Our Beliefs : Sermons : Sermon Archive - 2008 : January 13, 2008

Theme: Obedience That Gives Freedom

Church year occasion: Epiphany 1

There's always a place for the unexpected in our lives. Sometimes those unexpected things are welcome, like a bouquet of flowers that are received out of the blue, and sometimes they aren't so welcome, like a fender bender. But sometimes the unexpected just makes you sit back a while and think. For example, two men have different jobs -- one is a construction worker and the other works at a computer all day with data entry sitting on a comfy chair. Both work a 10-hour day, and you'd expect that the construction worker would be more exhausted than the data entry worker, but it's often the direct opposite. Even though the one staring at the computer only got up to get coffee and go to the bathroom, the strain of working on the computer was more demanding. Or, as another example, have you ever tried to simply sit without moving a muscle for a long time? It doesn't seem like it would be that difficult, but after only a little time, you feel like you're about to go insane if you can't move. It shouldn't be that difficult, but doing nothing can be very stressful. That's just not what we would expect, but it makes life a little more exciting to know that there are still some things that make us go, "Huh!"

The baptism of Jesus is one of those things that makes us go, "Huh!" It would be the last thing we'd expect because Jesus was sinless. So why would he need to be baptized? And why was it such an important moment in Jesus' life that his heavenly Father and the Holy Spirit would reveal their presence as Jesus came out of the water -- the only time they did that together during Jesus' whole life? This morning we'll try to answer those questions as we contemplate another aspect of Jesus' baptism -- that obedience gives freedom. Obedience that gives freedom? That doesn't make much sense either! We'd expect that obeying someone means you have bound your will, not freed it. Let's see if we can answer these questions as we look at the account of Jesus' baptism.

When we find Jesus in our account, it is eighteen years after the last time he was mentioned, which was when he went as a twelve-year-old to the temple. Now we find Jesus, at the age of thirty, coming from Galilee once again to Judea, but this time he is going to be baptized by John. Now, why in the world would Jesus have to be baptized? After all, he was sinless, right? Yes, he was sinless. But he didn't come to baptized to wash his sins away but in order that he could wash our sins away. You see, this was the beginning of Jesus' public ministry, and in only three years he would go again to Judea to be crucified.

Our text gives us two important characteristics of Jesus' ministry from this account. The first is presented in verse 16 where we see that it was a ministry approved by God himself. No other religious leader in any religion could claim for themselves what happened to Jesus in our text. First, after Jesus was baptized, "heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on him." Some critics might say that this was just a bird and nothing more, and certainly not the Holy Spirit. But what happened next could not be explained away, because "a voice from heaven said, 'This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.' " That voice was the voice of Jesus' heavenly Father. So we have an unmistakable example of all three persons of the Triune God revealing their presence at the same time, showing that Jesus had to be none other than God the Son himself.

But why would the Father and Holy Spirit come on this occasion? What was so special about it? This was the fulfillment of our Old Testament reading from Isaiah 42:1:

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.

God the Father's words are an unmistakable allusion to Isaiah's prophecy, and the religious Jews would not have missed it. In putting his Spirit on Jesus, God was equipping him for his task of being the Savior. God was setting Jesus apart as the Messiah. God anointed Jesus with the Holy Spirit. The same thing was done in the Old Testament to kings and prophets and priests to show that those men were set apart for special service to God. But Jesus would be set apart as no other before or after because he was following God's will in saving all people from their sins. But how would that happen? It all came down to one important word: obedience. Obedience that gives freedom.

How can obedience bring freedom? It doesn't seem to make sense. But actually, any child can tell you how. Any child who does something they shouldn't should be disciplined by their parents. Some children just don't like that idea of having to be obedient, so they just keep being disobedient. But somewhere along the line the parent hopes the child understands that, if they are obedient to their parents, then they won't be disciplined. Eventually, if the child does what they are told, no discipline will have to be given out at all, and the child will actually be more free by obeying than he would be by disobeying. Well that's kind of how it worked with Jesus, too, except that all the obedience he earned during his perfect life, he gave to us sinners. That is called Jesus' active obedience. Jesus lived a perfect life under God's law.

Unfortunately, that is part of Jesus' obedience that many people today forget about. We often think that Jesus' death was all we needed to be saved from sin. Well, Jesus' death took our sins away, but then we would still be left without the righteousness God's demands in order to let us into heaven. John the Baptist himself, the very forerunner of Christ, didn't understand this aspect of Jesus' work fully either. When Jesus came to be baptized, John said tried to stop him and said, "I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?" John realized that Jesus was the Christ and sinless, so he wouldn't need to be baptized to wash his sins away. If anything, John should be baptized by Jesus, so that John's sins could be washed away. But Jesus told John, "Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness." Then John consented. You see, Jesus had to be under the law, just like any sinner, because he was taking the sinner's place. So even though Jesus didn't need to be baptized to wash his sins away, he had to be baptized to wash our sins away as our substitute. The Holy Spirit tells us Jesus was obedient to his parents while he grew up for the very same reason, so he could be perfect as our substitute, something we could never be. And right after Jesus' baptism, he was led by the Holy Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. But again, he "was tempted in every way, just as we are, yet was without sin," as the writer to the Hebrews says (4:15). So Jesus was carrying out his ministry of active obedience his whole life, so that righteousness could be given to us.

How do we do with our obedience to God in our lives? We often act like rebellious children, looking to get out of our responsibilities as God's people. We don't like being different. We don't like always keeping our tongues in check when our friends might be letting their displeasure be voiced. We don't like sticking out like a sore thumb when our buddies tie one on at the bar. We don't like having to go to church during Lent or when we could be sleeping in. Unfortunately, by nature we are very much at home being rebellious children. And as a result, we don't just deserve God's discipline -- we deserve his punishment forever.

But Jesus never fell into that kind of thinking. He didn't have a sinful nature like we do. Instead, he was always doing and wanting to do the will of his heavenly Father, even when he knew it would mean suffering hell for us. We especially remember his words in Garden of Gethsemane as he anticipated his horrific suffering: "Not my will, but yours be done, heavenly Father." And so Jesus let himself be humiliated and eventually crucified for every time we disobeyed God. Talk about unexpected! God, the perfect Creator, being punished even though he had never committed a sin. But he took our sin on himself and replaced it with his own perfection, his own obedience. That is now how God sees us. And that gives us every reason to follow God's will in our lives, from worshiping him regularly to living as children of God to telling others about the amazing love of God for all sinners. God the Father said, "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased." And now, because of Jesus' obedience in our place, and through faith that receives it, God says of us also, "You are my son or daughter; with you I am well pleased."

That is the obedience that gives freedom. Christ's obedience credited to our account gives us the freedom to serve God's will and be obedient to God out of love for the love Christ showed to us. Before we knew Christ, all of God's commands would have been a terrible chore to perform: wives submitting to their husbands, husbands loving their wives, going into all creation and spreading the good news of creation when we could sit back and do the things we want to do. All those things would be a terrible burden without Christ, but with Christ they aren't a burden at all -- they are a joy because Christ has given us freedom in the gospel. Can it be possible that obedience actually gives freedom? Absolutely -- all things are possible with God. Amen.