Sermon Tone Analysis

If there’s one thing that all humans have in common, it’s our love for a good unveiling.

There’s something so enticingly dramatic and alluring about an unveiling.

We all love a good unveiling.

There’s a popular trend in today’s culture, you’ve probably seen videos of it on Facebook, it’s the gender reveal party.

I love watching those videos!

So if you’re not familiar, in a gender reveal party, the future parents don’t know whether they are having a boy or girl, so they have this big party with all their friends and family, and they unveil the sex of their baby in usually a really creative way: like they pop a balloon that’s filled with either blue or pink powder.

Or I’ve seen sparklers that are blue or pink, or piñatas.

And it’s always so exciting.

We love a good unveiling.

Actually, we love bad unveilings too.

I thoroughly enjoyed the botched unveiling of the new cybertruck from Tesla.

Did you hear about that?

Tesla had this big event to reveal their new futuristic looking electric truck, and during the event they were touting the toughness of the glass, saying it was armored like a military vehicle.

And to demonstrate, they threw a metal ball at the driver’s side window, and the window just shatters.

So, thinking it was a fluke, they lightly tossed the ball at the back window, and again it just shatters.

It was hilarious.

So, it doesn’t really even have to be a good unveiling, we still love it.

Well, we are now in the season of Epiphany, which is a time in the year when we really hone in on this idea of unveiling.

Specifically, the idea of Christ being unveiled to us, revealed to us, made known to us, and in turn our making Christ known to the world around us.

Unveiling Christ to the world around us.

So for the next few weeks we’re going to be looking at passages in the gospels where Christ is unveiled in a public way to see how he is made known to us, and in turn how we can go about the work of making him known to people in our lives.

So let’s look again at our gospel passage: .

So for the next few weeks we’re going to be looking at passages in the gospels where Christ is unveiled in a public way.

13 Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John, to be baptized by him.

14 John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” 15 But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.”

Then he consented.

16 And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him; 17 and behold, a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”

So here we have Matthew’s account of Jesus being baptized by John.

Last week we looked at Jesus’ first words recorded by Luke, and this week we hear the first words that Matthew records.

This scene at the Jordan river is happening right at the beginning of the story of Christ’s active life.

He’s not an infant in a manger anymore, he’s not a child being visited by the magi, he’s not a tween listening to the teachers in the temple, he’s now about thirty years old, and he’s about to set off to do the work the Lord had given him to do, he’s about to set off on the road that would eventually lead him back to Jerusalem, and to the cross, and the empty tomb.

This is the beginning of it all, this scene at the Jordan river.

The best way to describe what’s happening here, and in fact the angle that Matthew wants us to see regarding Christ’s baptism, is that what we’re witnessing is a coronation.

This isn’t just a baptism, it’s a coronation ceremony.

Jesus is being crowned the King.

A coronation is a public ceremony where a new sovereign is installed.

Melanie and I have really enjoyed the Netflix series, “The Crown,” which is a show that follows the life of Queen Elizabeth.

Now, we in America don’t really understand the national importance of a coronation, but for the British people, the installment of a new sovereign is an occasion unlike any other.

Our closest comparison would be inauguration day, but really that pales in comparison.

There is so much pomp and circumstance, so much ceremony, so much symbolism when the Queen of England is crowned, so much that means not a whole lot to those on the outside of that culture, but to those on the inside, they get it, they understand it.

Here we have the kind of coronation that the people of Israel would understand.

The heavens are torn open, the Spirit of God descends and anoints Jesus - bringing to mind the kings of Israel who were also said to be anointed by the Spirit, kinds like Saul and David, and we hear a voice that comes from the opened heavens, the voice of Yahweh himself saying, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”

This in fact is not a unique statement, but like much of what we see throughout the gospel of Matthew, this is an allusion to Old Testament passages, and in this case these words that come from heaven harken back to the book of Psalms and the prophet Isaiah.

In , the Lord is looking over the nations of the earth and how they’ve made such a mess of the world because they’ve broken away from the ways of God, and in response, God sets up a King that he himself chooses.

Listen to the Psalm and listen for the words that we hear coming from heaven at Christ’s baptism:

 Why do the nations rage

and the peoples plot in vain?

2  The kings of the earth set themselves,

and the rulers take counsel together,

against the LORD and against his Anointed, saying,

3  “Let us burst their bonds apart

and cast away their cords from us.”

4  He who sits in the heavens laughs;

the Lord holds them in derision.

5  Then he will speak to them in his wrath,

and terrify them in his fury, saying,

6  “As for me, I have set my King

on Zion, my holy hill.”

7  I will tell of the decree:

The LORD said to me, “You are my Son;

today I have begotten you.

Now this Psalm had long been seen as speaking about the king of Israel.

Kings like Saul and David, who were both called the Lord’s anointed, which in Hebrew is the word mashia, which we generally pronounce, Messiah.

But as history played out, people recognized that the kings of Israel, these Messiah’s, they never lived up to the promises made about the Messiah who Yahweh would call his own Son.

And so the people began to hope for a future king who would be the delight of Yahweh, who would rule with absolute justice and righteousness.

And the prophets affirmed this hope of the people.

The prophets began to speak about a coming King, who would be the true mashia.

More than any other prophet, Isaiah speaks again and again about the Messiah that would fulfill the hopes of God’s people.

But this Messiah would be more than a king, he’d be a servant.

Listen to again, where right at the beginning we hear what’s happening at the Jordan with Jesus and John.

Behold my servant, whom I uphold,

my chosen, in whom my soul delights;

I have put my Spirit upon him;

he will bring forth justice to the nations.

2  He will not cry aloud or lift up his voice,

or make it heard in the street;

3  a bruised reed he will not break,

and a faintly burning wick he will not quench;

he will faithfully bring forth justice.

4  He will not grow faint or be discouraged

till he has established justice in the earth;

and the coastlands wait for his law.

Can you see and hear in these two passages the voice that calls out from the heavens at Christ’s baptism?

In talking about the future King who would be chosen by Yahweh himself to bring justice to a world in rebellion?

And again in , where this beloved one of God is anointed by God’s Spirit in order to bring justice to the ends of the earth.

And so in a way that the people of Israel would understand, Jesus is being unveiled as this Messiah, this Servant King, this Anointed Son of God.

Right at the beginning of his ministry, before he has begun to teach that the Kingdom of God was at hand, before he had done a single miracle, he is crowned at the Jordan in this dazzling coronation.

What an unveiling.

But the question for us this morning, is how do we unveil this Jesus, who is the Messiah, who is the Servant King, who is the Anointed Son of God who is the hope for the earth?

How do we unveil him to the world around us? How do we make him known to our neighbors, coworkers, and friends who do not know him to be what we know him to be?

I see two answers in this passage.

First from John, and then from Jesus.

When Jesus comes to the Jordan to be baptized by John, I just love the response from John.

14 John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?”

If we are going to unveil Jesus to the world around us, we’ve got to adopt this posture of John, which is a posture of deference to Jesus.

John knows that his life and his purpose is to make Jesus known to the world.

John famously will say that he must decrease, and Christ must increase.

If we are going to make Jesus known in the world around us, we’ve got to do the same.

We have to push against this mentality that we are the stars of the show, that the life of the world revolves around us - because how can we possibly make much of Jesus if we’re caught up with making much of ourselves.

If we look at our lives, do we see this deference to King Jesus?