A, Post Pentecost 6 Proper 9 - Matthew 11:28-30 A Balancing Yoke

When you read or hear God’s Word, does God reveal His message to you? Does hearing or reading His Word leave you wanting to know more, or do you find yourself thinking, “I’m glad that’s done; now I can do something more constructive”?

If so, you may be weighing up God’s Word in the wrong way, and the depth of God’s power in His Word may remain hidden from you. Perhaps you are not allowing God the Holy Spirit to open God’s Word to you. Perhaps it is not important enough in the scheme of your life.

Or perhaps your stubborn, independent self-sufficiency is not allowing the Holy Spirit the time to work His will in you. Like stubborn Pharaoh placing a harsh burden on the Israelites through hardheartedness, you may be placing a harsh burden on yourself through your own stubborn self-sufficiency.

The question we must ask ourselves is this: “Do I want to continue in self-sufficiency, letting my heart become darker and harder through stubborn perception and deception, with the very real possibility that God hands me over to drown in my sins and their consequences?” No! I believe most of us don’t.

Next Sunday we’ll hear Jesus’ address what can happen to the Word of God when it has been sown in the heart. For now, He invites those who are weary from human hardheartedness to come to Him, take on His yoke, and learn from Him.

This invitation from Jesus is not simply a comforting saying; it reveals what God is doing with our weariness. He is drawing us away from the exhausting burden of self-sufficiency and towards the rest that comes from being yoked to Christ.

Jesus says, “Come to me, all who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28–30 ESV)

Chances are God is allowing your weariness to reveal something about yourself, just as He has done with individuals and groups throughout history. Perhaps God is teaching you how you relate to Him, especially when self-sufficiency leads you to forget or refuse to let Him be your God. Yet He remains the God whose kingdom, power, and glory are, were, and will continue to be.

We’ve all heard the saying, “there’s no rest for the wicked”.  This saying finds its origin in God’s Word where in Isaiah 48:22 we hear, “There is no peace,” says the Lord, “for the wicked.” (Isaiah 48:22 ESV)

God’s kingdom, power, and glory manifest themselves to us through His steadfast love. Our God is a God of generosity and mercy. So too are God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit invite us to receive Their generosity and mercy, and to live in the steadfast love of Their providence, salvation, and will.

We mostly think our heavy burden and weariness is a negative that has been inflicted upon us by the sins of others.  However, the reality is unlike Jesus, we are far from gentle and lowly in heart.  When push comes to shove from the sins of others our meekness or gentleness vaporises like an oasis in the desert, proving to be a mirage or deception.  Any lowliness of heart hardens in the heat of the moment.

Yet Jesus invites you to take on his yoke. A yoke still sounds like a burden to us. Most of us picture oxen yoked to a plough in the paddock, or a dray hauling heavy loads up a hill while the bullocky breaks the sound of shackles and chains on straining cattle with his most colourful language.

Jesus is not like a coarse bullocky, nor does His yoke make beasts of burden. No! “The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. The Lord is good to all, and his mercy is over all that he has made.” (Psalm 145:8–9 ESV) So too is our Lord Jesus since He and the Father are one!

But what is His yoke if it is not a beastly yoke? Another yoke is similar to that which rests on the neck of the beast, and it does carry things. However, the focus is more on balance than burden. In fact, if the balance is not right on a yoke the burden can be unbearable. So, what can we learn from Jesus about His yoke and the balance of what He bears and how He bears it? In other words, what does Jesus invite us to learn from Him?

As humans, we tire and weary ourselves with the old knowledge-of-good-and-evil narrative. As we all know, this is as old as humanity itself, reaching back to Adam and Eve. Since then, we have embellished this knowledge in countless ways. Unfortunately, these embellishments exhaust humanity more and more, as each of us uses this knowledge on others while it’s used on us.

As humanity prides itself on advancement in technological, social, academic, and practical knowledge, how much do these advancements become the very things that create a greater burden upon us? The things we thought would make life better often make us more anxious and burdened about living. This tiredness ends in eternal death when the knowledge of good and evil remains as one’s yoke.

What we learn from Jesus is that our balance is way out of whack! Judging ourselves and each other with a yoke of good and evil misjudges and misunderstands the yoke of Jesus. His yoke is a yoke of holiness built on the Law, that shows us that both the good and evil deeds that come from our natures are wicked. Our wickedness is that we do not fear and trust God but that we would prefer to fear and trust the desires of our hearts above God.

Jesus’ yoke rebalances the holiness of God in human life. In His meekness and humility, He removes the burden we place on ourselves and each other. Jesus’ yoke took Him to the cross, and He calls us to bear our cross. Yet the yoke of our cross is not the yoke Jesus bore in His death. That yoke has already been borne.

We learn from Jesus that bearing our cross is about putting off the very things that weary us. What we learn from Jesus is not that we must be good like Him and use Him as a method for our salvation. That would place Gospel before Law: Jesus did it, showed us what to do and how to do it, and now we must do it to be saved. Put simply, this is just a revised version of the knowledge of good and evil.

Paul shows us the reality of trying to make ourselves self-sufficient in Romans chapter seven, where he cries out, “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.”(Romans 7:19 ESV)

In the exhaustion of Paul’s good and evil he celebrates, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:25a ESV)

What we learn from Jesus while on earth, during life, ministry, cross, death, and resurrection is that He rested His divinity as the Son of God and was wearied with what worries every human being. But in the weakness of yours and my flesh He remained holy and without sin. Unlike us He was not wicked, and unlike us He lived life solely to please God the Father, setting Him aside in all holiness. And He did not do this from His own divinity but was led by the Holy Spirit in hallowing God and His name before all.

This is what it truly means to be gentle and lowly in heart, or meek and humble in heart. Where we become soft and sin making us hardhearted, Jesus was hard against sinning while becoming soft towards those who know their reality and call on the name of the Lord for help.

Jesus now yokes us with His Word of Law and Gospel. The Holy Spirit uses that Word to show you the weight of your sin and the weariness it brought upon Jesus Christ on the cross. Yet the same Word gives you the gift of His sinless life, which did not deserve the cross. By the power of God’s Word, you are made holy and given rest in the holiness of the Father’s presence, in peace.

Since this yoke balances yours and my debt with our Father, surely it gives you and me the will to walk in meekness and humility, to love others as Christ loves us, and to serve others as Jesus served us at the cross and as He continues to serve us before the Father in Heaven. Amen.

Heavenly Father, we bless You for blessing and balancing us with the yoke of Your Son, Jesus Christ. Help us to speak of the glory of Your kingdom and tell others of Your power. Let the Spirit dwell in us so Your power is made manifest in meekness and humility to others. Let us make known the glorious splendour of Your everlasting kingdom, now and forever. Amen.

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Sermon Summary

This sermon calls hearers to recognise how easily God’s Word can be treated as something weighed, judged, and managed by human self-sufficiency rather than received as the living Word through which God reveals Himself. The burden addressed is not only the suffering caused by others, but also the heavier burden created by stubborn independence, hardheartedness, and the old knowledge-of-good-and-evil narrative by which people judge themselves and one another.

Against this weariness, Jesus’ invitation in Matthew 11:28–30 is presented as more than comfort. It is the gracious call of Christ to come to Him, take His yoke, and learn from Him. His yoke is not beastly oppression but holy rebalancing. By His Law and Gospel, Jesus exposes the weight of sin and gives the gift of His sinless life, which has already borne the burden of the cross for us.

The sermon therefore moves from human exhaustion to divine rest. Christ, gentle and lowly in heart, does not leave sinners to carry the crushing yoke of self-justification. Through the work of the Holy Spirit, Jesus joins us to Himself, we’re taught meekness and humility, and willed to rest in the Father’s presence. To bear the yoke of Christ is to be freed from sinful self-sufficiency, rebalanced by grace, and drawn into a life of humble service.

Bearing the yoke of Jesus in the wider context on Matthew 11

Matthew 11 places before us the picture of children in the marketplace calling, “We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn.” Jesus uses this image to expose a generation unwilling to respond to God’s visitation, through Him and John the Baptist. John comes with the solemn dirge of repentance, yet they will not mourn. Jesus comes with the joyful music of the kingdom, eating and drinking with sinners, yet they will not dance. They reject both because they do not want God to set the tune. 

Reflection: What unrepentant things do I do to set the tune for my life?

This refusal is unrepentance. Christ’s mighty works are the music of God’s kingdom breaking into the world: the blind see, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor receive good news. Yet Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum remain unmoved. They have heard both flute and funeral song but answer neither. Their burden is not lack of revelation but resistance to it; their hearts remain yoked to themselves.

Reflection: What goods and evils need to be unyoked from my life with the yoke of Jesus Christ?

At that time Jesus rejoices that the Father has hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children. These little children are not childish in stubbornness, but childlike in dependence, receptiveness, and trust. They receive what the Father reveals through the Son. Here the mourning of the burdened becomes blessed: those who labour and are heavy laden know the dirge of sin, disappointment, judgement, and death, yet Jesus does not leave them under that load. He reveals the Father and calls them to Himself.

Reflection prayer: Dear Heavenly Father, send the Holy Spirit to move me to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ and to respond with thanksgiving when I hear it.  Help me to mourn over my sin, so in repentance I daily place it on the cross.

To take the yoke of Jesus Christ is allowing the Holy Spirit to teach and move us to respond to God’s music. His Law teaches and moves us to mourn what sin has done; His Gospel teaches and moves us to dance before God’s mighty works in Christ: His mercy, healing, forgiveness, cross, resurrection, deposit of the Holy Spirit, and promised rest. His yoke is not the heavy yoke of performing for God, nor the stubborn yoke of refusing God. It is the gracious yoke by which Christ brings mourners into joy and the weary into rest.

Reflection:  How does the yoke of Jesus encourage me to be humble in my blessings, and endure in the hardships, of this life?  How does the yoke of Jesus enable me to be “like Jesus” to my neighbour? 

A, Post Pentecost 5 Proper 8 - Romans 7:1-13 A Worthy Wedding

The fullness of God’s Word dwells in Jesus Christ, because He is the Word made flesh.  In His flesh, Jesus bears the fullness of the Law: its holiness, rules, statutes, promises, testimonies, steadfast love, commands, and demands.  This is the Law we have spoken responsively in the Introit and confessed from Psalm 119.

God’s Law is His word of truth.  It exposes us and shines its light upon human reality.  Before God’s holy Law, is there anywhere to hide?

No, there is not.  We who hold to God’s Word must first be examined by the Law.  If the Law does not ask its questions of us, we will never hear the truth about ourselves.

So God’s holy Law asks, “Are you holy as God is holy?  Are you merciful as God is merciful?”  And the answer that comes back from us is sin. 

Or, to use Christ’s own words, the Law gives two answers: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 22:37–40 ESV)

These words expose the simple reality of our humanity.  We love ourselves more than we love God and our neighbour.  When we hear the Law, we either turn away disheartened, or we reject it in favour of our own laws—laws that excuse us and condemn our enemies.

But because the Law is of God and is holy, rejecting the Law means rejecting God.  We either turn away from Him disheartened, or we stand in judgement over Him.  Either way, we make our Heavenly Father the enemy.

Jesus makes this clear in today’s Gospel reading.  Three times He says that if we love parents or children more than Him, or if we do not take up our cross and follow Him, we are not worthy of Him.  Jesus strikes hard with the Law, because He bears the fullness of God’s Word in His flesh.

Jesus also tells a parable in which the kingdom of heaven—the kingdom of God—is like a king giving a wedding feast for His son.  In that parable, those first invited prove unworthy, and another man, brought into the feast in their place, is also rejected because he is not wearing the wedding garment. (see Matthew 22:1–14)

Paul carries this wedding theme into his letter to the Romans, where he explains that in baptism we have… “died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to Him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God.” (Romans 7:4 ESV)

What, then, is this fruit of God, and how are we to produce it?  These questions cannot be answered by ourselves.  When we trust our own understanding and feelings, we are tempted to return to another law, becoming a law unto ourselves.  That new law also threatens to turn us away from God and make us His enemies once again.

Left to ourselves, humanity produces the fruits of humanity.  We do human things because we are human beings; and because we are sinners, our human works are marked by sin.  Being human, after the fall, means being sinners who do sinful things. 

Yet the Law is not sin, nor are we permitted to shrug our shoulders and carry on wilfully sinning.  Paul rejects that kind of self-justification for those who take the kingdom of God seriously and understand their marriage into it through baptism into the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Otherwise, we would be like an adulteress: rescued from sin and death revealed by the Law, only to return to justifying ourselves by what we do.

Rather, the Law serves its purpose in several ways.  After the Law shows us what we are and what we do, Jesus Christ is baptised into the Law.  The Word made flesh comes in our flesh, sets aside His divine privilege, and lives in the same flesh as you and me.  Jesus is born into the same human condition, yet He does not succumb to sinful emotion, deed, or being.  He becomes what neither Israel nor humanity had been able to be: faithful to God in heaven and faithful to His human neighbours on earth—faithful even unto death.

In His birth, baptism, death, and resurrection, Jesus bears the fruit that fulfils all righteousness, so that we might flee the wrath to come and bear fruit in keeping with repentance.

Jesus comes so that we are blessed and invited to “the marriage supper of the Lamb. These are the true words of God.” (Revelation 19:9 ESV)

This answers the question of why we produce fruit.  We produce it because Christ was baptised into the Law and death, yet without sin, and because we have been baptised into His death and resurrection.  But the question of how this fruit is produced still needs to be answered, lest we try to justify our way into the kingdom of heaven through our works—making ourselves worthy by churchly charity, giving, prayer, praise, and other practises.  Do not misunderstand me: these are good works, but they do not justify us.  Rather, they are works the body of Christ does for the salvation and good of others.

So how do we do them?  How does this fruit happen within us?  The Law still works within us, and in Lutheran theology this is known as the third use, or third function, of the Law.  This is why the Ten Commandments remain a core teaching of Lutheran theology.  Yet this is not our use of the Law, even though the Law still functions within us to the glory of God and for the love of our neighbour.

Paul’s analogy of marriage reaches its fullness in something profound.  He says, “‘Therefore a man shall leave His father and mother and hold fast to His wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.” (Ephesians 5:31–32 ESV)

Notice that the man leaves His parents, not the woman.  We do not leave our place in order to become Christian; rather, in His incarnation, Jesus leaves His Father to be pledged to His bride.  In Jesus Christ, God has… “put His seal on us and given us His Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.” (2 Corinthians 1:22 ESV)

Just as Jesus was carried along by the Holy Spirit in His ministry, so for Jesus’ sake we who have been baptised into Christ… “are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.” (Romans 7:6 ESV)

The Holy Spirit is the body of Christ’s “how”.  All that glorifies God is done in us and through us by the Holy Spirit.  The new way, the new function of the Law, is the Holy Spirit using God’s Law within us so we can love God and serve our neighbour.

How, then, do we do the works Jesus did while on earth, and even the greater works He promises in John 14:12?  Jesus tells us, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments. And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive.” (John 14:15–17a ESV)

By the new way of the Holy Spirit, He works this new obedience of Jesus Christ within us, because… “the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.” (Romans 8:2 ESV)

This third function of the Law is not one that leads us to death.  Rather, the Holy Spirit leads us out of sin and into a righteousness in keeping with repentance.  It is the work of the Holy Spirit to help us flee wrath, run to Christ, and take up our cross to follow Him, who has fulfilled all righteousness in His death and resurrection.  Therefore, as Paul encourages Timothy, we too can be encouraged: “By the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, guard the good deposit entrusted to you.” (2 Timothy 1:14 ESV)

This is God’s gift of grace upon grace to those who are human upon human, sinners upon sinners.  It does not justify our sin; it forgives sin in those who know they cannot justify themselves, and who are made worthy to enter the wedding feast of the Lamb of God. Amen.

A, Trinity Sunday - Genesis 1 A Creation Community

After half a church year today we arrive at Trinity Sunday.  Last week we heard how the Holy Spirit was given at Pentecost; ten days before that the Ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ; another forty days again and it was Easter Sunday, Good Friday, and Lent.  These days introduced the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus after the proclamation of his divinity in Epiphany, his humanity at Christmas, and his coming into the world at Advent, way back in the four weeks of December.

Now from today we focus on the Christian life in God’s fallen creation, redeemed and being redeemed by the blood of Christ who is seated at the right hand of God the Father, together with the Holy Spirit, three persons in one God.

However, there is a tendency for us to believe if Jesus is at the right hand of God, in heaven, he is no longer here with us.  That perhaps we have been left to our own devices to fend for ourselves.  Or we might recognise the presence of the Holy Spirit, who gives us the power to escape this world so we might ascend with our hearts and minds to a place where we see God.  Since he is not attainable by our natural senses anymore!   Right?  Well, no it’s not! God’s written word from Genesis one to Revelation twenty-two tells us otherwise!

In fact, the thought that God is not with us in our creation, is a thematic thread right the way through the bible demonstrating the sinfulness and faithlessness of humanity.  But rather, the Trinity is present in creation, giving us God’s creation, so we might dwell with God in his threefold holy community of being and love.

Atheism and atheists, mock us because of our confession of an unseen Triune God and our hidden communion with him in his creation.  However, these western infidels and scoffers of the Christian faith only exist because of Christianity.  The Romans, who believed in a pantheon of gods, scoffed at the Jews after bursting into their temple in Jerusalem some two-thousand years ago, finding no visual God in the Holy of Holies.  Go to a Hindu or a Buddhist country today and atheism is basically nonexistent. 

Yet in the Christian world where God is hidden and there are no idol images of gods, it’s not a big step to believe there is nothing.   So today the modern cynical atheist claims there is no God and the word of God is just “pie in the sky, for those who are going to die”.

On the other hand, we in the church in the second half of the church year celebrate the victory of Christ in his creation.  However, neither the victory in creation, nor the God of this creation, is seen in the normal sense.  God, Father Son and Holy Spirit, is not seen, and our world still seems to be spiralling out of control into greater and greater turmoil.  Perhaps we might be tempted into the epitome of negativity with the atheist and believe there is no God and therefore lose hope.

 But God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit call us back into his word, and today especially his “word of beginnings”.  His victory calls us to see creation as it was at the beginning and as it will be at the end.  And we’re called to see what it is today with the eyes of faith in a world that would rather look into the misery and darkness of the hopeless self with human reason.

When we look at the creation account in Genesis one, God reminds us he loves us.  He created the heavens and the earth for one purpose; for an environment where we might be with him in a threefold community of peace.  In his creation he created a paradise garden so that he might rest in it with us.  However since the fall, it’s been lost to our sin. But now since the cross, access has been won by Christ’s bloody death and glorious resurrection.  And all creation now rejoices and looks forward in hope to the full restoration of creation.

So for us who believe in Christ’s incarnation, death, resurrection, and ascension; for us who believe the Holy Spirit has been sent to reveal Christ to us in this creation; and for us who believe the Holy Spirit and Jesus Christ exist and work together so we might live in the presence of God the Father in peace — can turn back to the beginning and see the unseen reality of a hidden paradise won for us by Jesus Christ on the tree of life.  Added to this we can examine the last chapters of Revelation and see the exact same reality, and continue in the same hope.

Many get caught out when looking at the creation account by falling into the debate on whether creation is seven literal days or perhaps something different.  This argument only leads one away on a tangent from a correct emphasis on the creation text, regardless of what position one takes. 

For us everything is a distant second from the little phrase in Genesis one, “And God said”.  In fact, in our search for answers to creation, this simple phrase is in danger of being overlooked.  But the whole point of the creation account is to draw our faith to God’s word, in all its power and glory.  God’s word needs not our proofs or reasoning, but rather it demands our trust.  God said it, it happened — do you now believe it?

The other thing we need to take notice of is the order of creation, and in understanding its order, we soon come to realise its function.

First, we hear, “In the beginning God created…”  To imagine nothing in the beginning, is impossible, and added to it pondering the beginning as an eternal timelessness, will only make you go completely crazy.  We are beings in time and place and have not the capacity to contemplate boundless nothingness.  But having said that, God was there before any of it, and this can only be believed by faith.

At the other end of the creation account, in Genesis 2, after all had been created by the word of God, God now rests in time and space in his creation.  But God created this day of rest for a holy community – us and him together in peace. 

All the events of creation fall between these two events in a very deliberate order, so this community of peace can exist in a perfect paradise with a thrice holy God.  In fact, creation’s order rolls along like a snowball growing, or like an onion having its layers put on one after the other.  In this way the first event of creation, serves the second, and so on until God rests in its completion. 

The second last event God commanded in creation is the making of us, and in seeing the order of creation we learn that God created one thing after the other for you and me, in community.  And at the very last he desires to be present with humanity in peace and perfect joy.

Now we know a lot has happened since God created the heavens and the earth.  But he also calls us to now know that this reality has been restored in Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. 

So, as we travel through the next half of the church year, we are called to see with the eyes of faith that the Triune God is present, although hidden.  That we are called to peace with God, peace that passes all human understanding, peace that enables us to realise we are already in the arms of a loving God who calls us to rest with him, and trust that an eternity with him has been happening since our baptism and will continue on unto eternity.

We can all take stock from the last words in the bible from Revelation chapter twenty-two, where Jesus assures us that “Yes I am coming soon!”  And we rest in response, “Amen, Come, Lord Jesus come.”  As we trust the ever-present reality of the last verse, “The grace of the Lord Jesus be with God’s people.  Amen.” (Rev 22:20-21)  

A, Pentecost Sunday - Acts: 2:1-21 The Forgotten God: Honouring the Holy Spirit's Work in us

Acts 2:17,18,21 (ESV) “And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, even on my male servants and female servants in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy. And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” (Cited from Joel 2:28-32)

Because I am a poor lowly sinner, with a human heart that needs every bit of help it can get, I thank our Heavenly Father, and our Saviour Jesus Christ for sending the Holy Spirit.  Yet because of my nature, the Holy Spirit seems to be relegated to fourth place behind me, God the Father, and Jesus Christ. Whereas in reality I should happily be standing in fifth place behind God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, and everyone else whom God calls me to help.

Throughout the history of Christendom, it seems the Holy Spirit continually has suffered just as much rejection inside the church, as He does outside the church. 

On might expect this outside the church, but inside!  Surely churches who worship the triune God know the Holy Spirit and let Him do what He was sent to do! 

So, what is it that the Holy Spirit does? Why does He need to do it within us!  And are you allowing Him to do, what He does, within you?  We’ll return to these questions in a moment.

Firstly, why was the Holy Spirit sent at Pentecost, fifty days after Jesus’ resurrection from the dead?  Ten days after Jesus ascended to the right hand of the Father the Holy Spirit was given.  We know that Jesus promised the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, to call alongside us to be our help after He was raised. But before all this occurred the Holy Spirit first rested on Jesus at his baptism.  Why, did the Holy Spirit rest on Jesus?  Why did Jesus need the Holy Spirit to rest on Him?

John the Baptist was baptising the Jews with a baptism of repentance, preparing Israel as the last prophet, before Jesus came.  To John Jesus was, “one whose sandals he was not worthy to carry.”  Who would, “baptise with the Holy Spirit and fire.” (Mattew 3:11)  But when Jesus came to the Jordan to be baptised, He demanded of John to be baptised, saying, “Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” (Matthew 3:15 ESV)

John the Baptist was not expecting this, he was expecting to be baptised by Jesus with the Holy Spirit and fire.  Yet Jesus expected John to function in what he was called to do, baptise!  And Jesus was baptised along with all the other Jews who came to the River Jordan.

Why would this be?  What was this” all righteousness” that Jesus was fulfilling?  Our answer comes from God’s Word, as the Holy Spirit rests on Jesus and God says, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” (Matthew 3:17 ESV) The Son of God was baptised to please God.

Whereas the Jews were being baptised in preparation for a saviour, Jesus was baptised into his three-year ministry to be the Saviour and please God the Father. 

Now one might think that since Jesus is the Son of God, sent from the Father to be the Saviour of all people, He should have been able to do this by himself!  Instead, we hear He receives the Holy Spirit.  This was an essential part of God plan since Jesus, born into the flesh of humanity, had to put aside His divinity as the Son of God and live in the flesh as we live in the flesh. (Philippians 2:1-11)

Jesus had to experience all the garbage and filth of sinful humanity and pay the price of that sin, while being without sin to please God the Father.  And the Holy Spirit rested upon Him as He went through all the rot—we face and fail—in His faithful walk to the cross. This pleased God the Father.

Two things need to be highlighted here!  One, this is God the Father’s work of preparing us to receive a helper in the Holy Spirit, and two, through the Son of God receiving the same Holy Spirit as His helper!  Why?

Hear what Paul says to the Philippians encouraging them to be like Jesus who emptied himself to become obedient to death on the cross.  Paul teaches all who want their lives to be worthy of the gospel of Christ, saying, “So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.” (Philippians 2:1-2 ESV)

Paul lists five things here in chapter two, calling the church, the body of Christ, at Philippi into full, “co-spirited love” and “the mind of Jesus Christ”.  The worthiness of the gospel is worked within by the five things that make us the body of Christ, that make us one with Him our holy Head!  But it’s the Holy Spirit that works these five things, the human spirit cannot do it because of its fallen flesh.

The first is encouragement in Christ trusting you and I are being called alongside of Him.  The second is comfort and true realisation of God’s love.  In other words, believing we’re brought alongside God the Father who is steadfast in His compassion and love towards us.  The third is participation in the Holy Spirit, the same fellowship enjoyed amongst the Godhead of the Trinity, in heaven, and on earth during Jesus’ ministry .  This is more than fellowship over a cuppa, although it can happen over a cuppa too, but it’s seeing with the eyes of faith that we too are included in God’s fellowship as the body of Christ, the second member of the Trinitarian fellowship.  Then there is affection or compassion; that is to have a Christ-like desire to help as we have been helped.  And sympathy or the desire to be merciful as you and I have received God’s mercy. 

Here we come back to the initial questions: What is it that the Holy Spirit does?  Why he needs to do it within us!  And, are you allowing him to do what he does within you?

It’s the Holy Spirit that works the five within us, he works any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy.  

If Jesus received the Holy Spirit to continue the Trinitarian fellowship of heaven while He fulfilled his ministry at the cross in “all righteousness”, how much more do I need the Holy Spirit to help me since unlike Jesus I am full of “all unrighteousness”?  As we have just sung in the last hymn, and confessed in Psalm 25:11, “For your name’s sake, O Lord, pardon my guilt, for it is great.” (Psalm 25:11 ESV)

Most of us are flat out remembering our forebears much past our great grandparents.  If we didn’t have photos or pictures of them, we would long forget what they looked like, even when we had opportunity to live at the same time as them.  Yet two thousand years after Jesus ascended into heaven we not only know Him who was seen, but we also know the Father whom we have not seen.

This is not the work of the human spirit; it’s not found in the minds of a faithful humanity!   This is the work of the Holy Spirit who calls, gathers, enlightens, sanctifies and keeps us in the one faith as God’s church and as individuals of it.  Individually or collectively, none of us have the ability or knowhow to do it because of our humanity, sinful that it is in being or doing, nature and deed! 

Jesus is the only human who has done it and He did it perfectly!  Even so, He still did it with the fellowship of the Holy Spirit as a man who put aside his Godly divinity!  Therefore, no one can say, “Jesus is not like us because He relied on his divinity to be the perfect man.”  No!  Rather we hear in Hebrews chapter two, “ He [Jesus] had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.” (Hebrews 2:17 ESV)

So, the Holy Spirit calls, gathers, enlightens, sanctifies and keeps Christ’s church in the faith.  His work is one of giving us encouragement in Christ; bringing us alongside Jesus. He gives us comfort in receiving God’s love.  The Holy Spirit gives us the eyes of faith, so we see our fellowship or participation in the oneness in Christ with His hidden church on earth and His church in heaven where the angels, archangels, and the whole company of heaven worship around the throne of God.  And the Holy Spirit works outward affection and sympathy that otherwise would be forgetful, cold, and heartless.

So let us worship the Holy Spirit whose is sent from the Father and the Son, by allowing Him to do his work of bringing us before the Father and the Son, to receive and believe the forgiveness of our sins.  The Holy Spirit works within to make us holy when we hear his Holy Word preached and when we repentantly receive the Holy Sacraments as the holy body of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.