09 Jesus Also Being Baptized, and Praying, the Heaven was Opened
IX JESUS ALSO BEING BAPTIZED, AND PRAYING, THE HEAVEN WAS OPENED
It is at the Jordan, says Luther, that our New Testament really begins. It is at the Jordan, even more than at Bethlehem, that our New Testament really and truly begins. Our Lord, says the Reformer, was Jesus of Nazareth from His birth. But it was only at His baptism that He became the Christ of God, and it is only as He is the Christ of God that Jesus of Nazareth is really anything to us. All that is recorded about Him from His birth onwards is intensely interesting to us and is indispensably essential to us. But that is so because the Holy Child when He begins to be about thirty years of age is openly proclaimed to be our Redeemer. His baptism is made the occasion of our Lord’s ordination into His office as our Mediator; into His three offices as our Prophet, our Priest, and our King. And this was such an epoch in our salvation that the heaven opened and the whole Trinity, as the old writers used to say, came down to the Jordan that day. The Father came down and said, "Thou art My beloved Son; in whom I am well pleased." And the Holy Ghost descended in bodily shape like a dove upon Him. And, as for the Second Person of the Godhead, that is He who is praying as He comes up out of the water. That is He who has been tabernacling among men now for thirty years, but who is to-day being publicly ordained to His ministry of reconciliation. Was Luther wrong then when he spake in his table-talk and said in his own bold, original, and racy way that our New Testament really begins at the Jordan?
There is a very engaging and a very suggestive variety in the fourfold account we have given us of that great day’s work at the Jordan. Matthew writes in his way, and Mark in his way, and Luke in his way. And while they are all at one in what they write they are all so different in the way they write. And then John leaves the baptism out altogether, and in its place he gives us things that are of the intensest interest to us, and of the most supreme importance; and things, moreover, that we would never have known but for John’s way of telling such things. John had so much still unwritten matter in his hands that, had he told us everything he had seen and heard, the world itself would not have contained all the books he could have written about his Master’s sayings and doings. "But these are written that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through His name."
"Suffer it to be so now," said our Lord to the staggered and protesting Baptist; "for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness." Now, righteousness, you must know, is the sure foundation stone that our Lord had come to lay in Zion. Righteousness is the first foundation stone of all our salvation. Righteousness, as a word, is the greatest word for us in all our New Testament. And this is the first time we come on this great word in all our New Testament. And then it is a fine thing to see that the first occasion and occurrence of this afterwards universal word is from His lips who is soon to be made the righteousness of God to us. Our Savior had been fulfilling all manner of righteousness from His youth up; ceremonial righteousness and moral righteousness; legal righteousness and spiritual righteousness; and He is but following out all that to the end when He comes to the Jordan to be baptized by John. We are told that John was perplexed beyond measure at the sight of our Lord presenting Himself as a candidate for baptism among the crowds of penitent people. But that was because John did not as yet aright understand our Lord’s motive in coming to be baptized. Our Lord did not come confessing His own sins indeed; but He came to make Himself one with them who did so come. You will sometimes see the saintliest woman in all the city coming hand in hand with one of the Magdalenes of the city, and taking her seat beside the chief of sinners on the penitent form. That poor outcast would never have come to that seat of salvation had not this Christ-like lady taken her by the hand and led her in and sat down beside her; sat down beside her as if there was no difference. Now if the General were to warn off all such saintly women, he would be doing exactly what the Baptist said and did at the Jordan that day. But our divinely-taught friend knows better than to do that. So much better than that does he know, that he sits down on the same form himself beside the offscouring of the city. And thus it is that he gets his penitent form so well filled and his Salvation Army so well recruited. It was something not very unlike that when He who knew no sin came to the Jordan waters along with the Roman soldiers and the Jewish publicans who were there confessing and forsaking their sins.
It is to the third Evangelist that we are indebted for this fine information that it was when Jesus was praying that the heaven was opened. Our Lord prayed without ceasing, but there were times and places when He prayed more earnestly, and His baptism was one of those times and places. What all His thoughts were as He descended under the water and came up again out of it is far too deep for us to wade out into; at the best we can but adoringly guess at His thoughts and at His prayer. May His prayer at that moment not have been that He might receive the Holy Ghost without measure so as to seal Him with all possible certitude to His great office, and so as to guide Him with all possible clearness as to how and when He was to enter on it? We can safely guess at His unrecorded prayer from the answer He immediately received to His prayer. For while He was yet speaking, the heaven opened and the answer to His prayer came down. My brethren, will nothing teach you to pray? Will all His examples, and all His promises, and all your own needs, and cares, and distresses, not teach you to pray? What hopeless depravity must there be in your heart when, with all He can do, God simply cannot get you to come to Him in prayer. " It came to pass, that, as He was praying in a certain place, when He ceased, one of His disciples said to Him, Lord, teach us to pray." Will you not be like that disciple? Will you not tell your Savior what a dislike, even to downright antipathy, you have at secret prayer; how little you attempt it, and how soon you are weary of it? Only pray, O you prayerless people of His, and the heaven will soon open to you also, and you will hear your Father’s voice, and the Holy Ghost will descend like a dove upon you. Only pray, and your joy will soon be full. The Holy Ghost had often descended upon our Lord’s mother before He was born, and every day on Himself since He was born. At the same time this was a very special and an altogether extraordinary descent of the Holy Ghost at the Jordan. But why was it as a dove? Why was it in a bodily shape like that winged creature which we call a dove? "All apparitions," says Thomas Goodwin, "that God at any time made of Himself, were not so much made to show to men what God is in Himself, as to show us how He is affected toward us, and to declare what effects He will work in us." Excellently and enlighteningly said. For if there is one winged creature better fitted than another to symbolize how God is affected toward us, and what effects God would fain work in us, it is surely just a dove. "For a dove, you know," says the sometime President of Magdalen College, Oxford, "is the most meek and the most innocent of all birds; without gall, without talons, having no fierceness in it, expressing nothing but love and friendship to its mate in all its carriages, and mourning over its mate in all its distresses. And, accordingly, a dove was a most fit emblem of the Spirit that was poured out upon our Savior when He was just about to enter on the work of our salvation. For as sweetly as doves do converse with doves, so may every sinner and Christ converse together." Quite so. And to go no further than His very first sermon, what could there be more dove-like than the text He took out of the evangelical prophet? "The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me to preach the Gospel to the poor; He hath sent Me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and the recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised." Beautiful, is it not? Blessed to hear for the thousandth time, is it not? Remember the Jordan, then. Go often back to the Jordan. Look ,up at the opening heaven and think you see the descending dove. And at any time when you have to go to Christ again as a broken-hearted sinner, bruised and blinded with your sin, go back to Him thinking of the Jordan, and of the dove, and pleading to yourself and to Him the argument of His favorite text. And then in return to Him for all that, be you a very dove yourself. Be gentle, be kind, be helpful, be to all men a man of an approachable, affable, inviting, dove like disposition. Be to all men a man after the manner of Christ to you, and after the manner of the dove among all the birds of the air. It is His own word to all His disciples: Be ye harmless as doves. And a voice came from heaven which said, "Thou art My beloved Son; in whom I am well pleased." Think of it, my brethren. Never once since the fall of Adam and Eve had the Maker of men been able to say these words till He said them to Jesus Christ that day at the Jordan. Almighty God had often looked down from heaven to see if there were any that did good and sinned not. But when His eyelids tried the children of men it was always with the same result. Not one. Not Noah, not Abraham, not Jacob, not Joseph, not Moses, not David; no not one single patriarch, or prophet, or psalmist, or saint, in all the house of Israel. But here at last is a man after God’s own heart. Here at last is the second Adam, with whom God is well pleased. Listen well to these words,--"Well pleased." Think with all your might Who pronounces these words, and over Whom they are pronounced. Think, also, what all these words mean in His mouth who utters them, and in His ears, and in His heart, who hears them. And then, having thought all that well over; be entirely selfish for once. Turn to yourself and think what blessed words these words, "well pleased," are for you. Think it out how these words bear on you, and how these words come all the way from the Jordan to belong to you. Think continually of what these words absolutely secure and seal down for ever to you. As, also, what they expect and claim of you. For one thing, these words, "I am well pleased with My beloved Son," expect and demand of you that you shall as never before be very ill-pleased with yourself. These words, "well pleased," rightly understood, and rightly laid to heart, will henceforth make every man who hears them to be more ill pleased with himself than he ever is any more with any one else. For then you will come to see that no one can give both God and man such constant cause to be ill pleased with him as you continually do. If you are ever satisfied with yourself, then Christ is nothing to you. He has come in vain so far as you are concerned. But if there is nothing and no one on the face of the whole earth who ever causes you so much pain and disappointment and dissatisfaction and displeasure as you continually cause yourself, then you are the very man to go straight to the Jordan, and to accompany Christ through all that baptism scene of His for you. Do not despair of yourself though you are far worse pleased with yourself tonight than ever you were before. Do not despair of yourself so long as the Jordan runs in your New Testament. Be as ill pleased with yourself as you like, if all that only makes you better pleased than ever with Christ. It hath pleased the Father that in Him should all your fulness dwell. And if your displeasure, even to disgust at yourself and despair of yourself, only works round to make you of the same mind about His Son as the Father is,--what more would you have out of this life of yours on earth? If you can look on Jesus the Christ coming up out of the water praying for Himself and for you as your Mediator, and if you will take home to your heart of hearts these glorious words spoken over Him by His Father, then His Father is well pleased with you henceforth, for His righteousness sake. And what more would you have? What more, what better, could God Himself do for you, or for any man, than to proclaim you accepted in His beloved Son. Beyond that even God cannot go. Beseech Him then to go that length with you and with me to-night.