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 been symbolically washed.

And there's a profound gospel message in this picture isn't there? And it's profoundly theological

too. It's a picture of the gospel. Sinners washing away their sins into the water.

But then Jesus himself being baptized with that sin polluted water.

It's as though the sins that have washed off these sinners have now washed over the person of

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