Listening to the Voice that Names Us
A Sermon on Luke 3:21-22: Listening to the Voice that Names Us
Introduction
This passage is about more than baptism. It’s about the very real human experience we all have, and I believe this passage has been preserved for us to save us from a life of emptiness, hopelessness, and unmet longing.
As we start, I want to open with two stories, one from a movie and the other from one of the world’s greatest music producers. I typically don’t speak about movies because I don’t want to be a spoiler, but you’ll have to forgive me if I spoil the ending of Citizen Kane with you.
Citizen Kane is about Charles Foster Kane, who has acquired all that the world says should make a person happy—wealth, power, influence, and fame. Yet, in the final moments of Citizen Kane, as his life ebbs away in a mansion filled with treasures, he utters a single word: “Rosebud.”
It's cryptic at first, but as the story unfolds, we learn that “Rosebud” was the name of a childhood sled—a symbol of the simple love, safety, and belonging he experienced before his life became consumed with ambition and loss. Despite all his accomplishments, Kane’s dying words reveal a haunting truth: his deepest longing wasn’t for the things he gained but for the love and identity he lost (or ignored or overlooked).
He thought peace, love, and contented belonging were achieved externally.
Rick Rubin, the incredibly gifted music producer, recounts a similar internal impulse and shared his perspective in an interview. He recalls his experience when the Beastie Boys’ album Licensed to Ill became the number-one album in the country. A coworker called Rubin and asked, “How do you feel? You have the number-one album in the US!” And Rubin replied, “I’ve never been more unhappy in my life.”
He shares how this moment caused him to realize something profound about the pursuit of success, “We mistakenly think some kind of outward success is gonna change something in us, and it does not. It may make life more comfortable, but it doesn’t change who we are, and any hole in ourselves that we’re hoping to fill does not get filled. If you spend 20 years of your life working towards a goal that you think is gonna solve everything and then you finally achieve what you’ve been trying to do for 20 years, nothing changes—that’s when you get hopeless.”
This sentiment mirrors what many of us feel. We feel a deep need within ourselves. We want to satisfy that longing within us. We erroneously go about it. We strive for approval, success, or for something outside of ourselves that will make us whole, but as Rubin and Kane both learned, those external markers don’t fill the deeper, inner void.
Before Jesus Does Anything
Jesus hears a voice that names him in Jordan – you are my Son and with you I am well pleased, but it’s not long before the noise of the world tries to drown it out. In the very next scene in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus is in the wilderness where the tempter challenges him and says, “Prove it.” If you really are God’s son and beloved, turn these stones into bread. Jump from the temple. Bow down for the kingdoms of the world.”
Prove it. Do something more. “It’s not enough for God to speak it and you believe it and live with it. You must do something extra.”
That’s our struggle too, isn’t it? On one hand, we hear the voice of God saying, “With you, I am well pleased.” On the other hand, we hear another voice that says, “Not so fast. Prove it.” Show us what you can do. Show the them that you are worthy of love. And so, we throw ourselves into the work of earning approval. We measure our value by our successes, relationships or the things we accumulate.
This is such an easy trap to fall into. Take the season of Lent, for example. How often do we treat it like a performance review? We fast, pray, or deny ourselves—not to draw closer to God, but to prove we’re serious, to make up for the ways we think we’ve fallen short. It’s as if we are trying to convince ourselves—and maybe God—that we’re lovable after all.
There’s nothing you can do or leave undone that will change God’s love for you. I think within most of us there is a low hum of approval seeking.
The voice at Jesus’ baptism speaks louder than the noise inside of us and the noise in the world. The voice from heaven is not saying, “Prove it.” It’s saying, “You have nothing to prove. You are already beloved.”
Living From Love, Not For It
Think about how this shaped Jesus’ ministry. He didn’t spend his life chasing approval. He wasn’t afraid of rejection or failure. He didn’t heal people to prove his worth or preach to show he was this great orator that was worth the follow. Everything he did flowed from the deep well of knowing he was loved.
And that’s the invitation for us. To live not for love but from it. To let God’s voice name us and claim us.
This idea is a thread that goes through the entire Bible. We are not defined by the things we do, the people we know, or the titles we carry. As Ephesians 1:4-6 reminds us, “God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world . . . destined to be adopted as children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of God’s will, to the praise of his glorious grace that is freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.”
Before Jesus did anything he was beloved, and before the dawn of the very first day, God chose us. Before we made any moves or decisions, God loved us. Our identity is not based on how well we perform or live up to a standard. Our identity is from the fact that God has called us “beloved, with you I am well pleased.
The prophet Isaiah (43:1), speaks these words, “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.” These words echo the reality of God’s deep, personal delight and affection for us.
I want you to think about someone special right now. You delight in their presence. When you talk to them on the phone, it lifts you up. When you know that you are going to see them, it fills you with happiness and joy. You delight in being in their presence.
God delights in you. God loves your presence, your personality, your thoughts, and feelings. God treasurers time with you.
Let that sit with you for a bit and notice how it makes you feel. Do you recoil from that idea? Does it seem unlikely? Does it feel true?
We are God’s people. We belong to God. There is nothing that can take away our identity. Even Jesus said, “No one or nothing can snatch us from God’s hands.”
And in 1 John 3:1, we are reminded, “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.”
This is our foundation—the love of God that names us as God’s very own, not because of what we’ve done, but because of who God is. We are God’s children, called into a lasting, endearing relationship with God, based solely on this universe’s greatest power and force –love.
Do You Believe It?
So, let me ask you: Do you believe God is well pleased with you? Not because of what you’ve done or haven’t done, but because of who you are?
You may answer that question like a man in the gospels did, “Yes, I believe it. Lord, help my unbelief.”
For some, this is the hardest truth to accept. We’ve spent so much time striving, achieving, earning, and measuring. But the good news of Jesus’ baptism and yours is this: you don’t have to. The voice of God isn’t waiting for you to get it all right. The voice of God is already speaking. “I’m well pleased in you.”
Lay down the guilt. Don’t start with striving. Start with the voice that says, “You are beloved.” Let it shape your prayers, your inner thoughts, and let it crush the inner critic that puts you down, that says, “Prove it.” And when a voice says, “Prove it,” refuse it. The God who opened the heavens at the Jordan has already spoken – let that voice name you and claim you.
