This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

I want to welcome you to day two of week three of our look through the book of
Matthew. In chapter three, we're looking at John the Baptist preparing the way.
And then we're going to watch John meet Jesus, and we're going to see in that
some exciting things happen in a picture of baptism.

Listen to what happens in verses 13 to 17. Then Jesus came from Galilee to the
Jordan to be baptized by John. But John tried to deter him saying, "I need to be
baptized by you, and do you come to me?

" Jesus replied, "Let it be so now. It is proper for us to do this to fulfill
all righteousness. " Then John consented.

As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment,
heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and
lighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, "This is my son whom I love.

With him I am well pleased. " Wow, what a baptism. What a day.

What a spiritual moment and experience, unforgettable. When you see this, you
need to remember that baptism is a picture. For us, it's a picture of our
salvation.

When someone's baptized, it doesn't make them a Christian. It's a picture. It's
a symbol of what happens when we become a believer.

When someone goes down into the water, it's a picture of being buried, of dying
to sin. When someone comes up out of the water, it's a picture of the new life
we have in Christ. So we're buried with him in baptism, and we're raised to walk
a brand new life.

Baptism is also a picture for Jesus, but in a different way. Obviously, Jesus
didn't need to be saved. He is the one who brought us our salvation.

So why was Jesus baptized? Well, you see here, there are four pictures in the
baptism of Jesus that help you and I to grow to become all that God wants us to
be. Baptism was a part of the story of Jesus' life because he wants it to be a
part of the story of our life.

So what are the pictures that you see here? Well, first, a picture of humility.
You see the humility of John in this.

John is saying here, "I need you to look to the one who's coming after me. I
need to be baptized by you. " By the way, you may not have known this, John and
Jesus' mothers, they were cousins.

You might remember in the birth story that Jesus' mom, Mary, goes to see John's
mother. They're friends. And so Jesus and John the Baptist are family.

They're second cousins. Now, you know how sometimes you grow up with somebody
and they're in the family. It's hard to have a humble attitude towards them.

It's easy to get a spirit of bitterness towards this person that's better than
you. And I can promise you, Jesus was better than John in every circumstance
because Jesus is perfect. Jesus' own family, his brothers, his sisters struggled
with him.

We're going to see as he goes through his ministry, much because of this, but
not John the Baptist. He had the humility to look to Jesus. But here, I want you
to look also at the humility of Jesus who is willing to go out and to be
baptized by John.

Here is perfection, God in human flesh saying, "You, baptize me. " And John
realizes there's something wrong with this. He tried to make sure it didn't
happen, but Jesus said, "No, it is the right thing to do.

" What a picture of humility. What a picture of humility. There's also here a
picture of the Trinity.

You have when Jesus is baptized, you have Jesus being baptized. You have the
Spirit descending like a dove. And you have the Father speaking and saying,
"This is my Son.

" There is no one verse in the New Testament that says the Trinity is Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit. But there are many, many verses in the New Testament that
give us pictures, even in the Old Testament. Some of the pictures, the glimpses
of the Trinity that we get throughout the Bible are in the book of Genesis, the
four places that God speaks of Himself as "we.

" There's a sense that there is something going on here that I don't understand.
The fact that all three are involved in creation. The Spirit in Genesis 1-2, the
Father, Hebrews 1-2, the Son, Colossians 1-16, are all said to be part of
creation.

And obviously, only God creates, so Father, Son, Holy Spirit, they're all God.
The fact that we are baptized, when we're baptized, we're baptized in the name
of what? Of who?

The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And the fact that all of them were
there at Jesus' birth announcement. You can read that in Mark chapter 1.

And they're all here at Jesus' baptism. This is a picture of the Trinity of God,
the greatness of God, the power of God, and who He really is. That's a second
picture that we see in the baptism of Jesus.

Then there's a third picture that we see. And it's a picture of identification.
Jesus says to John, "I have to do this to fulfill all righteousness.

" Now, it wasn't to fulfill His righteousness. Jesus had no sin. But it was to
enable us to see God's righteousness fulfilled in us.

You see, Jesus, who had no sin, identified with us as sinners. And He's
baptized. He's baptized in His baptism for repentance.

Jesus, listen, Jesus identified with us by being baptized. And when we're
baptized, we identify with Him. Now, I know many people ask the question, "Well,
then should I be baptized the way that Jesus was?

I mean, I was baptized as a baby. My parents had me baptized. I mean, isn't that
enough?

" And to me, really, that isn't the question. The question is, what did Jesus
do? And what do I want to do to follow Him?

So, of course, you should be baptized the way that Jesus was. Affirming what
your parents did when you were baptized, that they wanted to see you make
spiritual progress in your life, but Jesus was baptized as an adult. We want to
be baptized as an adult after we made our decision to be baptized.

After we made our decision to follow Him. Why? Because of this picture of
identification.

We want to do all that we can to identify with Him, to obey Him. That's what
it's all about. It's not about churches and rituals and what one church does and
what another church does.

It's about my personal relationship with Jesus and me identifying with Him,
because He identified with me. It's a picture of identification. And then
there's a fourth picture here, and that is a picture of affirmation.

There is this statement that you hear the Father making in this moment. "This is
my Son, whom I love, and with Him I am well pleased. " In Him, there's this
sense of, "In Him my soul delights.

" Now, on the one hand in this, there is a call back to the Old Testament. This
echoes Isaiah 42 verse 1, where Jesus is identified as the servant of the Lord,
the Messiah, who would come according to the prophecies of Isaiah. He would
accomplish God's will to bring Israel back to Himself, to bring the light of God
to all nations.

So we're seeing here this affirmation from the Father, "This is the One," even
in Jesus' baptism at the very beginning of His ministry. But there's more than
just looking back to the Old Testament. There's also truth in what He said.

"I am well pleased in Him. " "I am well pleased. " The affirmation that Jesus
received at the beginning of His ministry is the affirmation that we're looking
forward to receiving from the Father at the end of our ministry on this earth.

"Well done, good and faithful servant. " In this affirmation, this picture of
affirmation, you see very clearly that when I live a life of faith, when you
live a life of faith, you start to live life with a different kind of question.
You stop asking, or less and less you ask, "What will make me happy?

" And more and more you find yourself asking, "What will make God happy? " What
will make God happy? Because you know in the end, what makes God happy is what's
going to make you happy.

What makes God joyful is what's going to make you joyful. What brings
satisfaction to God is going to bring eternal satisfaction into your life. So as
we take a minute to pray together, I want to focus on this last one.

I want to invite you to turn this question over in your mind in a spirit of
prayer with me for the next few minutes. Our Father, it's so easy, we admit, to
get caught up in what will make us happy, because we want to be happy. We don't
want to be sad.

We don't want life to feel like it's falling apart. We want to be coming
together. We want to have a joyful happiness about life.

But Lord, in our honest moments, we know that sometimes that causes us to chase
after the wrong things. Some immediate happiness. Sometimes those wrong things
are just bad ideas, but other times those wrong things are certainly sins.

Lord, we don't want to chase after those things. And so let the question start
to change in our minds, we pray. What will make you happy?

What pleases you? Because God, you made us to live a life of worship, a life
that is pleasing to you. And when we live a life that is pleasing to you, we are
most pleased.

When we live a life that is satisfying to you, we are most satisfied, because
that's what you made us to do. So let that question beat in our hearts. Let that
question run through our minds this day.

What will bring joy to you? What will make you happy? How can we live a life
that's pleasing to you?

And Lord, when we hear the answer, let us chase after that answer for all we're
worth, because that's what you made us to do. Strengthen us to do this, we pray.
We need your strength.

In Jesus' name, amen. Tomorrow, we're going to begin to see together what
happens when Jesus faces temptation.