How Do You Know?
Text: Luke 3:15-22
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In what is perhaps called by some a landmark in cinema, Monty Python and the Search for the Holy Grail, King Arther gets into a debate with some peasants about his kinghood. A peasant responds to Arthur’s claim to be King of the Britons by saying, “Well, I didn’t vote for you!” To which Arthur replies that he became king because the Lady of the Lake bestowed on him the sword Excalibur. The peasant argues that strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no way to determine who should be in charge.
As comical as that scene is, it does touch on a greater question that has preoccupied more serious minds for ages: How do we know? How do we know what is true? How do we know what is right? How do we know how to live? How do we know who we are? How do we know who God is?
The people gathered at the Jordan River to be baptized by John the Baptist were wondering the same. Could this John, this wild prophet of the desert, be the Messiah they and their ancestors had been waiting for? It seemed like John might be. He preached with power, unlike the scribes and teachers of the Law. He fulfilled so many prophecies of Scripture. He lived a life that looked unlike any other. Maybe he was the One. But how could they know?
John solves the riddle for them. They can know by having him tell them. “I baptize you with water,” he said clearly, “but he who is mightier than I is coming, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” And so it turns out, after all of our wondering and worrying about how to know the truth, how to know the Messiah, how to know our place in the world and what is good and what is bad, it turns out that the answer is right in front of us. God tells us.
God has always spoken and told His people the truth. He has told us how to know good from evil, from the very beginning. We’re very skilled at finding incorrect ways to determine the truth—individually or as a people. But deep down, we know that what is good has never been determined by personal preference, popular opinion, or the decrees of the powerful few. What is right has never been determined by what benefits me the most, at the expense of others. What is noble and true has never been hidden in a secret code or buried in arcane mysteries. God has told you how to know it. It’s in His Word. It always has been. He has given His Law, distilled and crystallized in the Commandments, so that you may know right from wrong, good from evil, truth from falsehood.
Furthermore, to those standing on the banks of the Jordan River, and to you sitting in the pews, He has given His Gospel to answer the question of how you can know the Messiah, the Chosen One, the Christ. God speaks. And He speaks to us in specific places, so that we can be certain that it is Him. At the Baptism of Jesus, God speaks in perhaps one of the most powerful and unique ways that He has ever done since those first words that cleaved the darkness, “Let there be light.”
Look again at the Baptism of our Lord and you will see the full Trinity speaking—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—showing you how to know the truth, how to see the Truth made flesh. The Father’s voice thunders from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.” The Spirit gives His own testimony as He flies down from the heavens in the form of a dove to light upon and point to, without a shadow of a doubt, Jesus, the Son of God in human flesh, the eternal Word of God now dwelling among us. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, speaking and acting as One, the Three-in-One, all giving the same message: this Jesus is the Son of God, the Messiah, the Christ in whom you should put your trust.
That is how you know the truth. That is how you know who your Messiah, your Savior, your Lord is. Although we may be tempted to think so, He is not your Lord because of anything you’ve done. He is not your Lord because you have vowed allegiance to Him. He is not your Anointed One because you anointed Him. He is not your Savior because you proved to Him that you’re worth saving. He is yours—all of these things for you—because He wants to be. He has come down to stand on riverbanks with sinners, the worst of them. He’s come to bow His head to be baptized by the very servants He sent into the world. He’s come to die the death that His people had earned through every lie believed, every wrong committed, every silly and foolish line fallen for.
How do you know that this is all for you too? In the same way that you know everything else. God speaks. What He says to Jesus at His baptism, He also says to you. Pay close attention to the words that the Father speaks: “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.” And remember that everything Jesus has, He’s come to share with you. That even means what the Father has said to Him, He now says to you. And because you have been baptized with a baptism like His—with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit present—that means that you are His beloved Son. You are His beloved daughter. You are His child and with you He is well pleased. Again, not because you’ve proved yourself to be that, but because, through His baptism, Jesus shares everything good and right and true that He’s done with you, put it on your account, so that when the Father looks at you, all He sees is His child who pleases Him. Jesus has done it all for you.
And that is more certainty than you’ll ever be able to muster from anywhere else. But if you need a bit more, know this: your Savior has sent you your very own baptizer, a preacher, who will point you to your Messiah, like John the Baptist did for the people at the Jordan so long ago. So here, look to your Savior. He’s in your midst. He’s coming to you, body and blood and all. He’s with you in your baptism. He’s forgiving you even now. You are God’s beloved. Because of Jesus, with you He is well pleased. In the name of Jesus, the Son of God. Amen.
