The Beginning of Jesus’ Ministry

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All right, well, tomorrow is a historic day in our country. Every four years, we inaugurate either a new or a returning president. They get sworn in.

And tomorrow is particularly historic because it’s both a new and returning president. And that hasn’t happened since Grover Cleveland back in the 1800s, that somebody who has been president and then was not is sworn back in. But if you haven’t already, you’re going to hear a lot of talk in the media about what’s going to happen in the first hundred days.

It seems like an arbitrary amount of time, but they like to talk about the first hundred days. And that goes all the way back to Franklin Roosevelt, who was elected president in the depths of the Depression. And as he was coming into office, he made some radio broadcasts way back in 1933, talking about what he was going to do the first hundred days, not necessarily of his term, but the first hundred days that Congress was meeting.

because he said there’s a lot of stuff that, in his opinion, needed to be done, and it needed to be done quickly. And so he came in with this agenda that in the first hundred days, here’s all the stuff we’re going to push and try to get through. And ever since then, most presidents come in with some kind of plan that these are the things we’re going to try to accomplish in the first hundred days.

Because they think we’re going to get in there while we’re still a new administration, and we’ve got the energy and we’ve got the momentum and we’re going to try to get a bunch of stuff done. The same thing happens when we elect a new governor. A lot of times they’ll come in with a plan of things that they want to see happen in the first 100 days.

It makes me wonder why we elect these people for four years, you know, if they’ve got a plan for 100 days. I would say let’s just elect them 100 days at a time, but no, no. It’s bad enough we’ve got to deal with election stuff every four years. They come in with this plan of what we’re going to get done, and we’re going to try to get done quickly right off the bat, because they recognize, for all that it feels like our political leaders sometimes, sometimes lack common sense, sometimes, they recognize that what they do at the very beginning sets the tone for what comes after, sets the tone for the entire thing.

The same is true for us, that’s why it’s a good idea to start your day off with a time of prayer, a time with God, because what you do at the beginning sets the tone for what comes after. It can be that way in a marriage. Not to say if you start off on a bad foot that it can’t change, but it’s a lot harder to change and turn things around than to start off in the right way.

What we do in the beginning sets the tone for what comes next. And so this morning, as we continue on in our study of the book of Luke that we began last week, we’re going to talk about the beginning of Jesus’s ministry. Last week, I talked to you about John the Baptist and what he did as far as coming out to the Jordan River and beginning to preach this message of repentance to the people of Israel, calling them to not just outwardly repent, but for their hearts to be changed and for them to show it outwardly in their behavior, and then to show a commitment to that through baptism, through the baptism of John, which is a little bit different from our believer’s baptism.

The next thing we’re going to see in the book of Luke is Jesus coming onto the scene in a public way, and this is really where the beginning of his public ministry takes place. And so we’re going to look at how Jesus started his ministry. I’ve put up there that what we’re going to talk about today is verses 21 through 38 of Luke chapter 3.

We’re not going to read all of those verses just because most of them are the genealogy. And I don’t intend on getting into the genealogy in detail this morning. If you all want to talk about that tonight, we can talk about that a little bit tonight.

But I do want to hit some highlights of the genealogy. But once you turn to Luke chapter 3, we’re going to look at a couple of these verses. If you’ll stand with me once you find it.

And if you don’t have your Bible or can’t find Luke chapter 3, it will be on the screen for you. But we’re going to look at three verses here. as we get started this morning looking at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry.

Starting in verse 1, here’s what Luke says. Now when all the people were baptized, Jesus was also baptized, and while He was praying, heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon Him in bodily form like a dove, and a voice came out of heaven, You are my beloved Son, in you I am well pleased. And when He began His ministry, Jesus Himself was about 30 years of age, being, as was supposed, the son of Joseph, the son of Eli.

You may be seated. Again, it’s not that the genealogy is not important. It is important, otherwise it wouldn’t be in there.

It’s just not the focal point of what we’re going to be studying this morning, although we will refer to it. So this is the beginning of Jesus’s ministry. This is the transition point from the ministry of John, who I talked to you about last week, came as the forerunner, the herald, to prepare people for the coming of Jesus, and now Jesus is actually there.

He shows up, and he comes out to where John is conducting this ministry, and Jesus says, I’ve come to be baptized. Now, we see in Matthew, Luke doesn’t record it, but we see in Matthew that Jesus shows up and says, I’m here to be baptized. Now, John has already told them there’s one coming whose sandal I’m not even worthy to loosen, And he’s coming, and though I baptize you with water, he’s going to baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.

He’s talking about, I offer a symbol of cleansing, he’s going to do the actual cleansing. The one who’s coming is greater than I am. And Jesus shows up, and John says, I need to be baptized by you, and you’re coming to me?

Matthew records that conversation. And Jesus says, I’ve come to do this because it fits, it’s fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness. And so John goes ahead and baptizes him.

Luke leaves a lot of that out. Not that Luke’s saying it didn’t happen, it’s just not the focus of what Luke is talking about. Instead, Luke is pointing us to the connection between what John has been preaching and what now Jesus has come to do.

And in these first few verses where Jesus begins his public ministry, we see that Luke wants to make sure we understand a few points of what this shows us about who Jesus is. From the very beginning, these are things that Jesus is showing about himself. And first of all, we see where we started right there in verse 21 that Jesus called Israel to repentance.

Now, I have been puzzled ever since I was a little boy as to why Jesus was baptized. You look at all the things in the Bible that baptism symbolizes, and Jesus didn’t need any of it. Now, for us as believers, we are baptized, we trust Christ as our Savior, and we follow that up with a public commitment through baptism, and it’s a picture to the world that we are putting our faith in the death and burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It’s a symbol of that.

It’s a picture of our salvation. Jesus didn’t need to be saved. He was the one doing the saving.

Jesus didn’t need to put his faith in his death, burial, and resurrection. He’s the one that came to do those things. And so he can’t have needed to be baptized for the same reasons that we need to be baptized.

You look at what it meant in their day before the crucifixion and resurrection. What did it mean? It was a symbol when the Gentiles would convert to the worship of the one true God.

Part of their conversion process was going through baptism. Jesus wasn’t a Gentile, and Jesus was never not a believer in the one true God. He is the one true God in human form.

So he didn’t need to do that. John here built on that and was using baptism as a symbol of repentance, but Jesus had no sins to repent of. And so I thought, why in the world, ever since I was a boy, that bothered me?

Not that I don’t believe it happened. I absolutely believe it happened, but why was it needed? Well, he tells us in that passage in Matthew, it’s fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.

He tells us, I’m doing this because it’s what the Father sent me to do. But see, that just backs the problem up a step. Okay, so why did the Father want him to do that?

He didn’t need to put his faith in himself. He wasn’t converting. He didn’t have sins to repent of.

Why in the world did the Father want him to do that? And then as I’ve been studying this passage in preparation for last week with what John did and this week in preparation for talking about the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, it just kind of smacked me in the face what’s going on here. And that’s one of the benefits of studying a book in order.

We realize these things that they’re telling us are connected. They’re not just standalone stories. But John has come preaching a message of repentance.

He’s come preaching that a Messiah was promised and was and he’s bringing judgment and he’s bringing restoration on the other side of that judgment. And so John has been preaching to the people that they needed to repent. They needed to prepare their hearts in that way.

Jesus comes and undergoes baptism and we think, it’s got to be saying something about Jesus. But it’s not. It’s Jesus saying something about John.

Now you study that in your Bibles because I don’t think I’m the. . .

If I came to you and said I’m the first person in 2,000 years to see this, then we’ve got problems. Okay, red flags all over the place. I don’t think I’m the first person ever to see this, but I think I’ve seen this for the first time for me, that what Jesus was doing was approving the message John had preached. That this is Jesus coming to John where John baptizing him shows the people that John approves of him because he’s saying you don’t need to be baptized by me.

He’s pointing to Jesus as the Messiah and Jesus undergoing the baptism anyway, says, I approve what John has been preaching. I’m Jesus, and I approve this message. That when John came saying, Israel needs to repent, Israel is not right with God.

The things that John talked about in chapter 3 last week, their pride and their self-righteousness, they’re thinking, oh, we’re good because we’re descended from Abraham. Their money, their power, all the things that they were embracing instead of embracing the Messiah, John is telling them, you need to repent of this, And this was Jesus signaling that there is continuity between him and John. There’s no daylight between them as far as what they’re preaching.

For him to undergo the baptism was as much, I believe, a sign of him taking John’s message and saying, I’m running with this and building on it, as it was anything else. Now, I’m not saying that’s the only reason why Jesus underwent baptism. But once we look at the two stories together, you realize that Jesus is approving John’s message.

and Jesus came to call people to repentance as well. We see that in verse 21 when Jesus was baptized. He brought himself to be baptized by John.

He was telling people that John’s message was right. And we see that as a theme throughout Jesus’ ministry as a fact. As a matter of fact, Jesus told people in Israel to repent.

We have this image in our minds, this modern idea of Jesus that he was just nice and affirming and just loved in the sense of approving what everybody wanted to do. Jesus called people to repent. He called the obvious sinners to repent.

He called the religious people to repent. As a matter of fact, he told a crowd that unless they were more righteous than the Pharisees, they would not enter into the kingdom. He told a group of people when they were pointing to another group who’d suffered some tragedy and said, do you think, Jesus said, do you think they’re worse sinners than you because they suffered this tragedy?

He says, I’m telling you, unless you repent, you’re going to perish in the same way. Maybe not the same physical means, but just as they perished, you’re going to perish too. Jesus called Israel to repentance, and it begins right here with his approval of John’s message.

Now, I think we need to make sure we understand every time what is repentance, because if the Bible calls us to repent, we need to know what that means. It is not saying clean your life up and then come to Christ. It’s not even saying feel sorry about your sins. Now, I think if we are repentant, our life will be cleaner as a result.

I think if we are repentant, we will feel sorry for our sins. But the repentance itself, the Greek word that the Bible uses means a change of mind. We might phrase it as a change of heart.

But we go from being sinners who love our sin and hate God to suddenly we’ve flipped around and we love God and we hate our sin. And that ought to characterize us as believers. Being repentant doesn’t mean that we’re sinless.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to happen on this side of eternity. But what it does mean is that when we sin, we hate our sin because we know it grieves the Lord and we love Him. And so if you, as a believer, if you sin and you feel that instant, oh, why did I do that?

Why did I say that? Why did I think that? There’s that feeling that I have disappointed my father yet again.

That’s a sign. And I don’t want to do that anymore. That’s a sign that we’re repentant.

And that’s what Jesus was calling people to do. So Jesus’ baptism was an opportunity to show the continuity between his message and John’s that Israel needed to repent. But it was also an opportunity to begin his ministry with a display of his identity and his power, who he is.

So we see in the next few verses that Jesus displayed his deity through this baptism. Look at some of the things that happened. First of all, we see there in verse 21 that the Father responded to his prayers.

It says, after Jesus was baptized, while he was praying, heaven was opened. The skies were opened. Now, we know, if you’re a believer, you know that the Father responds to our prayers.

Sometimes that answer is yes. Sometimes that answer is no. Sometimes that answer is wait a little bit. But we get one of those responses.

Just because God doesn’t do exactly what we ask doesn’t mean he hasn’t responded. If I left it up to some of my children, they would eat happy meals every meal every day. If they ask me for a happy meal and I don’t get them a happy meal, it doesn’t mean I didn’t respond.

The answer might have been no, or it might have been we’re doing that tomorrow, so wait a little bit. The Father does the same thing with us. But the difference here, you say, how does it prove anything about who Jesus is that the Father responded to his prayers.

It’s in the way that he responded. Have you ever prayed and suddenly the physical world responds? It moves in response.

Have you prayed and the heavens have opened up? I mean, this is incredible. He’s there coming up out of the water and he’s praying to the Father and it says the skies opened up.

That word in Greek can mean heavens or skies, but you look up and there’s something incredible that takes place. I don’t know exactly what it looks like. But we see the Father respond to the Son in a way that He does not typically respond to other people’s prayers.

This was a sign to those who were watching that there was something unusual about Jesus, that there was something unusual about this baptism, that there was something different going on with this man, that the Father didn’t just hear Jesus’ prayers, He didn’t just respond the way He would respond to ours, as incredible as that is, but it says while He was praying the heaven was open. And it was the way that the Father responded that showed that Jesus was no ordinary man. And this happened over and over, that Jesus would put things on display, even in the natural world, that would show he was no ordinary man.

This is sort of the coming attractions for him speaking to the storm, and even the storm has to obey him. I have not been able to master that. I grew up in the tornado capital of the world.

You think if anybody had practice trying to speak to the storm and make it stop. I would have loved to have mastered that. Storm never listened to me.

But Jesus just said, be quiet. And the storms listened. And that wasn’t the only time.

But when Jesus prayed, things happened. Not only because of who Jesus is, but also because he was always praying in line with the Father’s will. But the way the heavens opened in response to Jesus’ prayer shows us that something different was going on, and this was no ordinary man.

And those who were watching, if they didn’t get that, then when the skies opened up, the next thing happened was that the Holy Spirit confirmed His presence with Jesus in verse 22. When the heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended upon Him in bodily form like a dove and a voice came out of heaven. So the Holy Spirit made this deliberate move to rest on Jesus in a visible way.

Okay, so the Holy Spirit is present with Jesus. The Holy Spirit is present with each of us. If you’re a believer, if you’ve been born again and trusted Christ, the Holy Spirit is present with you all day, every day, everywhere you go.

That can be a comforting thought. It can be a terrifying thought, depending on where you stand with the repentance issue. All right?

But the Holy Spirit is always with us. But the idea that the Holy Spirit is going to come and show Himself visibly is not the normal way he operates. There’s a couple times in Scripture that it’s recorded, the day of Pentecost being one thing, but it’s always done as a sign that the Holy Spirit is doing something different here.

So when the tongues of fire land on the apostles’ heads at Pentecost, it’s a sign that the Holy Spirit is doing something out of the ordinary. For the Holy Spirit to come and be present with Jesus, it says, in bodily form and looking like a dove that just kind of comes and lands on Jesus. It’s a sign that the Holy Spirit is doing something here that’s out of the ordinary.

And we see this throughout Jesus’ ministry, that the Gospels talk about the Spirit working through Him. As a matter of fact, that’s why Jesus refers to the unpardonable sin as the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. It’s because Jesus was doing miracles through the power of the Holy Spirit, and people who knew, like the Pharisees, who knew it was the Holy Spirit, who knew it was God’s power, looked at it, and because they felt threatened, they attributed it to Satan instead.

And when Jesus talks about the unforgivable sin and blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, he’s talking about those who are so hardened in their hearts that they would look at the very evident work of the Spirit that they know to be the Spirit and say, no, no, that’s Satan’s work. That takes a special kind of hardness of heart. That takes a special kind of hostility toward what God is doing.

But the Holy Spirit worked throughout Jesus’s ministry, which that raises all kinds of puzzling questions that we may get into more tonight as to why Jesus, if he’s God the Son, why does he need God the Holy Spirit to come and empower his ministry? And it probably has something to do with him taking on human form. And it may not be that he needed the Holy Spirit, but it may be that the Son and the Spirit worked together to accomplish the will of the Father.

But whatever it was, this was not something that the people in John’s day and Jesus’s day were used to seeing. The Holy Spirit comes and lands on him, and Luke is the only one that makes sure we understand he landed in bodily form. Matthew and Mark don’t mention that.

They mention the Holy Spirit appearing as a dove. And again, it’s not that they’re saying that didn’t happen. That’s just not their focus.

But Luke is talking to a group of Gentiles, a group of people who are not familiar with the work of the Holy Spirit, and he wanted them to understand, wants us to understand this is not just a vision. Something actually came down and landed on Jesus, and it was the presence of the Holy Spirit. And that was showing the people who were watching that there’s something different happening with this man.

And then we get into verses 22 and 23, where after it says the Holy Spirit came in bodily form like a dove, it says a voice came out of heaven. You are my beloved son, and in you I am well pleased. The Father confirmed his relationship with Jesus.

So the father spoke in an audible voice, again in a way that was unusual. And I think the people around there were probably looking around, what am I hearing? But there’s this booming voice out of the sky saying, this is my beloved son. And he made this statement.

Jesus knew who he was. Jesus didn’t need to be told, you’re my son. He knew.

John didn’t need to be told, that’s my son. He knew. That’s why he said, I don’t think I should be baptizing you.

Instead, this was done for the very specific reason of making sure the crowd, those who had followed John, that they understood that this was my son. The father wanted those who were listening to understand in full view and full hearing of everyone that that man who stood before them being baptized was the son of God. Now, we don’t know how big this crowd was.

It’s obviously not everybody in Jerusalem. We wonder sometimes, why did so many people seem to support him and so many people were so opposed to him? It seems to be a where you came from thing.

People from outside Jerusalem tended to be a little more friendly toward Jesus, and it was the folks at Jerusalem that crucified him the last week. But these people who were there at the Jordan River, they got to hear with their own ears. The father said, this is my son.

Lots of people claim crazy things. I used to work at the Oklahoma County Courthouse in the court clerk’s office, and there were certain people that would come in all the time wanting to file just goofy legal papers that the higher-ups did not want me waiting on. I said, get them out of here.

I felt bad about that because they’re citizens too. We work for them. I’m just going to hear them out, especially if we’re not busy.

But I’ve been told by more than one person, oh, I’m the son of God. Okay. Tell me more about that.

I don’t believe that, but tell me more about that. Anybody can just say they’re the son of God. Jesus didn’t have to say it because God said it.

The father said it where everybody else got to hear it. He confirmed that relationship. And even as we go to verse 23, where it starts in the beginning of the genealogy, when he began his ministry, Jesus himself was about 30 years of age being, and then there are three words right there, as was supposed the son of Joseph.

That may be what everybody thought, that he was the son of Joseph. But Luke is pointing us back to what just happened. You want to know who his father really is?

He told us there at the Jordan River. And all the talk about him being the son of Joseph, that’s not the whole story. And then he ties this into the genealogy.

You wonder, why does he put the genealogy here? When Matthew puts it around the time of Jesus’ birth. Because again, this is his public introduction of Jesus and his ministry.

Well, if he’s not really, if he’s legally the son of Joseph, but he’s not really Joseph’s son, then where does he come from? And you go back through the legal lineage here, all these names, and Matthew goes back to Abraham because Matthew is concerned with trying to make the case that Jesus is the King of the Jews, that Jesus is the Messiah. But if you scroll past all of these names, and I encourage you to read them sometime because it’s an interesting historical account, but if you scroll past all these names and you come down to verse 38, you see that he is descended from Enosh, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.

Luke doesn’t stop at Abraham like Matthew does. Luke goes all the way back to where we all came from because Luke is trying to make the case that Jesus came to be the Savior of all mankind. And that’s a recurring theme throughout the book of Luke.

Those of you who were here a couple Sunday nights ago, I think on the 5th, when we did the introduction to the book of Luke, heard about some of that, that Luke wants to make sure that the Gentiles understood that even though Jesus came to be Israel’s Messiah, he came to be all of mankind’s Savior. That it didn’t matter whether you were a Jew or a Gentile, it didn’t matter whether you were rich or poor, whether you were from one of the haves or the have-nots, slave, free, it didn’t matter. That Jesus’ lineage goes all the way back to Adam, who was made by God.

Jesus’ human lineage goes all the way back to Adam because Jesus was sent here by the Father to save all of those who were made by God, regardless of where we came from. Three things that Luke wants us to understand as he introduces us to Jesus as an adult. First two chapters deal with his birth and his infancy and the one story of him as what we would call now a preteen going to the temple.

But now as he comes and introduces us to Jesus as an adult, he wants us to understand that Jesus came to call Israel to repentance, came to point out that people were not right with God. He showed us from the very beginning that He was God in human flesh, and that He came to be a Savior for all of us. And all of these are important to everything Luke wants us to understand going forward.

All of these are things that are important for us to understand today. And by the way, if you were here on a recent Wednesday night when we talked about the claims that people make, that Jesus never claimed to be God, that was something that was made up later and added into the book of John, the other three Gospels, don’t show Jesus anywhere claiming to be God. We looked at 19 examples that night, I think, from the other three Gospels that show Jesus claiming to be God.

Here’s you another one, maybe not Jesus making the claim, but of the Gospels themselves making the claim that he’s God, for the Father to show up and say, this is my son. This isn’t something that was made up later after the writing of the other Gospels. But all throughout the book of Luke, we’re going to see that Jesus came to bring us to repentance because we’re not right with God.

He came and showed us by his teaching and by his actions that he is God’s son, so he has the authority to call us to repentance. And he came so that when we are repentant, he’s actually there to do the saving. Jesus came and did all of these things, ultimately leading to the cross, so that anybody, regardless of background, could repent and trust him and find salvation.

And this morning, if there’s something in you as you’re listening to this that’s telling you, you know, you’re not right with God, especially as we’ve talked about repentance, that you know you’re not right with God. We wonder what it takes to be right with God. What does that take?

And our human intuition tells us, well, I’ve just got to do better. I’ve got to try harder. Listen, if you could try hard enough, if you could be good enough, then there was no point in Him coming and doing any of this.

Jesus came to be the Savior of all mankind because all mankind needed a Savior. We couldn’t save ourselves. So that sin that we need to repent of, that sin that separates us from God, has to be paid for.

And so Jesus came as the Savior of all mankind, not just to teach us, not just to set an example, although he did those things, but he came to take responsibility for that sin. And three years after this, he was nailed to the cross and he shed his blood and he died so that you could be forgiven. And sometimes you might think, well, you don’t know what I’ve done or where I’ve come from.

I don’t. Probably not. But he does.

And Luke wants us to understand if you’re descended from Adam, then he paid for you. Meaning if you’re a human being, Christ died for you. And all that’s necessary is for you to repent.

Meaning to understand your sin is wrong and offensive to God. Recognize that God is right about your sin and that you’ve been wrong. Believe that Jesus died to pay for your sins in full and rose again to prove it.

And ask for that forgiveness and you’ll have it.

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