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The Wonder of The Trinity at The Baptism of Christ (Mark 1:9-11 K 1.9-11) )
The Wonder of The Trinity at The Baptism of Christ (Mark 1:9-11 K 1.9-11) )
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(http://fbcaudio2011.s3.amazonaws.com/outlines/10162011.pdf)
Life has its mysteries . . . why would a gopher show up in my yard? What holds electrons
around neutrons and protons? Why does my wife sometimes throw away my favorite
shirts? How far does the universe extend? Yet another mystery–why can’t I eat a lot of
ice cream anymore?
The Bible acknowledges that there are unexplainable things. Proverbs 30:18
(https://biblia.com/bible/nasb95/Prov%2030.18) to 19, “There are three things which are
too wonderful for me, four which I do not understand: 19 the way of an eagle in the sky,
the way of a serpent on a rock, the way of a ship in the middle of the sea, and the way of a
man with a maid.” There are things on this earth worthy of wonder and mystery.
Theology has its mysteries too–since God is limitless and you are limited, there will be
things you can’t fully understand. Is the Word of God written by men or by God? Yes!
Was Jesus 100% God or 100% man? Yes! Is salvation a sovereign act of God or something
man is responsible to believe? Yes! And is God one or three persons? Yes!
Open your Bibles to Mark 1, and open up the outline found in your bulletin to follow
along. Today we are going to wonder about the Trinity. The Trinity means three things:
As Mark begins his gospel, he makes it clear our God is one yet three. So as we read aloud
together verses 9 to 11, notice Mark mentions God the Son, God the Spirit and God the
Father. “In those days Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in
the Jordan. 10 Immediately coming up out of the water, He saw the heavens opening, and
the Spirit like a dove descending upon Him; 11 and a voice came out of the heavens: ‘You
are My beloved Son, in You I am well-pleased.’”
Did you see the three persons of the Trinity in verses 9 to 11? Verse 9–God the Son, verse
10–God the Spirit, and verse 11–God the Father. One in essence and three in persons, one
God, three persons. Dive into the theology with me for a moment, and keep your brain
tuned in. All three persons of the Trinity share the same essence or “Godness”. One is
not more God than another. No member of the Trinity is more essentially divine than the
rest.
When I say three “persons”, a person means “a particular individual distinct from the
others.” Theologians use these terms because they are trying to find a way to express the
relationship of three beings that are equally and uniquely God, but not three gods. That’s
why you will read or hear this difficult language referring to essence and persons–one
essence and three persons. The Bible clearly states, there is an indivisibility and unity of
God, even though Father, Son, and Holy Spirit can all be rightly called God. The Persons
are not three gods–rather, they dwell in communion with each other as they subsist in the
divine nature without being compounded or confused.
Today, if you’re humble, hungry, willing, and love God’s Word you will learn the core
secret to a great marriage, a great church, and building a great leadership team in your
ministry. Today, you will understand why one group of Christians thrills your heart to be
with, but others seem lifeless and dull. Today, by embracing the Trinity, singles, you will
understand what God desires of you in all your relationships. Today is one of the most
important sermons I’ve ever preached in order to grow in your relationships with others.
So let’s dig in.
And verse 9 says, “Jesus came in those days.” There are two truths you don’t see in most
English versions. But to feel the weight of what Mark is saying, you need to know first
that verse 9 starts with a kai, an “and”, which attaches verse 9 to verses 1 to 8. Verse 9 is
connected to verse 8 in the mind of the author. “In those days” is at the height of John
the Baptist’s ministry, when he is telling everyone there is One coming who is superior in
every way–He can transform you from the inside out.
The second truth is translated correct only in the KJV—it’s left out of the NASB and the
ESV. The verb “it came to pass” should actually begin verse 9. The Greek should be
translated this way in your English Bible—“and, it came to pass in those days.” “And it
came to pass” is a rare phrase for Mark to use, but it distinguishes the baptism of Christ
which is about to occur in verse 9 as distinct from those baptisms John was giving to the
people in verses 1 to 8.
So where did Jesus come from? Verse 9 says Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee. Here is
the hero of our story, the focus of the Gospel and one who makes our salvation “good
news”–His name is Jesus. The God man Jesus has now begun the process in which He will
do the work necessary for His people to be saved from their sins. It will be through Jesus,
who is from Nazareth in Galilee.
And it came to pass in those days that Jesus wrapped up thirty years of obscurity and
silence, thirty years of growing up with his half-brothers, James and Jude. Thirty years
working (at least some of the time) with his stepfather Joseph, as a carpenter. Thirty
years in the same house with his mother and half-sisters. Thirty years, where he grew to
manhood, learned, played, talked, ate, did chores, purchased items, made friends, learned
the Word in the synagogue, and traveled to Jerusalem for feasts and festivals. And thirty
years, where verse 9 says, He lived in Galilee.
Galilee is the northern region of Israel where the Sea of Galilee is. It is beautiful with
attractive green rolling hills, dramatic cliffs and a gorgeous lake. Yet Galilee was a region
that was contemptible to all who lived in the south, in Judea, because the Galileans had
developed a funny dialect, mispronounced words and made grammatical errors. They had
developed what we might make fun of with people in our country who live in the south—
“Ha ya’ll doin?” or Minnesota, “don’t ya know.”
And Mark uniquely adds that Jesus came from Nazareth, which was also despised by the
religious elite of Jesus’s day because Nazareth isn’t mentioned once in the Old
Testament. It was not even mentioned once by the Jewish historian Josephus, or the
Talmud. This little city was also disdained by common Israelites because of its irreligion
and lack of morals. Its population was mongrel, its dialect was rough, and its people were
seditious. Nazareth was even considered rough by the hillbilly Galileans.
Luke 3:23 (https://biblia.com/bible/nasb95/Luke%203.23) tells us when He began His
ministry, Jesus Himself was about thirty years of age. So for thirty years, Jesus lived in
Nazareth, the backwoods hills of hickville Galilee, where God prepared Him for his three-
and-a-half years of public ministry, leading to His ultimate goal of dying on the cross for
our sins, rising from the dead and ascending into heaven.
Verse 10 has one main verb—“He saw” and three participles . . . “coming up” out of the
water, the heavens “opening”, and the Spirit “descending” and the order is correct. As
Jesus was immediately coming up out of the water Jesus saw two incredible events–one
visible, one audible. We know from the other gospels that John the Baptist also saw this
event (John 1:32 (https://biblia.com/bible/nasb95/John%201.32) to 34). What Jesus saw
and heard were objective, real, factual events. This was not a vision, but reality.
First Jesus saw the heavens opening
The present tense of the verb “opening” pictures the sky itself in the very act of being
torn apart. The passive voice of the verb opening suggests that this was an act of God.
The heavens opening literally means heavens are splitting open, dividing open, renting
asunder–the Greek word opening is where we get our English word “schism”.
This verb “opening” is the same verb Mark uses later in 15:38 to describe the veil in the
temple being ripped into two at the time of Jesus’s death–torn apart. The sky was ripped
open. This kind of dramatic event suggests the start of a new era of open communication
between heaven and earth.
But “into Him” does not mean the Spirit was not present in Him prior to this time, since
Christ and the Spirit are one God–this “into Him” is a unique empowering for His public
ministry. Christ never laid aside His attributes nor His deity, but He self-limited His
attributes–the kenosis, and veiled His deity in order to live as a man on earth, to
completely identify with us.
There are many of us who believe Christ functioned not by His own power, attributes or
deity, even when He did miracles, but He performed those actions and all He said and did
by the power of the Holy Spirit in Him. He lived by the Spirit. Such is the example and
the love of Christ for you. But why does the Holy Spirit descend on Christ like a dove?
Three suggestions have been made.
1 Some have suggested because the dove is gentle, pure, peaceful, and innocent like
Christ was and is.
2 More probably, the dove points to sacrifice–the dove was preeminently the bird of
sacrifice for the Jews. So here, Christ is being empowered by the Holy Spirit to live
humbly, and ultimately lead to the sacrifice of the cross.
3 The third reason why a dove is because it points to the picture God gave us of the
Trinity at creation. In the creation account, Genesis 1:2
(https://biblia.com/bible/nasb95/Gen%201.2) says that the Spirit hovered over the face of
the waters. The Hebrew verb hovered means to “flutter”–the Spirit fluttered over the face
of the waters. To capture this vivid image, the rabbis who translated this passage into
Aramaic wrote it like this, “And the earth was without form and empty and darkness was
on the face of the deep and the spirit of God fluttered above the face of the waters like a
dove.”
From Genesis we know there are three parties active in the creation of the world–God the
Father, God’s Spirit and God’s Word, through which He creates. We know that’s Christ.
The same three parties are present at Jesus’s baptism–the Father who is the voice, the Son
who is the Word, and the Spirit fluttering over the waters like a dove. Mark is deliberately
pointing us back to the creation, when the first Adam was to rule the earth as God’s
representative.
Now as the fallen world is about to be redeemed, it is the second Adam who will rule the
earth as God’s representative. Both creation and redemption are the work of the Trinity.
The point is, life itself from creation and redemption is to be saturated by, and one with,
the Trinity. So we’ve seen the Son be immersed to identify with His coming death, the
Spirit descend to empower–what about the Father?
#3 God the Father affirms the Son Verse 11
Read verse 11, “and a voice came out of the heavens: ‘You are My beloved Son, in You I
am well-pleased.’” This is the Father’s confirmation to the incarnate Son as He stood
upon the bank of the Jordan River. A voice, a sound, a noise–the Greek word is phon-a,
where we get cell phone, phonograph, and symphony. God the Father speaks, presumably
out of the split in the sky, and expresses deep love and affirmation to God the Son.
Only two other times does the Father speak about His Son audibly. On the mount of
transfiguration the Father says of the Son in Mark 9:7
(https://biblia.com/bible/nasb95/Mark%209.7), “a voice came out of the cloud, ‘This is My
beloved Son, listen to Him!’” Again, Jesus is called beloved. Then, during the Passion
Week, Jesus prays and the Father audibly replies. Jesus says in John 12:28
(https://biblia.com/bible/nasb95/John%2012.28), “’Father, glorify Your name.’ Then a
voice came out of heaven: ‘I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.’”
In every case, the Father is either expressing love or affirmation to the Son. God the
Father loves God the Son. The main verb in verses 9, 10 and 11 is “ you are” my beloved
Son. And the “you” or “thou” is emphatic, emphasized (you yourself) in comparison to all
others, You alone are beloved. Not You have become beloved, nor You have become my
Son–this is not a newly established relationship, but an abiding reality.
The root of beloved is agape, that sacrificial action to benefit another–and the exact form
of the verb “beloved” is to prize, to be dear, to express extreme delight. No higher love is
possible than the love which the Father cherishes toward His Son–this love is
thoroughgoing love, deep-seated love, as great as the heart of God itself–infinite love.
My spouse is beloved, prized, very dear, an extreme delight. The Father is saying to the
Son, “You alone are uniquely beloved. Again the Greek has a strong emphasis on
beloved–it is literally, you are my Son, The Beloved, stressing a perfect love relationship,
“only” beloved.
I love my sons massively–I am so grateful for their love for Christ and love for their wife
and wife-to-be, for their love for Christ’s church, their love for service to His body and
their love for Jean and I as parents. But that is nothing compared to what God declares
here toward His Son–this is the greatest, perfect love that exists. This statement is the
Father’s love response to Jesus’s dedication to His mission as the servant of God and lamb
of salvation.
Then the Father adds, “in You I am well-pleased.” Pleased is pleasure or delight. This
verb “well-pleased” is timeless, indicating that the Father had always been pleased with
the Son and was still pleased with Him. In Christ, the Father found perfect satisfaction
and delight, and it’s a pleasure that never had a beginning and will never have an end.
Now why is the Father’s love for the Son so important? Why is the Trinity clearly present
at creation and redemption? What difference does God being three yet one make to me?
Buckle up, friends. I read Lewis, Piper, Grudem, Keller, MacArthur and some Mueller–here
is what you need to embrace.
The Christian teaching of the Trinity is mysterious and difficult. The doctrine of the
Trinity is that God is one God, eternally existent in three persons. That’s not tritheism,
meaning three gods who work in harmony. Neither is it modelism, where the Father puts
on a hat and becomes the Son, then the Son puts on a hat and becomes the Spirit–no TD
Jakes. The correct view is Trinitarianism, which holds there is one God in three persons
who know and love one another. God is not more fundamentally one than He is three, and
He is not more fundamentally three than He is one.
When Jesus comes out of the water, the Father envelops Him with words of love–you’re
my Son whom I love–with you I’m well pleased. Meanwhile, at the same time the Spirit
covers Christ with power. What most people miss from this event is this–these very
actions have been happening in the interior life of the Trinity from all eternity. And this
is the model target for all relationships.
When you glorify God, this is what you experience–Mark is giving us a glimpse into the
very heart of life, purpose and all relationships–family, single, friendships, and ministry.
According to the Bible, the Father, the Son and the Spirit glorify one another. Jesus says
in His prayer recorded in John 17:4 (https://biblia.com/bible/nasb95/John%2017.4) to 5, “’I
glorified You on the earth, having accomplished the work which You have given Me to do.
5 Now, Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You
before the world was.’” Each person of the Trinity glorifies the other.
But listen to one theologian commenting on how the Father, Son and Spirit, glorify one
another. He says, “The persons within God exalt each other, commune with each other
and defer to one another–each divine person harbors the others at the center of his being.
In constant movement of overture and acceptance, each person envelops and encircles
the others . . . God’s interior life, therefore, overflows with regard for others.”
You are glorifying something when you find it beautiful for what it is in itself. Its beauty
compels you to adore it, to have your imagination captured by it, you think about it,
treasure it, reflect it, imitate it, enjoy it and take pleasure in it. This happened to me with
art by Rembrandt. To get an “A” in Art Appreciation in college, I had to look at a lot of
Rembrandt. I had to get good grades to get a good job, so in reality I looked at Rembrandt
to make money. But today I am quite willing to spend money just to look at Rembrandt,
not because it’s useful to me anymore, but because it is beautiful in and of itself. It is no
longer a means to an end, but an end in itself.
When it is a person you find beautiful in that way, you want to serve that person
unconditionally. When you say, “I’ll serve you as long as I am getting benefits from my
service,” that is not actually serving people, it is serving yourself through them. That’s
not orbiting around them, it’s using them, getting them to orbit around you, making you
the center of your life, not them. And there are many of us who look unselfish, dutiful and
obedient because we say yes to enough to look good. But we are not glorifying God, just
ourselves. We are not serving out of love for other persons like the Trinity does, but to
look good and to please ourselves.
To glorify others means to unconditionally serve them, not because we’re getting
anything out of it, just because of our love and appreciation for who they truly are. The
Father, the Son and the Spirit are each centered on the other persons in the Trinity,
adoring and serving them, and look what happens. Because the Father, Son and Spirit are
giving glorifying love to one another, God is infinitely and profoundly happy.
Does this matter? Yes–this is crucial. C.S. Lewis says it matters more than anything else
in the world–the whole Trinitarian love relationship, joy relationship, happiness from
serving, giving and loving each other unselfishly is to be played out in each one of us and
all of us together.
This is the key to a biblical marriage–this Trinitarian unselfish, giving, loving, expect
nothing in return, service to your mate is what creates joy and happiness in marriage, and
spills out all over your children. They’ll want Christ because they see Him in all His
fullness, lived out in the way you treat each other as spouses. Are you getting this?
This is key–glorifying God is not merely reflecting His attributes, it is also reflecting His
relationship. This is radical, life-altering, rock your world truth. Love is not static, it
happens in relationship. Joy is experienced in community–God is seen best in the context
of selfless, giving relationships in community.
This is the key to an amazing church. When we begin to glorify God by dependently
emulating the unselfish service of the persons of the Trinity, and begin to serve each
other in that same manner, then the joy of the Trinity, and happiness of the Trinity
become our joy and our happiness–that’s part of the reason why FBC is so special. And
it’s part of the reason we are also not having as much joy and as much happiness and as
much impact as we could, because not all of you are pursuing the heart of the Trinity.
This is the key to great ministry as you work with an RMG, or children’s or youth. Is God
manifesting Himself in amazing ways as you begin to serve each other as staff, love each
other unconditionally, minister to others who are serving with you with no thought of
return–and watch what it does to those you are serving and shepherding. They’ll see God,
catch His joy, love your ministry, and be more faithful. Are you catching a picture of who
God is as Trinity?
A self-centered person wants to be the center around which everything else orbits. I
might help people, I might have friends, I might fall in love as long as there’s no
compromise of my individual interests or whatever meets my needs. I might even give a
twenty to the church or a buck to the poor–but only as long as it makes me feel good
about myself and doesn’t hinder my lifestyle too much. Self-centeredness makes
everything else a means to an end. And that end is whatever I want and whatever I like,
my interests over theirs. I’ll even have fun with people, I will talk with people, but in the
end, everything orbits around me.
Now, if everyone is saying, “I want you to orbit around me,” what happens? Imagine any
ten Christians in your group or ministry all on one stage, all seeking the spotlight. When
everyone is saying, “Let me be in the spotlight, you step out of the way, you move around
me,” then nobody gets anywhere, and it becomes dangerous to be on the stage.
The Trinity is utterly different. Instead of self-centeredness, the Father, the Son and the
Spirit are characterized in their very essence by mutually self-giving love. No person in
the Trinity insists that the others revolve around Him. Rather, each of the persons of the
Trinity voluntarily orbits around the other persons. The Trinity is the ultimate reality,
and if this world was made by a triune God, and we were redeemed by a triune God, then
relationships of biblical love are what life is all about. It is how you glorify God in your
marriage, in your family, in your church and in this world–in each and every relationship.
John 13:35 (https://biblia.com/bible/nasb95/John%2013.35) says, “By this all men will
know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”
Love is selfless, sacrificial action to benefit another. So why did God create us, then
redeem us? Not to get love but to give love, not to get joy but to give joy. Your faith in
Christ is not merely a belief, or praying when you’re in trouble, or getting people to pay
attention to you. You were made then redeemed to function like the Trinity and enjoy the
happiness and joy of the Trinity as you serve, give and love others unconditionally.
“This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.” Glorifying God is more than
reflecting His attributes, it is dependently displaying His triune relationship.
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