At Last!  At Last!  God is Pleased with Man!
Rev. Richard A. Bolland

Luke 3:21-22
(Jan. 11, 2004 Sermon Transcript)

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        Grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

        This is a good day. It is a good day because on this day we remember in the church year the baptism of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now, oftentimes we consider that this is some kind of minor thing. In fact, sometimes people have told me that they’re not entirely sure why this is included every single year on the church calendar. But it is no sidelight, and this earthly ministry which He is about to begin, brings to us salvation and the restoration of creation.

        And now it begins, with His baptism.

        Already, Satan had attempted to take the Lord’s life, through the treacherous murder of the innocents in Bethlehem, but now, having grown into a man, Jesus, when the time was right, and when the time, as the scriptures say, had fully come, Jesus steps forward to be baptized, to stand with sinners, in solidarity. To take His first substitutionary act. To be baptized for us.

        Dear friends, John the Baptist had been preaching that the kingdom of God was drawing near, that it was at hand. And he said that the proper preparation for that was repentance, and the most public outward sign of that spirit of repentance, was to be admitting that we needed a washing. And indeed, it was the washing of the stain away for the forgiveness of sin in the waters of John’s baptism.

        But now, standing in line, it seems, with the others, Jesus comes forward to be baptized. And John stops, for suddenly the face he encounters is not the face of anyone other than the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.

        And he protests. He says, "It is not fitting that I should baptize. Rather that you should baptize me." But Jesus rightly says, "No, it is right that all is fulfilled." And then He is baptized.

        Now the kingdom of God is at hand! And indeed, the recreation of the world begins and the establishment of the Messianic Age is initiated. The restoration of all that God had originally intended for sinful mankind now begins with the baptism of our Lord and the initiation and anointing of Him by the Holy Spirit for the public ministry which He is about to embark on. At last, at last, here is a man with whom God is well pleased, something that could not be said of any other man before or since.

        Dear friends, if God’s creatures are to have any hope of being pleasing to Him, the first thing that must happen to them is that they must listen to Him without doubting Him. In the beginning, of course, humanity was pleasing to God. We read in the book of Genesis, the very first chapter, the 31st verse, these magnificent and profound words. God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning-- the sixth day.

        It was God’s will and gracious action who crafted humanity in His very own image. That image contained also a complete harmony of our will with His. I say "our" will because all that we are or ever will be was contained also in our first parents. And so, they reflected His will in every possible way. There was never intended to be any distance between the one who had created us and us. But rather, we were called expressly to be in eternal fellowship with God forever.

        Alas, the serpent came into the garden, Satan of old, and he brings with him to the ears and hearts of Adam and Eve some words. And they are the most insidious and damnable of words. For to Eve, he says to them, Did God really say....?

        Satan whispered those words of doubt in her ears, and in the ears of Adam who was standing by. And they began to doubt what God had said. And that is the root cause of the fall of mankind into sin, for the temptation blossomed into the fruit, the rotten fruit, of sin. And Satan, I would suggest to you, continues to whisper into the ears and hearts of those who would believe. And he issues the same words to us over and over again. Did God really say....? whatever it was He said in Holy Scripture. And the deadly virus of doubt, doubt in the truth of God’s word has continued to alienate God’s people from God. And to bring doubt among His faithful.

        People have said things like, "Oh, the Bible, yes. That’s been corrupted by man over these many years and it isn’t really reliable anymore." But I would suggest to you that there is absolutely no proof of such corruption. Indeed, there is absolutely no proof of corruption that can be obtained from any of the 24,633 ancient manuscripts on which the New Testament alone is based. Indeed, what can we learn from those 24,633 manuscripts? We can learn this! That there is an incredible consistency over the millennia of exactly what God has said. We can learn this! That whatever manuscript you choose to read, not one single teaching over all those thousands of years is ever changed! Something no other document in all of the world’s history can claim. Not one single thing.

        And yet, still others will say, " The Bible was written to a different culture in a different era of history in a different set of circumstances, therefore we cannot let it speak to us plainly today, and we have to interpret it in the light of our own culture and society." Well, I have some news for you. God is not confined by history. He is not confined by the mindset of any particular historical era. Nor does He feel confined by the constrictions of a particular culture or society. In fact, He is the master of time. And He is the master of space, and its creator. And what’s more, He knows, and is the master of culture and of society, and when He speaks, His text speaks to us precisely for our culture and for our time and for our individual lives.

        Do not believe that His plain words, His plain texts, do not speak clearly to us, for they most certainly do.

        And of late, a new voice of late, not that they claim anything that hasn’t already been said, but they are getting a lot more press lately, like in Time Magazine and US News and World Report and Newsweek, which come out with their semi-annual attacks, usually at Christmas and Easter, on the Christian faith, and particularly on the person of Jesus Christ or the Holy Scripture.

        And the claim goes like this, "Well, there were early Christian gnostics during the foundational period of development of the Christian faith. And what they taught was actually closer to the truth, but a majority of more traditional folks voted them out of the church."

        Well, first, let me tell you what’s true about the claim. There were indeed early Christian gnostics. And what they did is they tried to incorporate and to synthesize, if you will, together old Grecian gnosticism, which was a belief system which said basically that there was nothing of physical nature that was anything but of corrupt nature. And so God certainly would not have become human flesh, for that would have been a corruption of God! And what’s more, you have to have inner enlightenment, sort of sparks that come to you, of enlightenment that would give you special, hidden knowledge that nobody else would have. And when they did that they removed from God any notion that He was in any way divine, and we were left with a Jesus which was nothing but a mere man.

        And I assure you, if Christ were nothing but a mere man, than you and I are still in our sins and headed nowhere but hell.

        The fact of the matter is this. Anyone who reads the history of what transpired during that time would quickly learn that the gnostics and their heresy were examined in the light of the apostolic word, and they were found heretical. And they and their heresy were dismissed from the church. And it was as simple as that.

        Yes, Satan’s whispered doubts still turn the hearts and minds of many, and seriously endanger and destroy souls with his damnable doubt. Did God really say....?

        With the baptism of our Lord, man’s foolish and sinful nature begins to be rescued from such doubt and corruption. Indeed, in Luke’s account of John’s baptism, the focus is not on the baptism itself, interestingly enough, but rather, on what follows it. And it says that after Jesus was baptized, He began to pray.

        Now, Jesus prayed a lot. And He prayed repeatedly, and oftentimes, most of the time in fact, withdrew from people in order to pray. But whenever He prays publicly, something special is about to happen. In fact, the only occasions in which we find Jesus praying publicly, other than this, is just before the sermon on the plain, just before the confession of St. Peter, just before the Transfiguration, and just before His final betrayal, and that’s it. So you know that when Jesus prays in public, something amazing is about to happen, and indeed it does!

        Consider the impact of the next two words I tell you. Heaven opened! Heaven became joined with earth. The two realms were, for a moment, co-joined! And that which was the Holy Spirit descended in a physical form, the scriptures say, like a dove. Not "a dove", but "like a dove". And a voice was heard from heaven. This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased. Listen to him. Did you hear that part about Listen to him rather than say, Did God really say....?

        Yes, the Holy Spirit descended, and nothing less than the anointing of the Holy Spirit upon the Son of God, to equip Him, strengthen Him, and sustain Him for all that He knew lay ahead. For He knew well that the road ahead would lead to a cross and a tomb. He knew well that He would be headed straight for the whipping posts of the Romans. He knew well the betrayal that would come His way.

        And yet, He begins. This one, who had no sin, was baptized in the place of sinners. You, and I, are now also baptized in Him. And with His baptism begins the Messianic Age. The age of the Messiah, for indeed, that is who He is. From here on out, the only thing that will matter is what He comes to do, and what He comes to accomplish. And what has happened is that He will begin to establish His creation. He will reestablish that which God intended, through the sacrifice and death and resurrection of His Son.

        Jesus is now in absolute solidarity with us. And He will redeem us with His Holy, innocent, and precious blood. Here and here alone is a man with whom God is well pleased.

        Like Christ, as I said, we too are baptized. And through the blessings of such baptism we receive the blessings of the Messianic Age that Jesus brings. For we receive eternal life and the forgiveness of sins, and the assurance of our salvation through His grace alone, and not by human effort, for Christ is the one who provides the effort.

        No longer will there be any outstanding debt of sin for those who are in Christ.

        No longer will an unpayable debt stand in our way of being with God, for indeed it is our Lord who makes payment on that unpayable sin, and He alone has the ability to pay it.

        And the unrelenting demands of the grave, that inescapable end, is no longer the inescapable end. But rather, we know that in His resurrection, we know our very own. That our baptism, at our baptism, at your baptism and mine, the heavens opened, and God said of us, You are my beloved son (or daughter) whom I love. With you I am well-pleased.

        And so, it is only right on this day, and that on every single year, we remember with great joy the baptism of our Lord! For what He brings to us is His whole life! His suffering, His death, His resurrection, His payment for sin, everything that brings us into the grace of God. And we stand in awestruck amazement, for indeed we find and discover that it is amazing grace that His baptism becomes our very own.  In Jesus’ name, Amen.