Jesus came from Nazareth.
Nazareth of Galilee: The fitness of the spot
1. Its seclusion. It lies in a narrow cleft in the limestone hills which form the boundary of Zabulon, entirely out of the ordinary roads of commerce, so that none could say that our Lord had learnt either from Gentiles or from rabbis.
2. Its beauty and peacefulness. The flowers of Nazareth are famous, and the appearance of its inhabitants shows its healthiness. It was a home of humble peace and plenty. The fields of its green valley are fruitful, and the view from the hill which over shadows it is one of the loveliest and most historically striking in all Palestine. (F. W. Farrar, D. D.)
Nazareth
The village of Nazareth is reached by a narrow, steep, and rough mountain path. But the distant view of the village itself, in spring, is beautiful. Its streets rise in terraces on the hill slopes toward the northwest. The hills rise above it in an amphitheatre around to a height of five hundred feet, and shut it in from the bleak winds of winter. The flat-roofed houses, built of yellowish-white limestone of the neighbourhood, shine in the sun with a dazzling brightness, from among gardens and fig trees, olives, cypresses, and the white and scarlet blossoms of the orange and pomegranate. (C. Geikie, D. D.)
Hidden worth
Oh how much hidden worth is there, which, in this world, is either lost in the dust of contempt and cannot be known, or wrapt up in the veil of humility and will not be known! But sooner or later it shall be known, as Christ’s was. (M. Henry.)
Jesus Christ’s early youth and baptism
I. There is here an intimation of the fact, that Christ had hitherto resided in the city of Nazareth, in lower Galilee.
1. The name of this city attached itself to Jesus Christ as a term of reproach.
2. In this city Christ lived thirty years in seclusion, etc.
discharging the humble and homely duties of His station-thus obeyed the law in all its precepts.
II. When Christ was about to show Himself to Israel, He came to John to be baptized. He thus acknowledged the appointment of John, and honoured his office. He was made subject to the law. He thus dedicated Himself to the service of God.
III. The baptism of Christ was signalized by several miraculous and striking accompaniments.
1. The heavens were opened.
2. The Spirit descended.
3. There was a voice from heaven. (Expository Outlines.)
And was baptized of John in Jordan.-
Our Lord’s baptism
It is not possible for us to understand the whole mystery of this act, but we may reverently consider some of the motives which prompted the amazing condescension.
1. It may have been to consecrate water for the remission of sins. Just as the brooding of the Spirit of God upon the face of the waters at the first creation reduced order out of chaos, and prepared that element for all the purifications of the first dispensation; so when the moral re-creation of the world was inaugurated the operation of the same Blessed Agent, descending upon our Lord in the river Jordan, sanctified water to the mystical washing away of sin.
2. It may also have been that He designed thereby to be made one with His brethren, or to taste for their sakes at the outset of His ministry that curse of sin which He felt in all its intolerable burden at the close, before His cry of desolation.
3. Another motive He has expressly revealed. When the Baptist shrank back from an act that must have seemed profane, He pointed out that it was incumbent on Him to show an example of perfect obedience to His Father’s will.
4. Underlying this resolution of obedience was the consciousness of a deep humiliation. His self-abasement reached its lowest depth in His baptism. To be misinterpreted and misunderstood at every step was bad enough; but to be told that by His own confession He was a sinner, one with publicans and harlots, and that by His own act and deed He admitted His guilt and sought to have it removed-such self-abasement is more than man can either measure or conceive. (H. M. Luckock, D. D.)
The public commencement of a great life
I. That it emerged from comparative obscurity. “From Nazareth of Galilee.” Christ’s coming from Nazareth would tend-
1. To correct the proud nations of those to whom He came.
2. It would be a means of self-discipline.
II. That it was characterized by true humility.
1. Humility was shown in appreciating the worth of another man’s work.
2. By giving preeminence to a man of inferior moral worth.
3. By submitting to the ceremonialisms of life.
III. That it was favoured with happy visions-“He saw the heavens opened.”
1. Christ was favoured with a revelation of the unseen world.
2. This revelation was given in the performance of a comparatively trivial duty.
IV. Christ was honoured by a Divine commendation. “This is my beloved son,” etc.
1. This commendation was paternal.
2. It was sympathetic.
Learn:
1. Comparative solitude is the best preparation for a life of public usefulness.
2. That men are not to be judged by the surroundings of their childhood.
3. That humility is the true adornment of a young man about to commence public life.
4. The happy interchange of sympathy between heaven and a truly pious soul. (Joseph S. Exell, M. A.)
The baptism of Christ
Note,
I. The time of it-“In those days,” A.D. 28, Jesus thirty years of age, the age at which the Levites began their ministry.
II. The place of it. Either the ancient ford at Succoth or near Jericho.
III. The manner of it. Of John. In Jordan. To fulfil all righteousness.
IV. The blessing that followed it. Credentials of Messiahship. Anointing for ministry with power (Cf. Romans 1:4; Acts 10:38). Tranquility (Dove; see Isaiah 6:6). Expression of Divine favour. (H. Thorne.)
The baptism of Christ: Its significance
Jesus was baptized by His forerunner, who was both the representative of the old economy and the preacher of repentance for the new.
I. In the former relation the Baptist performed on the person of the Christian High Priest the washing which preceded His anointing with the Holy Spirit. The typical high priests were washed before their anointing.
II. In the latter relation the preacher of repentance administered the pledge of penitent washing for the Messiah to One who was also the representative of sinful man. Two ends were thus accomplished.
1. Christ was baptized as the Head and Surety of the human race; assuming in its symbol the transgression of mankind.
2. He was designated as the Messiah, in whom were combined all the offices to which His types were of old anointed. In the former sense, His baptism represented a sin assumed but not shared; He was “numbered with the transgressors,” and “came by water” before He came by “blood.” In the latter it represented the perfect purity which His preeminent ministry required; the water represented not the cleansing, but the absense of the need of purification. (W. B. Pope, D. D.)
The Baptism of Jesus
If we can distinguish between the important and the unimportant in this scene, between the transient and the permanent, we shall not study it in vain. Essential truths do not grow old.
1. Applying this test we find that one of the unessential truths concerning Christ’s baptism is its mode. The exact mode could not be reproduced; none of us can have the Jordan ford for our baptismal font.
2. The heavenly phenomena accompanying the baptism are not among its essential features. The accessories cannot, from their very nature, be universal What then were the essential features?
I. Christ our Lord there set for us a perfect example of perfect obedience. Baptism was an ordinance of God; Christ will not exempt Himself from any duty. Why should I be baptized? Because God commands it. Have you less need than Christ? The King of Glory did not despise it as “a mere form of the Church.” He received baptism as ratifying the mission of His great forerunner, and He also received it as the beautiful symbol of moral purification and the humble inauguration of a ministry which came “not to destroy the law but to fulfil.”
II. That it was his way of publicly renouncing sin and publicly professing religion. Christ is our Example as well as Redeemer. Every true follower of Christ must publicly renounce his sins and confess his faith.
III. The evident approval of the Father in heaven. (Sermons by the Monday Club.)
The baptism of Jesus
I. The baptism of Jesus was the sign of the close of John’s commission as the forerunner. Every ministry has its culmination. Well if it be borne with John’s self-abnegation and humility!
II. The baptism of Jesus was the sign of the opening of Christ’s commission as the Redeemer.
III. The baptism of Jesus was the sign of a new era of spiritual influence. This gift now was the prelude and foretoken of that great pentecostal bestowment.
IV. The baptism of Jesus was the sign of the speedy fulfilment of the Father’s great design of redeeming love.
V. Practical lessons.
1. It should enhance our love to Jesus to see Him identifying Himself with all His sinful people.
2. We have an example of reverance for all God’s ordinances.
3. Baptism significant in connection with Christ’s own baptism. When it is more than a mere ceremony it is our burial with Christ into His death, pledges us to fulfil all righteousness.
4. Christ kept His baptismal vow. He has fulfilled all righteousness, not for Himself alone, but for His people also. (Anon.)
The Saviour’s consecration to His work
I. Our Lord was consecrated to his work by His baptism by the forerunner. The inferior started the superior on His public work. Many a man has received the first open recognition of his mission from one mentally and spiritually lower than himself.
II. Our Lord was consecrated to His work by prayer. St. Luke, who calls attention frequently to the prayers of Jesus, alone mentions this important fact. No great work should be entered on without prayer, especially no work connected with God’s kingdom.
III. Our Lord was consecrated to His work by the gift of the spirit. Outward ordinances, as the laying on of hands, etc., are for this end, etc.
IV. Our Lord was consecrated to His work by the approval of the Father. The approval and blessing of God are essential to a true work. (Anon.)
The coronation of the King
The baptism was, on His part, the assumption of His Messianic office; and on God’s, His anointing or coronation as the King. There are three stages in this lesson: The preliminary dialogue, which explains the paradox of the baptism of the sinless by and with the sinful, the Divine anointing of the King, and the Divine proclamation.
I. The becomingness of the apparently unbecoming baptism. The stern preacher bows in lowliest abasement before his carpenter cousin, and feels that his own character shows black against that lustrous whiteness. Who would have thought, when John was flashing and thundering against sin, that such sense of his own evil underlay his boldness? He clearly feels that Jesus is his superior, and needs no baptism of repentance. How had he come to this conviction? Difficulties have been raised as to the consistency of these words with his declaration that he “knew Him not.” But, not to dwell on the fact that anticipations and expectations are not knowledge, why should this insight into the character of Jesus not have then been granted to him by prophetic intuition, as he gazed on the gentle face? Why should not the Divine voice have then for the first time sounded in John’s heart, “Arise, anoint Him: for this is He”? It is a pure assumption that John had previous knowledge of Jesus. The city in the hill country of Judaea where his boyhood had possibly been passed, was far from Nazareth, and he had very early betaken himself to the desert and its isolation. The circumstances of the nativity may, or may not, have been known to him; but there is no reason to explain this conviction of the inappropriateness of his baptism of Jesus by previous knowledge. The other explanation seems to me both more probable and more accordant with his prophetic office. Christ accepts without demur the place which John gives Him. He always accepted the highest place which any man put Him in, and never rebuked any estimate of Himself as enthusiastic or too lofty. If Jesus had not up till that moment lived a perfectly sinless life, He committed a black sin in tacitly endorsing this estimate of Him. If He had lived such a life, on what theory of His nature is it explicable? A sinless man must be more than man. The same consciousness of blamelessness is put into plain words in His answer to John, which is Jesus’ own explanation of His baptism. It was an act of obedience to a Divine appointment, and therefore it “became” Him. It was the fulfilment of “righteousness;” that is to say, Jesus did not confess sin, but professed sinlessness in His baptism, and submitted to it, not because He needed cleansing, but because it was appointed as the duty for the nation of which He was a member. Why, then, was He baptized? For the same reason for which He was found in the likeness of the flesh of sin, and submitted to other requirements of the law from which as Son He was free, and bore the sorrows which were not the issue of His own sins, and went down at last to the other baptism with which He had to be baptized, though His pure life had for itself no need to pass through that awful submersion beneath the black, cold waters of death. The whole mystery of His identification of Himself with sinful men, and of His being “made sin … for us, who knew no sin,” lies in germ in His baptism by John. No other conception of its meaning does justice to the facts.
II. We have next the Divine anointing or coronation. The symbol of the dove seems to carry allusions to the grand image which represents the Spirit of God as “brooding over chaos, and quickening life, as a bird in its nest by the warmth of its own soft breast; to the dove which bore the olive branch, first messenger of hope to the prisoners in the ark; to the use of the dove as clean, in sacrifice; to the poetical attribution to it, common to many nations, of meek gentleness and faithful love. Set side by side with that, John’s thought of the Holy Spirit as fire, and we get all the beauty of both emblems increased, and understand hew much the stern ascetic, whose words burned and blistered, had to learn. He knew “what manner of spirit” the King possessed and bestowed Meekness is throned now. Gentleness is stronger than force. The dove conquers Rome’s eagles and every strong-taloned, sharp-beaked bird of prey. “The Prince of the kings of the earth” is anointed by the descending dove, and His second coronation is with thorns, and a reed is His sceptre; for His kingdom is based on purity and meekness, is won by suffering, and wielded in gentleness. As is the King, so are His subjects, whose only weapons He has assigned when He bids them be “harmless as doves.” The purpose of this descent of the Spirit on Jesus was twofold. In John’s Gospel it is represented as principally meant to certify the Baptist of the identity of the Messiah. But we cannot exclude its effect on Jesus. For Him it was the Divine anointing for His mediatorial work. A king is king before he is anointed or crowned. These are but the signs of what we may call the official assumption of His royalty. We are not to conceive that Jesus then began to be filled with the Spirit, or that absolutely new powers were given to Him then. No doubt the anointing did mark a stage in His human development, and the accession to His manhood of all that was needed to equip it for His work. But the Spirit of God had formed His pure manhood ere He was born, and had dwelt in growing measure in His growing spirit, through all His sinless thirty years. Since He was a man, He needed the Divine Spirit. Since He was a sinless man, He was capable of receiving it in perfect measure and unbroken continuity. Since His baptism began His public career, He needed then, and then received, the anointing which at once designated and fitted Him for His work of witnessing and atonement.
III. We have finally the Divine proclamation. God Himself takes the herald’s office. The coronation ends with the solemn recitation of the style and title of the King. Two Old Testament passages seem to be melted together in it: that in the second Psalm, which says to the Messianic King, “Thou art My Son;” that in Isaiah 42:1, which calls on the nations to “behold … Mine elect, in whom My soul delighteth.” God speaks from heaven, and quotes a psalm and a prophet. Why should He not speak from heaven an illuminating word, which interprets whole regions of the Old Testament? This Divine testimony touches first the mystery of our Lord’s nature. “Son of God” is not merely a synonym of Messiah, but it includes the distinct conception of Divine origin and of consequent Divine nature. The name implies that the relation between Him and the Father is unique. The voice attests the Divine complacency in Him. The form of the verb in the Greek implies a definite past delight of the Father in the Son, and carries back our thoughts to that wonderful intercourse of which Jesus lets us catch some faint glimpse when He says, “Thou lovedst Me before the foundation of the world.” From eternity the mysterious depths of the Divine nature moved in soft waves of love, and in its solitude there was society. Nor can we leave out of view the thought that the Father’s delight in the Son is through the Son extended to all who love and trust the Son. In Jesus, God is well pleased towards us. That complacent delight embraces us too, if we become sons through faith in the only begotten Son. The dove that rested on His head will come and nestle in our hearts, and brood there, over their chaos, if we have faith in Christ. (A. McLaren, D. D.)