And a voice from heaven said, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased!”Behold, a voice out of the heavens said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”And lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.and lo, a voice out of the heavens, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.
15 sermons cite this verse
… book. This one who came, this one John baptized, this one whose life and ministry was ignited with power by the Holy Spirit, this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased, said the father at his baptism. This one who hit the floor running and ministered all over the country. This is the one who ultimately was crucified and buried, left to die. What will amaze you in the gospel by Mark is that sometime the same people who followed him and said to him how much he meant to them were the same ones who later yelled, crucify him, crucify him. If you've lived long enough on this old planet, you know how people can turn. The same ones who once were for you were later against you. I thought of that when I read the true story of Governor Hoy when he was governor of North Carolina or North Carolina. He decided to travel to the western part of the state and visit some of the country folk in the Blue Ridge Mountains. …
… And what did it say? It said, this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. And we heard this voice which came from heaven when we were with him on the holy mountain. You wanna underline that, on the holy mountain. And so we have, I love this, the prophetic word confirmed, which you do well to heed as a light that shines in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. Now, every message in this series, if you've been paying attention, has come from the epistles of 1 or 2 Peter. And so we end here as Peter, looking back, is talking about one of certainly the highest moments of his entire life, when Jesus took him, as well as James and John, on top of a mountain. And there, you could say, showed his true colors, right? In the incarnation, we find God wrapping himself in flesh. But for just a moment, just a sneak peek on this mountain, Jesus showed what truly he was made of. …
… River and he was baptized by his cousin John. The Holy Spirit came upon him in the form of a dove and God said, this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. Pretty epic moment. We could definitely call that a blessed moment. And what happens after that? Immediately the Bible says, Jesus went into the wilderness to be tested by the devil for 40 days and 40 nights. So after the dove came the devil. After the blessing came the attack. That's often what happens in our lives. The devil sizes us up and he looks for our vulnerabilities. And everybody has a weakness or weaknesses. And so the devil's sizing up David. And David was setting himself up for this. Bringing me to point number two. The sins we commit today may come back to haunt us tomorrow. Again, the sins we commit today may come back to haunt us tomorrow. Here's the thing. David didn't just fall into this sin. He had been setting the stage for it. 2 Samuel 5 tells us that in direct disobedience to God, David took concubines after he became king. And in Deuteronomy 17, it says a king should never do this. He should never have multiplied wives or his heart will turn away from God. And that's exactly what was happening to David. His heart was turning away from God slowly but surely. This is a man who was allowing lust to consume his life. Now he might have justified it and said, well, I have a strong sexual drive. And if I have all these women, …
… John the Baptist was there that day Jesus came, and the Spirit came down like a dove descending upon Jesus. God the Father spoke from heaven, said, this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. Moreover, John the Baptist, when the Pharisees came to him, rebuked them, confronted them. Don't think that you're something special because you're sons of Abraham. God can make people like you out of these rocks. I mean, he just excoriated them. So what are they doing there, these disciples of John? Well, you know, not everybody who goes to a church is the best representative of that church. we're John's disciples. Well, John had a lot of disciples. He preached for months at the Jordan River. It says all from Jerusalem and Judea came to hear him preach. So that means if he's there for months, they weren't all there of John's disciples on the one day that Jesus showed up at the Jordan River and the heavens opened and John the Baptist said, behold the Lamb of God. So there were a lot of different Jewish people that heard John preach a message of repentance who did not know the fullness of Christ. In fact, there's a group of them that seem to survive into the ministry of Paul the Apostle. When Paul was at Ephesus of all places in Asia Minor, he goes to Ephesus and he sees a group of disciples and he says, have you received the Holy Spirit since you believed? And their answer was very interesting. …
… And then a voice came from heaven. You are my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. You are my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. Now, I want you just to notice how Mark writes this. He says, he saw the heavens parting. Now, the other gospel writers use different words. They just say the heavens were open. Mark says the heavens parted, and it's a very strong word. It literally means the heavens were torn apart, torn open, rent, like you take a garment and rip it. The heavens were torn open. Do you remember in the book of Isaiah, the prophet looks up to heaven and says, oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down. This is God answering Isaiah's prayer. The Son of God has come down. The heavens are torn open. And the Spirit comes down in a form of a dove while the Father says, you are my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. This is the Father and the Son making a confirmation of Jesus Christ and his mission. …
… the moment that Jesus had that must have been indescribably intimate with his heavenly father, right after Jesus was baptized. In Matthew chapter three, verse 17, a voice from heaven, This is the father speaking to his son. The father says, this is my son. Publicly, God declares the sonship of Jesus. And then he said, this is my son whom I love. But he didn't stop there. God the father went on to say, with him, I am well pleased. Not only do I love him, and I do, but I'm pleased with the way that he's living. So what kind of church do I wanna pastor? Everything in me, I want to pastor a church that pleases God. That raises the question, if we're gonna be a church that pleases God, what kind of church pleases God? And the answer is, this is obvious, but here's the answer. A church that pleases God is made up of people who are pleasing God. Guess what that does for you? …
… His beloved is a clue. This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. Okay, so he's not just his son. He's his beloved son. You know, beloved son. This is my beloved son in whom I'm well pleased. He's like Joseph to Jacob. He's his beloved son. He's his favorite son. They sent somebody that he had deep emotional attachment to. They sent him. He also sent him to them last saying, they will respect my son. They're not that bad. They will respect my son. Verse 7, but those vine dressers said among themselves, oh, goody, this is the heir. Come let us kill him and the inheritance will be ours. Which shows you what their intention was in the first place. There are a lot of people who grin in your face and smile and act like they're with you, but all the while they're plotting. They don't want to be like you, they want to be you. They want to be you. They want to be you. …
… He was there when Jesus was baptized. And God the Father audibly said, this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. And guess what? God the Father was just as well pleased as Jesus Christ hung on the cross. So what we believe matters. Because listen, if we don't believe Jesus took on a body, well, downstream, it doesn't really matter what we do with our body, does it? And in the church then, and in the church now, were people justifying and rationalizing and explaining sin. It doesn't matter how I live, because I have thoughts of goodness towards the man upstairs. I can love God and do whatever I want, is ultimately the reason for this theological excursion into Never Never Land, where pixie dust and happy feeling can make you, no, there's no place like home. Get out of here. This is who Jesus is. And I think deep down, we know if he is who he says he is, we then need to do what he says we ought to do. …
This creed was birthed 1,700 years ago this month. And on its 1,700th anniversary, I thought it was appropriate for us to spend a couple of weeks trying to understand what does it teach and why does it matter. This is the most important distillation of the Christian faith that we have. So the Apostles' Creed comes earlier, doesn't go into nearly as much detail. The Nicene Creed has shaped Christianity since the 4th century. and has an opportunity to continue to shape our lives today. It is something that all branches of Christianity have stacked hands on, or nearly all. Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholics, mainline Protestants, and most evangelical Protestants would say this summarizes and distills down what we believe. 90 seconds it takes to read the Nicene Creed. In 90 seconds, you can summarize our theological understanding of who God is and how God became flesh in Jesus and who the Holy Spirit is and what the church is meant to be and what our ultimate hope is. …
… That was an expression of obedience to the fear of the Lord. You turned to God and you acknowledged God, who said, this is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Listen to Him. When you turned to Christ, you honored God by honoring His Son. Jesus said, if you honor Me, you honor My Father. And at the moment you turned to God through Christ, you became wise. You became wise, because 1 Corinthians 1.30 says, Christ Jesus became to us wisdom from God. You passed from death to life, but you also passed from foolishness to wisdom. The world doesn't recognize that. They don't want us. They don't want our wisdom. It's not natural, because the natural man cannot understand the things of God. They are foolishness to him. His mind is dark, his heart is dark, because he loves his sin. But when you come to Christ, you come to wisdom. Listen to what Paul said in 2 Timothy 3, 15, talking to Timothy, and he says that, Timothy, from childhood, you have known the sacred writings, the Scripture, which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. …
… came over the cloud saying, This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. Hear him. And when the disciples heard it, they fell on their faces and were greatly afraid. But Jesus came and touched them and said, Arise and do not be afraid. And when they had lifted up their eyes, they saw no one but Jesus only. Now, as they came down from the mountain, and Jesus commanded them saying, keep it to yourself. May the Lord bless the reading of his word. I need you to understand that this complete pericope or passage in the 17th chapter of Matthew is represented by two powerful episodes. There is the one that I've read to you where the disciples are on the mountain with Jesus, and I submit that is they have been called to a moment of celebration. To be sure, Jesus has had something in mind, a special gathering. he has not invited everybody he has invited Peter, James and John and they go to the mountain for this special special occasion a special occasion like this is a special occasion he calls them to the mountain and he instructs them what he does is he summons what a powerful notion he summons from the allies of history the lawgiver and the prophet. …
… We see it at the baptism of Jesus when the Father speaks audibly from heaven, this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased, and elsewhere, this is my beloved Son, listen to Him. Nicodemus in the third chapter of John's gospel coming to Jesus at night and saying, Teacher, we know that you are a teacher sent from God, or you would not be able to do the works that you do. So that Jesus' miracles, His signs that He gives, reflect God's attestation, confirmation, and corroboration of the truth claims of Jesus. And so Jesus said, hey, I'm not just bearing witness to myself that I am the light of the world, but my Father who sent me also gives His testimony to that truth.
… And while he was speaking, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and suddenly a voice came out of the cloud, saying, This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Hear Him." And when the disciples heard it, they fell on their faces and were greatly afraid. Not only do they see the transformation of Jesus, but now they look and hear Moses and Elijah having a private conversation with Jesus. The Bible doesn't tell us what they were talking about. But remember, the Scriptures say that the Law and the Prophets all speak of the coming of the Messiah, and He fulfills the Law and the Prophets. And now here comes the law and the prophet, the leader of the school of prophets, Elijah, the mediator of the law, Moses, and they're talking privately with Jesus. Let me guess. They were discussing what was awaiting Him in Jerusalem. The law and the prophets were saying, set your face like a flint. Fulfill your vocation. This is the work of the Messiah. …
… weren't present when the heavens opened and God declared with a voice that was audible at the time of Jesus' baptism, this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. Nicodemus got it. Remember when Nicodemus came to Jesus at night and he said, teacher, we know that you are sent by God or you would not be able to do the things that you were doing Nicodemus understood the function of miracle. I hear people say that the miracles of the New Testament prove the existence of God. No, they don't. God demonstrates His existence long before a single miracle is ever performed by anybody. The function of the miracle is not to prove the existence of God, but it is to demonstrate and authenticate a messenger of God. That's why Jesus said, if you don't believe Me for what I say, believe Me for My works that I do. but here he doesn't talk about God. He talks about the Father, and he says a string of contrasts here. Notice this. He said, I know where I came from, and I know where I'm going. You don't know where I come from. …
… occasion the voice from God was audible. Remember that when the dove came upon Jesus at His baptism, and the heavens opened, and the voice was heard from heaven saying, this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. So that God gave audible testimony to His Son. Three times the New Testament tells us, as I've mentioned before, that God speaks audibly. And in every one of those occasions, what is God saying? He's calling attention to the identity of Jesus as His Son. This is My Son, the voice from heaven says. Hear Him. Listen to Him. But even on that occasion, not everyone who was present understood the words, because we were told some thought it was thunder. That is, to those who did not have the ears to hear the voice of God, that voice was muffled, lest they hear. But those whose hearts were open to the things of God heard distinctly what the Father had said, this is My Son. So, so far we have John the Baptist bearing witness. …