Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
Proposition: Jesus Christ is the Son of God and Savior, trust Him!
Q.
I. Jesus - Anointed and Acclaimed by God (3:21-23)
I. Jesus - Anointed and Acclaimed by God (3:21-23)
<<READ 21-22>>
Unlike Matthew, Luke doesn’t give details of the baptism itself. Focus instead - this baptism set apart from all the rest - Jesus also had been baptized. Not a baptism of repentance, since Jesus was without sin
Only Luke says that Jesus was praying at this moment (the Son speaking to the Heavenly Father)
Heavens opened - picture of God sending salvation
Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down,
that the mountains might quake at your presence—
v22 - Holy Spirit descended (John the Baptist saw it, and this was the whole reason John was sent -
This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks before me, because he was before me.’ I myself did not know him, but for this purpose I came baptizing with water, that he might be revealed to Israel.” And John bore witness: “I saw the Spirit descend from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. I myself did not know him, but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ And I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God.”
What do we see in the baptism of Jesus?
God revealing Himself as Trinity - the Father and the Holy Spirit anointing and acclaiming Jesus, God the Son.
“My beloved Son” - many OT parallels
But you, Israel, my servant,
Jacob, whom I have chosen,
the offspring of Abraham, my friend;
“my friend” = “my beloved”
I will tell of the decree:
The Lord said to me, “You are my Son;
today I have begotten you.
Baptism - as ordination to high priesthood
Exodus 29:1-9 - ordination of priests - first washed with water (by immersing in a huge basin called the Bronze Sea), then anointed with oil (often pointed to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit)
<<READ 23>> - we find out from Numbers 4 that a priest was ordained and began his service at age 30
Levitical Priesthood - set apart from the rest of Israel to represent the people before God (breastplate w/ 12 stones, one for each tribe). Turban w/ gold insignia “Holy to the LORD.” Had to remain set apart in important ways.
Job was to bring their offerings before the LORD and intercede for the people - to pray for the people
But their priesthood and their offerings were a shadow pointing forward to the better priesthood of Jesus Christ
Book of Hebrews - Jesus Christ was GOD the Son, made MAN - like us in every respect - even tempted like we are, but without sin - so that he could be our Great High Priest and our propitiation. He is able to sympathize with us. And He is able to save us completely, because He ever lives to make intercession for us. Because He is perfectly and holy, He was able to offer Himself as our propitiation - our substitutionary atonement - one sacrifice for all time. Therefore, everyone who belongs to Him can approach God in full confidence and assurance, trusting Him as Jesus did.
Speaking of the difference between the Old Testament priests and Jesus, our Great High Priest, the author of Hebrews says in:
And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.
And just a few verses later
Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.
Here in Christ’s baptism, God the Holy Spirit descends on God the Son, and God the Father announces and acclaims His identity and status. If this is also Christ’s ordination to His Great High Priesthood, we would expect Jesus to immediately begin His ministry, and that’s exactly what verse 23 says.
OUR SECOND POINT:
II. Jesus - Son of Adam, Son of God (3:23-38)
II. Jesus - Son of Adam, Son of God (3:23-38)
I’m not going to read the genealogy again in its entirety, since Aaron did that a few minutes ago. But here are a few things you should know about it.
First, Biblical genealogies are not the same as what we think of as a family tree. It’s not an exhaustive list of ancestors for your private exploration on Ancestry.com or something. Many of the genealogies in the Old Testament were intended to show where a family came from, how they were grafted into another tribe by adoption, or how leadership passed down over time.
Public genealogies were used when the people returned to the Land after the Babylonian captivity in Ezra 2. <<Ppl claiming to be priests // opened the genealogies // if not there, couldn’t participate in the priesthood>>
Since Joseph and Mary were both descended from David, both of their families probably had family genealogies as well as the public rosters
Matthew 1 - a very typical genealogy - starts with Abraham, concludes with “Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born.” Doesn’t try to be exhaustive, instead divides Israel’s history into 3 sections with 14 generations in each - ‘all the generations - 14 generations’ - Abraham to David, David to the deportation to Babylon, and deportation to Babylon to Christ.
Luke’s genealogy is very different, and very unusual. Starts with Jesus, goes back in time, past David, even past Abraham, past Noah, to the very beginning. And while Matthew’s genealogy follows the line of kingly succession, from David to Solomon down the line, Luke’s genealogy passes through David’s lesser-known son, Nathan.
There are a couple different explanations for the difference. But Matthew’s genealogy is the typical legal form, that we might expect to establish that Jesus, as the adopted son of Joseph, is David’s heir.
Luke’s genealogy states that Jesus is the son of each name in the list. He’s the legal son of Joseph - but not the genetic son of Joseph. But as the son of Mary, he is the genetic son of David.
concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord,
So Mary’s line must go through David, too. So Jesus is supposedly the son of Joseph, but there’s no supposedly about his status as the son of Heli, or as the son of Matthat, or pick any other name in the list. And that’s just how it reads
<<READ 23>> - And Jesus is the son of David, just as verse 31 says. Jesus is the son of Abraham, verse 34. Jesus is the son of Noah, verse 36.
And look how verse 38 ends: Jesus is the son of Adam through Mary’s line. And Jesus, in a way even more fundamental than Adam, is the Son of God.
This is the second time Jesus has been called the Son of God in this chapter, after verse 22. And perhaps you remember that the angel Gabriel told Mary that her son would be called the Son of God.
When the heavens opened and the Father acclaimed Jesus as His Son, and the Holy Spirit anointed Him for mission, He was announced as the Christ, the Savior. His divine nature as the Second Person of the Trinity was momentarily showcased. Now, the Son of God is declared to be one of us, fully God and fully man.
Elsewhere in the NT - Jesus is also called “the Last Adam,” because Adam’s sin plunged all of us into the brokenness of a fallen world, but Jesus’s obedience and holiness rescues us from death.
For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.
1 cor 15.21-22
For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.
Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.
And this brings us back to the idea of Jesus, our great high priest. A priest stands in God’s presence on behalf of the people, representing them, as Adam in the Garden of Eden, in God’s presence, stood as our head. And when the devil came and tempted him, Adam failed utterly.
But where Adam failed, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was victorious.
OUR THIRD POINT
III. Jesus - Victorious on Our Behalf (4:1-13)
III. Jesus - Victorious on Our Behalf (4:1-13)
But instead of a lush garden, the Holy Spirit leads Jesus into the wilderness to begin His official role as Lord, Savior, Christ, and Priest.
<<READ 4:1-4>>
In Genesis 2, God had told Adam
And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
But the serpent lied to Eve, telling her that she would not die, and that by disobeying God, she would become more like Him.
So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.
Here, the devil starts with a supposition: “Since you’re the Son of God, and you’re hungry from fasting, just make yourself some food.”
But Jesus recognizes the devil’s trick. The Holy Spirit led Him into the wilderness. And His mission requires Him to rely on His Father completely. So unlike Adam, Jesus believed God’s provision and even more importantly lived by God’s Word.
When the people of Israel were delivered from Egypt in the Exodus, they were baptized into the Red Sea, according to Paul in 1 Cor 10. And then, in the wilderness, they complained that God brought them out into the desert to die of starvation. But God fed them with manna, bread from heaven.
And so, Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 8:3.
And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.
Jesus, our Savior, our Great High Priest, trusted God’s provision completely.
Look at the devil’s next temptation, in verses 5-8 <<READ 5-8>>
And just like Satan’s lie in the Garden of Eden, the lie was wrapped up in a deceptive element of truth. Adam and Eve did gain knowledge they didn’t have before, so they did become like God in one sense. But they became alienated from God. They were now morally unlike Him. They were ashamed and afraid, two things they’d never known. And they were sent out of the Garden, with the way to the Tree of Life blocked, and their death was sure. Even the truth in the devil’s lie turned out to be a ruined, twisted truth.
The same is true here. The Bible calls the devil the prince of the power of the air, the ruler of this present age, and the (little ‘g’) god of this world. You can see evidence of his government everywhere you look.
We know that we are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one.
Our Great High Priest was standing before the one who could hand over every earthly kingdom in exchange for a repeat from this new Adam. If he would just bow to him instead of the Father, he hisses, there would be a smooth transition of power. “Do what I say and you get what you want.”
But Jesus recognizes the lie yet again.
He quotes
It is the Lord your God you shall fear. Him you shall serve and by his name you shall swear.
Unlike Adam, Jesus refused to do what the serpent demanded. And unlike Israel in the wilderness, Jesus refused to bow to any false god.
All the kingdoms of the earth - what are they?
Who has measured the Spirit of the Lord, or what man shows him his counsel? Whom did he consult, and who made him understand? Who taught him the path of justice, and taught him knowledge, and showed him the way of understanding? Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket, and are accounted as the dust on the scales; behold, he takes up the coastlands like fine dust.
Jesus has a better kingdom to inherit. Better than all the nations. The devil might be able to offer all the dead and dying kingdoms of the earth, the ash and bone empires that come and go.
In fact, as much as they belong to the devil, they already belong to the sons and daughters of Adam. Adam’s children run every earthly kingdom with the devil’s deceptions twisting every one of them. But his time is short.
And here’s the promise the Father made to the Son
“I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.
And so Jesus Christ, the Son of God, our Savior, stood firm so that He could inherit the Kingdom of God for you:
“Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.
The third temptation is in verses 9-13 <<READ 9-13>>
The balcony at the Temple’s pinnacle looked out over 450 foot drop down the side of Mt Zion. The devil’s lie twists God’s own Word, just as he did in the Garden. This time, he misuses Psalm 91.
Israel put God to the test in the wilderness, when they demanded a miracle from God, in Exodus 17. For Jesus to cast Himself down would be a demand for the Father to prove His care. It would imply a challenge to God’s faithfulness. It would be an act of unbelief. But Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 6:16, when the LORD told Israel that they must not put the LORD their God to the test, as they did in the wilderness.
In these three moments, Jesus is tempted in ways that directly connect to His mission as the Son of God, sent to be our Savior. But they’re also directly connected to temptations that Adam faced, that Israel faced, that you and I face.
And every day, humanity proves that we are children of Adam and Eve. Instead of saying, as Jesus will do in the Garden of Gethsemane, “Nevertheless, not as I will, but your will be done,” we hunger and say, “God must not love us.” He feeds us, and we say, “Woe is me, why not steak?”
He leads us by His POWER and MIGHT and we look around at the wilderness and say, “You know, I could run this world better.”
In short, like Adam and like Israel, we doubt God’s provision so we try to get by on our own terms; we doubt God’s power so we try to run things against His plans; we doubt God’s promises, so we demand or expect Him to prove Himself to us.
For all of these things, we deserve Adam’s sentence.
But in all these things, a better Son of Adam, Son of God was victorious on our behalf.
Conclusion - Jesus, Savior for All Who Believe
Conclusion - Jesus, Savior for All Who Believe