Now we're going to read from God's word, and this morning we are in the book of John, chapter one, and I'm reading verses 19 through 34. Now, this is the testimony of John. when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, who are you? He confessed and did not deny, but confessed, I am not the Christ. And they asked him, what then? Are you Elijah? He said, I am not. Are you the prophet? He answered, no. Then they said to him, who are you? That we may give an answer to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself? He said, I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, make straight the way of the Lord, as the prophet Isaiah said. Now those who were sent were from the Pharisees, and they asked him saying, why then do you baptize if you are not the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the prophet? John answered them saying, I baptize with water, but there stands one among you whom you do not know. It is he who coming after me is preferred before me, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to lose." These things were done in Bethabara, beyond the Jordan, where John was baptizing. The next day, John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. This is he of whom I said, after me comes a man who is preferred before me, for he was before me. I did not know him, but that he should be revealed to Israel, therefore I came baptizing with water. and John bore witness saying, I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and he remained upon him. I did not know him, but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me, upon whom you see the Spirit descending and remaining on him, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit. And I have seen and testified that this is the Son of God." This is the word of the Lord. Our text this morning deals with this man, John. And the John we're talking about is John the Baptizer. There are several Johns in the New Testament. And this is not the author of the Gospel of John. He's sometimes called John the Evangelist. This is John the Baptizer. And John, this John, is especially significant. Here's one way you know that this John is significant. There are four Gospels in the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, each one of them a distinct but overlapping account of Jesus, Jesus Christ. And as you read through those different Gospels, you'll see that there are things that are the same, repeated accounts in each of them, and there are things that are unique or only shared in some of the different Gospels. But of the subset that every single Gospel shares and puts in according to whatever the author's purpose was, this John, John the Baptizer, is in every single one of them. All four accounts include John. Now, why? Why is John the Baptizer important? I thought the Gospels were about Jesus. Well, they are. But John the Baptizer is very important if you want to understand about Jesus. Well, here's one way that John the Baptizer is important. This man, John the Baptizer, he is the connection point that links the entire Old Testament to the entire New Testament. The very last two verses of the Old Testament speak of John the Baptizer. Malachi 4, behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. That's how the Old Testament ends, and it was silent for 400 years. If you were to think of the unfolding of scripture as a succession of movies, and there would be one episode, and then a second one, and then a third one, and then you get all the way to the 39th episode, and then you had to wait 400 years before it continued. This is how the 39th episode ended. And because John comes after centuries of silence, And because John aligns, John the Baptizer aligns with this Elijah figure that's just referenced here at the very end of Malachi, at the very end of the Old Testament, we know that this is the person, this is the link, this is what was going to come next as the Old Testament ended. John, he aligned with Elijah's location. Elijah was the prophet who was especially known for being in the wilderness. John ministered in the wilderness. He aligned with Elijah's manner and the way he dressed. He was a rough man, Elijah and John the Baptizer. He also had the same kind of message. Elijah preached repentance, and that is what John the Baptizer also preached. He called people to turn. Now, here's another way to think about John the Baptizer and his significance. Maybe you've seen some of these period either plays or people dress up, or maybe you've seen period movies set in somewhere like 18th, 19th century. And if you imagine some of those scenes, if you imagine some of those formal events, maybe it's a ball, or maybe it's a dinner, and you've got all kinds of important powerful people who are coming, and as they come, one at a time, as they enter the Grand Hall, what is it that usually happens? Well, the protocol is, there's a servant at the door, and the servant at the door announces the entrance of the next prestigious personage who enters. And it's the official way that it happens. And when the attendees hear the voice of the person at the door announcing, everyone listens, and the identity of the next person to come into the event is heard. Everyone is receiving the announcement. It makes it official. John the baptizer is that person. John the baptizer fills the role of this door announcer. And so what you have as a result from John the baptizer is this, Christianity connects to Judaism. In fact, you could say the Bible teaches that Christianity completes Judaism. And so let's look at what was the immediate context for John the Baptizer as he came. The immediate context for Judaism at this time, it was a time of looking and it was a time of longing. They were looking, they were scanning, they were reading the events, they were trying to interpret. Is it now? Has he come? And they were longing. They were longing for the time to be now and for the one to come. Because their situation was this. Not just the Old Testament was not yet finished. Revelation had not yet been completed. The story of their nation was also still unresolved. It was not yet finished. There were justice issues that were brought up in Malachi. There was exploitation of the weak, and they were feeling it in Palestine in those days. Rome, they were under the thumb of Rome. They did not have freedom to worship and to live as they once did. There were not only unresolved nations for them as a nation, they were unresolved for them as a people. And this is a poignant part of how that last book of the Bible ends. It talks about there were unresolved problems in their families. In each of those little households, there were problems in the family. There was a need for the hearts of fathers to be reconciled to children and the need for children's hearts to be reconciled to their parents. This was the big unresolved longing that they were all living under as a nation, as households. Malachi 4, verse 5, he says, Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord, and when he comes, he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to the fathers, lest I come and strike the earth with a curse. And so they were looking for the one, they were longing for this one. There's a time of looking and longing. And that's somewhat where we are today. I think if we have time just to slow down and to take stock of where we are and look at the landscape of our lives, look at the different relationships, look at the different people in the drama of our lives, we are in a time of looking. We are in a time of longing about these same kinds of things. Isn't it the case that all of us are wondering, how do I make sense of this? How do I make sense of this strange relationship? How do I make sense of the craziness outside in the country, in the world? What we're asking is, what is the secret interpretation What is the secret interpretation of life? The explanation that will make this come together, that will tell me, how do I respond? Where do I go with this? What's going to happen? We, in our looking, in our longing, this is what's actually happening. You might not use these words, but we want Messiah. We want a Messiah. And what we're gonna see in our text today is Jesus is the Messiah. that we didn't expect. We want a Messiah. Jesus is the Messiah that we didn't expect. In fact, he's more, more than what we expected. And so this is what I'm gonna start with. We want a Messiah. The big claim that I'm gonna make is this. Everyone is searching for Messiah. You might not use those words, but everyone is searching for Messiah. This is in verses 19 through 25. Verses 19 through 25, everyone here in this passage is looking for Messiah. Let's look at the context of this passage and just go a little bit deeper. We're talking about first century Judaism. We're talking about the Judaism at that time. What you were looking at there was the accumulated product of 1,500 years of scholastic studies. of the Old Testament, 1,500 years of scholastic study and synthesis of all of the data and all the events of their history, 15 centuries, and what was the product? What was the temperature? What was going on in the ethos of all the people then? That deep learning produced deep longing. They were looking for an answer. They were looking for resolution. They were looking for repair of all of these broken things in their society, in their lives, in their families, for things that were once right and now they were ruined. It was at an existential level for them. They had pain. They were people who had pain and suffering. It was at a political level. They were oppressed. They were not free people. There was injustice. It was at an existential level, a political level, and it was also at a family level. There were strained relationships. If you read the book of Malachi, it's very clear there were strained marriages. There were husbands who hated their wives and were mistreating them. There were crushed romances. And so at all of those levels, there was deep longing that came from their deep learning. And they had this concept in their mind, Messiah, Messiah would come, the anointed one. And when Messiah came, Messiah would resolve the broken relationships. Messiah was the one who could take all of these broken systems and somehow put it back together and Messiah would come and would deal tenderly with those with broken hearts. Now who were the players here in the context, in our text, verses 19 through 25? The people that you have in this scene, they represent maybe the highest development of scholarly practice, and scholarly study. You have in verse 19 the priests and the Levites. In verse 24, you've got the Pharisees. That would be like saying today, who are the people that were coming to John the Baptizer? It would be like clergy and professors. It would be like political analysts and political operatives coming to him. And they all have this one longing. They are looking for Messiah. That's what's going on in verses 19 through 25. Over and over, they keep asking, they keep probing in different ways, asking the same question. Are you Messiah? Who are you? And they're asking, are you Messiah? Verse 19, John says, I am not Messiah. Verse 21, they say, OK, if you're not Messiah, are you Elijah? Are you the prophet? Verse 22, who are you? Verse 25, if you're not Messiah, if you're not the Christ, Are you Elijah? Are you the prophet? Those questions about are you Elijah? Are you the prophet? It's asking the same question. If you're not Messiah, are you the immediate precursors for Messiah? They've got this developed system of thought. They've got an interpretation of life and reality, and they've got an expectation of what it is that's going to finally turn the key and start the engine, and Messiah will bring the answer to all of our longing. They've got this expectation of what will make life work. We all have that. You may not use the word Messiah, but all of us have this sense of what it is that we need to pull it all together, to put it back together, to address everything that's been unspoken. We are desperately trying to fit people and events into the grid, whatever your grid is, whatever your Messiah is. And so that's why they're asking John, who are you? And why do you do what you do? Why are you baptizing? Now, what are they talking about with verse 25? Messiah, Elijah, the prophet, what's going on? What do they mean by that? It seems kind of random. Well, it actually makes a lot of sense if you're familiar with the system of thought that they were very steeped in. This is how you could describe the state of Judaism at that time, when they were coming to John. Studies show, all of our research shows that Messiah's arrival must involve Elijah and the prophet like Moses, okay? That's where they were coming from. That's why they're asking about, if you're not Messiah, then are you Elijah? Are you the prophet? That verse 23 that John cites, it's a quote. of Isaiah 40, chapter 40, verse 3. And that verse is talking about Messiah's arrival. John says, I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness. Make straight the way of the Lord. He's saying, you're wondering about Messiah. I'm wondering, too. You're longing and looking for him. I am, too. And I'm here to tell you that I'm the one declaring he is here. John is the one who is the voice crying in the wilderness. He was like the prophet Moses. You remember the prophet Moses? He brought this huge initial tranche of revelation. And where did Moses do all of this prophesying and bringing the word of God? It was in the wilderness between Egypt and Canaan. John is also not only like Moses, the prophet, declaring the word of the Lord in the wilderness, he's also like Elijah, as we said, proclaiming divine revelation in the wilderness. And so now John the baptizer comes. He's the fulfillment of Isaiah 40, verse three. He comes in the wilderness, and they see something's going on with John. Something's going on, and they're wondering, how do we process this? What do we make of you, John, and your baptizing? You've got this message. Are you the answer that we need? Are you bringing the answer that we need? Are you the person who can make all things right. They are intent on finding Messiah. And so that's what we see. Everyone is searching for Messiah, some version of Messiah. Everyone's got this system of interpretation. The things that you decide are your values. The things that you decide are the answers, the explanations, the way you will find stability, the way you will find healing, It's interesting, in this passage, what you see here with these different players is you see that both conservatives and progressives search for Messiah, long for Messiah. You've got Pharisees and you've got Sadducees. You've got Pharisees and you've got the priests, and they represent both conservatives and progressives, and it's a little wild. The Pharisees were socially progressive. They were taking the word of God and they were moving it and applying it in new ways that had not been done, trying to keep it current. And so in some ways, the Pharisees were socially progressive, but the Sadducees and the priests, who were mostly Sadducees, the priests were socially conservative. If you're familiar with any of the Two Kingdom view stuff or the One Kingdom view stuff, The Pharisees would have been one kingdom people and the Sadducees would have been two kingdom people. Sharp distinction between kingdom of God and limiting what the word applies to and then the kingdom of man. So Pharisees were socially progressive but they were theologically conservative. We would look at what they believed and what they practiced and we would say they are the ones who are theologically the conservatives, the Pharisees were. They believed in the miracles. They believed in the resurrection. They believed that God was real and God still interacted with humanity. The Sadducees theologically, were what we would call liberal. They denied the resurrection. They denied the miracles. They limited only the revelation to the first five books, and they thought, that's it. That's it. And so you've got both conservatives and progressives here in early 0 A.D. looking for this Messiah, longing for him, searching for the meaning of life. And you can do that. We can do that. You can be progressive. You can be conservative. You are looking for meaning. What are you doing when you're just so fixated on your podcasts or the influencers that interpret and analyze political events or life events or relationships for you. You're looking for meaning. You're looking for an answer. You're looking for Messiah. You're looking for something that will give you assurance about where I should go, where we should be going, what people should be doing, and what will happen after my life is over. What will happen to everything that I've done and written and said? Will any of it matter? We're all looking for Messiah. Now you might say, I'm not philosophical. I'm not religious. I actually find it very difficult to read theological things and listen to all these podcasts and stuff and sermons that people are always sending me. Fine. You are still searching for Messiah. You still are. What is the goal of therapy? What is the goal of getting into counseling? Aren't you looking for resolution to your inner anguish? Aren't you looking for a way to find peace in your poisoned relationships? What's your hope? What are you looking for when you consult your medical doctor? You're looking for. You might be a person who would never go to a doctor, but now you are going to a doctor. Why? Because you're scared, because you're in pain. What about financial counseling? What about your financial mess? Isn't your search, your looking for financial help or financial advising, isn't that a search for peace? Isn't that a longing for stability? Stability through money? Stability through better management of your money? Your expectation is that I'll have peace if I can just get my money straight. I'll have joy if I could just have enough money. And think about, perhaps, maybe for you, think about your dependence or your over-dependence on things like sex or substance. What are you looking for? You're looking for relief in your turbulent, troubled life. You could go on and on, the way that we look for Messiah. It could be all of these things. It could be any of these things. It could be the way you look at, the way you hang all of your attention on your family or on your romance? What are you thinking when you get so into it that it's your entire world? If only I could find the right person, then I would feel complete. If only my kids could be successful, to accomplish or to have the things that I never had. Well, that's why I exercise, not care, but I exercise control. It's a search for Messiah. Think about your own, career, or your position, your job, whatever it is. Why does your big mistake that you made at work, why does the big mistake that cost you at work, or why does your failure to promote at work, why does that just rip the core out of you? And you completely lose your sense of self-worth. Or maybe you make a big play at work. Maybe you have this great success and you get a big promotion. Why does that bring not just sweetness, but outsized joy and almost giddiness, sends you soaring? Why? It's because you've got so much Messiah hope bound up in your work. Everyone is searching for Messiah. Now we want Messiah. Jesus is the Messiah that we did not expect. This is in verses 26 through 34. Verse 26, John says, the one, the Messiah, the one is among them, but he's unknown. He's saying, he's here, and you don't know it. They're all searching for the solution. They're looking for the answer. They're looking for the peace that Messiah will bring. He stands among them, John says. He stands among you, but you don't recognize him. Why? Why don't they recognize him? It's because they've got the wrong expectations. He's not who they thought they were looking for. And the way this plays out in verses 26 through 34, it's a little bit weird, but just hang with me here. There is a lot of talk in verses 26 through 34 about baptism. There are, in fact, three baptisms here in verses 26 through 34. Three baptisms in view. The first baptism, verses 25 and 26, there's John who's baptizing people with water. So there's baptism by John with water. That's the first baptism. The second baptism that we have in view here is verse 32. There's not just the baptism by John with water, there's the specific baptism of Jesus with the Spirit. That's in verse 32. Jesus submit himself to being baptized with water by John, and as it happened, another baptism happened. The Spirit came down from heaven and descended and rested on Jesus. So there's the baptism of Jesus with the Spirit, that's the second baptism, and the third baptism that's brought up here, verse 33. There's baptism by Jesus with the Spirit. John says, he's the one who comes, he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit. So we've got these three baptisms, and in these three baptisms, we see the Messiah that we did not expect, but it's the Messiah we need. In these three baptisms, we see the Messiah we didn't expect, but the Messiah that we need. Let's look at how this works out in the text. First of all, this is what we see. With the first baptism, we see that we need a Messiah who can wash us. We need a Messiah who can wash us. The baptism of John, if you're familiar, if you've read in the different passages, this is what was happening. John was out in the wilderness, he was preaching, and thousands were coming to him. From out of the town into the wilderness, they were responding. They came to the wilderness and they heard what he was saying. What was his message? He was calling them out. John was identifying in the lives of the people and in the society of the people. He was identifying widespread wrongdoing. And in this way, I think it's very accurate when people describe John the Baptizer as the final and the greatest of all of the Old Testament prophets. How do you categorize John? He's a prophet. Is he a New Testament prophet or is he an Old Testament prophet? He's an Old Testament prophet and he's the greatest of the Old Testament prophets. What were the Old Testament prophets like? What did they preach? Two things about them. They publicly condemned social evils and they publicly condemned personal evils. The prophets of the Old Testament condemned things that were going on in society, and they said it out loud, and they also condemned things that were going on privately with specific individuals. Think about how John spoke about the personal sexual immorality of the current leader of the land, Herod. He called them out. He said, what you've done is adultery. Think of how Nathan, the Old Testament prophet, did the same thing with David, the leader of the land. and condemned him for adultery and for murder. Think of how Elijah, the Old Testament prophet, condemned the specific personal sin of Ahab. You killed that man. You stole his land. So they would publicly condemn personal, individual evil. They would also speak and condemn broad, societal, cultural evil. Think about the book and the message of Amos, speaking about mistreatment of the poor and of the weak. Think about Malachi, speaking of widespread hatred in the hearts of husbands towards their wives. They address both the broad as well as the individual. Now, what was John looking for? When he came and he was baptizing in the wilderness, what did he want people to do when they heard his preaching? Did he want them to like and share and subscribe? He was looking for more than that. Verse 23, the voice crying in the wilderness, make straight the way of the Lord. He's quoting Isaiah 40. Matthew, Mark, Luke also quote this. He says, make straight. He is saying, I want you to turn around. I want you to hear all these things that I'm identifying, and I want you to turn around. I want you to admit that you're wrong, and I want you to stop doing it, and I want you to start doing what's right. I want you to repent, he's saying. I want you to confess sin. I want you to turn from that sin to God. And so here's the Messiah expectation. If we repent, this Messiah will wash us from our sins. And if you look at Isaiah 40, not verse three, but the verse before it, Isaiah 40, verse two, that's exactly what John would have been preaching. Isaiah 40, verse two, speak comfort to Jerusalem and cry out to her that her warfare has ended, that her iniquity is pardoned. Her iniquity is pardoned, the washing away of our sins. All of us here, this is what it's saying, all of us here need the Messiah who can wash us from our guilt. We all need that. Verse 29, that's what John says. John says, behold the Lamb of God. who takes away the sin of the world. And that is the Messiah that we need. The one who takes away the sin of the world. He will be a stain remover. We are stained, Messiah removes the stain. Do you sense your stain? Do you sense that you're stained and need to have it removed? Both at a personal, individual level, but also at a societal level. It's interesting, there are three, I mean there's more than three, Three key passages about the Messiah. They speak about personal sin and they speak about societal sin. Personal sins. John was addressing parents doing wrong against their children. That was in Malachi. And John also addresses children doing wrong against parents. And so what's in view here? The very mundane but painful experience of having conflict in the home. And one of you, whether you're the child or you're the parent, goes away muttering bitter words, maybe just under your breath. There's seething resentment in your heart. There's perhaps rebellion, disobedience, dishonoring of parents. Are you personally stained this way? Are you personally stained your own individual sins? When you come to God's word, when you hear it, maybe your grandma brings it to you. Maybe you've read it, maybe you've heard preaching. When God's word comes to you and it exposes in you darkness, maybe it's your anger, maybe it's your impatience, maybe it's exposing one of your can't stop behaviors. Sometimes we call them addictions. They're the things that you can't stop even though you know you should stop because it's hurting you. You can't stop even though you know you should stop because it's hurting other people around you. It could have to do with who you're sleeping with. It could have to do with what you're stealing. It could have to do with why you're sloshed so much of the time. Are you stained with personal sins? But the question is also, are you stained with societal? sins. Maybe you haven't done it. Maybe you didn't pull the trigger, but you're in a society that's done it. Three Messiah passages, Isaiah 11, Isaiah 42, Isaiah 61. All of them talk about how Messiah will come and deal with the societal sins. Isaiah 11, four, but with righteousness, Messiah shall judge the poor and decide with equity for the meek of the earth. He's going to come and deal with how the weak, how the poor have been mistreated, have not been treated fairly. Isaiah 42. One, behold, my servant, the Messiah, 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. A bruised reed he will not break, and smoking flax he will not quench, he will bring forth justice for truth. He will not fail nor be discouraged till he has established justice in the earth, and the coastlands shall wait for his law. Isaiah 61, this is one that's often brought up at Christmas time. The spirit of the Lord God is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison to those who are bound. Are there societal sins still happening today? Of course there are. They may be different from what happened back then in ancient Israel and Palestine, but there are societal sins today. We have to look at our own country. We have to look at our own society. Are we as a society guilty of the blood of the weak, of the unborn children? Tens of millions of unborn children killed. That's the entire population of Virginia and North Carolina and South Carolina and probably Georgia. All of them killed. Are we as a society guilty of the blood and the mistreatment of the poor? Think about the living, the black Americans who are still alive, who were treated prejudicially, and what was taken from them has never been returned, and maybe it never will be. I'll give you an illustration. You think, why are you always talking about, it's so vague. Okay, let me give you an illustration. I know a man who was alive in Norfolk, who lived across the street from a public high school that was all white, but guess what? While he was in high school, They changed the laws and praise God for that. And now it was illegal to segregate. And so he could now attend the high school that he lived across the street from. But he didn't because the weeks before the school year started, a black man effigy was hung up. in front of that high school and it scared the daylights out of every black student around. And so they just kept going back to Booker T. Washington. He missed a chance to be at that high school. How has that ever been returned to him? How could it be? I don't know. But it was societal evil done against him. Is our society stained? We've got blood on our hands. We've got bills that have not been paid. Our society is stained and we need a messiah. We need the messiah who can remove the stain both of personal and societal sin and restore justice. And so here's the hard question. Here's the hard question. Think about where we're all looking for Messiah. Think about it. Where do we look for Messiah? Does therapy, as helpful as it is, remove sin? Can medicine, as useful as it is, remove sin? Can a promotion at work, Remove sin. Can money remove sin? Is there a single political leader or set of political leaders who can remove sin? We need a Messiah who is capable of taking away the sin of the world. A Messiah who can wash us. That's in the first baptism. In the second baptism, we see this. We need a Messiah who is beyond us. We need a Messiah who's beyond us. This is the second baptism in the passage, verses 29 through 32. When John was baptizing at the Jordan with water, one of the people that he baptized was Jesus. And when Jesus was baptized by John, something wild happened. John, here, verse 33, he said, when I baptize this man, Jesus, there was another baptism that happened. The heavens opened, the Holy Spirit descended on Jesus and remained on him. This is he. And there was also a voice from heaven that spoke and said, this is my beloved son in whom I'm well pleased. And so John said, I saw that. And God told me That is the Messiah. Jesus is the Messiah. The dove that came down designated Jesus was the Messiah. It's kind of like, you've probably seen these, one of our great new inventions is augmented reality. You can put on glasses, you can put on the visor, and as you look, you see everything that you would normally see with your eyes, but it's now annotated. There are little labels to help you identify things. There are little arrows that show you which way you might want to go. The Holy Spirit coming down on Jesus was like augmented reality. It was the identifier saying, this one, this one whom John just baptized is the Messiah. The same three Isaiah passages that I just read, Isaiah 11, Isaiah 42, Isaiah 61, they all say, the Spirit would come on Messiah. Isaiah 11, the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him. Isaiah 42, I have put my Spirit upon him, my elect one. Isaiah 61, the Spirit of the Lord God is upon me. We all are setting Messiah expectations on something or on someone, but does your Messiah, is the one to whom you're looking for for answers, for repair, for healing, for justice, does your Messiah have the fullness of the divine Spirit of God? No other national leader, no other human judge has the fullness of the Holy Spirit like Jesus had. Money and financial security are not the fullness of the Holy Spirit of God. They used to say God is dead. Isn't it true that gold is dead? Gold cannot answer your deep questions. Gold cannot love you. Your children Your children, as wonderful as they are and as well as they may do, your children cannot redeem everything that you've lost. They can't live the life that you never lived. They cannot return everything that was taken from you. You can't put messianic expectations on your children. Messiah has to come from outside of humanity. We need a Messiah who's beyond us. It has to, he has to come down from heaven. And if you seek Messiah, if you seek the solution, if you seek the repair, the change from any other thing or any other person, it will disappoint you. We need a Messiah who's beyond us. And if you've got a Messiah that's beyond you, here's what you'll see. Here's what you'll find from the Messiah who's beyond you. Two marks of a Messiah that's beyond you. The Messiah that's beyond you is the only appropriate way to have both the lamb and the Lord that you need. And that's the mark of the Messiah. He's a lamb. The only Messiah who's beyond us could be strong enough to be the sacrificial substitutionary lamb who would bear all of my sins, all of society's sins, and be able to take them away. Only a lamb from beyond us could deal with guilt and deal with every terrible secret of your life. The thing that you hope they never find out if they were to dig through your social media posts. Only a lamb from beyond could deal with how you have stained other people. Only a lamb who's from beyond could deal with how others have stained you. Jesus Christ is the only lamb from beyond. And that's what you see. He's fully human. He's capable of representing you. He's fully divine. He's capable of enduring all the punishment of the sin of his people. But he's not only beyond us and capable of being that lamb. He's beyond us and that makes him capable and the only appropriate one to be your Lord. It could only be, if Messiah was beyond us, that he could be great enough to be Lord. You know, baptism, back then when they were doing it, it clearly signaled conversion. It was an action you took that said, I'm converting. I'm throwing in my allegiance. I'm signing up. I'm applying for citizenship here. The Gentiles who converted to Judaism would baptize. They would wash. It was ceremonial. It signaled that. And it was a way of humbling yourself and saying, I will follow you. I will be subject to you. Because Jesus comes from beyond, that makes him worthy and great enough that you should worship him and that you should obey him. Verse 27, that's what John is saying. Jesus is so great, I'm not even worthy to carry his shoes. As the Lamb of God, Jesus saves us. As the Lord, Jesus rules us. Everyone devotes themselves to something. Everyone is serving. What are you serving? Whom are you serving? Now, I need to just press this very briefly. Maybe Jesus has saved you, and that's your story, and that happened years ago, and that's wonderful. Don't ever lose that. Maybe Jesus is your savior, but is he your Lord? Are you following him? Are you obeying him? Are you going to his word and hearing the things that are commanded in it and saying, yes, I will do that? Yes, I should do that. We need a Messiah to wash us. We need a Messiah who's beyond us to be our lamb and to be our Lord, and this is what we'll close with. We need a Messiah. who will fill us, and that's the third baptism. We need a Messiah who will fill us. Verse 33, this Messiah, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit. For those who believe, this Messiah fills us. The picture is this, when Jesus was baptized in that second baptism, the Holy Spirit came down and rested on him. When you receive Jesus as your Savior and he's your Lord, the Spirit, that same Spirit comes and descends upon you and comes upon you and two things happen. There's a permanent change in you and there's a personal change in you. A permanent change and a personal change. It's the glorious reformed doctrine of regeneration. How the Holy Spirit comes and changes the believer. Isaiah 36 speaks about it, Isaiah 36, 25, then I will sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be clean. I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you. I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and you will keep my judgments and do them. Every other Messiah will tell you either this. Every other Messiah will tell you, you need to change. You need to be more devoted. You need to get a better self-image. Or your situation needs to change. You've got to drop your toxic friends. You've got to find better friends. You've got to find a different party in power, whatever. Either you need to change or your situation needs to change. Every other Messiah will tell you to make the change. Only this Messiah will make the change in you. Give you the altered mind, the altered heart. Remove from you the constitutional prejudice that we all have against God. Remove the hatred from your heart. I'm going to close with this example. It's a bit extended. I've gone long. Thank you for bearing with me. This is an extended passage written by John Perkins. He's the well-known African-American civil rights activist. He writes this. My older brother, Clyde, who served his country in the army in World War II, was shot and killed by a deputy marshal soon after returning home. I have been spat upon and brutally beaten by police. When I was 27 years old, I was a young husband and father. living in Monrovia, California. We had moved to Southern California to escape the racism and segregation that was smothering us in Mississippi. At that time, most of the people in my family were not attending church regularly. My son, Spencer, however, had started attending a neighborhood good news club where kids learned about the Bible while playing games and having fun. It was connected to a local church. One day my son Spencer came home and began to share with me what he had been learning about Jesus. He learned that Jesus was God's son who had come to earth to die in our place so we could be forgiven of sins. Before that, I had never heard the good news of God's love in such a clear way. So when my son Spencer asked me to go to Sunday school with him at that local church, I agreed. And in that Sunday school, I finally met Jesus. I discovered that joy is the fulfillment of longing. I was longing for love. I was seeing it in Spencer, but I never really had it in myself. Almost immediately, God began to do something radical in my heart. He began to challenge my prejudices and my hatred toward others. I had learned to hate the white people in Mississippi. I hated their control over our lives. I hated them for what they had done to my brother, Clyde. I hated them for refusing to see me as a person deserving of respect just because I was a human being. I had so much hate. And if I had not met Jesus, I would have died carrying that heavy burden of hate to my grave. But Jesus began to strip it away, layer by layer. He reminded me again and again that I could not hoard his love and I could not be selective about who I would share it with. The love he had shed abroad in my heart was meant to be shared with others regardless of their color. I never imagined when I left Mississippi at the age of 16 that God would bring me back to Mississippi. with a changed heart towards white people. I left Mississippi with hate in my heart. God brought me back with a heart that was overflowing with his love. I had been reconciled to Christ, and he prepared me to return to Mississippi, to be reconciled to my white brothers and sisters. Even today, when I think back on this, I am overwhelmed at the transforming power of God God is the ultimate reconciler. And with this we'll close. Jesus is the Messiah who will wash you. Jesus is the Messiah who is beyond us. He's the Lord and the Lamb. And Jesus is the Messiah who can fill you and make you new. Is Jesus your Messiah? Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we come to you, we've looked for you, we've longed for you, and Lord, you've satisfied us. We humble ourselves and confess that we have our individual sins, we've got societal sins. Would you be the Lamb of God who takes away all of the sins of the world? And Lord, would you put in us a new heart, a heart that is capable of loving you, of knowing that you love us, and now can love one another? Would you work it in our lives, in all of the broken relationships that we have? Would you show Christ to us and would you cause us to treasure him? We ask in Jesus' name, amen.