life: reading it,
thinking about it, listening to it. We’re going to be baptising three adults at
our next service. Perhaps it’s time to identify yourself clearly, in that way,
with the Christian faith. Perhaps you need courage to identify with Jesus at
work or in your family in some way – maybe by inviting someone to a carol
service for the first time, this Christmas. Maybe there is some part of your
life that is as yet unsurrendered: maybe it’s your working life, maybe it’s
your love life.
Well, this is what God’s voice is telling you and me
this morning: take Jesus more seriously. The future belongs to Him. Your future
does not belong to you: it belongs to God’s Son. He is our destiny.
Amen.