In John’s stunned question—“Do you come to me?”—we hear the entire gospel: the sinless Son steps into the Jordan not because He needs repentance, but because He comes to us first in sovereign grace, bearing our double curse (the judgment of death for all and the covenant penalties we deserve) so the waters of judgment become the waters of renewal and life. No more clinging to fleshly generation or humanistic striving; only His seeking love descends like a dove, declaring over broken sinners: “This is my beloved Son… and you are mine too.” New episode drops Sunday afternoon—subscribe wherever you get podcasts and join us at the Jordan, where grace finds us before we ever find it.
Epiphany 1
Psalm 29; Isaiah 42:1-9; Acts 10:34-43; Matthew 3:13-17
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I.
The problem I wish to examine with you today is that put us by John the Baptist in Matthew 3:14, “John would have prevented him, saying, ‘I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?’”
Before we examine the problem from John’s point of view, let me point out that in this one verse, Matthew gives us the whole gospel.
Every sinner must one day ask this question: “Do you come to me, Lord? If so, how do you come? As my Savior or as my Judge?”
Scripture is very clear that Christ will come to every nation. Either, as Isaiah puts it in verse 1 of this morning’s reading to “bring forth justice to the nations,” or as he says later, as “a light to the nations, to open the eyes that are blind.”
It is one and the same thing, one act of Christ, both to bring justice and to open eyes to the truth.
The only question is whether this light comes while there is still time for you to do something about it or after it is too late. Whether it comes to you in the time of grace, while you can still repent, or in the time of judgment, when your damnation is certain.
Jesus says in John 9:4, “We must work the works of him who sent me, while it is day; night comes, when no one can work.”
But this is not John the Baptist’s concern. John cannot understand why the One sent to judge and enlighten the world should Himself need to undergo a ritual of judgment and covenant renewal.
II.
But that is what the readings this morning are about: repentance followed by the renewal and extension of God’s covenant with His people.
John the angry preacher is the symbol of Advent, the dark season before Christmas.
Like all angry preachers, the reasons for John’s anger are twofold: first anger at the sin itself, second at the complacency of people who should know better.
The anger comes from a place of love, though we are often perceived as being full of hate.
Angry preachers like John have a well-earned reputation for calling out sin.
But sometimes you may think that angry preachers are more frustrated than effective. That is because for all their bluster, they cannot force anyone to repent.
Worse, preachers are powerless, by ourselves, to give you the one thing you need: Christ Himself.
This is why John’s words, “do you come to me?” are so potent. The measure of an angry preacher’s success — what makes his sermons work — comes when one of his hearers says what John said to Jesus, “Do you come to me?”
Jesus comes to John and presents Himself for baptism. “Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John, to be baptized by him.”
John tries to stop Him saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?”
Jesus replies, “Let it be so now; for thus it is fitting for us to fulfil all righteousness.” John consents and baptizes Jesus.
By being baptized Jesus does the one thing no other can do: He shows that He is willing and able to take His congregation’s place.
Our salvation hinges on this substitution, on Christ’s complete identification with sin and sinners.
You see, when I preach, I preach as one under judgment. You come to me to hear the gospel preached, yet I have just as much need of it as you do.
I preach judgment, as one under judgment. I preach repentance, having the need to repent. I preach grace, but only by God’s grace. Yet you come to hear me?
The thing I cannot do is save you. I cannot regenerate you, or cause you to be born again. I cannot give you the gift of faith.
That is a work only the Holy Spirit can do in you: not me, not the sermon, not the Church, not the sacraments. It is entirely the work of Christ.
All I do is declare in the mighty words of St. Paul, “If any one is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come.”
John the Baptist asks, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” I can ask you the same question: has Jesus come to you? But that is all I can do.
Even Paul makes his great declaration conditional, if any one is in Christ, then he is a new creation, and if he is a new creation only then the old has passed away.
The most important question in this life (and the next) is “Jesus, do you come to me?”
In sickness and health, “Jesus, do you come to me?” In doubt and anxiety, “Jesus, do you come to me?”
As I face the darkness of death and the emptiness of eternity, “Jesus, do you come to me?” Will you be there with me?
This is the significance of His baptism, for only by coming to us under this sign of judgment can He give us tangible proof that He comes to renew us.
III.
Baptism is the sacrament of initiation into the new covenant, while circumcision was the rite of initiation into the old. Jesus underwent both.
Jewish men are circumcised on the eighth day after they are born. This is why the eighth day after Christmas, which is always January 1, is traditionally the Feast of the Circumcision of Our Lord.
It’s not a day you’ll usually think to commemorate, unless January 1 falls on Sunday, and you go to a church that uses the traditional calendar of readings. In the old calendar, it was a “red letter” day — literally printed in red — which meant that it was important.
It begs the same question as Jesus’ baptism. Why does Jesus need to be initiated into the Old Covenant, especially if the whole purpose of His coming is to establish the New Covenant? There are two reasons why.
The first will sound familiar, given what I’ve just said about baptism. In His baptism, Jesus identified with the judgment that all men face: death as the punishment for Adam and Eve’s disobedience.
When He was circumcised Jesus also assumed the burden of the covenant curses, applied to those who break the Law of Moses (Deuteronomy 27-29).
In baptism, Jesus identified with the whole human race.
In circumcision, Jesus identified specifically with the Jewish people.
In other words, He incurred a double penalty. What does that mean, He incurred a “double penalty”? Think of it this way.
You are under a general obligation to tell the truth, but if you swear an oath to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, only to lie under oath, you incur a second penalty.
The first penalty is the damage done to your reputation just for lying. The second penalty could be a prison sentence for lying under oath.
Jesus’ love for His own people, the Jews, was so great that He was willing to incur the additional penalties that the law required for breaking their covenant with God.
The second reason Jesus was initiated into the Old Covenant by circumcision was to fulfill its meaning.
Circumcision is the cutting of the generative organ, marking that organ, and making it into a visible sign, a reminder that there is no hope in physical generation, only in spiritual regeneration.
What circumcision is saying is this. Fallen men can only make more fallen men. Sinners only give birth to more sinners.
Circumcision reminded Jewish husbands and wives that even in — perhaps especially in — their most intimate acts, they were to put their hope and trust in no one else but God.
Without the God of Israel, their children were as good as dead (Psalm 58:8; Job 3:16).
As Christians, we scarcely understand the significance of Christ’s circumcision, which makes our understanding of His baptism nearly as shallow as the water into which we ourselves are baptized.
“I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” John asks Jesus. Indeed, Jesus does come to John, to be baptized, and now the very water itself, previously the foundation of all natural life, now symbolizes the supernatural life that can only begin when Jesus comes to us.
Let me give you a contemporary example of how little we understand circumcision, and of baptism as the fulfillment of all that circumcision foreshadowes.
Elon Musk is poised to become the world’s first trillionaire. He has built his entire business — rockets, humanoid robots, AI, EVs — around making the human race “multiplanetary.”
He calls this “life insurance” against the eventual incineration of planet earth by the sun.
I commend Mr. Musk for this bold vision, but I suspect that he is deceived in one very important way. All he can hope to accomplish is the continued generation of the human race — the mere physical propagation — and not its spiritual regeneration and renewal.
Mr. Musk has his definition of life backwards so he does not understand what kind of life insurance the human race truly needs.
His is the kind of humanistic thinking that the Old Testament rite of circumcision and the New Testament sacrament of baptism are meant to refute — not to keep us from colonizing space, but so that we can truly make it flourish when we do.
Space is already cold, dead, and lifeless. It doesn’t need to be populated by a race of spiritually dead men.
God uses these signs and sacraments — circumcision and Baptism — to remind us that He must come to us to make us alive — and that He, in fact, does come to us in the water and the blood.
IV.
Circumcision required the shedding of blood, the blood of Abraham and his male descendants. By contrast, Jesus’ baptism looks back to the drowning of the Egyptian army in the Red Sea, itself the baptism of the Hebrew people as a whole and links the events of Passover and Exodus to the cross.
(You see why I said earlier that we’re dealing with the whole gospel this morning.)
By Jesus’ time, circumcision had become corrupted, a form of self-atonement, a means of propagating a chosen race, along ethnic-religious lines.
It is no accident that John the Baptist heralds the coming of the Messiah with these words, spoken to the Pharisees and Sadducees, earlier in Matthew 3, which we read on the Second Sunday of Advent:
“Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.”
There is continuity between circumcision and baptism but there is also a real break.
Baptism is no mere ritual or rite of passage whose meaning we can only dimly perceive while we wait for its fulfillment at an undetermined date in the future. Its meaning has been fully revealed to us in the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ:
His death reveals the collective drowning of our sinful nature and the salvation of the elect, symbolized by Noah and his family, those eight few people on the Ark, saved from the judgment that flooded the ancient world (1 Peter 3:20; 2 Peter 2:5).
His resurrection is proof that we are reborn, using the same natural element, water, that sustains all life, which Jesus sanctifies to become the sign of the supernatural life now at work in us.
Finally, His ascension into heaven establishes the government to which we owe our full allegiance, the throne to which we swear our loyalty.
Baptism seals our citizenship in heaven and grants His Church the authority and power to bind and lose on earth as it will be in heaven: “thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
Baptism is the initiation by which born-again men and women assume the government of God’s creation, both what is left of the old creation — now growing very old and tired indeed and rapidly passing away under God’s judgment — and the new creation that is already present among us.
This is what I wish Mr. Musk would understand. He can only chase after old dirt in the sky, but Christians follow the voice that comes from heaven.
V.
“Do you come to me?” That is the great question.
The question itself is a perfect illustration of the great doctrines of Predestination and Election.
I preached about those doctrines last week. I said these were hated doctrines. They are hated for this very reason, the reason behind John the Baptist’s question.
We should like to think that it is we who come to Christ, that we can come to Him at a time and manner of our choosing. When we are good and ready, then we will go to Him
That we can come to Him when we’ve had our fill of sinning, when finally make time to read the Bible, when get serious about coming to church.
My friends, aren’t you glad your salvation does not depend on your ability to keep your New Years’ resolutions?
Yet much evangelistic preaching puts the matter just like that. “When will you decide?” “The hour is getting late.” “Will you give your life to Jesus?” “Will you accept Him as your Lord and Savior?” “Will you be baptized?”
But that is not the example we have in the text before us today. “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?”
I have nothing against our friends who preach this way, but going to Jesus can mean nothing if He hasn’t already come to you and sought you out.
“Do you come to me?” Amazing grace, how sweet the sound of that question! To ask it is to answer it!
Such a question can only be asked in the presence of whom it is asked. One would not even think to ask it unless He has already come.
It can only be asked just as John asked it, after he became aware that he stood in the presence of Jesus Himself.
You can’t really explain why or even how He got there, but here He is, standing before you in the midst of all the troubles and preoccupations of your life.
You hear the voice too. Again, you can’t explain where it comes from, or why the person standing next to you can’t hear what you hear, but the words are clear: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”
Somehow, you know those words are meant for you too. So long as the name of Christ is in your heart and on your lips, then you too are a beloved son or daughter.
He has come to you first in grace, so you need not fear the judgment, even if the preacher sometimes gets a little angry.
Preached on January 11, 2026, at the First Congregational Church, Woodbury, Connecticut (https://www.firstchurchwoodbury.org).
