The Servant Heart of Jesus
Hey Family!
Welcome to evening three of our Walk with Jesus. Can you still feel the dust from Israel on your feet as we imagined today to have a front row seat and watch Jesus get baptized and perform miracles?!
Kids, take a minute to remind your family about Jesus’s baptism, the miracles he performed, and how he even fed thousands of people! Today was quite a day at VBS!
Today we learned something about Jesus that was unlike anything these people had ever been taught about what it means to be a King and a God. What Jesus taught the people and what we read in the Bible is a much different life that what most people would teach. He tells us the first shall be last and the greatest in the Kingdom of God is the one who is most willing to serve others. He led by example what it means to serve and not be served. Today we read about Jesus’s baptism in Matthew 3:13-17 which took place before he began ministering to people. He led by example what it means to serve and not be served.
Have you ever wondered why Jesus was baptized? Parents, take a minute to discuss with your children or child what you know or believe about baptism and maybe share your experience of your own baptism if you have one. There are many ways baptism is practiced today and there are some different beliefs about it, but when we look at the meaning of baptism, we see symbols of baptism throughout the entire Bible.
Baptism means to be immersed or fully consumed and in the context of following Jesus it means we are making a commitment to believe he truly is God, and we are trusting him with our life. In the Old Testament we often hear about this as being “set-apart” or consecrated. In the book of Exodus, God tell the Israelites that they are a treasured possession, and they are supposed to live “set-apart” or different than everyone else around them. He says the same thing in the book of Leviticus and then later in the New Testament again we read how we are supposed to live set-apart for God.
Baptism is a “setting apart”, but to the people in the day of Jesus, it meant they had to either choose the way of Jesus or the way of Caesar. Today we call the way of Caesar “the way of the world”. The way of the world is different than the way of Jesus. If one of Caesars soldiers decided to follow the way of Jesus and Caesar found out about it, that solider would most likely be killed. How special is it that we don’t have to worry about something like that in America!! Caesar wanted complete allegiance from people, meaning he wanted his people to be completely loyal to him, but that’s exactly what God wants from us. He wants our entire heart and when we choose baptism, we are choosing to walk away from ourselves and walk into an incredible life following the ways of Jesus!
New life comes out of water. In the beginning of the Bible, God brings forth land out of the water and it became good land for humans to live in and prosper. Noah and the flood is a story of God purifying the Earth from a lot of evil and out of the waters of that flood was to come something much better.
When a mother gives birth to her child, that baby comes out of the water of the mother’s belly and comes into our world as a special new life. When Jesus was baptized, he showed us that the life we were meant for comes only from trusting God with our whole life and we will find all the joy and peace we need when we do that.
As we journeyed on today, we saw how after Jesus’s baptism, he was first led by the spirit into the wilderness to spend time learning to trust the Father, but then after those 40 days he began serving, or what we learned today as ministry. If you remember, yesterday we talked about Jesus being in Jerusalem for Passover as a young boy. The Passover was a celebration time each year when the Jewish people would gather and remember God delivered the Israelites out of the slavery of Egypt and how he brought them through the waters of the Red Sea on a journey to a much better place that was called the Promise Land.
Do you see how God freed these people from a very sad way of living through water into a much different, more joyful and peaceful life? Can you see how that ties into what we just learned baptism represents?
This is how God has served us and this is how we know we are designed to serve others.
God wants to free us from our sin that makes us feel like we are trapped into a much different way of living by following him. Pretty amazing! The reason Jesus was in Jerusalem was because the Jewish people took time once a year to remember how God did this for their ancestors. Each year at Passover, they would share in what’s called a Sader meal. Each cup reminds them of each step God cared for and delivered the people through their exodus from Egypt.
The first cup is the Cup of Sanctification. Exodus 6:6a. “I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians.” When Jesus was baptized, we see God once again reminding us how only he can bring us into the life we are created for.
The second cup is the Cup of Deliverance. Exodus 6:6b. “And I will deliver you from their bondage…”
Just like we read today, Jesus shows us how he is the one true God, go from village to village, healing people from the disease that has taken over their lives.
The third cup is the Cup of Redemption. Exodus 6:6c. “And I will redeem you will and outstretched arm.”
We also read today from Matthew 14 when Jesus fed the five thousand people. Jesus had withdrawn to a quiet place, but when he saw the people, the hurting, the diseased, and the hungry, he had compassion on them, healed them and fed them.
The fourth cup is the Cup of Praise. Exodus 6:7. “I will take you as my people, and I will be your God…”
As we journey towards the end of our week at VBS as we have been “Walking with Jesus”, we see that God’s desire is that we would be just a committed to him as he is to us.
Do you see how Jesus teaches the people that by following him, we will find freedom and redemption just like the Israelites did from Egypt and Pharaoh? Tomorrow we will see how even up to his death on the cross, Jesus teaches us the way to true life, but it first begins with committing to God to serve as he has served us.
Questions to answer as a family.
John the Baptist called the people to “prepare the way” for the Messiah who was coming, but Jesus said that he baptizes with “water and fire”. Water and fire are two elements in the Bible that can represent purification and life.
1. Now, seeing that even Jesus, the Son of God, was baptized to signify his commitment to the Father, how can we grow together as a family into showing Jesus our love to him by how we live our lives with the full commitment that baptism represents?
The Passover meal reminded the Jewish people who God was and still is. It was a time to realign their hearts with what they’ve already seen God do and to remind them to still see the moments of how he still desires to set us free and bring us into a brand-new life.
2. What are some ways that you as a family have seen God serve you as he delivered you from trouble and provided for you in times of need?
*Here’s something that’s important us to realize!
The delivery of the Israelites out of Egypt is quite a wild story. The way God delivered his people doesn’t quite make sense to us as humans. Do you know anyone who can literally make a dry path through a huge body of water?? That’s pretty wild!!
We need to realize we have a very narrow way of thinking and God is God for a reason. When we are seeking after God to help, deliver us, or provide for us, often we can miss God doing something because we have already made our best guess as to how he should do it. Let’s seek to be open to however God wants to interact with us and let us pray to him to ask to have more faith to believe that can and will provide all we need.
