The Voice of the Lord: Today

Scripture: Matthew 3:13-17

Matthew 3:13–17 NIV

13 Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptized by John. 14 But John tried to deter him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” 15 Jesus replied, “Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness.” Then John consented. 16 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 alighting on him. 17 And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”

1/11/2026

Order of Service:

Announcements

Opening Worship

Prayer Requests

Prayer Song

Pastoral Prayer

Kid’s Time

Offering (Doxology and Offering Prayer)

Scripture Reading

Sermon

Closing Song

Benediction

Special Notes:

Standard

Prayer over 2026 Leadership after Offering/Doxology

Opening Prayer:

The Voice of God: Today

Stir Frying vs Baking

My favorite thing to cook for myself is probably stir-fry. There's a wide range of ways you can prepare it, many options for flavors, proteins, and vegetables. I like it because it's convenient, usually fairly quick, and gives you plenty of room for error. I won't say you can't mess up stir-fry, but it's a style of cooking that's a lot more forgiving than others.

Baking is very different. It doesn't matter if you're baking cookies from a box or making artisan bread from scratch. Baking requires precision. There's chemistry involved that you don't have to understand, but if you ignore it, your bread won't rise. Baking is nowhere near as forgiving as stir-fry. If you don't follow the directions obediently, you will not get the result you were hoping for.

I mentioned last week that we're going to be in the Gospel of Matthew a lot this year, and one of the things Matthew pays careful attention to is how Jesus fulfills Scripture. For Matthew, Jesus made the Old Testament come alive in a new way—not just in the way He taught it, but in the way He lived it.

After 400 years of silence from God, there was a lot of speculation about how to understand Scripture and how to understand God. I think there may have been a lot of interpretation by stir-fry methods going on: taking a little of this, a little of that, throwing it into the pan with some sauce, and seeing what happens.

We get that way today with our relationship with God, especially when we're trying to hear His voice. The world tells us there's no clear direction, that anything goes. So we take something the preacher said, something we saw on Facebook, maybe open our Bible and find a verse or two to add into the mix, stir it together, and walk away saying, "That must be what God wanted to tell me."

But Matthew's Gospel shows us that hearing God clearly is more like baking than stir-fry. It doesn't happen by accident. It requires obedience. Today's Scripture gives us a picture of exactly what that looks like.

The Interchange

All four gospel writers include Jesus' baptism, and in each account, the main thing is still the main thing: Jesus gets baptized, God speaks, and calls Him His beloved Son. Matthew focuses on a short interchange between John the Baptist and Jesus.

Jesus had traveled a good distance from Nazareth to the Jordan River, specifically to be baptized. John, knowing who Jesus is, questions what's happening: "I need to be baptized by you, and you come to me?" Listen to Jesus' reply.

"Let it be so now. It is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness."

"Let it be so now." In this moment, Jesus reminds me of his mother Mary, when the angel showed up at her door with unusual news. It's an act of submission and surrender. Notice that Jesus isn't doing this alone. He's inviting John to join him: "It is proper for us to do this." John has an important part to play.

There's that favorite word of Matthew's: "Fulfill." Although in this moment, it's not Scripture being fulfilled. It's all righteousness. What's the difference?

Scripture is truth that God spoke or caused to happen, written down and preserved through the ages. Like truth carved in stone, meant to last forever. But that truth was never meant to stay locked away on a stone or hidden on a bookshelf. It was meant to be written in our minds and hearts. It was meant to grow and flourish and bear fruit. To do that, truth has to be something we live out, and, in a sense, make come alive.

When we carry Scripture, that precious treasure of the past, and plant it in our lives and allow it to grow and bear fruit, it becomes righteousness through us. Matthew calls that fulfillment.

What does it mean to be fulfilled? Maybe you've been to a restaurant, ordered something with hope and expectation, and when it came out, it was three times as much food as you thought you were getting. They cooked it in a special way that made it so much better than you had dared to hope. You eat more than you should, and you've got leftovers to take home and enjoy later. That's the idea of being fulfilled.

When Scripture or God's righteousness is fulfilled, it exceeds our expectations. It comes alive in a new way we never saw before. There's so much truth and goodness in it that it leaves us with leftovers for days.

Jesus says, "I'm here to be baptized, and I need you to be the one to baptize me, so that we can fulfill all righteousness together with God."

That's enough for John. He consents and goes through with it, even if he doesn't fully understand it. He trusts Jesus enough to follow and obey. What happens next exceeds anything John expected.

The Voice

As soon as Jesus was baptized, he came up out of the water. At that moment, heaven opened up. The Spirit of God descended like a dove and landed on him. A voice from heaven said, "This is my Son, whom I love. With him, I am well-pleased." More than John expected and hoped for, enough in this one experience to keep him satisfied for days, weeks, maybe the rest of his life.

Up until this moment, God had not spoken directly to anyone. He had been silent for 400 years. In the Christmas story accounts, God sends angels as messengers, intermediaries to carry His messages to people. But in this moment, after so long, God breaks the silence. The heavens open up. His voice that spoke the universe into creation calls down through the clouds.

What are those first words He says? This time it's not "Let there be light." This time it's "This is my Son, my love. With him I am well-pleased." It is the same voice that called creation into existence and gave it value, calling it good on each day of creation. Creation culminated with human beings, and God stepped back and called all of it very good.

Here is Jesus, the one God calls His Son, the one He loves. More than just being good or very good, God says He is well-pleased with Him. Matthew sees in this moment a picture of powerful truth coming to life. Before Jesus has performed any miracles, before He's preached or led or even started gathering followers, here He is submitting to baptism just like everybody else, letting go of what was past and embracing what God has for Him in His future, accepting that covenant relationship with God and that call on His life.

He's being baptized by John, who the gospel writers identify as the greatest prophet since Elijah, come to prepare the people for the Messiah. Notice that Jesus isn't being anointed with oil to take on a role as priest or king. He's taking on the water of baptism: surrender, submission, repentance. He's showing us that if baptism is good enough for Him, it's good enough for us.

This moment required obedience from both men. If Jesus had seen baptism as beneath Him, or if John had insisted he knew better, we would have missed all of this. Instead, both surrendered, and the heavens opened.

God's not making stir-fry. He's baking the bread of life. He measures those pieces with precision. Even when we don't understand all the miraculous equations that go into baking that bread, we can taste the results, and we know the difference.

So what does this mean for how we hear God today?

Obey, Seek, Listen

It makes sense that the way we follow God should be like the way we follow our teachers in school. We stop what we're doing, listen, and pay attention. Once we hear clearly, we ask questions and do what we're told. Then we repeat the process.

But when it comes to listening to God today, I want to suggest we change the order. Obey, seek, and listen.

Our scripture doesn't start with Jesus getting still, turning His attention to God, and waiting for instructions. It starts with Jesus getting up and traveling a great distance from Nazareth to the Jordan River to be baptized. While I'm sure God told Him to do this at some point, Matthew doesn't tell us when.

Look at the structure of this account. It starts with an act of obedience and ends with hearing God. This shows us that sometimes the way to hear God most clearly is not by cutting everything out of our lives, turning off our phones, running from everyone who wants our attention, and hiding in our prayer closets, as if God were a tiny voice like Jiminy Cricket being out-shouted by everything else around.

Most of us, if we ask ourselves honestly, have some idea of what the next thing God wants us to do is. We may not understand it fully. It may be something we do alone, or it may require asking someone for help, just like Jesus asked John. Either way, we need to take that next step of obedience. When we do our part, God does His. Simple acts of obedience become incredible encounters with the Lord.

As our passage shows, it is in that moment of surrender, not just with our words but with our actions, that the heavens open up and we hear God again, maybe a little more clearly than before.

Did you notice what God said to Jesus? To John? To whoever else could hear that voice from heaven? We might expect God to say, "Good job. Now here's your next job, Jesus." He doesn't say that. He tells Jesus He loves Him. He identifies Him as His Son. He tells Him He's pleased with Him.

When I think about what I need to hear from God, I often think about what He wants me to do next. I think if He spoke clearly, I would know what to do. Sometimes I feel frustrated when it doesn't seem clear or simple.

But God didn't just give Jesus His next step in that moment. He gave Him something even more precious: feedback. We forget that we need feedback as much as we need direction. We need to hear what God thinks about us, not just what He wants from us. The truth is, it's scary to open ourselves up to the Creator of the universe and let Him tell us exactly what He thinks. We know our flaws. We know He knows them better than we do.

So most days, it's easier to tell ourselves, "He forgave us. Move on." It's true, He does forgive us. He has the next thing prepared for us. But there's a world of difference between reading that in a book and convincing ourselves it's true, and hearing those words, "I forgive you. I adopt you as my child, my beloved," from God's lips to our heart.

Two Anchors

To hear God like that, we have to make space for Him. We are so used to doing that sometimes it's hard to just be with God. But that is what He wants more than anything else. We worry about doing the next right thing. I think God is more focused on who we are becoming over the course of all our actions.

Prayer is how we talk with God. You've probably heard it said, "You don't have to use special words. Just talk to God like He's your best friend." But that's not how it usually works, is it? When we first find forgiveness and begin following Jesus, our prayers sound more like words to the one who saved us—like speaking to a firefighter or first responder who rescued our life. The same phrases come out again and again because we don't know God very well yet. That's okay. That's where we start.

Over time, as we see how we can respond in gratitude by serving, God becomes our boss, our leader, our lord. We'll follow Him anywhere as we await His orders. This growth is good. Each stage draws us closer to Him.

But there's something even deeper. From the very beginning and all throughout, God wants us to be His beloved children. He doesn't just want us to serve Him. He wants to be with us, and He wants us to want to be with Him. The goal of our journey is to respond to His desire for us with our own desire for Him, to relate to Him not just as Rescuer or Lord, but as the Father who loves us and calls us His own.

What we do together with Him matters, but He's more than capable of handling those details if we're willing to trust Him. That's where we struggle: trusting God enough to handle the questions of what to do next so we can focus on just being with Him.

If that's where you find yourself today—wanting to trust God but not sure how—you're not alone, and you're not without help. God has given us two anchors to hold onto.

First, Scripture. God's word does not change. We have more than enough guidance in the Bible to get us pointed in the right direction. You won't find answers to every question, but there's plenty to get you started if you approach it with the goal of being obedient rather than using it for your own ends. Let the Scriptures question you, and respond obediently. You'll find the answers you need along the way.

Second, the Body of Christ. Where there are gaps between our questions and what we have in Scripture, God gives us our brothers and sisters who have chosen to follow Jesus. He gives us the church, and with the church comes His Holy Spirit. We don't each have our own individual spirits taking us wherever we want to go. God gives us one Spirit that we share together, and we share that Spirit with Jesus. It keeps us connected to Him and to each other.

When we're confused about what we're hearing, our brothers and sisters can share their experiences with Jesus. Like the four Gospels, their testimonies tell the same story from different perspectives. The similarities far outweigh the differences, and together they form a clearer picture of who Jesus is.

But what if you've sought God and still feel like you haven't heard anything? Remember that Jesus told us to seek and we will find. If we persist in seeking Him, especially in Scripture and in the Body of Christ together, we may discover that God has been speaking to us all along, but we didn't recognize His voice. The more time we spend with Him, the more familiar His voice becomes.

So if you're worried about hearing what God wants you to do next, don't be. Remember, we're baking, not making stir-fry. When you're unsure about the next step in baking, you check the recipe—that's Scripture. When you want to know how someone else's turned out so well or need help with a tricky technique, you ask a friend who's done it before—that's the Body of Christ. You have the voice of God yesterday and the voice of God today, right at hand. As we respond in obedience, we will discover that as much as we want to be in His presence, He wants to be in ours even more.

Brothers and sisters, what is that next step of obedience for you? What is God saying to you? In just a moment, we're going to participate in the Wesley Covenant Renewal, reminding ourselves that our lives are not our own, but that we pledge to live them with and for Jesus. We've recognized our church leaders today, but this relationship with God is not just for our leaders. It's for all of us. We'll close our service remembering our baptism and taking home a small stone to remind ourselves that what God has done for us in calling us, forgiving us, and adopting us as His own is more than just a moment today. It has changed our lives forever.

Closing Prayer

Lord, thank You that You speak to us every day. Thank You that we don't have to hide away to hear You call us to Yourself, to receive Your love and encouragement, Your discipline and correction, Your wisdom and promises. Give us eyes to see You and ears to hear Your voice. As we hear You, help us respond faithfully. In Jesus' name, amen.

Covenant Renewal Service

Let us gathered here before the Lord now in covenant, commit ourselves to Christ as his servants. Let us give ourselves to him so that we may fully belong to him. Jesus Christ has left us with many services to be done. Some of these services are easy and honorable, but some are difficult and disgraceful. Some line up with our desires and interests, others are contrary to both. In some we please both Christ and ourselves, but in others we cannot please Christ except by denying ourselves.

Jesus Christ, we offer you this prayer:

Let me be your servant. Let me follow your commands. I will no longer follow my own desires. I give myself completely to your will.

The power and strength to live as true servants is given to us in Christ. We accept the place and work that he gives us, acknowledging that he alone will be our reward.

I am not my own. I am yours alone. Make me into what you will. Rank me with those you will. Put me to use for you. Put me to suffering for you. Let me be employed for you. Let me be laid aside for you. Let me be lifted high for you. Let me be brought low for you. Let me be full or let me be empty. Let me have all things or let me have nothing. With a willing heart, i freely give everything to your pleasure and disposal.

Christ is Savior to those who are his true servants. He is the source of all salvation to those who obey. To be his servant is to consent fully to his will. Christ accepts nothing less. Christ will be all in all, or he will be nothing.

Now confirm this truth in holy covenant. Make it a reality in your life in these ways:

First, set apart time in your day, more than once, to be spent alone with the Lord. Seek to perceive God’s special care for you and gracious acceptance of you. Carefully think through the words of this covenant and its conditions. Examine your heart, even if you have freely given your life to Christ. Name the sins in your life. Reflect on whether you are willing to choose Christ’s holy laws and strict commands. Be sure you are clear in all of these so you do not lie to God!

Second, uphold a serious spirit of holy awe and reverence.

Third, claim God’s covenant. Do not trust in your own strength and power but rely upon God’s promise of giving grace and strength. In this way, he will empower you to keep your promise.

Fourth, be determined to be faithful. You have given your heart and life to God. You have opened your mouth to dedicate yourself to the Lord. With God’s power, never go back to your former way of living.

And, last, be prepared to renew your covenant with God. Fall on your knees. Lift your hands. Open your heart.

Remembrance of Baptism

Pastor: Brothers and sisters in Christ: Through the Sacrament of Baptism we are initiated into Christ’s Holy Church. We are incorporated into God’s mighty acts of Salvation and given new birth through water and the Spirit. All this is God’s gift, offered to us without price. Through the reaffirmation of our faith we renew the covenant declared at our baptism, acknowledge what God is doing for us, and affirm our commitment to Christ’s holy church.

Pastor: Church, Do you believe in God the Father, Jesus Christ the Son, and the Holy Spirit?

Congregation: I do.

Pastor: Do you confess Jesus Christ as Savior, put your whole trust in His grace, and promise to serve Him as your Lord?

Congregation: I do.

Pastor: Do you receive and profess the Christian faith as contained in the Scriptures?

Congregation: I do.

Pastor: Do you promise, according to the grace given you, to keep God’s holy will and commandments and walk in the same all the days of your life as a faithful member of Christ’s holy church?

Congregation: I do.

Pastor: The Holy Spirit works within you, that having been born through water and the Spirit, you may live as a faithful disciple of Jesus Christ.

Remember your baptism and be thankful.

I invite those who are helping with baptism remembrance stones to come forward at this time. As we sing our closing song together I invite you to move to one of our baptismal remembrance stations, dip your hand in the water, and take a stone with you to remind you how God has and continues to work in your life.