Luke 3:15-22 Sermon preached on 10th January 2010.
Our Gospel lesson today is the story of Jesus' baptism
but it's the short version
the 25-words-or-less version
the Executive Summary.
There are some interesting things in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark that Luke doesn't mention
such as Jesus coming up out of the water after his baptism
and Jesus being baptized to fulfill all righteousness.
Luke doesn't mention those things at all.
Luke's interest is elsewhere.
He wants to make sure that we understand the importance of the Holy Spirit in Jesus' life and ministry.
We too, need to be aware of the work of God’s Holy Spirit in OUR lives.
In Luke's Gospel, the story of the Holy Spirit begins even before Jesus is born.
Before Jesus was born, an angel of the Lord said to Mary,
"The Holy Spirit will come upon you,
and the power of the Most High will overshadow you;
therefore the child to be born will be holy;
he will be called the Son of God" (1:35).
Let me underline a part of that.
The angel told Mary, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you"
And the angel tells Mary the good things that will come of that encounter.
Then, in our story today, we see that people were thinking that John the Baptist was the Messiah.
They had good reason to believe that.
Israel hadn't seen a real prophet for hundreds of years, and they could see that John the Baptist was a real prophet.
But when they asked John if he happened to be the Messiah, he replied:
"I baptize you with water;
but the one who is more powerful than I is coming;
I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals.
He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire" (3:16).
In other words, John said, "No! I'm not the Messiah!
The Messiah is coming, and he isn't far off.
If I'm a candle shining in the darkness, he's a thousand-watt bulb.
I baptize with water, but he baptizes with the Holy Spirit and with fire!
That's quite a big step up from what I do! says John
I'm not even fit to tie his shoe laces!"
So far this morning we have been reminded of two things: that Jesus was born by the power of the Holy Spirit.
And that Jesus will baptize us with the Holy Spirit.
Then comes the story of Jesus' baptism.
Luke doesn't describe the baptism itself.
He just says that when Jesus had been baptized and was praying,
"The Holy Spirit descended upon him
in a bodily form like a dove.
And a voice came from heaven,
'You are my Son, the Beloved;
with you I am well pleased" (3:21-22).
Luke makes it clear that there is something miraculous about the work of the Holy Spirit.
He told Mary that the Holy Spirit would come upon her and that, because of the work of the Holy Spirit, she would have a son who would be called the Son of God.
And then when Jesus was baptized, the Holy Spirit descended on him, and a voice from heaven said,
"You are my Son, the Beloved;
with you I am well pleased."
So the Holy Spirit was with Jesus at his conception, his birth, and his baptism.
For Luke, that was the key to who Jesus was.
We need to stop and think about who the Holy Spirit is,
And what does it mean to be baptized by the Holy Spirit?
The Holy Spirit is described as the spirit of God.
It was the Holy Spirit –– God's Spirit –– who made Jesus who he was –– the Son of God.
It was by the action of the Holy Spirit that Mary conceived a child who would be known as the Son of God.
It was the Holy Spirit descending on Jesus at his baptism who empowered Jesus for his amazing ministry.
That might sound like just so much ancient history to us.
It sounds like something that doesn't really have much to do with our lives today.
But it has a very great impact on our lives.
How does God’s Holy Spirit have an impact on our lives?
If we are baptized in the Holy Spirit,
We are immersed / totally immersed in God’s Spirit.
The Holy Spirit has saturated every part of our lives and being.
He lives in us.
This gives us the means and the power and the possibility to live for God.
The Holy Spirit made it possible for Mary to conceive a miraculous baby.
The Holy Spirit made it possible for Jesus to carry on his miraculous ministry.
The same Holy Spirit is present with us here today.
That same Holy Spirit came to dwell in us when we repented and became followers of Jesus.
That same Holy Spirit makes it possible for us to live miraculous lives.
Lives lived for God today.
That might seem to be overstating it.
You may be thinking, "My life doesn't seem very miraculous.
In fact, my life seems very ordinary.
I don't see any miracles happening in me or through me or around me.
If the Holy Spirit is supposed to make my life special, then I haven’t noticed it.
First of all, I would say that if God has began a work of salvation in us – then that is the first miracle.
I would also like to point out that most of God's work gets done in very ordinary places by very ordinary people.
That has always been the pattern.
It often gets done so quietly that nobody really notices.
It gets done in the midst of the ordinary things of life –– working, loving, and washing up.
It gets done because of the presence of the Holy Spirit in people’s lives–– the gift that God gave us –– God's Spirit.
When you stop and think about it, there was much that was ordinary about Jesus.
From the beginning, he had been in the form of God, but the scriptures tell us that he emptied himself
became ordinary
to live among us as a man (Philippians 2:6-8).
The place where Jesus lived was ordinary.
He wasn't born in a Roman palace, but in a Bethlehem home.
His earthly father, Joseph, wasn't a king, but a carpenter.
Jesus didn't travel from place to place in a fancy chariot, but on foot.
At the end, entering Jerusalem in triumph, he didn't ride an impressive steed but an ordinary donkey.
Jesus went to Jerusalem, not to force his rule upon its inhabitants, but to die on a cross.
The people with whom Jesus rubbed elbows day by day were, for the most part, quite ordinary
fishermen and the like.
When he came into contact with movers and shakers, they were usually his enemies rather than his friends.
When he finally got to rub elbows with kings and governors, it was so that they might decide whether to kill him.
But there was something about this ordinary-appearing man that caught the attention of the crowds.
They gathered around him, because they recognised something special in him.
“nobody has taught like this man”
They saw something special in his attention to the sick and needy.
They could see the power of God at work in his life, and were attracted to him.
I mention this today, because our Gospel lesson is the story of Jesus' baptism.
At his baptism, the Holy Spirit –– the Spirit of God –– descended on him and filled him with power.
His baptism opened the door to his life-changing, world-changing ministry.
Repentance and baptism are parallel events.
John called on people to “repent and be baptized”
Jesus called on people to “repent and be baptized”
It is in this turning back in God direction – repenting, receiving forgiveness and being baptized,
that we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit –– God's Spirit (Acts 2:38).
It is God's Spirit who empowers us to do great things in his name.
You might wonder, "Where are all these great things that you talking about?
I don't see any great things happening in my life."
Let me say two things:
The first is that it is often difficult to recognize the great things happening in our midst.
God's Spirit often acts in such a way, that great things don't become visible for years.
I had this brought home to me years ago.
I served at Narrabri immediately after college.
After Narrabri we moved to Mungindi (on the Qld border).
Visiting Narrabri years later I met a young man who became a Christian at a funeral I took.
He was then a solid part of the Narrabri congregation.
Of course in some cases, we will die without ever catching a glimpse of the miracles happening around us.
We will be in for some huge surprises when we finally get to heaven.
If we have been faithful – there will be all sorts of blessings that have happened that we have not known about.
At that time, we will learn that a child in our Sunday school class became a solid citizen of the kingdom of God because of our influence.
We will learn that some long-forgotten kindness of ours turned a life a few degrees in the right direction –– and that made all the difference.
There are wonderful things happening in our midst right now by the grace of God. Many are invisible to us, but will be revealed to us in God's good time.
The second possibility is that some aren't doing much to harness the Spirit's power.
That's like sitting in a racing car with the motor turned off –– or like sitting in a dark room without switching on the light.
I could imagine one of our little grandchildren putting a lot of sugar in their milk and wanting more.
We would have to say “stir what you’ve got before you want any more!"
Sometimes, with regard to the Holy Spirit, it’s like us sitting in a racecar without turning on the engine –– or sitting in a dark room without turning on the light –– or asking for more sugar when we haven't stirred what we've got.
There has been much misunderstanding when it has come to the Holy Spirit.
I remember one young man coming to one of our Services at Newport and dismissing us because “we didn’t have the Holy Spirit”.
In his view, we didn’t speak in tongues, cast out demons and other so called manifestations of the Holy Spirit,
And so we were not proper Christians.
That extreme teaching doesn’t seem to be so prevalent now.
But the challenge is still before us – to let God’s Spirit work in our lives.
Amen.
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