Introduction
“Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heavens were opened.”
Question
Have you ever taken the time to make an errand only to find, for some reason, that the place you were going to was not open, it was closed? It’s a minor inconvenience in the grand scheme of things when it’s a store of some kind, if it’s a business you could always just go on another day or at a different time. Even still, you’ve taken the time to make that errand and if it doesn’t go your way, doesn’t that sort of thing try your patience? Does it reveal how even on a small scale the temptation to be impatience is always lurking, prepared to upset your day, your week, your month, year!
Application
We want things to be open, and we want them to be open when we want them open. Some shop that’s temporarily closed is one thing and not that serious, if it was something more important like a doctor’s office, or a Hospital, or a Bank, or the Government we would be more concerned especially if we didn’t know how long it would be closed for. What if you get there and it is open but you consider the customer service to be poor, maybe it irritates you that the line up, the queue, the checkout, is long and slow. Maybe there’s no self check out. Perhaps the automated voice on the other end of the line says, “due to high call volume, the average wait time for your call to be answered is 35 minutes, please stay on the line, your call is important to us.”
Malady
Generally we are all impatient when the way ahead is not open, when the door is closed, when the line is long, when the service is poor, when we aren’t getting what we want, the way we want it, when we want to have it. This, I guess is why they say patience is a virtue. Others say patience moves mountain. Explain here and illustrate with a comment that: “God’s mill griants slowly but surely.
The truth is that we are not just impatient with each other; the truth is that we can be very impatient with God too: particularly if we feel like God is closed off from us. The virtue of patience is daily assaulted by vainglorious anger, frustration, impatience.
Between Old and New Testament
God had stopped speaking through the prophets. At the end of the Old Testament He closed His mouth and the mouths of the prophets. After the prophet Malachi, God had stopped sending prophets to the people.
During that time life carried on until the coming of the prophet John and the Christ, the baby Jesus: The time that passed between Malachi and John until the incarnation of Christ Jesus was a silent time, a quiet time. Heaven was in a way closed. For 400 years heaven was not open to the children of Israel in the way it had been at different times in their past when God would speak to them through His prophets.
Background information
During those 400 quiet years, during those 400 silent years, we even have the Jews mentioning this lack of a Word from God in the Apocrypha.
The Temple in Jerusalem was desecrated by the invading Greeks who had defeated them under Alexander the Great and when the Jews were able to get back into the temple, and clean up the mess made by the Greeks (The Greeks had among other things sacrificed unclean pigs in the temple), not knowing exactly what to do the Jewish people took the defiled altar stones and buried them “until there should come a prophet to tell [them] what to do with them.” (1Maccabees 4:46).
During those days, those years, God still heard their prayers and was still active but He wasn’t speaking to them by His prophets, and you couldn’t point to events as being influenced by God with any certainty, like you can do with events recorded in the Bible.
Text
In today’s text, God speaks! His Mouth is opened and no longer closed. At the baptism of Jesus, Jesus prayed and, “the heavens were opened, and the Holy Spirit descended on Him in bodily form, like a dove; and a voice came from heaven, “You are My beloved Son; with You I Am well pleased.” God had sent His angel Gabriel to speak to Zechariah about the birth of the prophet John the Baptizer; (Luke 1:5-25).
God had sent the angel Gabriel to speak to Mary about the birth of Jesus the Christ; (Luke 1:26-38).
He’d sent an angel to Joseph to prepare Joseph for the coming Christ; (Matthew 1:18-25). He’d sent angels to announce Jesus to the shepherds (Luke 2:8-20) and an angel to warn the Magi of the dangers of King Herod; (Matt. 2:1-12). God had prepared the way for Jesus with the Word given to the Prophet John the Baptizer:(Luke 3:1-22) but today, in today’s Gospel reading, God the Father Speaks and says to Jesus, “You are My beloved Son; with You I Am well pleased.” At this point there’s no question as to whether heaven is closed or opened. It is open. And while you may not have realized this along the way, because of Jesus, and His Baptism that Day, Heaven is open to you too.
Why heaven open?
Heaven opened on the Son in prayer; Heaven opened for the descending Holy Spirit; The Heavens were open as the Father spoke.
Gospel
This opening up of heaven to you is one of the significant parts of Jesus’ Baptism. Here everything changes. Publicly God’s Word would be spoken again to the people and not just by the Prophet John but by Jesus, God the Father’s Son with whom He was well pleased (Luke 4:43). This public speaking of God’s Word then extends from Jesus to those He had handpicked, the disciples (Luke 10:1-12, 17-24) – the apostles (Acts 9:1-19; Romans 1:1), those He sent out to preach and administer the sacraments in His stead and by His command (John 20:19-23) down the line to us today, to you.
Tomorrow the concluding part would come your way!