How is your relationship with God? Are you happy with it? Do you see Him as your loving Father? Do you feel like He is out to get you? Or is it somewhere in between? Do you wish it could be better? Wouldn't everyone?

So, do you want to see it improved? The key to that improvement will be in seeing Jesus as He is, and yourself as you are and seeing relationship between you and Him more clearly; that is, how you really stand. Both Psalms and Proverbs say, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." Fear is a word that has to do with faith, not necessarily terror, but faith that sees yourself in relationship to an almighty God and then going on to see how He can be gracious to you.

The message in this sermon won't be new. It's not like it needs to be. Sometimes we think the message has to be something we've never heard before, as though, this were an educational lesson, and you've wasted your time if you didn't learn something new. It's not a lesson to be learned . If you pick up a new insight from the sermon, wonderful, but that's not the goal. I want you to hear how this text applies to you. I want you to hear it applied to you. I want you to hear again how God looks at you, His baptized child, because of what Christ has done; to know comfort because that is what the Lord wants for you. I want you to see this is what He wants and to see He is able to deliver.

So, the theme is "Seeing Jesus as He is, and yourself as you are." But if we should stop there, the relationship would be worse. We would see His holiness and our sinfulness. The division between He and us would be even wider. We must find the bridge He has provided which takes us from seeing ourselves as sinners, to seeing ourselves as Jesus is seen.

Let's start with seeing ourselves as we are, by looking at John and how he saw himself. John is great for that. We can see John preaching and living out in the desert.

You know he had to be a single guy. You just know it. For one thing, he lived in the wilderness, most likely a cave. And I would bet if you were to go into that cave, it would look like a cave. And when it came to dinner, he would just grab the first thing he could find around the house-literally. Y'know, around the house. Like jumping around the house, since after all we know he ate locusts and washed them down with wild honey.

But his decorating styles and diet aren't what is so important about John. As odd as that may be, his character is even more interesting. What stands out first, is that he was a gutsy guy. He wasn't going to get pushed around. He wasn't afraid to let the tax collectors know what they were doing wrong and the same for the soldiers. No, he would call a spade a spade. He took some of the leaders of the Pharisees out behind the woodshed and let them have the what for. He wasn't afraid of them. He even took on the king, telling the king it wasn't right that he take his brother's wife for himself. He was no pushover, and definitely not a people pleaser. He apparently had self-confidence to spare.

But when it came to the Messiah, it was a different story. He only saw himself as unworthy to be even around Jesus. He had the privilege of being the spokesman, the herald for Jesus. He was the very one predicted several hundred years ago, by Malachi and Isaiah. His whole purpose in life, was to prepare the way for the Messiah, but to actually meet Him would be an honor he felt he didn't deserve. He did not consider himself worthy of even loosing Jesus' sandal strap. With his head bowed, he would consider it an honor to just touch his feet. He would never look him in the eye.

All this, because John knew he was a sinner. He was not worthy to speak to Jesus, much less look Him in the eye. Maybe he lived out in the wilderness, but that didn't mean sin didn't find him. He struggled just like everyone else. Just because you remove visible signs of temptation, doesn't mean the temptation is removed. How easily John could have given in to it. He could have thought he was hot stuff. He was popular. He was talented. And he was the spokesman for the Messiah, but these didn't go to his head.

Instead, you can see his attitude toward Jesus when Jesus approaches him to be baptized. Now, we will use John's perception to get a good understanding of Jesus for ourselves. He knows Jesus is the holy One of God. This is the king of kings. This is the one whose way he has been preparing. The Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the whole world.

This is the one the magi came to visit, that Herod had wanted to kill when He was still a child. This is the one promised since Adam and Eve, and every Israeli mother hoped her child would be. This is the One the whole Old Testament is pointing to. This is the One who created the heavens and the earth. How much more can I say? He knew this is the Almighty God standing there, requesting to be baptized.

When the Father and the Holy Spirit reveal themselves right after the baptism, John probably wasn't a bit surprised. He knew who this was. This is God in the flesh. The Father speaks, the Son stands there, and the Holy Spirit descends on Him. What an amazing thing to see, and yet completely expected.

Is that what we see when we think of Jesus? Do we see Jesus as the Almighty God who has become flesh? Or do we see Him as a peer, maybe only a notch or two better than us? In our effort to see Him as our friend, do we bring Him down?

And do we see ourselves as John saw himself? John was no people pleaser. He loved people, but he loved them enough to tell them what they needed to hear-even if they didn't want to hear it. He took his calling very seriously, and served his neighbor well. And yet, he knew he was a sinner. Everything he did was tainted by his sinfulness. He was desperate for forgiveness. He knew he was helpless without it.

And then the day comes. Jesus makes a beeline to John. He leaves Galilee to go to Jordan to see John. He says to John, "Baptize me," and John is floored. Think about what this is like. It's like Albert Einstein registering for a Jr High math course and saying to the teacher, "Teach me everything I need to know about math." Or like Bill Gates sitting in a seminar on how to make money. This is the one whose holiness will be given to John, and Jesus is saying, "Treat me like any one of these other sinners."

No wonder John objected at first. But then Jesus said "To fulfill all righteousness," and then John knew this needed to be done. In order that others could become righteous, Jesus needed to be baptized. In order that Jesus' death could accomplish anything for sinners, He needed to be baptized for sinners.

And here we have the bridge I hinted at to get us from how we see ought to see ourselves and how we ought to see Him to how we ought to see ourselves in Him. It's in the Jordan River. Not a bridge over the Jordan, but a bridge through it.

The Jordan was a normal river. Fish and other aquatic life would find their home in it. Little boys would skip stones across it. It would flood during the rainy season. And yet it was no ordinary river. It seemed to have an intelligence. When the Israelites crossed over it to enter the Promised Land, the river must have known the very presence of God was stepping into it. As soon as the priests holding the Ark of the Covenant touched the water, it stood at attention about 15 miles up river, at the town of Adam, the Hebrew word for man. It's like the river along with all humanity recognized the presence of God, and stopped everything it was doing to pay Him honor. Everyone along the Jordan had to take note, something has happened to the River.

Now the river is being called on again, this time for the baptism of that same God. Not only having some kind of intelligence, it has a transferal quality about it. Jesus will step into it, and He will leave His righteousness and pick up our sinfulness. We will step into it, leave our sinfulness, and pick up His righteousness.

The Jordan still does that today, although not in a literal sense, nor did it literally do that when Jesus stepped into it.

You may recall the analogy I had used last year. It's like we are covered with blood sucking bugs and we step into the river. They let loose of us and then are drawn to Him. He is like a magnet for those bugs. We lose all of our sin, and then He picks it all up. We are washed clean and He takes on the deadly condition. He is baptized into our sin, and we are baptized into His righteousness. He will go to the cross and eternal damnation, carrying all of our sin that had been so-to-speak dumped into the Jordan when you were baptized, and you will proceed to an eternity of glory because you picked up His righteousness when you were in the water.

Again, of course this didn't literally happen this way, not literally. None of us were baptized in the Jordan, and the Jordan that we did have, that is, ordinary water out of the tap attached to the powerful Word of God, was probably just splashed on our head.

Now, you see the bridge. Your baptism is the bridge from seeing yourself as you are as a lost sinner and seeing Him as the Holy and spotless lamb of God to seeing yourself as you are seen in Jesus, as Holy and spotless as Jesus is.

Now, when we hear the words of the Father, "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased, we will know, just as I have said many times before, it's not just Him, it's you. The Father says that about you. The pleasure He has from His Son is said about you, because He has given you His identity.

Another way of describing this is the way it's done in the hymn "God's own child, I gladly say it." He unites with us. We will sing it for the closing, and I want you to think about the words. Hymns can either be sung to God or to each other. This one is mostly sung to our spiritual enemies, sin death and the devil. We sing it to each other as a congregation so we can encourage each other with the words, but it is even better sung individually, in a time when we are feeling assaulted by these enemies. I'm going to sing the stanza directed to Satan as a solo. I won't stand facing you, nor the altar when I sing it. Rather turned away from the altar and facing out, I will sing it at Satan. "Satan, hear this proclamation, I am baptized into Christ. Drop your ugly accusation, I am not so soon enticed. Now that to the font I've traveled, all you might has come unraveled and against your tyranny, God my Lord unites with me." That's how we are seen in Him.

AMEN