On things unseen this week, we've been thinking about baptism, and I was saying yesterday that it's a sign that points us away from ourselves to the Lord Jesus Christ.

And I was suggesting that we'll miss its real power and usefulness in our lives

if we think that its chief message is to point us to what we ourselves have done.

Everything Jesus did was for us.

He had no need to do it for himself.

So when he was baptized himself, it was for us. Think back to his baptism

for a moment. John the Baptist was baptizing vast numbers of people at the Jordan, summoning them to repent

of their sins. When he saw Jesus coming, he cried out, look, the Lamb of God,

who takes away the sin of the world. God's lambs, of course, the sacrificial lambs, needed

to be without spot or blemish or any such thing. So it's not surprising that when Jesus came

to John to be baptized, John resisted him.

John was the sinner needing to be baptized, not Jesus.

So why did Jesus insist on being baptized?

That was the question that John himself struggled to answer, and he wasn't the last to do so.

But if we picture the scene, perhaps its significance will become clear to us.

We see the great crowds that have come to the River Jordan to be baptized, confessing their

sins.

And in your mind's eye for a moment, watch what happens.

Do you see what John is doing?

He is symbolically washing their sins off of them and into the River Jordan.

But now, Luke, Jesus is standing in front of him. You see what John is doing? He is baptizing Jesus

with the very water into which those sins have

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