{"id":7139,"date":"2015-11-23T00:05:07","date_gmt":"2015-11-23T08:05:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/?p=7139"},"modified":"2015-11-22T23:51:41","modified_gmt":"2015-11-23T07:51:41","slug":"water","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/2015\/11\/23\/water\/","title":{"rendered":"Water"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cI baptize with water those who repent of their sins and turn to God. But someone is coming soon who is greater than I am\u2014so much greater that I\u2019m not worthy even to be his slave and carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. He is ready to separate the chaff from the wheat with his winnowing fork. Then he will clean up the threshing area, gathering the wheat into his barn but burning the chaff with never-ending fire.\u201d <\/p>\n

\tThen Jesus went from Galilee to the Jordan River to be baptized by John. But John tried to talk him out of it. \u201cI am the one who needs to be baptized by you,\u201d he said, \u201cso why are you coming to me?\u201d
\n\tBut Jesus said, \u201cIt should be done, for we must carry out all that God requires.\u201d So John agreed to baptize him.<\/p>\n

\tAfter his baptism, as Jesus came up out of the water, the heavens were opened and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and settling on him. And a voice from heaven said, \u201cThis is my dearly loved Son, who brings me great joy.\u201d (Matthew 3:11-17)<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\tIf we really believed that God loved us we\u2019d never resist his will. Jesus was concerned only with doing what his Father wanted. Human beings, in contrast, are generally more concerned with only doing what they want. <\/p>\n

\tJohn knew that the Messiah was coming. John saw himself as God\u2019s servant, as a human being of limited consequence. It made no sense to him that Jesus should ask him\u2014or any other human being\u2014for baptism. Rather, John saw only his own need for redemption; he was aware only of his own failings. And that prevented him from seeing beyond himself to what someone else might need\u2014in this case, Jesus\u2019 need to begin his public ministry, to receive, not the baptism of repentance that John had been giving everyone else, but rather the baptism given to those who were becoming rabbis. There were many sorts of baptisms regularly performed in Judaism: for conversion, for ceremonial cleansing, and for those becoming rabbis or priests. John, because of his focus, because of his own needs, had trouble seeing beyond his own habitual patterns.<\/p>\n

\tBecause of our fallen nature, we tend to think of things only in terms of what\u2019s in it for us, or what we\u2019re used to. Rather than being like Jesus, who saw things only in terms of what his Father wanted.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI baptize with water those who repent of their sins and turn to God. But someone is coming soon who is greater than I am\u2014so much greater that I\u2019m not worthy even to be his slave and carry his sandals. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"yes"},"categories":[18,17,16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7139"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7139"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7139\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7141,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7139\/revisions\/7141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}