Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Jesus’s Secret Identity | Learning to Follow Jesus | Luke 3.21-38

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life in the time it takes to get to work. I'm Patrick Miller. And I'm Keith Simon. Right now, we're learning what it looks like to follow Jesus by working our way through the Gospel of Luke. Who is Jesus? At this stage in Luke's Gospel, Jesus is a bit of an enigma. He's conceived by the Holy Spirit, announced by angels and prophets in the temple. He's a precocious teenager who's impressing this.

Starting point is 00:00:34 the best Bible scholars of his day. It's obvious that he's not just an ordinary person, but what sort of person is he? Is he just an exceptional human being? Or is he a new Moses, a new David, a new human agent of God's redemptive plans? Or is Jesus something more? Luke's not quick to blurt out, Jesus is God, but why? Well, in their world, the idea that humans could be the children of gods really wasn't very uncommon. You see, Romans thought that a godman ruled over their entire empire. They called that godman Caesar, the emperor Tiberius. And so calling Jesus a godman could lead to problems. It could lead to lots of problems. Here's at least three different ways it could lead to problems. First, Luke was not a pagan. Luke didn't have a big pantheon of gods.

Starting point is 00:01:28 But calling Jesus the godman might sound like polytheism. Luke needs to be a pagan. Luke needs to be a pagan. needed to be careful. If Jesus is God, then Jesus is the one and only God of Israel. He's not some God from the pagan Pantheon. The second reason that this could cause some troubles, calling Jesus the God man was politically dangerous. You see, the Emperor Augustus and the emperors after him like Tiberius, they had no interest in sharing their throne. Calling Jesus the God man meant calling him king. Not just king over Rome, but king over all creation. Luke's claims to call Jesus the godman, those are treason. But this leads to a third kind of problem. You see, what kind of king was Jesus? The godman emperor Augustus, he demonstrated his divinity by acts of power and violence.

Starting point is 00:02:21 Luke didn't want his audience to think that Jesus was that kind of king. No, Jesus was something entirely different. Jesus was a servant who came to seek and save the lost. So who is Jesus? Well, Luke wants to answer that question, but he's going to do it in a very strange and careful way, a way designed to avoid each of these three pitfalls. He tells us who Jesus is through the story of Jesus' baptism and the story of Jesus' genealogy. Luke 321. When all the people were being baptized, Jesus was baptized too. And as he was praying, heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, you are my son whom I love. With you, I am well pleased. In this short passage, several Old Testament passages come rushing together to clarify Jesus' true identity.

Starting point is 00:03:18 First, Jesus is the king. God says to him in his baptism, you are my son. That's actually, actually a quote from Psalm 2-7, where God says to Israel's king, you are my son. So Jesus's sonship is an expression of his lordship. It's an expression of the fact that he is the king. But what kind of king is he? Well, next we read, whom I love. God says, this is my son, whom I love. And this alludes to Genesis 22, the story where God calls Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac. But at the last moment, right before Abraham's about to do it. God stops him. But we realize that there's a different ending

Starting point is 00:03:59 to the story of God's own son. You see, Jesus is going to lay down his life, but no one's going to stop him at the last second. No, Jesus will fully and wholly lay down his life for God's kingdom. This tells us that Jesus isn't just the king. He is the servant king who lays down his life. But that's not all.

Starting point is 00:04:21 Next, God says this, with you, I am well pleased. Now, Luke is alluding to Isaiah 42-1, which Bible nerds would call a servant song. You see, in Isaiah chapter 40 to 55, there are multiple of these servant songs, and they all predict a coming rescuer who is going to renew God's relationship with Israel, and he would become a light drawing the Gentiles into God's kingdom. In this servant, it was predicted that he would suffer undeservingly and act as a sacrifice, cleansing, and ransoming Israel from sin. Now, through this act, God himself would once again return to reign over all creation and make all things new. You see, Jesus is not a king in the mold of

Starting point is 00:05:05 Tiberius or in the mold of Augustus, in the mold of the Caesars. He doesn't rule by violence. He instead takes violence himself. He doesn't make peace by the blood of others, but makes peace by his own blood. and we get the overwhelming sense in all of these illusions that Jesus is above all the obedient and subservient servant to God. He is being baptized and praying in obedience to God. He is pleasing to God by his own obedience. So is he just the rescuing servant king? Or is he something more? And Luke answers that something more question by tracing Jesus's genealogy. verse 23. Now, Jesus himself was about 30 years old when he began his ministry. He was the son, so it was thought, of Joseph, the son of Healy, the son of Mahat. Luke continues to work his way through Jesus's

Starting point is 00:06:04 genealogy, and he mentions David and Abraham, and finally in verse 38, the son of Adam, the son of God. There are two things Luke wants us to know about this servant king, Jesus. The first is that he, is the son of God. Just like Adam was a special creation of God from the dust, so Jesus was a special creation by God. But Luke's language goes even further beyond that. You see, Adam is actually never called God's son in the Old Testament. This title is unique to Jesus, and it's expressive of the fact that Jesus is actually God's son. Jesus is divine. But is that polytheism? No, not at all. Luke makes the answer. are clear and a roundabout way. By tracing Jesus' genealogy through the line of Israel, this was a way of saying that Jesus is not just some Roman emperor claiming to be a God in the

Starting point is 00:07:00 pantheon of gods. No, he is the son of the one God, the God of Israel. And what always made Israel stand apart from the nations was that they lacked a pantheon. Their great prayer was, Here, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. So if Jesus is the divine son of this one God, it means that somehow he has to be that one God, because there is only one God. It means that this one God is, in his essence, more than one. It would take centuries for the church to coin the phrase Trinity in order to describe this reality. But it's a true reality. that God is three and one. And yet we see this idea right here, right at the very beginning of Luke's gospel. Now, I realize that this podcast has been a little bit heady, but it needs to be because

Starting point is 00:07:49 Luke's whole goal is to be focused and clear-headed about who Jesus is. He is the king. He is the servant king. He is the servant king who lays down his life as a sacrifice for the many. He is the son of God. He is God incarnate. These statements may sound blan to us if we grew up in the church. So we have to slow down. Let them shake us up. The God of Israel, the one true God of all creation, became a human. The God of Israel became a human to reclaim his throne over all creation. The God of Israel became a human to reclaim his throne by becoming a servant of His throne. his creation by being obedient even to the point of death on a cross. There's only one proper response to all of this, to turn from all of your old

Starting point is 00:08:44 allegiances and bow your knee before the cosmic servant king who weighs down his life, the one who is the son of God, the king of all creation. Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe and give us a rating. That helps other people find this podcast more easily. Also, ask yourself, who could you share this podcast with? Texting an episode to a friend or a family member is a great way to help them grow spiritually. If you want to go deeper, check out our show notes for book recommendations.

Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Jesus’s Secret Identity | Learning to Follow Jesus | Luke 3.21-38

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