Luke 3:21-22

21 Now it happened, when all the people were baptized, Jesus also had been baptized, and was praying. The sky was opened,

22 and the Holy Spirit descended in a bodily form as a dove on him; and a voice came out of the sky, saying “You are my beloved Son. In you I am well pleased.”

Jesus modeled Baptism

Hebrews 6:1

1 Therefore leaving the doctrine of the first principles of Christ, let us press on to perfection—not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works, of faith toward God,

2 of the teaching of baptisms, of laying on of hands, of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment.

Die with Christ, resurrected with Christ.

This is why I like immersion baptism so much. It symbolizes the drama of Jesus going into the tomb and being raised again.

If you’ve never been baptized, I encourage you to talk about it with me and seek to get baptized.

Three people getting saved.

Three people being baptized.

The Holy Spirit. Living through the spirit.

I’ve said a lot about the Holy Spirit in this past year because I feel as though He is the neglected person of the trinity.

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As Mennonites committed to the example of Jesus, He is in the primacy. When Rory comes this is the topic I’ve asked Him to speak on. After He is gone, I am going to begin interspersing some of my sermons on Luke with some teaching on God the Father.

It is important for us to realize that Jesus did nothing apart from the Spirit.

Gregory of Nazianzus, an early church father wrote:

Christ is born; the Spirit is his forefunner. Lk 1:31, 35

Christ is baptized; the Spirit bears him witness.

Christ is tempted; the Spirit leads him up Lk 4:2

Christ performs miracles. The Spirit accompanies him. Mt. 12:22

Christ ascends. The Spirit fills his place. Acts 1:9

One of the most dangerous things we can do is to live in our own strength.

For most of us we don’t realize that we are doing this until we come to a tragedy for which our strength is not enough to get us by.

And then when we come to that point, we don’t even want the Holy Spirit to be our strength. What we want is for God to fix the problem so we can go back to business as usual.

Larry Crabb writes in “Shattered Dreams”

‘In our day of feel-good Christianity, we have come up with a wrong view of our spiritual journey. We think of suffering as something abnormal, as evidence that we lack faith. We work so hard to escape suffering [even demanding that God bail us out] that we fail to realize what good things might be happening in us as we suffer.”

“It’s a testimony to how desperately we’re committed to finding ourselves apart from God that the choice to abandon ourselves to Him is often most powerfully made when life has dragged us to the brink of blasphemy. Until we know how close we come to giving up on God (“Look what He allowed to happen in my life!”) we’ll know little of what it means to give ourselves fully to God.”

Shattered Dreams, p. 166

Here is where Jesus’ example is so profound. He did nothing in His ministry apart from the Holy Spirit. He did not begin until the Holy Spirit annointed down upon Him.

It’s a little confusing to figure out what this scene meant because since Jesus was fully God as well as fully man, He would have had the Holy Spirit already. But what I think is going on here is that while He had the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit annointed Him for ministry. In the same way, while we have the Holy Spirit when we are saved, I believe that He anoints us at various times for ministry in the church and to the world.

The trinity

I’ve been thinking about the complexities of the trinity this week.

If it were not for the testimony of the New Testament, we would believe as the Jews do that as God proclaimed His identity. He is one God. Yahweh: “I am.” Not “we are”

If it were not for the testimony of the Old Testement and Jesus’ declarations that He and the Father are one, we would have to believe that God was three persons.

The confusion is not that God reveals Himself as either one person or three people, it is that God reveals Himself as both.

One of my pastor friends says that if you find two things in the Bible that seem to contradict each other, both must be true.

If you’d like to read an anabaptist article on paradoxes in the Bible ask me after the service and I’ll make a copy or point you to the website.

Here in the story of Jesus’ baptism we have a wonderful example of the three persons of the trinity.

Jesus, God incarnate is anointed with the Holy Spirit and approved of by God the Father.

There is no doubt that God is three persons from this verse.

Close with what the trinity means to us. I’ll flesh this out more another time.

One of the important aspects that the trinity teaches us is intimate fellowship. God the Father, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are in constant communion. They are not alone. And their communion is intimate: close.

We need to follow this example in our marriages.

We need to follow this example in a few close friendships. One of the things I’ve noticed as I’ve gotten older is that I have fewer close friends. Many have drifted away. And in the laziness of my older age, I haven’t invested in new ones.

We need people. Just as the trinity are in close communion with each other, we need to be in close community with each other.

8 Core Convictions

I believe in a sovereign, loving, holy God. I believe it is more true to the scripture and healthier to live with God as He is and has described Himself in the Bible then to attempt to craft a theology that safely answers the paradoxes His omnipotence creates. He is in charge of life.

The best source of knowledge, wisdom and understanding is the Gospels, the Bible and the Spirit of Christ in me.

I believe that we are called to live abundant lives. The entrance of Jesus into the world 2000 years ago established the Kingdom of God on Earth and provided history and our personal lives with hopeful meaning in the midst of tribulation and trials as opposed to historicial and personal pessimism. Deuteronomy 30:19 to choose life, that you may live. I choose life!

Learning is a life-long pursuit with varied focuses that depend on the physical, emotional and spiritual stage of life we are in.

God has given each of us complete solidarity. The ethic that Jesus taught was for the influence of the Holy Spirit to transform the will of each individual so that they would be free to choose the Kingdom and to then take initiative to accomplish Kingdom good. This contrasts measuring spirituality on outward appearance and rewarding organizational service. It instead elevates initiative on individuals and gifts.

God has made us mutual branches of one vine, and reconcilers of people separated from God and others. Our relationships are to be characterized by love, acceptance and forgiveness. It is important that we gather as the Church, the Body of Christ, seek team solutions to social and spiritual needs, to reach out to people in need, and to reconcile and strengthen relationships both in the church and outside the church.

The seed and nest of abundant life is the family. It should be prioritized so that we are providing for the full needs of our families without sacrificing their well being to pursue material wealth, organizational recognition, religious obligations, or personal passions.

I believe that we are called to change people’s lives by inviting them to follow Jesus. I believe that we are called to change the world. By leveraging the previous seven points, the individual, family and church can “salt the earth,” providing healing and adding flavor. This is the mission of the Kingdom, that God’s will would be done here as it is in heaven, that the blind see, that we be the father to the orphan, and friend to the stranger.