So why was he baptized? Was he doing it to identify with his own death, burial, and resurrection?
We're going to look at that this morning. Now turn with me if you would to Hebrews chapter number 6.
We're going to come back to Matthew chapter 3 in just a bit. Go to Hebrews chapter 6.
I want you to notice a couple things. First and foremost, I want you to notice that baptism by immersion.
When we say baptism by immersion, we're referring to the fact that someone gets fully placed into the water.
They're fully immersed in the water, fully taken out. Baptism by immersion was not instituted until the latter end of the Old Testament going into the new.
And so we don't see explicitly individuals being baptized in the Old Testament. We don't see local congregations and believers.
We don't see David baptizing people or the prophets immersing people into water individually.
We don't really see that in the Old Testament. But we do see baptism in the Old Testament because John the Baptist is considered Old Testament.
In fact, he's the last of the Old Testament prophets, the Bible tells us.
And everything up until the death of Jesus Christ, according to the Bible, is actually referred to as the Old Testament.
Now, in our physical Bibles, our Bible is split into Old and New Testament.
And for us, the New Testament begins at the book of Matthew.
But when you follow what that means to have Old Covenant, New Covenant, Old Testament, New Testament, the New Testament does not begin until the testator dies.
And the testator is referring to Jesus Christ.
So when Jesus Christ was crucified on the cross, the Bible says at that point, the Old Testament ceased and the New Testament began.
And in fact, you know, if you really want to get detailed about this, the Old Testament doesn't begin in Genesis.
Though we have New Testament beginning in Genesis in our physical Bibles as a point of reference for us,
the Old Testament didn't begin until Moses sprinkled the blood on the book and on the people.
That's when the Old Covenant was actually established in the Old Testament.
And it was completed at the death of Jesus Christ.
So picture this, Jesus Christ, John the Baptist, the disciples as they're ministering, they're actually ministering in the Old Testament still.
That's why you see Jesus telling people to go offer the sacrifices, go offer the gift, go present themselves before the priest.
Because these were still ordinances, institutions, and people that were still in place in the Old Testament because that's what they were in.