Why was Jesus Baptized?| Chris

This message was preached  by Chris at Word of Grace Church on May 15th, 2016. To listen/download the audio please click here. To listen to the Sunday's worship and prophetic contributions please click here

Last week, Sunith shared with us the spiritual and physical truths about worry. He took to a text- Matthew 6:31-33- “So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” Instead of worrying, what is it that we should do? Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness.

Q. What does that look like- to live a life seeking first his kingdom and his righteousness?

I want to do that, but how do I do it? Did you ever ask yourself that question?

What the Word demands from us, he also supplies us. We will return to Mark 1 today. There the Lord has provided us a picture of a life lived pursuing his kingdom and righteousness.

Colin said at the beginning of the year said that we should be people who are marinating in the word. We need the word in two ways- slowly and fast.

Mark 1: 9-45

This is a picture of what a life lived seeking first his kingdom and his righteousness looks like. The example we draw is from Christ.1 Corinthians 11:1- Be imitators of me as I am of Christ.

Earlier in this passage, we noted some weird things. Mark quotes a snippet of Isaiah 40 so we may recount the value of all the things it says.

We understood that God is the one for whom Isaiah was calling, John is calling to make straight the paths- who will come wearing sandals.

In those days, Jesus came from Nazareth and was Baptised by John. The heavens parted and a voice came from heaven saying, “You are my beloved son. With you I am well pleased”.

Q. Why is Jesus getting Baptised? What sins does he have? From what does he repent?

This is not weird, it’s enlightening. We will answer this question in the end.

Q. What just happened?

The sky tears open, a voice comes down saying, “you are my beloved son”. Baptism is pleasing to God. To seek first his kingdom, there are 6 attitudes, attributes, deeds, that are required:

1.      Baptism: Exodus 4:22-23- “Israel is my firstborn son... Let my son go, so he may worship me.” God is saying to Israel you are my beloved son. Israel would agree that throughout their time in OT they were not pleasing to God. But in this son (Jesus Christ) he was well pleased. God is setting up a comparison.

2.      Overcome sin and Temptation: In Verses 12-13 it says that Jesus was then led into the wilderness for 40 days. 40 and wilderness- how long was Israel wandering in the wilderness? 40 Years. This son is seeking the kingdom perfectly. In Matthew 4, we look at the fuller version of what happens. Jesus is tempted with the very same temptation that Israel went through- to lean on its own sufficiency. But where Israel failed, Jesus thrived. Jesus overcame sin and temptation by means of the Spirit and the Word. In this way, he models for us how to seek his kingdom.

3.      Proclaiming the Gospel- encouraging God fearers and those who do not believe: V 14- calling of the disciples. Proclaiming the Kingdom- for others to repent and believe. He starts with the God fearers. But he calls them to a new level of obedience. We should do the same. In your life there are people who believe, but are not living a life seeking first his kingdom and his righteousness. We ought to call them to seek first his kingdom. V. 36-39- Jesus is not just calling the God fearers. He is calling to repentance and belief, those who know nothing about God.

4.      Engaging the darkness around us- v. 23-26- a man with an unclean spirit. V. 29-34- Simon’s mother-in-law, the whole city, etc. through prayer- asking that the Lord would heal our friends and neighbours, and to remove spirits of various kinds. We should do the same.

5.      Recognising the authority of Jesus: Jesus also recognised that he is authoritative. Jesus is our authority. We must recognise the authority of the word of God. What it says, we must do.

6.      Pray- Jesus devotes himself to prayer- spending time with his heavenly father. In walking in such a way as to please God and seek first his kingdom and his righteousness- these are the things we ought to be doing.

Jesus is fulfilling all perfect righteousness. 2 Cor 5:21- “God made him who had no sin to be sin[b] for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”  Jesus came to earth to identify with us and to eradicate our sin.

Isaiah 53:12 says that he was counted among the transgressors. He became to God our sin. He looks at the cross and takes it, kills it and offers himself as a sacrifice. Then he was buried and rose again so that we can be separated from our sin forever. This is exceedingly good news.

Our life might not look like the life lived out seeking first his kingdom- not all of it, not every day.

Rom 3:21-23- “But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness is given through faith in[h] Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” 

The life that Jesus lived on our behalf needs to be in us. What is missing from my life from these 6 things? And should we fail at something for whatever reason, we still praise and give glory to Jesus who gave us freedom in him through his life.

 Word of Grace is an Evangelical (Born Again),  Spirit filled (Charismatic), Reformed, English speaking church in Pune that upholds the Bible as God's inspired Word for life. We are a church community that have people from every part of India and parts of the world. We are here to put the Great Command and the Great Commission into practice by equipping and releasing every member into works of service. To know more about us please log onto www.wordofgracechurch.org.

0