I once heard a pastor relate the story of a conversation he had with a fellow passenger on a lengthy transcontinental flight. The pastor struck up a friendly dialogue with the man sitting next him. “What do you do for a living?” the man asked. The pastor shared that he had been in the ministry for many years, spoke of some of the specific blessings and challenges he had experienced, and then asked the man what his profession was. “I’m an actor,” the man replied. Knowing that acting can be a difficult and brutal industry to break into, the pastor inquired, “Have you had any success in that field?” The man answered, “Yes, I’ve had a pretty good experience so far.”

Afterward, when this fellow passenger got up from his seat, a lady nearby leaned over to the pastor and said, “What an opportunity, for you to get to sit next to him!” The pastor, not understanding the woman’s excitement, asked, “Why? Who is he?” The woman looked at him in disbelief and then simply said, “That is Tom Cruise.”

A Remarkably Unremarkable Man

Imagine sharing personal space with one of the most famous Hollywood stars in history, and not even being aware of the significance of the encounter! Yet, the people of Jesus’s day had an infinitely more momentous opportunity to rub shoulders with Immanuel himself. The town’s people watched Jesus grow up in Nazareth, and the Jewish leaders sat and visited with the young boy Jesus about religious questions in the temple. All the while, however, many of those with whom Jesus interacted had no idea that they were in the presence of the Messiah himself!

Among those who knew Jesus—or at least knew of Jesus—before Jesus began his public ministry, was a man named John. John was actually a member of Jesus’s own extended family. You see, a few months before Jesus’s own miraculous birth there was another remarkable birth. The baby—born to faithful Zachariah and Elizabeth—has come to be known as John the Baptist.

Despite this remarkable beginning to John’s life, and despite his own remarkable ministry which followed, it appears John did not recognize Jesus as the Messiah until the eventful day when Jesus came to be baptized by John. Just as the prophet Isaiah had described centuries beforehand, there was nothing about Jesus’s physical appearance or build that was particularly striking, or that would even lead anyone to take a second look at him (Isa. 53:2). Jesus was a remarkably unremarkable man, in many ways.

Wowed by the Son of God

It is with this backdrop that we then find Jesus coming to John in the wilderness to be baptized by him. As Matthew records in his gospel, John is so in shock that he initially even refuses Jesus’s request, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” (Matt. 3:14). When Jesus insists, however, John obliges him. Matthew is clearly in awe himself as he recounts the events that follow:

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