Exploring My Strange Bible - I am who I am Part 8: The Spirit as a Voice of Love

Episode Date: November 27, 2017

In this episode we explore the story of the baptism of Jesus. This story is very powerful and there are many many biblical themes colliding here. This story communicates the love of the father as a gift to the son before the son has done anything at all. This wasn’t just something that Jesus experienced, it was something that he invited his followers to experience as well.

Tim Mackey, Jr. utterly amazing and worth following with everything that you have. On this podcast, I'm putting together the last 10 years worth of lectures and sermons where I've been exploring the strange and wonderful story of the Bible and how it invites us into the mission of Jesus and the journey of faith. And I hope this can be helpful for you too. I also help start this thing called The Bible Project. We make animated videos and podcasts about all kinds of topics in Bible and theology. You can find those resources at thebibleproject.com. With all that said, let's dive into the episode for this week. All right, well, in this episode, we're continuing in this long-ish series called I Am Who I Am. We're exploring the multifaceted portrait of God throughout the scriptures.

We're right in the heart of a series of teachings. I did these a number of years ago. We're exploring the portrait of the Spirit, of God's Spirit, from cover to cover throughout the pages of scripture. It's one of the—it's not just that it's one of the most hard to understand portraits of God in the Bible. For some people, it's not, but for many people, it is. I find that to be true, at least personally, and in the lives of many other followers of Jesus that I meet. If you weren't raised in a tradition that really emphasized and gave you habits and tools to learn how to engage with the spirit or what that even means. It's very hard to adopt it, especially in a modern Western culture where

things that you can't see, we're trained not to believe in them, at least some things that we can't see. Although I do tell my boys to wash their hands of little tiny germs that they can't see, and they believe me about those. Anyway, that's a different topic altogether. So the Spirit, what we're going to look at in this episode is something very powerful about the person and work of the Spirit that appears in the story of the baptism of Jesus, which is told or recounted or mentioned in all four of the gospels in the New Testament. This, man, the story is just like a bottomless ocean, the story of Jesus' baptism. There's so many biblical themes colliding here together. But the fundamental depiction of the Spirit in this story is the Spirit is the one who communicates the love of

the Father as a gift to the Son before the Son has done anything at all. It's actually, it's Jesus moving out into his mission to announce the kingdom of God, but he does so from a place of knowing that he is holy and completely loved by the Father. And this wasn't just something that Jesus experienced. It was something that he invited his followers to experience, the communion of the love between he and the Father that's shared by means of the Spirit. And as you go throughout the New Testament, what we're going to see is the role of the Spirit is exactly the same in the lives of Jesus' followers. So this has been a very powerful biblical theme for me personally,

and I'm really happy to be able to share it with you. So let's open our minds and hearts and learn together. The experience of becoming a father, for me personally, and for those of you who are fathers, for many of you, there's something in this story that becoming a father helped me read it with new eyes. And the Holy Spirit is right smack in the middle of this story in Matthew chapter three. So let me kind of frame things as I often do, and I think it'll give us some new insight as we go into the story. So as I mentioned, so for many of you, if you're a father, you know, the experience of becoming a father as an experience that gets etched in your memory here,

we're talking about this image of becoming a father and the love that comes from a father. And these two moments are etched in my memory. And there's two pictures. We had a friend or family member present at the birth of our two sons and taking pictures. And so we're just, you know, I'm trying to like focus on Jessica and now this new crazy little human that just came into the room, you know. And so we have a friend or family member snapping pictures of all of this. And so I'll never forget these first moments of being a father and just what like comes, rises up inside of you in that moment. Now, I think what was striking about these pictures, this is their first few minutes outside of the womb. How does it seem that they feel about their first moments in our world? Do you know what I'm

saying? Like, really, like, look, this is how every single one of us entered into the world. So they're both now laying on this substance called cotton, and it is not nearly as soft as uterus, I can only imagine, right? So that's like, and they're pretty much, they're going to be bound to cotton or polyester, you know, whatever for the rest of their lives now. You know, like just imagine, like what do these, what do these pictures capture an emotion, right, of the experience of coming into our world? And there's confusion. There's people poking me and measuring me and moving me around and looking at me.

You know, this guy with glasses totally in my face right here, you know? And so there's confusion. There's certain, I mean, you have to imagine. None of us remember this moment, thank God perhaps, you know, of anxiety or fear or stress, and here you go. That's it. This is how every single one of us entered into the world, and my first moments as a father is trying to help a little human creature in this position. And it gets me thinking in a number of different ways. I mean, first of all, you know, these are our first moments. Every single one of us had a moment like this. And does it really, does it really get any better? Does it really change? You know what

I'm saying? So, you know, it begins like this and it kind of keeps going for many of us, you know? And so, you know, of course not. You know, I've since been able to introduce each of them to ice cream or something or butterflies and going and playing in the park or whatever. And so they don't act like that when we're at the park, at least until we have to leave, right? What makes ice cream and butterflies

and going to the park so awesome is that most of life isn't ice cream and butterflies and going to the park so awesome is that most of life isn't ice cream and butterflies and going to the park. We all come on to, you know, the stage of our lives in a pretty, like, confused, anxious, stressed out, fearful state. And for the most part, that just kind of continues on. It's different levels of intensity and so on. This struck me deeply in these first moments of watching my sons come into the world. It's just like, holy cow, you know, and you begin to reflect on your own life. And this is how I came into the world. And then all of the moments throughout your own story, right, that are marked by the same type of experience of confusion, of fear, of anxiety,

same type of experience of confusion, of fear, of anxiety, of what's going on around me. I don't get what's happening right now. This is part of what it means to be a human living in our world. What it evokes in me when I think back about this is it's a question that's just kind of with me as a father, thinking through how they came into the world and thinking through my own life story and of people that I know. And it's just the question of what good news do I have as a father to offer these boys who entered the world in a fearful, confused state and who will continue to have moments of fear and confusion? And what can I do as a father to offer good news to my boys? Because if I don't have good news to offer to my boys, I'm definitely in the wrong profession, you know what I'm saying? As a pastor, right? Like, what am I doing up here? So what is that? And that good news

and asking that question has caused me to come back to this story in Matthew chapter 3 and read it with a new set of eyes. So let's go for it. We'll come back to the boys again before the story's over. Matthew chapter 3, the role of fatherhood, the spirit, and good news. Matthew chapter 3, this is the setup story to Jesus coming on to the public scene here. Chapter 3. In those days, John the Baptist came. He was preaching in the wilderness of Judea, and he was saying, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.

This is the one who was spoken of through the prophet Isaiah, a voice of one calling in the wilderness, prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him. So we're at this key moment in the storyline of the Bible, and John the Baptist appears on the scene, and he's like one of these Israelite prophets. So we're going to see he was setting new fashion trends, pretty gruff dude. And he's out there in the desert, right, in the wilderness, and he's announcing this message. He's calling the people of Israel back to the God of the covenant and so on, and that the kingdom is coming. God's going to do a new thing to rescue his people, to rescue his world, to set all things right. And this is all fulfillment of the long storyline of the Old Testament. We get a quotation from the prophet Isaiah that there was always expected to be one coming who would

announce that Yahweh, the God of Israel, was on the way. Keep reading verse 4. The trendsetter here, the fashion trendsetter. John's clothes were made of camel's hair. And he had this leather belt all around his waist. And he was a foodie, oh yes. His food was locusts and wild honey. He just lived off the land. People went out to him from Jerusalem and from all Judea, from the whole region of the Jordan,

and they were confessing their sins, and they were baptized by him in the Jordan River. So think of what John the Baptist is doing. Think of him as a figure similar like in American history to the great revivals, the old tent revivals in the South. And it was this cultural religious renewal movement. And so you have this eccentric, charismatic, prophetic figure, and he goes out and he's wearing this symbolic clothing, right? And he's dressing just like the prophets Elijah and Elisha used to dress. If you go read

the stories about them in 1 and 2 Kings, you'll see John was actually imitating these ancient, renowned prophets' way of dressing. And he goes out there and he's eating off of the land and he goes to this symbolic place, right? He goes to the wilderness down by a river. He doesn't live in a van down by a river, but he goes down by the river. And what river in the wilderness? The Jordan River. And this is all full of cultural historical symbolism because the Jordan was the birthplace of Israel as the people as they made their way into the promised land. They were led into the land under this figure named Joshua, and there they inherited the land as a pure gift. And John's conviction as a prophet is

that Israel has squandered that gift and they've forfeited it and things have gone terribly. And so Yahweh is coming again and we're going to start this whole thing over. Let's call the people back to the covenant relationship. So he goes down wearing ancient prophetic garb, going down to the symbolic place full of cultural memory for the Israelites. And he has them engage in this symbolic activity, right? of being immersed in the water, going down and getting dunked in this river, recalling Israel's passage through the waters of the Jordan to become the people who receive the land as a gift and so on. He's going down there and he's essentially saying this is a new moment for God's people, and we're going to renew the people of the covenant. Come be a part if you want. Let's confess our sins. Let's get the story back on track again.

Now, there's lots of people who come to him, and they think he's crazy, and so on, and that's what the next few verses are about. Look at verse 11. This is John's response explaining what he was doing. He says, I baptize you with water for repentance. We're forming a new people who are recognizing that we failed as the people of the covenant. We're asking for Yahweh's forgiveness and to renew the story. But he says, but after me is coming one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I'm not even worthy to carry. He's going to baptize you with what? Holy Spirit and fire. So he's going to immerse you in the personal presence of God and fire. That sounds inviting, doesn't it? Right? So obviously this is a metaphor, right? There's a whole bunch about Israel that needs to be purged and purified and burned away, so to speak. And so the coming of Yahweh's personal

presence and the person of the Spirit is both going to create new life, as the Spirit always does, but it's also going to purify and purge God's people at the same time. Verse 12, this one who is coming, his winnowing fork is in his hand. He'll clear the threshing floor, gathering wheat into the barn, burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire. This one is going to come and bring new life and new moments, but also going to bring justice and make every wrong right again. So John sets up the stage where it's the moment Yahweh is going to return and bring all things and mercies people in the spirit, and we're expecting, prepare the way of the Lord, and the Lord must be coming now, and then who should appear onto the scene for the first time as an adult here in the story? Then Jesus came. He came from

Galilee to the Jordan to be baptized by John, but John tried to deter him, saying, no, no, no. I need to be baptized by you. What are you doing coming here to me? Jesus replied, let it be. It's hard not to hear the Beatles song, I know. Let it be, right? Let it be so now. This is proper for us to do this, to fulfill all righteousness. And then John consented. So John's like, holy cow, like you're coming as the Messiah, as Yahweh coming to rescue his people. Like I, you know, this is all upside down.

And Jesus says, no, this is actually, this is part of what needs to happen for righteousness to be fulfilled. Now this is kind of an obscure phrase to us, righteousness to be fulfilled. This is language that the Old Testament prophets used and the Old Testament poets who wrote the Psalms used. God's righteousness is his covenant commitment to rescue and restore his world, to bring his justice, and it just flows out of his character. And so Jesus is God becoming human to set all things right, and that fulfills God's righteous purposes in the world. And so Jesus is going to be baptized to identify with the new

covenant people who are being formed right here. Now, that was all set up. Here we go. Here's the moment. And here's the moment in the story that I've come to read with new eyes after these moments and experiences of becoming a father. Verse 16, as soon as Jesus was baptized, he's immersed in the water, he came up out of the water, and at that moment, heaven was opened. This is a phrase used of many of the prophets of Daniel and Ezekiel. When the heavens are opened, it's a phrase that signals some sort of visionary experience. When the heavens open, it's like the curtains are drawn back and you get a true vision of what's happening in the world.

When the heavens were open and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting upon him. Alighting, who used that word in the last week? I love the Bible. So alighting upon him, you know, like resting on him. And then a voice from heaven said, Then a voice from heaven said, This is my son, whom I love.

With him, I am well pleased. And then that's how that story ends. What's going on here? There's about a million things going on here. Let's just look at a few. So you have this visionary experience of Jesus. This is his public entrance onto the scene, and the whole story has been leading up to him. And then there's this moment where we're in public, this visionary experience, and he sees the personal presence of God, the Spirit, descending. And it's in the form of, right? You see it's like a what? What's the Spirit like? A dove. Now, of course, you know, in children's books and pictures

that try and depict all this, what does it actually depict the Spirit as? As a dove, right? But remember, it's like a dove, right? This is a vision. This is the personal presence of God coming in the form of this bird to hover over Jesus in the waters, right? And to rest and to rest on him. And we've looked at this passage before in this series on the Father, on the Son, and on the Spirit, because can you think of another story in the Bible where the Spirit is there personally present hovering over the waters? Do you remember this? It's like the second sentence of the Bible in Genesis chapter 1, where the Spirit of God was the personal presence of the Creator God hovering in the midst of the chaotic, dark waters. And then right from there, God begins to speak and bring order and new life out of the chaos and so on. And so here again, you have the Spirit of God

hovering as a bird over the waters because a new moment is about to happen in God's story of creation. So you have the Spirit of God there, and it rests on him. And then you have God speaking from heaven. It's like God making this public announcement of who Jesus is. And you have these words, three phrases. This is my son. I love him. He's well pleased. Now this is what's so awesome about these famous lines, is that every bit of this line, actually, God's quoting himself.

God's quoting the Bible right here. All of these phrases are phrases that occur earlier in the Hebrew Scriptures that God spoke about someone. And actually almost all of the lines that are being merged together here from the book of the prophet Isaiah that Matthew has already quoted from up above. These are two of the most important passages that God is quoting from right here. The first one is Isaiah chapter 11, and it's a prophecy about the coming Messiah, the coming King who will rescue God's people and bring justice to God's world. And this is how the passage reads. Out of the stump of David's family will grow a shoot. It's a metaphor describing the family of David of Kings

as a tree that's been cut off and it's now like this dead stump and then a little new growth green shoot peers out. And yes, a new branch bearing fruit from the old root. And the spirit of Yahweh will rest on him. The spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of Yahweh. And he will delight in obeying Yahweh.

When the Messiah comes, he'll be the spirit-empowered individual. The spirit will rest on him. And you'd read this description, and you can just see exactly like these words depict all of the ways that Jesus talked and behaved and treated people and so on. Wisdom and understanding and counsel and power and knowledge and so on. The other passage is later on in the book of Isaiah. You have this figure who's called the servant. And this is also a depiction of the coming Messiah, but depicted as one who carries out the will and the purposes of God.

And so God says about this servant in Isaiah chapter 42, God says, This is my servant whom I strengthen. He's my chosen one. I am pleased with him. I have put my spirit on him, and he will bring justice to the nations. And so what God is doing here is he's announcing that Jesus is this one to whom all of these ancient prophecies point. And so the Spirit of God descends on Jesus as the Messiah, and he's pleased with him, and so on. You guys with me here?

This is all God's quoting himself, fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. Okay, now here's what's really unique about this, of course, is that we have the Spirit resting, and we have the servant, and I'm pleased with him. Isaiah 42, God says, this is my servant. Matthew chapter 3, God says, this is my son. Do you see that difference? Is that a significant difference? Yeah, that's a really significant difference, right? Because what's happening here is Jesus is coming onto the scene, and Jesus is revealing who God is. And it's a category-breaking, there were kind of language and hints of it in the Old Testament scriptures, but nothing to prepare for this whole new category-breaking

reality of who Jesus revealed God to be. And it's the vision of God, the Christian vision of God, that we've been exploring in this whole series. Jesus revealed God to be the one whom he called Father, whom he called God, and as someone distinct from him. And Jesus called himself Son of God, or the Son of the Father. But yet there were other times when Jesus says, I and the Father are one. If you've seen me, you've seen the Father, Jesus said. And then here in this story, you have the Father making this declaration about the Son, and who is the one who's communicating this love and commitment and statement from the Father to the Son? Who is it? The Spirit. And so you have this vision of the one God who is Father, Son, and Spirit. And it's the vision of God we've been exploring for months now. Now, later Christians would come to find a term to describe what they saw Jesus revealing about who God is.

They didn't invent this idea when they used the term Trinity. What they're trying to do is read a story like this and find a word that can describe the God who's revealed in this story here. And so you have this one God who is Father, Son, and Spirit, and Father, Son, and Spirit in their unity, their tri-unity, in their commitment to each other, are God. One God who is yet three. That's the vision of God revealed in this story. Now that's the theology piece. But look at the statement, right? This is my Son, and what does the Father say about the son here? This is the fundamental revelation of who Jesus is and of who God is.

What is the fundamental relationship between the Father and the Son? What does it say? What does God say? I love him. I love him. him. I love him. And that love is communicated from the Father to the Son through whom? The Spirit. The Spirit. The Spirit is the personal presence of the Father coming to be with the Son, to empower Him, to equip Him, to anoint Him, but here specifically to communicate the love of the Father. And this story is just in a nutshell the whole Christian vision of God.

It's what the later biblical authors will look back on, like in the letter of 1 John, where the apostle John says, God is love. What is he saying? What he's saying is the Christian vision of God is the one God who is Father, Son, and Spirit, who are committed to each other eternally, perpetually in a covenant of love, that each is perpetually committed to seeking the well-being and to honoring being others-centered. And that's the Christian view of God. At the heart of God is an others-centered, self-giving love community. And that's the God who's revealed to us in the story right here. Now, that's the theology piece. That's a really beautiful piece. Here's something that struck me after my sons were born and that made me find something in this story that I, at least

personally, that I hadn't reflected on before. Think of where we're at in the story right now, in the story of Jesus. So this, what has Jesus done so far? I mean, not that he was born, you know, so he probably cried, you know, pooped his pants or something like that. You know, we're not given any information about what he's done up to the, you know, the 30 some odd years up to this point. So the point of this is his public kind of entrance, you know, as a prophet and Messiah announcing the kingdom of God and so on. And so what has Jesus done for the kingdom of God yet? And the answer is nothing. Absolutely nothing. He has no followers yet, right? He's done no signs or wonders. He's done no amazing teachings like the Sermon on the Mount.

He hasn't given any great moral proverbs, love your neighbor as yourself. He hasn't said any of that yet. He hasn't healed anybody. He hasn't done any of that stuff. He hasn't. And yet what is the Father's statement in and through the Spirit to him? I love him. I love him. Not even just I love him, but I'm pleased with him. But what has Jesus done yet

to elicit God's love and God's pleasure? And the answer is nothing. Nothing. And just right here is where you just have to stop. And you have to say, and we've hit this theme many times here at Door of Hope over the years, that we all inherit a vision of what love is from our own life experience, from our own cultural upbringing. In our culture especially, love primarily refers to an emotion. It's something that happens to you, and so you respond to it, and it's an emotional connection and passion and so on. In the Bible, love is an action and a choice. It's a choice that I make to seek the well-being of

another person through decisions, through actions that I do, to seek their well-being regardless of how they respond to me. That's the biblical vision of love. And what this story is trying to tell us is that before Jesus has done anything, the Father makes this statement of his eternal disposition and posture towards the Son. It's one of love and permanent commitment. Before Jesus has done everything, anything at all. And this is so profound. This is's so counter to all of our experiences of love. Save maybe in one relationship. And that is between parents and their children. And even then, even then, it's not even a perfect analogy.

Because if you think about it, most of our experiences of love are based on an understanding that I need to do something to make myself desirable to people. I mean, just think about what drives half of the things we do with our waking hours. You know what I mean? So we need to, whatever, be responsible. We need to work and provide for our basic needs or for those who depend on us. But then there's this other layer of stuff going on in our day-to-day lives, right? And it drives what we wear. It drives how we make ourselves appear to others or how hyper aware we are about how we appear to others. And what's that all about there?

Well, it's because we want to appear desirable. We want to be known and we want to become lovable to others. There's just something about the human heart that we just want to be known. We need to be loved. We need to be admired. We need to know that someone's pleased with us. And when human beings, when we're deprived of that, it's like trying to start a fire with no wood. It's like trying to start a fire with no wood, right? It's like trying to drive a car with no gasoline. Human beings don't work. When we don't have love and pleasure and approval, we shrivel as human beings, emotionally, spiritually, and even physically, it affects us. And so most of our experiences of love are that we make ourselves lovable, we are successful, we're admirable, we do the right thing, and then our

friends will like us. Then your parents will finally approve of you. Then your teachers will actually start to pay attention to you when you begin to perform, right? I mean, that's our, am I describing the world that we live in, right? That's our day-to-day experience. And the story of Jesus comes to us with this absolutely counter vision of who God is and what love is. And what Jesus is revealing of who God is, is actually that there is this love that stands at the center of the universe. is actually that there is this love that stands at the center of the universe. And this love precedes everything.

It precedes Jesus doing anything. Jesus comes and he does everything that he does, not to earn the love of the Father, but precisely generated out of the fact that he is the beloved of the Father. This is a love that grounds human beings. This is a love that precedes and pre-exists before Jesus ever arrived on the scene and did everything. This is the eternal loving God. That's what the story is trying to tell us. loving God. That's what the story is trying to tell us. And the only thing I can liken it to is the love that a mother or a father has for the little human before they arrive, you know?

Before this human emerges from the womb, there are ideally, hopefully, two, you know, a set of parents or one parent. There's somebody who's thinking and hoping well-being and love for this little human before they even arrive. Whatever this language of father or son is referring to ultimately, surely it's meant to lock into this human experience that God is a source of love before we ever do anything at all. It's just there. It's just a fact. And that's who the Christian God is. Now here's what's interesting. Look at the next verse.

Look at the end of chapter 3. We have this announcement of the Father to the Son communicated through the Spirit. This is my Son, whom I love. With him, I am well pleased. What happens next? What happens next? Jesus was led. Led by whom? By the Spirit. So this loving presence, this personal presence that communicates the love of the Father to the Son, leads the Son into where?

Into the wilderness. And what happens in the wilderness? Testing. Testing and temptation. Testing and temptation to do what? Well, Jesus encounters, he's led by the Spirit into this wilderness, and he encounters another personal presence. It's the personal presence of evil that the scriptures call the Satan or the devil. And what is the primary tactic of this personal spiritual evil in this story right here? We won't read it in detail, but what does the tester come to do? Well, in each case, the tester asks Jesus questions, three of them. And all of them begin with, if you really are the Son of God, right? So all the questions begin. If you really are the

beloved Son of God, what on earth are you doing out here starving and tired and hungry? I mean, all the circumstances line up to tell you that God actually doesn't really love you and that he's abandoned you because look at your life circumstances right now. What the presence of spiritual evil does is it tries to get Jesus to doubt his status as the beloved and to doubt his status as the loved. If you really are the son of God, then listen, do some magic tricks, right? Provide for yourself, right? So that you can show everybody who you are. And in each case, Jesus humbles himself.

He quotes from scripture. It's kind of a pattern. Whenever God speaks, he quotes from the scriptures. Whenever Jesus speaks, he often is quoting from the scriptures. And basically, in the power of the spirit, Jesus asserts to this evil that's getting him to doubt God's goodness and to doubt his status as the beloved. He just says, away. He says, away. That's the story that follows right here. Jesus counters evil. Evil comes at this voice that's trying to get Jesus to doubt his status as the beloved son, that love that's

communicated by the Spirit. He quotes the scriptures that speak what is true about him and what is true about God, and he says, away. He resists the urge to doubt his status as the beloved. That's Matthew chapter 4. This is so profound, it seems to me. There's a passage in Paul's letter to the Romans, and we were looking at Romans chapter 8 just a couple weeks ago, but there's another chapter that has kind of led me to read it with new eyes, the experience of becoming a father, and it's crucial in this whole connection here. It's Romans chapter 8, and pay attention to the language here. This is so key.

Paul says, For those who are led by the Spirit of God, they are the children of God. What did the Spirit do to Jesus in Matthew chapter 4? It led him. It led him, right? It led him. Those who are led by the Spirit are the children, are the children of God. And Paul says, listen, the Spirit that you received doesn't make you

slaves so that you should live in fear again. No, no. The spirit that you received brought about your adoption to sonship. This is a theme that we've been exploring also in this series so far, is that the Father sends the Son as the one true human who is the human being that we all perpetually fail to be. And in so doing, this triune God binds himself to sinful, broken humans and permanently commits himself to rescuing us and bringing justice and restoration. And he does that by sending his spirit to communicate his love to the Son. And ultimately, this act of love from this God points towards and comes to the moment of fulfillment in the cross, where Jesus lived for each one of us as the human that you and I perpetually fail to be. He died as absorbing the cost and the consequences of all of the stupid,

sinful, selfish decisions that we have all made. And in his resurrection, his love conquers even the powers of death and the sin that brought it about. And so life and grace, new humanity is offered to each one of us. And the Son does this as an act of love empowered by the Spirit. And for those human beings who look to this Son of God in faith and what he did for us, Paul says the Spirit comes and takes up residence in your life, and it's as if you become adopted to become sons and daughters. Or as Paul says later in Romans 8, he says Jesus came to become the firstborn of a

whole new family, a whole new family of humans who, like the people who came to John the Baptist, who confess and recognize we failed at being humans and we need someone to lead the way into a new future and a new humanity. And Jesus comes as precisely that one. new future and a new humanity. And Jesus comes as precisely that one. And Paul says, if you're led by the Spirit, if the Spirit has taken up residence in your life, then you have been adopted into the family of Jesus. And if that's the case, then what that means is that our relationship to the Father is actually a gift to us from Jesus' relationship to the Father. And what did Jesus call God? Father. And so look at what he goes on to say right here. He says, so we've received the Spirit, we've been adopted into the sonship, into the family of God's children, and by the Spirit we cry out, Abba, Father. And this is really curious. Abba, how many of you

ever heard that word before, Abba? And you think of the, you know, the 70s rock band, of course, which you should. They were a great band, and they produced a lot of great hits, actually, I think. I think they were fairly influential. Anyway, so Abba. So don't think of that. Don't think of that. Abba, this is interesting. Abba is the word in Jesus' native day-to-day tongue, which was Aramaic. You know you're speaking ancient Aramaic when you say Abba, right? You think of 70s pop culture, right? But actually you're speaking ancient Aramaic. And here's what's interesting is that, you know, as Christianity began to spread, the language of the world at that time outside of Israel-Palestine was mostly Greek and Latin. And so you have all of these non-Jewish Christian people becoming Christians or whatever, and they all speak Greek. They don't know a lick of Latin, but they're ushered into this tradition of Jesus' people. And how do we refer to God around here in the family of Jesus' people? Even if you speak Greek or English, who do we call God? We call him

Abba. Abba. This word referring to the Father kept consistent through the centuries. Why? Because this is how Jesus referred to God. And so Jesus referred to God as Abba. And because he paved the way for us, you and I are invited as sons and daughters to call God by the same exact name, Abba, Father. to call God by the same exact name, Abba, Father. And Paul closes here saying, the Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children.

So here's what this all means. What it means is this story of Jesus' baptism, this is true of him, yes. But I think what Matthew's trying to get us to see and what Paul's trying to get us to see is what's true of Jesus is also true of those who reach out to him in faith. And the same spirit that communicated

the eternal preexisting love of the Father to the Son now becomes this voice that testifies, this voice that speaks in our hearts and our minds as Christians reminding us of who we really are. We are the beloved. And this is a love that comes, you know, that clearly it pre-exists. Before you ever did anything, this love is just there, and it's for you. Before you arrived onto the scene, there was this one whose attention was set on you and your story, and this God's fundamental posture to you is one of utter commitment, permanent, eternal commitment and love. And the one who communicates that love to you before you ever got an A in math or a D in math, if you were like me, before you ever succeeded or failed at

anything, before you ever made yourself look hot or handsome or not hot or not handsome or whatever, before any of that ever happened, there's just this one whose attention is set on you for your well-being to love you. And that love is communicated to you in the person of the Spirit. So here's what I'm really getting at, is that one of the roles of the Spirit, in the series on the Spirit, we're exploring the roles and the reality and what the Spirit does. One of the key roles of the Spirit is to remind you of who you are. This voice reminding Jesus' people that I love you. This is my daughter. I love you. I'm pleased with you.

But I'm actually not really somebody that a lot of people take pleasure in. Yeah, that's actually besides the point. So I'm actually, you know, clearly by my appearance, I'm not the kind of person that people want to be around or look at. I'm not the first person people look at when I walk into a room or whatever. So that's besides the point. This is my daughter. I love her. This is my son. I love him. And this is the fundamental being of God towards his children. And it seems to me one of the greatest challenges that we have as Christians

is this discipline of our minds to listen to the voice of the Spirit as opposed to listening to these voices of evil that would get you to doubt God's goodness and doubt who God is towards you and to doubt God's love for you and to doubt your status as the beloved. And the Spirit comes testifying as this voice reminding us of who you are. That's one of the roles of the Spirit. Henry Nowen, I don't know if you know who Henry Nowen is. He was kind of a Catholic priest, turned spiritual director, writer of lots of really amazing books. And he wrote a little book just exploring this very idea, this whole theme. It's a little short paperback that I recommend. It's just called The Life of the Beloved.

It's learning to live, claiming your status as the beloved. And there's a section of the book where he closes it, and it reads like this. He says, As long as we allow our parents and siblings and teachers and friends and lovers to determine whether we are beloved or not, we are caught in the net of a suffocating world that accepts or rejects us according to its own agenda of effectiveness and control. The great spiritual battle begins when we reclaim our status as God's beloved. Long before any human being saw us, we were seen by God's loving eyes.

Long before anyone heard us cry or laugh, we are heard by our God who is all ears for us. Long before any person spoke to us in the world, we were spoken to by the voice of eternal love. It seems to me Henry Nowen, he's putting his finger, he's putting into words exactly what Matthew 3 and Romans chapter 8 is trying to communicate. In that moment, the picture that I showed you right at the beginning, both my sons were just minutes old. So the moment they come out, clean them off and just set them right on mom. And it's like the initial nursing and skin time or something like that. And so you just get them on, you know, bare skin to bare skin, and that's just really important in those first few minutes there, because they're clearly really stressed out, right? And so that's happening, and then, you know,

after 10 minutes or so, you know, there's still actually a lot that the female body needs to go through after birth and so on, and so, you know, like little Roman, little August gets set right beside mom and midwife and so on are now attending Jessica. And so I remember for Roman, this is my first time, and the midwife just looked at me and said, go be with him. This is what you do now. Go be with him. I'm like, but Jessica, she's like, Jessica will be fine. You just go be with yourself.

And so I have this moment, you know, where I'm, you know, beside Jessica or later on the bed. And so, you know, I'm having my first conversation with my son. And I didn't know what to say. You know, I'd had been having conversations with my wife's stomach for a while, you know, trying to, you know, get it used to my voice or whatever, get it used to my voice. But, and so whatever, you know, I just, and man, I'll just, that moment's etched in my memory. Because I was like, what do you say?

I just started talking to him, you know, and just telling him like how excited we are that he's here and that we're here for the long haul and this is going to be awesome. And you don't even know how much that we love you. In both cases, with Roman and with August, our friend, a family member that was there taking pictures, they captured that moment for us, and it's a picture that remains really special to me. And this is, you know, this is the closest, like I don't know how to get near to this except this analogy in my own experience that I got to play a role in these two little humans' lives

of love for them before they ever really existed, and that in their first moments, I got to speak love to them in their first minutes of existing. And it seems to me this is what Paul is trying to say. There's this voice trying to get your attention every day above the cacophony of voices that make you question your status as the beloved. And the Spirit's there just reminding you, this is my daughter. I love her. This is my son.

I love him. And this is what the Spirit is trying to get us to listen to. And so I think the question for us is, do we have ears to hear the truth about who we are because of what Jesus has done for us in His life, in His death, in His resurrection? Do you have ears to hear what the Spirit is trying to tell you. You guys, thank you for listening to Exploring My Strange Bible podcast. Man, I really hope that the reality of the Spirit as a voice of love can be real and tangible and felt to you today.

No matter what you're doing as you listen to this and where you're going to go on from here and the rest of your day, may you be aware of the voice of the spirit speaking divine love to you. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time.