Imagine This:

[00:00:00] In the name of Jesus. [00:00:01] Amen. [00:00:04] At the end of the Old Testament reading, God tells the people, I'm telling you about something that hasn't happened yet. [00:00:19] You can't see it yet. He says, behold, the former things have come to pass. Those things are plain to see. They already happened. You saw them happen. There they are in front of your eyes. [00:00:32] New things I now declare before they spring forth, I tell you of them. [00:00:41] They haven't sprung forth. You can picture a little things are going to spring forth. [00:00:45] They haven't yet. And I'm going to tell you about them. [00:00:49] He's letting us know our imagination is going to be engaged in this. Imagine, okay? Just take what I say and though you can't see it because this hasn't happened, imagine. [00:01:06] And then how is he saying what's going to happen? [00:01:11] Oh, he's saying that he'll give his servant to open the eyes that are blind and bring out the prisoners from the dungeon and from the prison, from the darkness. [00:01:23] I am the Lord, that is my name, My glory. I give to no other, nor my praise to carved idols. [00:01:29] Former things have come to pass. But I'm telling you about something new. [00:01:33] Imagine. [00:01:36] We do a lot of imagining. Imagination is incredibly important for us every day, all right? And first I just want to pull out of that word the word image. Right? Imagination. What is imagination? It's. [00:01:52] Well, it's. We're imaginating, we're drawing images in our minds, all right? [00:02:05] And we'll also just point out that's what Matthew is doing in his gospel, okay? He's wanting you to call something to mind. He's saying, picture this. [00:02:18] Have this image in your mind. [00:02:21] One of the ways that he says that is behold. [00:02:25] Behold means look. [00:02:28] It means imagine, alright? And then imagine this. [00:02:33] You know, just look. Look at it. You're not, you, you can't. You weren't there. We're not there now. [00:02:39] But he's telling you to look in your mind. [00:02:42] When Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water and behold, look. [00:02:48] Imagine it. The heavens were open to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and resting, coming to rest on him. And behold, look. A voice from heaven said, this is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased. [00:03:03] So engage your minds with this. And not just now, but later today. [00:03:08] Call this to mind again and picture it. All the parts of it. [00:03:13] Have this image in your mind. [00:03:17] We do all kinds of imaginating all the time. [00:03:26] In a prideful moment. [00:03:28] When you're thinking about how well, things are going. [00:03:32] Have been going and could go how? Well, you could accomplish whatever you're endeavoring to do. [00:03:42] You might imagine what success looks like. [00:03:45] You might. Whatever you're building or accomplishing in your mind might come to fruition. And you can see yourself there and maybe receiving praise or that kind of thing. [00:03:58] Or in another kind of prideful moment when somebody's not recognizing you or giving you the credit that you deserve, you might imagine what you really deserve, what they can't see, but you can. [00:04:20] And if that tears you up, you might imagine yourself taking revenge on somebody or getting them back. Or you start to imagine things that you could say to cut them down or to. [00:04:35] In a covetous moment, maybe we imagine what we could have that we don't have, that we wish we had, think about what they had and think, why can't I have that? [00:04:49] Or why can't I have my health back? Or feel whole or alive in a restless moment. [00:05:01] Might imagine a future that would bring you peace. [00:05:05] We imagine all the time. [00:05:10] All the time we imagine. [00:05:13] And that imagination is fed by whatever comes in. [00:05:18] Right? So why are you. [00:05:25] Let's say this. Let's just skip to the kind of. More toward the point. [00:05:31] I grew up watching Jimmy Stewart movies, and not just Jimmy Stewart, but that's what I think of when I think of like a wholesome. Here's a good example kind of old movie. You know, Jimmy Stewart seems like. And maybe you could correct me, maybe I've only seen like three. I can't even call them all to mind, you know, but just like, play such wholesome characters with good lessons where you end up feeling like, yeah, I should. And not just Gary Cooper and others. [00:05:57] I don't know. You watch a movie like Sergeant York and. Or, you know, where you get a. A character playing a humble guy and you see that and an image is presented in your mind, not just of the movie. It's not all about action. It's not all about the excitement of what's going on. [00:06:20] It's about character. [00:06:22] You're given somebody to look up to. [00:06:26] You see in someone humility or courage or faithfulness, self control. [00:06:34] And it makes you want to be like that. [00:06:38] There's an image there that's to be taken in. [00:06:43] And that image can transform your life. There are other things that can transform your life for the worse. [00:06:50] That's why bad company corrupts good morals. [00:06:56] Our surroundings. [00:06:58] Our surroundings have an effect on us that we can't anticipate necessarily, or that we don't think about. So much anymore. [00:07:07] I mean, do we take the same kind of care in curating our surroundings and the surroundings of our children that we did in the past? [00:07:21] Some of those old movies and old movies aren't all good movies. And you know, maybe my parents were just doing a good job curating my movies, you know, that I saw. [00:07:30] Right. That's probably the truth. Okay, just let me live in my fantasy where things used to be different, you know, at least recently, I think there's a lot less concern about what the movies are portraying. What image this movie is putting in front of my kids. Is the main character someone to look up to? [00:07:52] Does good win? [00:07:56] Does it pay to be courageous or self effacing or have any of the fruits of the spirit? [00:08:08] What are we putting in front of our children? Not just our children. What are we putting in front of ourselves? [00:08:17] And that's true of movies. Movies is just. That's like the last kind of art that we have left. [00:08:24] You know, it's like, well, that can engage me, you know, I'll enjoy sitting on the couch in front of the TV for a while. So that art form still works. [00:08:34] But I think we've kind of lost attention overall. This is an overgeneralization. But I don't know, art just doesn't mean the same thing to us it did a long time ago. [00:08:51] Books. [00:08:55] All right, so imagination, imagination makes us. [00:09:07] Matthew wants us to imagine Jesus being baptized, wants us to hold that image in our minds because it's an image, not just of something that happened a long time ago. He's not just trying to say like, hey, I want you to understand the facts of Jesus baptism. [00:09:31] This is what happened, so that we can draw some conclusion or know where we're at in the story. [00:09:38] This isn't just kind of leading us along to something else. He's presenting this image to us so that it would transform us. [00:09:52] Look, when Jesus was baptized, the heavens were opened, like whatever separates us from God just split open. [00:10:07] And God came down, his spirit came down. [00:10:11] And then you have to sort of bring into this image everything that the Spirit descending like a dove brings into it, right? So then the imagination that's been trained on God's word and, and immersed in it, you know, that's the idea of scripture, is that we would be immersed in it. The people of Israel certainly were. So when they hear this, they're thinking of the prophets, right? And prophecies like this. [00:10:46] I have put my spirit upon him. [00:10:48] He will bring forth justice to the nations. And they see this picture and it's like the spirit. I will put my spirit upon him. And all these things are coming to mind now about what he's going to do. [00:11:02] God descending to Earth, bringing Earth up, like, which is happening. Is God coming down with this opening of the heavens? Or is Jesus coming up and bringing us with him? [00:11:15] To open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon. These are all images. [00:11:21] And they're images that. [00:11:22] Like, just hearing them doesn't do it. You have to think like, oh, a dungeon. You know, it's like, okay, nobody. No more people in dungeons. [00:11:32] No more dark places. [00:11:34] Right? That's not the point. No more prisoners to imagine ourselves in those places. Like you and I, have we been in dungeons? [00:11:47] Are we in dungeons? [00:11:49] We've been freed from the dungeon, and there are still dungeons left for us to be freed from. [00:11:55] We've come out of the darkness into the light. [00:11:58] If you look, you'll find some more darkness in there, some more dark places where we hide or feel lost in. [00:12:07] These are images for us to live in. They're like the. [00:12:12] A friend just kind of pointed this out to me yesterday. [00:12:17] They're like the wardrobe to Narnia. [00:12:21] Like, this is what CS Lewis is doing in the lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. [00:12:29] There's this world that you can get into, and it doesn't make it imaginary, although it is. It's about images, right? [00:12:38] Okay. [00:12:40] It's that this image is for us to live in. So how do we. How do we live in this image of Jesus? Baptism. Well, we've got some help in the epistle reading. [00:12:54] Don't you know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death. [00:13:00] We were buried, therefore, with Him. So. Okay, so now skip to the burial of Jesus. [00:13:08] We were buried with Him. [00:13:11] See yourself in that image like we're drawn into Jesus own story. [00:13:17] Keep going. [00:13:18] We were buried with him, therefore, by baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like His. [00:13:34] We know that our old self was crucified with Him. There you go. So you see the crucifixion of Jesus. And where should we see ourselves? We live into that story. He draws us into his own story, so that his story is our story, so that our life is in Him. [00:13:51] One who has died has been set free from sin. Now, if we have died with Christ, we believe that we also will live with him. We know that Christ being raised from the dead, will never die again. That's his story, but it's our story too. Death no longer has dominion over him. [00:14:05] For death he died. The death, he died. He died to sin once for all. But the life he lives, he lives to God. So that's your story. You also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Notice he says, consider yourselves like. That's kind of an imaginating way to say it. [00:14:27] So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. [00:14:36] So what story do you imagine for yourself? [00:14:40] What identity do you imagine you have? Or how do you imagine others should see yourself? [00:14:46] How do you see yourself? [00:14:50] What are your goals and dreams? [00:14:53] If you were going to make a movie of your own life, what's the plot? [00:14:59] And what would a happy ending look like? [00:15:02] We do it all the time. [00:15:08] But you know, Scripture has a story for us already. [00:15:12] Scripture has the proper story for us. And it comes to us and it presents a picture to us. [00:15:19] And it's. Well, the point is for us to drop our own story and just live in this story so that we no longer live, but Christ lives in us. So that his story is our story. [00:15:31] So that we consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. [00:15:37] So that. [00:15:39] So that all those things that we imagined at at the beginning, all those things that I mentioned, all those ways of imagining, covetous imagination and prideful imagination, all of that. Like, what's the answer? [00:15:55] Well, it's faith in Jesus, following Him with eyes locked on him and his story and just living in that story. [00:16:04] And so Christ taking us up into his own life and living in and through us. [00:16:10] Thanks be to God. In Jesus name, amen.