Jesus has it backwards

Noone has ever done it like that before

So many times, Jesus, according to those who observed him, just didn’t understand how things worked. They saw him giving away all those miracles with no intention of using them for political gain. They saw his feed thousands of people, but never provided a home for himself. He touches the Leper, and the Leper becomes clean? Who is this guy?

Just as he begins his public ministry, he goes to see the wild man in the wilderness, John the Baptizer. Many people were flocking to him to repent of their sins and be baptised. Into this scene comes this new Rabbi, and he comes not to watch, not to help, but to participate. In fact, he came to the bug-eating, camel-hair-wearing desert preacher to be baptized. Even John saw this was backwards.

Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” Matthew 3:13-14

BACKWARDS! Even though John, who was born to prepare the way for Jesus, was preparing the way for Him, he didn’t fully understand who he was.

And this is the testimony of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?” He confessed, and did not deny, but confessed, “I am not the Christ.” And they asked him, “What then? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you the Prophet?” And he answered, “No.” So they said to him, “Who are you? We need to give an answer to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?” He said, “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’ as the prophet Isaiah said.” (Now they had been sent from the Pharisees.) They asked him, “Then why are you baptizing, if you are neither the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?” John answered them, “I baptize with water, but among you stands one you do not know, even he who comes after me, the strap of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie.” These things took place in Bethany across the Jordan, where John was baptizing. John 1:19-28

Jesus does not let John’s lack of understanding keep him from being baptized. Jesus knew he would spend a great deal of time in the next 3 years trying to explain to people that he DID understand how things worked. Or perhaps I could say Jesus would spend a lot of time telling people how backwards this world was and how he had come to turn the whole place back around. Jesus answers John’s concerns as he answers him.

But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he consented. Matthew 3:15

I imagine that in the moments, days, and weeks that followed this moment with Jesus in the river, John remembered Jesus’s Baptism. Talk about a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him; and behold, a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” Matthew 3:16-17

Jesus even had his baptism backwards from our perspective. We believe and confess that through our baptism, our sins are washed away in a cleansing flood of God’s grace and mercy. But when Jesus' baptism was complete, he was no freer than he had been when he began; he was not clothed in righteousness. He was doing what he was sent to do; Jesus was taking on the sins of the world. All those confessed sins that were drowned in that water, and the sins confessed and expressed since the Garden, met Jesus in the water, and he stepped into the sins of our lives and came out celebrated by the Father and the Holy Spirit.

Following God backwards is safer than going it alone forward.

The first will be last; the strong become weak; the king becomes a servant; love your enemy. Yeah, I think I can say with confidence, from the perspective of this broken world, we still see Jesus getting it backwards. Remember that the next time life seems to be jumping off the tracks, when God seems to be ignoring our needs, remember the words of Isaiah.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. Isaiah 55:8-9

That, my friends, is prophet talk for Jesus has it backwards.

SOMETHING TO PONDER:

How is God calling you to live life backwards?

<><Pastor Craig