Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Isaiah 61:1 The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound.
ANOINTED BY THE HOLY SPIRIT
At the start of His ministry, Jesus was baptized. This confuses people because usually baptism is in part an admission of sin and a need for cleansing. However, not being an ordinary person, Jesus' baptism wasn't ordinary either.
One of the things baptism did was associate Jesus with God's people, and not with the unbelievers who rejected baptism. But there was even more to Jesus' baptism than this.
In the past, kings and prophets were anointed with oil to show that they were chosen for their office by God Himself. Today we don't use oil when installing people into the office of president or judge or whatever, but we often observe some sort of ceremony to show they have been chosen.
Jesus' baptism marked the beginning of His public ministry. But instead of merely being anointed with oil, Jesus was anointed with the Holy Spirit. As He stepped up from the waters of the Jordan River, the sky was split open above, and the Holy Spirit fluttered down in the form of a dove and rested on Jesus. This was to show that what the Old Testament prophet Isaiah foretold was coming true.
Up to this point Jesus had lived a quiet and unassuming life. He had learned how to be a carpenter. He had quietly attended worship at the synagogue. He had been a model citizen, but one that didn't stick out from the crowd. Now things would change. Now the power of God would shine out from Jesus in everything that He said and did. Now the time to teach and perform miracles had come. Now the world would see who this Jesus really was -- the Son of God and the promised Savior of the world.
