Well, please stand as we hear God's Word being read to us. Matthew chapter 3 and reading from the 13th verse. Let us hear the Word of God. Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him saying, I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me? But Jesus answered him, let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness. Then he consented. And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him. And he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him. And behold, a voice from heaven said, this is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased. Let us pray. Father, You've given us Your Word as a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. You've given us Your truth to make us wise for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. You've given us Your inspired Word to build us up in our most holy faith. And we ask, Lord, that the Holy Spirit will minister the words that he breathed out into our lives, that your word will dwell richly within us, that your truth, Lord, will shape and style all that we are to the praise of your glory, the building of your church, the extending of your kingdom, and the coming of your Son, in whose name we pray. Amen. This morning we considered for a short time the significance and meaning of the baptism of the Lord Jesus Christ. And we noted the geography of His baptism. He was baptized by John in the Jordan And that would be deeply evocative to anyone who knew the scriptures of what we call the Old Testament. It would bring to mind the mighty act of God when He opened the Jordan and brought His people from their wilderness wanderings. into the rich land of His promise and provision with the Ark of the Covenant of God, that little tabernacle where God met with His people in a very special and unique way, leading the way. And Jesus Christ comes to the Jordan and He stands there as the one in whom the living God has come to make Himself known to His people. in Jesus we are confronted with the true tabernacle of God, the one in whom and through whom we are brought into living encounter with God Himself. And we saw also that in that baptism by the Jordan, People would surely have remembered how Elijah, in passing on the prophetic mantle to Elisha, struck the waters. And there is little doubt, I think, that we're intended to see here in this little narrative, rich, evocative theology. Jesus Christ is being publicly inaugurated into His mission as the prophet, priest, and king sent by God to accomplish the mission of God. It's not the inauguration of that mission that took place in the covenant of redemption in eternity between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, but it is the public unveiling of that mission, the public inauguration of Jesus embracing the will of His Father, as it were saying, here I am, I have come to do your will, O God. And He stands in the waters of the Jordan receiving a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, not that He has any sins to repent of. but He has come to stand in the place of those who have many sins to repent of. He's come to identify with us. He's come to stand alongside us as one of us. And that baptism in the Jordan pointed forward to a greater baptism, a baptism in blood, on Calvary's cross, where as the provided representative covenant head and substitute of all who would believe throughout the ages, the Lord Jesus Christ suffered the deluge of God's judgment on human sin. And the wrath of God against our sin was laid upon Him. And as our covenant head, he righteously experienced the condemnation and judgment that was ours to receive. And so we saw that there were two baptisms that both at the beginning and at the end of the Savior's public ministry bookended the great mission entrusted to him by his Father. And what we will see this evening is that alongside these two book-ending baptisms, there were two book-ending anointings. And so this evening I want to consider with you the sequel to the baptism Matthew writes for us, when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water and behold, the heavens were open to him. And he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest upon him. And behold, a voice from heaven said, this is my beloved son. with whom I am well-pleased." I want to notice essentially four things with you this evening. Let me tell you what they are. We see here Jesus being equipped for ministry. We see here the Lord Jesus being reassured by His Father. Here we are being encouraged and instructed regarding Christian mission. And here we see a new creation being inaugurated. So first of all, notice here very clearly, we see our Lord Jesus Christ being equipped for ministry. Now of course you need to understand that as God the Son, the only begotten of the Father, that Son from times eternal possessed the Spirit without measure. In the Holy Trinity there is an interpenetratedness the Father and the Son and the Son and the Father and the Spirit and the Son and the Father and the Spirit. No blurring of their essential personhood or identity, but there is an interpenetratedness. What one has, they all have. There is a uniqueness that belongs alone to the Father, to the Son, and the Spirit. But in the Holy Trinity, they live not in splendid isolation from one another, but in, let me use the word and explain it, in perichoretic communion with one another, in interpenetrated communion. He possessed the Spirit without measure. But there was a mystery about the God who became man in Jesus Christ at the incarnation. When the early church began to ponder the data of Holy Scripture, they came to two essential conclusions regarding the person of Jesus Christ. they came absolutely to this conclusion and conviction that He was God incarnate. He was not God Junior. He was not a little lower than the Father. He was not subordinate to the Father. He was God in whom the fullness of the Godhead dwelt bodily. And the church has ever since gloriously affirmed that foundational, if transcendent and inexplicable truth, that God became flesh in Jesus Christ. But the other great conclusion that the early church arrived at was this. We cannot understand what that means. We cannot fathom what it could mean for God to become man. And so when the early church devised creeds and catechisms concerning the person of Christ, almost always they used negative adverbs. They were more happy to say what this glorious union of two natures and the one person of Jesus Christ wasn't than what it was. There was a holy reserve. They were saying with Paul, oh, the depths, both of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchable are his judgments, his paths are beyond tracing out. And so you find in the early fathers this constant refrain that we must learn to shun speculation and bow down and worship. And so there is an inexplicableness here. as we come to ponder the descent of the Holy Spirit on Jesus Christ. Because very clearly in His holy humanity, the Lord Jesus Christ stood in desperate need of the Holy Spirit. It was the Holy Spirit who overshadowed the womb of the Virgin Mary. And the Greek language is very deeply evocative. There is a holy reticence and reverence, but the Holy Spirit was there. Mary conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit. It was by the Holy Spirit that Jesus, throughout His whole life, was able to fulfill His mission and ministry, climaxing, of course, in His holy oblation on Calvary's cross, whereby the eternal Spirit He offered himself unblemished to God. He could not offer himself apart from the Holy Spirit. He needed the upholding of the Holy Spirit in his wholly fragile humanity. And so we have here at the outset of his public unveiling, as it were, as he is dramatically and publicly inaugurated into the mission that he embraced in times eternal, we find the Holy Spirit descending like a dove and coming to rest upon him. And you'll remember how this was prophesied throughout the Old Testament. Isaiah chapter 11, there shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from its root shall bear fruit, and the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him. The spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. And the same thing is highlighted in chapter two of Isaiah, behold my servant whom I uphold, my chosen and whom my soul delights, I have put my spirit upon him. As the servant of the Lord, he needed the help of the spirit of the Lord. to enable him to fulfill the mission entrusted to him by the Lord. And this is brought out really very beautifully in the tenth chapter of the book of Acts. You'll remember how Cornelius has sent for Peter. And Peter goes to the house of Cornelius and he begins to unpack for Cornelius the gospel of the grace of God in Jesus Christ. And he says to Cornelius and to those who were gathered, you yourselves know what happened throughout all Judea, beginning from Galilee and the baptism that John proclaimed, how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. And what do we read next? he went about doing good. I just love that. The first thing that Peter wants to tell Cornelius about Jesus Christ is that he was anointed by the Holy Spirit. To what end? To go about doing good. Jesus needed the enabling ministry of the Holy Spirit in order to fulfill all righteousness. Remember, John was perplexed. Why? Why are you coming to me? I don't understand this. And Jesus said, let it be so now to fulfill all righteousness. Without the Holy Spirit's help, The Lord Jesus Christ could not have fulfilled all righteousness, because he had come into the world as a man among men. Yes, God become man, but truly man. And as man, he needed to fulfill all righteousness. He needed to do what we could never do, and die the death we could never die, but do it as a man. Because in Adam, all die. but God had a better man, the one Luther called God's proper man. And he came in the fullness of time and embraced the mission entrusted to him by his father. And I simply want to notice with you this very simple point. that the descent of the Holy Spirit on God the Son in our flesh came after He publicly embraced the holy will of His Father and was publicly inaugurated into that ministry and mission. Now, I don't know many of you, most of you, but I wonder if some of you are wrestling with God's call to leave the comfortable and go forth in His name to the ends of the earth. And you're thinking, but how could I begin to begin to begin to face the thought of leaving and the prospect of going? How could I, whose gifts are few and whose graces are even fewer, how could I rise to such a call and such a challenge? But it's only when you embrace the call that God grants you the help. It's as our Lord Jesus Christ embraced all that the Father had entrusted to him, that he received that help from heaven. You know, that's what mission is all about. It's not about God, as it were, dotting all our I's and crossing all our T's and having all our ducks in a row and saying, right now, are you ready now to go? Yes, Lord, I think you've done everything that I think I need to happen in order to equip me and enable me. The Lord simply says, go and trust Me to supply your every need. Go, and I will give you the grace and help of My Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the now risen, ascended Christ. That's the Holy Spirit who comes to help us, the one who first helped Christ and enabled Christ, and He comes as the enabler of Christ to be the enabler of the people of Christ. The holy humanity that He first etched in the Son of God's humanity, He comes to overlay on our humanity, and He knows what it is to help and enable. because he did it principally and perfectly in the life of the Savior. And so we find here our Lord Jesus being equipped for ministry. Secondly, we find our Lord Jesus Christ being reassured by his Father. And behold, a voice from heaven said, this is my beloved son. with whom I am well pleased." The Bible again and again and again highlights in obvious ways and in not-so-obvious ways the fragile humanity of our Savior Jesus Christ. He wept. He wearied. His whole humanity partook of what Calvin calls the wretchednesses of our humanity. And in the mission that he embraces publicly, inauguratingly in the waters of Jordan, the father comes, as it were, to reassure his son. Now, I've no doubt that What is declared from the heavens was intended to speak beyond Jesus, but I have little doubt that preeminently it was intended for Jesus. I want you to know, my beloved son, that with you I'm well pleased. You have come not only in the decree of the covenant of redemption to redeem the lost, you have come to embrace it in time and space. You have come in the fragility of holy humanity to take it upon yourself and to stand where sinners stand and to be the creator in the midst of a creation. that would despise and reject you. We have no beginnings of a conception to know what it must have meant for the creator of the cosmos to live among people who despised and rejected him, who came to his own and his own did not receive him. and throughout His life, the Father at particular moments punctuates time and space. Remember in the Transfiguration, Jesus, Peter, James, and John, Moses, and Elijah meet on the mountain, and the Lord is metamorphosed, and they are glimpsing through a veil, something of the glory of God. And the father speaks, this is my son. You can almost feel, dare I use the language, the emotion of the father, the affection of the father. This is my son, my son, look at him. Look at Him. Oh, heaven behold Him. See Him embracing what as yet His holy humanity cannot fully comprehend, the abyss of the cross. Oh, behold Him. And then in the garden of Gethsemane when The shadow of the cross begins to penetrate his human soul and the Lord psychologically as well as spiritually and physically begins to begin to see something of the utter, utter darkness that lay before him. What happens? An angel comes from heaven. My son needs help. My son needs help. A little tap has not turned on and the deity flows into the humanity to divinize the humanity for a time. No, an angel comes from heaven. And the father reassures and encourages his son You know, the life of the Lord Jesus is paradigmatic. It's a pattern that God by the Spirit replicates in our lives because as we live out the life of faith, most times the life of faith is ordinary. There is at times a drudgery about the life of faith because we live in a fallen world with fallen yet bodies with indwelling sin. But there are times when it pleases God to punctuate the drudgery and the ordinary and says, you are my beloved son, my beloved daughter. Oh heaven, behold her, behold him as they live out in the ordinariness and drudgery of faithful obedience, behold them, and God pleases to send punctuations. Some years ago, I had a public debate in London with Wayne Grudem, lovely man, fine, fine Christian man, one of the few Americans I've ever met who's shorter than me. He's a small man. And we were debating spiritual gifts. And he was to be the continuous, and I was to be the cessationist. And we were asked to give a five-minute introduction. I remember how I began. I said, I believe in the personal, profound, continuing ministry of the Holy Spirit in the life of the church and in the life of the people of God. And people thought, I thought you were a cessationist. I'm a passionate cessationist, but a passionate continuationist in terms of the ministry of the Spirit. Remember Jesus in, is it Luke 11 verse 13, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him? The Holy Spirit is given historically in redemptive terms once for all at Pentecost. When we come by the new birth to believe in Jesus Christ, it's by the indwelling presence of the Spirit and he doesn't come in parcels. But we mustn't allow that to detract from the ongoing punctuations of the Spirit of God in the life of the church. You see it dramatically at times of revival, but you see it at times quietly and unspectacularly, when perhaps you're just reading your Bible, maybe praying, maybe walking and pondering. and light from heaven shines into your soul. It may be brief, it may last for hours, days, but you see, God is pleased to break out of the boxes in which we so often place him. And here he splits the heavens and says, this is my son. I am so, so pleased with his obedience and his faithfulness. But then fourthly, notice a new creation is being inaugurated. The Spirit of God descends like a dove and comes to rest in Him." Now, John Calvin thinks that what is being accented here is the gentleness and the tenderness that would define and fundamentally describe the ministry of Jesus Christ. Remember how the First Servant song in Isaiah 42, isn't it? I will put my Spirit upon Him. He will not break bruised wreaths. He will be gentle and tender with the weak and the frail and the fragile. That should be the hallmark of every Christian preacher and pastor. And if it's not the hallmark, they should be run out of the church. I don't mean they shouldn't be bold. I don't mean they shouldn't be unyielding. But the first mark of the servant of the Lord is that he doesn't snuff out poor, fading wicks. He's tender and gentle with the fragile, the feeble. the halting, the lame, He comes alongside them. And Calvin may well be right, and the picture of the dove certainly is a picture of gentleness. But I think if we're reading this passage in the flow of redemptive history, we're thinking immediately back to Genesis 1 to 3. Almost everything goes back to Genesis 1 to 3. At the beginning of Genesis 1, we have the Spirit of God brooding over the waters. You have God, God's Word that brings out of nothing all things and the Spirit of God. But then you immediately think of Genesis 8 and Noah and the flood. We don't need to spend time on the details. Remember how the day comes when the dove is sent forth and it comes back with the freshly plucked olive leaf. There's a new beginning. There's a new beginning. And here, Jesus Christ, as he stands in the filthy waters of the Jordan, is inaugurating a new creation. He has come as the head of a new humanity. He has come to make new all things. In Him, all things become new That's why Paul can write in 2 Corinthians 5, if anyone is in Christ, new creation. Not he is or she is a new creation, that's true. Paul is saying something far more dramatic. He's saying if anyone is in Christ, new creation. They belong to a new order. They belong to a new humanity. They belong to a new creation. inaugurated by its king, the second Adam. And all of that is enveloped, did you notice, all of that in the most, almost prosaic of ways, all of that is enveloped by the ministry of the Holy Trinity. You have the sun standing in the Jordan. You have the Spirit of God descending on him. And you have the Father saying, this is my beloved son. The Christian religion is all about the Holy Trinity. I know at least Ryan McGraw will be saying, amen, brother. Preach it. Preach it. It's all about the Holy Trinity. It's not about you, and it's not about me. Well, of course, it is about you, and it is about me. He came to seek and to save the lost. But what was the ultimate purpose of the coming of Jesus Christ? It was that by the Father's gracious will and purpose, He might become the firstborn among many brothers. Jesus Christ is the ultimate purpose of God. The Jesus who was upheld by the Spirit. And the Holy Trinity conspired because what one does, they all do. I sometimes say that and people look at me and they think, one does the all. The Father didn't die on the cross, absolutely not. We're not Patrapassians, are we? But the one who died on the cross was sent by the Father. It was an obedience to the Father that He offered Himself by the eternal Spirit, what one does they all do. We must guard better than we do the profound Trinitarian nature of the Christian religion and of the Christian life. we come to the Father through the Son by the Spirit. That doesn't mean we cannot pray to Jesus or to the Holy Spirit. I pray to the Holy Spirit every day of my life. But foundationally, there is an order, a taxes in biblical revelation. We come to the Father, united to the Son and through Him and by the Holy Spirit. But I said that there were two anointings. One that we see at the beginning of Jesus' life in terms of the public inauguration of Him into His ministry and mission. And there's another anointing, isn't there? at the end of his life, just as there was a second baptism that he had to undergo. And we read of it in Matthew 26. Now when Jesus was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, a woman came up to him with an alabaster flask of very expensive ointment. She poured it on his head as he reclined at table. And when the disciples saw it, they were indignant, saying, why this waste? For this could have been sold for a large sum and given to the poor. But Jesus, aware of this, said to them, why do you trouble the woman? For she has done a beautiful thing to me. For you always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me. In pouring this ointment on my body, she has done it in preparation for my burial. Truly I say to you, wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will also be told in memory of her. Here was a woman, and she saw what his disciples didn't see. She understood what his disciples as yet couldn't understand. The Bible is so unexpected. You've got shepherds, the incarnation shepherds. They weren't even allowed into a court to testify. You've got mysterious strangers from the east appearing out of nowhere following a star that nobody knows much about, if anything. And then you have this woman. and she anoints the body of Jesus. It's as if she's saying, I know where you're going. I know why you've come. I want to pour out my life and lay it before you. You see, those who best understand the baptism of Jesus and the anointing of Jesus And not those who can speak most eloquently about it, but those who prostrate their lives before the baptized, anointed Jesus and say, here I am. Take all that I have and all that I am. Take me and use me as it pleases you. We pour out our lives before Him who came to pour out His life for us. I've sometimes thought the one question we should maybe ask intending church members. There's lots of good questions. I love being here this morning. But I wonder if we should ask this final question. Are you ready and willing to pour out all that you are and go to the ends of the earth? to tell people of this Jesus. You know, if someone asked me that over 40 years ago when I first professed Christ, I think I would have said with almost gay abandon, absolutely. But I would have said it too easily, too shallowly, too unthinkingly. Because who knows what costs that will involve. And so we're back where we began. It was only as Jesus embraced publicly the mission that the Holy Spirit came and equipped Him for the mission. So maybe there's someone here tonight, maybe you've heard about Chad or Burkina Faso or Afghanistan or Iran. or Pakistan, and you thought, Lord, are you? The Lord is always saying, whom shall I send and who will go for us? May the Lord, whoever we are or whatever stage we're in, may the Lord help us to say maybe tremblingly, maybe fearfully, maybe terrifyingly, Lord, here am I. Send me. May God bless to us his word.