Matthew 3:13-17 E1/Baptism of Jesus
Pastor Ron Koehler
Grace—Tucson, AZ
January 11, 2026
Revelations at the River I don’t know if you’ve ever heard when a child is asked what their pastor’s first name is, but you can probably guess the most common answer—and it isn’t their actual name. To a kid, Pastor Kassulke’s first name is…Pastor! So is Pastor Koehler’s! So is every pastor’s that they meet! If we’re kind of young in our faith or our familiarity with the Bible, there’s a name thing that’s kind of similar. We may hear the name Jesus Christ and naturally think that this is the Savior’s first and last name. That’s a very reasonable assumption given how we use names. As we start getting to know our Bible better, we find out that Jesus is his name, and Christ is a title. It means “Anointed One” and refers to him as the promised Savior. Today, we’re thinking about the anointing of Jesus at his baptism—and what we hear probably raises some questions for us—whether we are relatively new to this event in Jesus’ life, or we have heard it many times. As we listen to what happened at the Jordan River one day, there are important things to learn about Jesus, and they bring us to think about our own baptisms too. Let’s call them Revelations at the River. Jesus’ Identity Revealed—to John and to Us Our list of curious things begins immediately in the first words of our reading: Jesus came from Galilee to be baptized by John at the Jordan. I thought that baptism was for washing away sins and giving faith and being brought into a happy relationship with God! Isn’t that what we spent the opening of our service reviewing and thanking God for? Then why on earth would the perfect Son of God need to be baptized? That really is an excellent question. In fact, John the Baptist—the one sent by God to call people to repentance and baptize them and point them to Jesus as the sinless Son of God who had come into the world—even he asked the question! And you notice, he exerted some force and emotion—he tried to stop Jesus! “You’re coming to me?!” We might look at it this way: Jesus’ birth was in almost every way was just like ours, but the one difference was that when he came into the world, he was not simply human—he was also true God. In a similar way, Jesus’ baptism is like ours in some ways, but there is a difference because he is true God. You notice that Jesus didn’t correct him when John said that he needed to be baptized by Jesus, indicating that Jesus was greater than he was. And Jesus didn’t say that he personally needed baptism. He is the sinless Son of God. What did he say? He said that he needed to be baptized because it was proper. His Father planned for him to do this. So, while baptizing Jesus might seem like taking your professionally detailed car home and washing it off with your garden hose, it wasn’t really like that.