Tuesday 26 June, 2018

13 Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptized by John. 14 But John tried to deter him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” 15 Jesus replied, “Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness.” Then John consented. 16 As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. 17 And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”

If ever I need motivation to do something – pray, witness, fast, read the Bible – I can’t really get a better reason than “because Jesus did it”. In this passage Jesus goes to John in the Jordan and gets baptised. Right here we have a case for our need to be baptised: Jesus did it, so we do it. Baptism is to publicly commit our lives to God.
Baptism is to be symbolically washed and cleansed. Now that we have the hindsight understanding of Jesus’ death and resurrection, we can see Baptism as a metaphorical copy of going down into the grave like Jesus (going underwater) and then being raised back (coming out of the water) with new life. Our Jesus did this, we also do it because we are his followers.

Jesus, your baptism with John set you up on the trajectory that lead into your destiny. Lord I want to find my destiny in you, baptise me for your purposes, Amen.

Written by Sam Stewart