All right, straight through the front door here. We are in Matthew chapter 3, verse 15. John the Baptist and Jesus are standing right next to some water, and they're having this really intense showdown about who's going to baptize who. And it's really not actually all that intense at all because John is going to bend the knee immediately because he knows who Jesus is. But of course, his initial response is, You're already clean. Why should I clean something that's already clean? I'm the one who should be getting baptized by you. But Jesus says in verse 15, as we were discussing in the last conversation, let it be so now. It is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness. And last time around, we were working through this concept of Jesus as the fulfillment of the Old Testament, something that's all over the book of Matthew. We've been talking about this for month, bada da da. Jesus. Jesus is the thing that is just needed. It's sitting out there. It's the obvious round out to all of the earlier concepts. And so now when we get to this baptism and he says we're going to do this to fulfill all righteousness, we can't read this as him saying, we're washing our hands of all of this stupid stuff that went down in the Old Testament. We're going to start fresh with me. We have to view this as again that motif of completion. And that's where we're going to pick it up from yesterday's conversation right now. The past wasn't broken. The problem was with us and human insufficiency and our inability to respond rightly to the righteousness and authority of God. Admittedly, that was never going to work. We were never going to be able to fix that on our own. But after the account of the Old Testament, it's just abundantly clear we can't fix that on our own. And this would have been fresh in the minds of the audience, the same way the last 125 years of history, World War I, World War II, the Holocaust, the endless wars of the superpowers by proxy and Vietnam and Afghanistan, both for us and the Russians, us meaning Americans, because that's where I'm from. All of the yuck and the fighting and the bickering and the we didn't start the fire Billy Joel lyrics come to mind, and we're like, wow, yeah, we've tried a lot of different things to fix this, but humanity can't seem to fix its problems. We cannot live up to the righteous standards of God and perfect ourselves. But in Jesus, there is the promise that something could be done about that, that the resolution might come from outside the system and come into us. Now, all of that nuance would have been very fresh in the cultural memory of the original audience and very fresh in the religious consciousness of the original audience, a Hebrew audience who understand this idea of only having the human ability to temporarily solve our problems of guilt and failure through sacrifices that don't really ultimately fix anything forever, we would need God to step in and fix the situation. If you wash your hands of the Old Testament, you lose all of that stuff that points to exactly how Jesus is the key to the historical theological lock and that he's the only key to that lock, and the importance of who he is and where he fits is diminished. So strategically, it doesn't make sense for Jesus to abolish the law, even if that were an existential possibility for him as God to abolish who he's been and what he's been doing in the past. So what I think we're seeing here is Jesus saying, No, I got to be baptized, not because that makes me a Christian, not because that makes me a member of the church, not because that makes my sins go away. I don't have any, not because it's an outward symbol of my repentance, but I need to be baptized, well, for the same reason everybody does, in that it's an identification with God. But also, this is kind of the dunk moment, the sword out of the stone moment, the completion moment to say, all right, there we go. We're pretty much landing the plane on the fulfillment of all righteousness and everything that needs to be in place to believe that Jesus is the external to humanity solution to the problems of humanity is now in place. And if there's any doubt about that, the whole Trinity shows up right afterwards. 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. Now, I'm not going to break this down completely here because I'm going to come back to it when we get to the transfiguration scene down the road a little ways. But I don't know, I've been to a lot of baptisms and they were good, and it felt like something really happened there. I am just to turn over my cards, I'm definitely from the school of thought that a person becomes a Christian, and then they're like, I need to obey Jesus and get baptized and make sure everybody knows exactly where I stand here. And so then they get baptized, and uh everybody celebrates and acknowledges, okay, stake in the ground. That's where this person is, is how they live now. They're a new creation in Christ, and they've made that clear, and we've just seen a physical representation ordained by Jesus of a spiritual reality that happened through the power of Christ and the Holy Spirit through the resurrection, uh, the crucifixion and the resurrection. That's what I believe. And so bearing that in mind, let's just say I think baptism's a really huge deal, a very powerful thing among the most powerful experiences and celebrations in all of Christian faith. But I've never seen anything like this happen. I've seen people like applaud, I've seen people cry, I've baptized people, and there's always that kind of wet hug afterwards, and so you got your nice clothes on and they're just wrecked because the other person's drenched. Like there's that. I got to baptize all three of my kids. That was powerful. I balled during that, but this is different. This isn't like one of our baptisms. And in keeping with kind of everything about Jesus' baptism, that's frankly a little different than our baptisms. God shows up in a literal physical manifestation. Look, I get that if you don't think that there's truth to the miraculous claims of the Bible or truth to the divine nature of Jesus, you're gonna be very skeptical of a claim like this. If you do, uh it just seems enormously logical that God, through all of these ticking of the boxes, and that God, right after Jesus said, Nope, this is the fulfillment of all righteousness, would come along and be like, Yeah, yeah, actually it was. Hey everybody, that was actually the fulfillment of all righteousness. This is my son, I am well pleased with him. And he goes on later to say, Do what he says. So God vouches for and affirms Jesus. So it's kind of an interesting little sandwich here because you got John the Baptist, who's way less than Jesus, even worthy to hold his sneakers, is like, Yep, Jesus is coming, he's a big deal. Then Jesus shows up, the baptism happens, and on the other side of the sandwich, you have God, a much more impressive hype man coming along and being like, Yep, I also agree with John. This guy is a very, very big deal, and I'm well pleased with him. So this is, I think, our first New Testament look at the Trinity all in one place at once. There are Old Testament uh moments that point to that as well, but we don't have time to get into that. So, in summary, Jesus' baptism is not like the rest of the baptisms John does, because there is no repentance and the kingdom of heaven is near. Well, not anymore, the kingdom of heaven is here because Jesus just showed up and began his public ministry. So this is the uniquest of all the baptisms that John ever performed by a wide margin, and it's the most unique of all the baptisms anybody ever performed by a wide margin. Jesus' baptism is somewhat like ours in that it is a public identification of faith, and much like talking about the thumbs up, thumbs down signal and how that thumbs down, I guess it's the same no matter what it means. The gesture is the same. Jesus' baptism is like ours in that the actual physical act of the baptism looks a lot like how we do it. But Jesus' baptism is different than ours in that he is not joining a church, he is not making a public proclamation of a recent decision toward faith, he is not repenting of previous sin, and he is not bending the knee to himself as king and kingdom, rather, he is doing something completely unique from our baptism, which is completing all of those Old Testament arcs that point to Jesus as the fulfillment of all righteousness. And if that is not totally making sense yet, stick with me as we get into the Sermon on the Mount starting in chapter five. That is going to come more in focus. And again, a lot of these things, if you're like, I don't know quite what to make of this yet, well, that's how the original audience received it too. And it's okay to let this thing unfold and to take our time. I think we always feel pressure to have a stance and land somewhere on something and put a flag in the ground and be like, this is what I think. Come fight me. And we just don't need to do that here. We can take our time and be patient with ourselves and with each other and with God as this whole thing unfolds how it needs to for each of us as we think it through and give it a fair look. So if not everything is crystal clear yet, don't sweat it. That's how the original audience would have received it as well. This week of the podcast is sponsored by Dwell Audio Bible App. It's a spectacular way to encounter the Bible every day. And they've built this landing page, dwellapp.io slash TMBH Christmas, that enables you to give it away as a gift. They've got discounts on all of their different types of subscriptions, but the big one for me is 50% off a lifetime subscription, which is awesome. So you can check that out at dwellapp.io slash tmbh Christmas, or just go get the link at the top of the show notes below. Okay, we are shifting gears into the final part of Jesus' preparation for ministry next time around in chapter four as we get into the temptation in the wilderness, which unsurprisingly I think is fascinating. All right, I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do this again soon.