Hey my friends, it's Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible Hour podcast, and I have a question for you that I'd like you to do some pop culture math right now. How many times over the years in animation or in a comic book or in a movie or a TV show have you seen a dramatization, a portrayal of Batman's origin story? I don't think I'm spoiling anything here because this is like the most well-known thing in all of pop culture, but Batman became Batman because he is, you know, he's the son of a rich couple in Gotham City, and they go into an alley and there's some crime sters in there, and the crime sters are like, give me all your stuff, and they they shoot. There's a Bruce Wayne loses his parents. It's very sad. It's a very, I mean, I've seen this scene a lot, and it's very moving to me. Still, it's tragic. And out of that, you know, the character of Batman clean up this town is is made. But how many times have you seen that story? Because I'm thinking maybe I've seen it five different times, seven different times. That's a story that is told from a lot of different angles. It's been told by a lot of different directors, and it's just very important. It's very foundational for the story. So anybody who handles Batman is gonna handle the origin story of Batman. Likewise, there's some stuff in the Bible that you get on repeat. When you read the Bible a lot, it kind of runs together. It can be hard to keep straight, you know, which details are in this account of a given scene that is repeated, and which details are in this other one over here. And it can be kind of a fun exercise when you've been around the Bible for a while to be like, okay, well, this author who includes that scene, he's writing to these people and trying to make this point. Ah, so I bet he would include these details. And you know, it's it's fun that we get multiple different portrayals, multiple different points of view, angles on some of these really crucial stories in the Bible. I think of uh Paul's conversion on the road to Damascus. We get the literal Bible telling of that account from Luke in Acts, but then we get Paul alluding to or fully recounting that a few more times. We get the feeding of the 5,000 from a bunch of different angles in the Gospels. And another one that we see from four different angles in the Gospels, one of the most repeated scenes in the whole Bible is the baptism of Jesus, what we've been looking at here for the past week or two, inspired by our journey through the book of John, where here we are 60 whatever episodes in, and we're still in John 1 with John the Baptist out in the wilds, Bethany beyond the Jordan. People are coming out to him. He's baptizing people left and right. You can kind of picture him dunking people and like, you know, being probably pastoral with them or whatever, but also John comes off as pretty confrontational and eccentric. So you can kind of picture this dude baptizing somebody while he's also going back and forth, you know, giving and getting a little bit with the religious leaders and agitators, but the line keeps moving and people keep getting baptized. So we see this scene with John the Baptist out baptizing four different times. And in three of those accounts, we see Jesus himself get baptized. Now in John, it's in intoned, inferred. Which one is it? I don't, I language can be hard. It's strongly, I mean, it's you can tell that Jesus got baptized, and there are details from the other gospel accounts that kind of fill that in. But we're gonna today try to get a better sense of how the scene of Jesus' baptism plays out from these different angles that we've got. So we're gonna start in Matthew chapter three to try to flesh out our understanding of this moment where Jesus gets baptized in John chapter one. And most of Matthew three is just tension between John the Baptist and the religious leaders. Of course, in John 1, it doesn't feel quite so hot between the religious leaders and John. It feels uh curt, right? They come out and they're like, Well, uh, you know, are you the Christ? And he says, I am not. Then who are you? Are you Elijah? I am not. Are you the prophet? No. Who are you? Give us an answer to take back to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself? And John doesn't even give him a name. I am the voice of one calling in the desert. Make straight the way of the Lord. Oh, it's so cryptic. You know, but it just doesn't feel like they're in a fight at all. Well, in Matthew 3, it feels more like they're in a fight. And maybe that's because Matthew is writing to a more, I don't know, mu mercurial Jewish audience, people with really strong feelings one way or another. Here we get a closer look at the tension. In those days, this is Matthew 3 1, John the Baptist came preaching in the desert of Judea and saying, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near. This is he who was spoken of through the prophet Isaiah, quote, a voice of one calling in the desert, prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him. Something that in John's account, John the Baptist quotes, about himself. It goes on. John's clothes were made of camel's hair, and he had a leather belt around his waist. His food was locusts and honey, and people went out to him from Jerusalem and all Judea and the whole region of the Jordan. There's so many layers here, and we're just not going to do all the layers on this one, but there's so many allusions to Old Testament things in terms of like a Nazarite vow. It looks like maybe John is in the same tradition that Samson was in, but where Samson failed the test of having all that influence and power, it looks like John is passing the test of having all that influence and power. And so that you know, people are coming out to him and confessing their sins. They were baptized by him in the Jordan River. So here we don't get any more specific details about exactly where that is, like John gives us with the Bethany Beyond the Jordan thing. But what we do get here is we're told that the baptism of John is a baptism of repentance. That is, these people aren't becoming Christians when John baptizes them, even though it's just barely, in Matthew chapter three and in John chapter one, we're still under all the ground rules of the Old Testament. God was a gracious God in the Old Testament. Like grace didn't start with Jesus. God was gracious in like even making a sacrificial system. If anything God did other than just wipe out humanity, because humanity transgressed God is an act of grace. So the God of the Old Testament is the same God as the God of the New Testament. But the ground rules are different, something that we'll keep fleshing out as we keep talking. So these people are coming out and they're responding to the message of John, which is repent and be baptized. The kingdom of heaven is at hand. It's the same thing that Jesus preached early on in his ministry. And later on in the Bible, there's actually some confusion about this. As later disciples of John the Baptist who are from this sort of religious family tree, they believe in Jesus because John the Baptist pointed to Jesus. But particularly a guy named Apollos, who we meet deeper into the New Testament, when we first meet him, he's pretty awesome. But he's like, I, you know, I'm just kind of on the John Baptism thing. And then some Christians who are baptized by the Holy Spirit, they explain what the baptism of Christ is and how this all works. So this initial baptism is one of repentance from sin and rededication to God. It goes on, but when John the Baptist saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to where he was baptizing, he said to them, You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the coming wrath, produce fruit in keeping with repentance, dunk. And do not think that you can say to yourselves, Dunk, we have Abraham as our father. I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham, dunk. The axe is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. Dunk. I baptize you with water for repentance, but after me will come one who's more powerful than I, whose sandals I'm not fit to carry. He will baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire. Aha. So that's going to be a different baptism than the baptism of John, which is for the confession of sins and repentance and turning back to the Lord. His winnowing fork is in his hand and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his weed into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire. Now, all of this stuff right here, I mean, I covered this when we were in Matthew 3. I don't know what episode that was, but in season one on Matthew. If Jeff's feeling ambitious and he has time tonight, because I'm kind of getting him a late file tonight, Jeff, if you have time, throw everybody a link to where we covered this stuff over in Matthew. But a couple more details here before we wrap it up for today. Introduced in Matthew chapter three is a very important tension for the entire New Testament. It's the same tension that is introduced in John chapter one. It's okay, is God doing something new in Jesus? And if so, wouldn't it be idolatrous to worship Jesus as God? Or is Jesus God the promised one who will reign on the throne of David forever, the one to whom all the prophets pointed, the chief cornerstone, the culminating character and moment in the redemptive plan of God since time immemorial. And if Jesus is that, well then he's worthy of worship. It's right to put our hope in Jesus. He is the point. That's the big riddle that people have, the Jewish people have on the front end of the Jesus thing. They're like, this seems totally credible, but dang, we kind of learned our lesson not to do idolatry. That didn't serve us well in the past. We don't touch that with a 10-foot pole. And so these religious leaders come out, and you know, in the account in John, it's just Kurt. Matthew gives us a fuller description of the exchange. And John kind of sounds like Jesus sounds later in the book of Matthew, in chapter 23, when Jesus just openly rebukes the religious leaders. In fact, I think Jesus even kind of uses some of the exact same language. Hang on. 23. Yeah, right here, right at the end of Jesus' chapter-long rebuke of the religious leaders, right before they have him arrested, put him through a kangaroo court, and have him killed. Jesus says to them, You snakes, you brood of vipers, how will you escape being condemned to hell? Dang. And the larger context of 23 is pretty jarring, but it's kind of a vindication of John the Baptist, right? Like he sounds mean here in this Matthew 3 thing. Like these, hey, these guys were just coming out to just ask you some questions. Why are you being so mean to them? Well, in the end, it turns out John the Baptist read their motives exactly right and knew that they were blind guides, that they were misleading the people and that they were doing it on ethnic grounds. Like we're the we're the ones who have exactly the right bloodline, and only we have access to God, and you all need us. What's John saying to them? Eh, you don't go saying we have Abraham as our father. That that that isn't what this was ever all about. Your your bloodline doesn't save. You know, John isn't saying it here, but he's pointing to it. The blood of Christ is what saves. And so John the Baptist says, I tell you that out of these stones, God can raise up children for Abraham. Dang, the point being, like, God can make a new family of faith whenever he wants. Don't imagine for a second that like you're needed or you're the point here. God is the point. And further, like we're talking about a family tree. Well, the axe is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that doesn't produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. I mean, wow. This is a tense confrontation that John has with them. And then, well, it turns out that he's right because these people eventually have Jesus put to death, and even Jesus uses some of John's language here late in the Gospel of Matthew to call them out. So here in Matthew 3, we get a little fuller sense of the fire and the passion of John the Baptist. Well, what's going to happen here is between the scene I just read you today and the next verse that I haven't read you yet today in Matthew, we're going to go from that fiery, prophetic, kind of Elijah-like voice that is absolutely courageous, like the kind of thing that could get you in trouble and get you killed. And it does for John the Baptist. He's going to go from that to, whoa. Next up is kind of that, oh, behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world moment that we get in John, where Jesus shows up and I mean, John is in awe. The guy who is in total command prophetically of the room for the first 12 verses of Matthew 3 suddenly is in awe and deference and reverence of Jesus. So we'll read those last few verses of Matthew's account of this scene next time around in the service of helping us understand what's going on over in John that much better. Well, I've had a lovely time today. All right. More next time around. I'm Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.