God's Son and Us

Passage: Matthew 3:13-17

As I mentioned last week, we’ll be focusing on passages in Matthew throughout much of the summer. Overall, we’ll wrestle with what it means to be gathered to Jesus—to be called by Him as a disciple—and what it means to be going as He sends us into the world. All Christians are both full-time followers and full-time missionaries.

This theme in Matthew is similar in some ways to an apprenticeship. In learning formal or informal skills we need to watch, and also do the work alongside someone who has mastered it. In seminary, it would be a big disadvantage to just sit in the classroom for three years without ever setting foot in a church for an internship. Any son who hopes to learn how to work their parents’ farm spends years watching and working alongside them. Anyone who wants to learn piano takes both studies and practices—and then the student may also tell their friends about their teacher so that others can also learn from the same teacher. This is mission!

Even consider something as simple as first learning how to use a power drill. Our father may have helped guide us—holding our hands as we held the drill, to brace it and help us push just the right amount while keeping the screw straight. This is discipleship. And we may have told our friends about our father, how he taught and guided us. This is mission.

If we just want to stand back and watch—learning passively—we aren’t following Jesus as we should. But if we just strike out on our own—like trying to set up a new computer without reading any directions—we will also run into problem. 

So today we’ll be looking at who this Jesus is who calls us to follow Him, and what it means to be a part of His mission in the world.

Matthew in Particular

As we begin this series in Matthew, it will help to understand a bit of a broader framework. Among others, there are certain themes in Matthew that will show up in the next few weeks:

• Matthew is deeply rooted in the Old Testament, so our reading of the gospel will be enriched by a fuller understanding of the Old Testament.
• Jesus’ Identity & Fulfillment in Christ. Who is Jesus, and what role does He have in fulfilling the Old Testament and all that we couldn’t fulfill? 
• What it means to be a disciple, and to be part of the community of those following Jesus
• The mission of Christ and the Church: Where and what are Jesus’ followers commanded to go and do?

As we look through our passage this morning, we’ll focus on how, at Jesus’ baptism, He is affirmed as God’s Son and commissioned for public ministry. And then we’ll look at what this means for us.

At Baptism, Jesus is Affirmed and Commissioned...because Israel Failed

In the Old Testament, we see that God chose the nation of Israel as His own people. But there’s a problem: They failed at being God’s obedient children. God loved them, but they still turned from Him. We read in Isaiah that God “come[s] to the help of those who gladly do right, who remember your ways. But when we continued to sin against them, you were angry. How then can we be saved?” (Is. 64:5, NIV 1984)

But as you can see earlier in Matthew, Jesus is identified as God’s Son—in a sense in all the ways that Israel never was. We won’t focus on this now, but here we see Matthew’s theme of fulfillment and Jesus as God’s Son coming out. So Jesus is here commissioned for God’s work because Israel failed in this mission. And it is He who will bring salvation to all.

...and Jesus is empowered by the Holy Spirit

 

Right after John baptized Jesus, we read that “At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on him.”

This also goes back to Isaiah 64, which begins with, “Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down...” That’s what’s going on right here! God is intervening for His people, even though they had turned away from Him. And so the Holy Spirit visibly descends.

Isaiah 42 is also relevant. It begins: “Here is my servant [whom we recognize as Jesus] whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight; I will put my Spirit on him and he will bring justice to the nations...”

So the Holy Spirit empowers Jesus for ministry. His mission is to bring justice to the nations, and He’s able to do this in God’s power.

...and is declared to be God’s own Son

Also right after Jesus is baptized, we hear that “a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.’” So baptism had something to do with affirming Jesus’ identity. This is the One we follow—who is God’s true Son when all of Israel had failed and turned away from their Father. God the Father Himself stating His love for Jesus. And this shows us that Jesus is truly who He claims to be—and His ministry is authentic.

Jesus’ baptism and us...who have been rebellious

So in Jesus’ baptism, we come to know more of why we follow Jesus. He’s God’s Son, and He is empowered and directed in His mission by the Holy Spirit. But how does this touch our own lives more directly?

We recall Isaiah 64 again: “All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags...” (verse 6) These words were true of Israel, and they are just as true of us today apart from Christ. On our own, we have all failed to be God’s obedient children. Whenever he holds our hands to help guide us as we learn to use a drill for the first time, we have pushed Him away and rejected His help. This is true whenever we worry instead of trusting, or whenever we view our time as our own instead of as belonging to Him. It’s true whenever we harbor grudges against others, or even when we try to do good things while relying on our own strength instead of His. We want our fathers to say that they are proud of us, but we have rejected God who is our Father.

Our Baptism – Union with Jesus

But something special is symbolized in baptism. When we are baptized, it symbolizes a new identity in Christ that we must accept. We are baptized into the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. And so we have a new identity—we are not our own; we belong to Christ and are united with Him.

Romans 6 is relevant here: “What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.” (Romans 6:1-4, NIV 1984)

Maybe baptism is a bit like when we sign our name on the title to our car—we claim it as our own. Or like when we’re playing soccer, and a captain picks us to be on their team. We now belong to God. We are now part of that team. And in a way so much greater than our claim to our car or being part of a soccer team, baptism shows God’s ultimate claim on us, and our complete union with Christ.

In Christ, we are...God’s forgiven children

In the Heidelberg Catechism Q&A 33, we read how Jesus is God’s only begotten Son, but we are also God’s forgiven children. What Jesus is by His own nature, we are by adoption in Him. So we are part of His team—or for an analogy closer to Scripture, we’re members of His body.

In Galatians 3, Paul writes to the Christians, “You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. ...[later] when we were underage, we were in slavery under the elemental spiritual forces of the world. But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship. Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.” So you are no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are his child, God has made you also an heir.” (Gal. 3:26-4:7, NIV 1984)

So in Christ, we are restored and reconciled as God’s forgiven children whom He loves. We are just called to turn from our sin and turn to Jesus.

In Christ, we are...empowered by the Holy Spirit for mission

And then we are also, like Jesus, empowered by the Holy Spirit for mission to the world. All Christians have the same Spirit that descends on Jesus here in Matthew 3, the same Spirit as the apostles were given at Pentecost, and the same power. We are able to go share the gospel with others in God’s power. He holds our hands as we learn to use the drill—and so much more.

So this voice from heaven, from our Father, is not just for Jesus, but also for each of us. We see who Jesus is, and who we are in Him.

At Baptism, Jesus is Affirmed and Commissioned...and in Him, we participate in God’s mission

So in Christ, as God’s children, we also share in Christ’s mission to the world. Gathered and going. But we never stop being apprentices. We can’t do this on our own, and we never start it as a church. We simply participate in what God is already doing.

For us in North America, we think of each day beginning in the morning. But in the Hebrew understanding, the day starts in the evening. So basically, when we get up in the morning, the day has already been going on for hours. God has been at work in the world long before we are even conscious. So when anyone begins work, they are simply participating in what God has already been doing.

Before I and my fellow students at seminary left for our summer internships, a professor used this same analogy. He reminded us that we never begin God’s work in a congregation. God has been at work long before we ever arrive—and we have the privilege of participating in what God is doing.

The same is true of the church’s mission. It begins with God, and Christ’s mission. We as followers of Christ only participate in His work.

One of my professors told about how when he was younger, he went on a road-trip with friends. They took their guitars and wanted to evangelize across the country. But things didn’t seem to be going well at all. Then they heard of a Christian coffeeshop ministry where it seemed that God was at work in some powerful ways. When my professor asked the owner about it, he answered something like, “The only person who can live the Christian life is Jesus. The secret is not to get stronger and stronger; the secret is to get weaker and weaker. You need to give up trying to be a Christian (on your own); surrender, and just ask the Holy Spirit to live through you. Ask Him to take over and to live the life of Jesus through you.”

Earlier we talked about the image of an apprentice, learning a trade from the master—or any child learning from a parent. This is what it means to be gathered and going as Christians. And so we are always apprentices; there is only one Master, one Father. Return to the image of our fathers teaching us how to use a power drill—This is what it’s like to be a disciple and a missionary: We are both learning and doing, but only and always participating in God’s work. Except God’s hands never come off ours—we are always His children, dependent on Him as He works through us.

So we follow Jesus, and in His baptism our Lord was shown to be God’s own Son. And like we read in Galatians 3, ^“You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus”...so all who believe in Jesus—and we could put our own name here if we do—we are all God’s children, God’s sons and daughters in Christ, whom He loves. And in the power of the Holy Spirit, we can also participate in God’s work in the world.