Baptism

Pastor Phillips’ Sermon

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

[Pastor is taking a drink of water.] Ahh. That’s good. Water. We need it, don’t we? Especially on a hot summer day when we’re working hard out in the yard and things like that. Did you know that roughly 3/4 of the earth’s surface is covered with water? Did you know that 65% of the human body is water? Did you know that the average adult could go 30 to 40 days without food? And some of us are above average. But the average adult can only go 3 to 5 days without water.

Water is essential to life. And isn’t it interesting that God would take something so common in our everyday life, we use it to drink, we use it to wash our hands, wash our clothes, take a bath, everything, we use it all the time, it’s everywhere we look, and yet it’s essential to life. Isn’t it interesting that God could take something like that and incorporate it into a wonderful blessing and gift that we call baptism?

Water. What a great gift that God has blessed us with. Baptism. Water. The combination. Essential for life. But even more than that, the water in baptism takes on a supernatural quality. This is how Luther describes it, “Baptism is not just plain water but it is water included in God’s command and combined with God’s Word.” What’s supernatural about water? Nothing really. Until it’s, as Luther says, “combined with God’s command, included with God’s command, combined with God’s Word” is life creating life giving Word and the waters of Holy Baptism and the result is that we are born again of water and the Spirit.

This idea of a command sometimes is something we rebel against, even as people with 50 years’ experience in life. We don’t like being told what to do but I want you to think about God’s command to be baptized in this sense: When you were growing up, did you have one of those mothers who, while you were sitting at the table, said, “Drink your milk.” I did. Now why did she do that? Was she just being bossy or trying to tell you what to do? No, your mother loved you and she told you to drink your milk because she wanted you to grow strong and be healthy and to develop properly and all those wonderful things. Was it an option? When your mother looked at you and said, “Drink your milk,” was that an option? Not if you knew what was good for you in our house. That’s right. If Mom told us to do it, we better do it. She’s only 5'1" and there were eight of us but it didn’t matter. It wasn’t an option. And when Jesus tells us to baptize and be baptized, as Christians, we recognize Him as our loving Savior and we know that our Father in heaven is also loving toward us. And so when He commands us to do something, even though we probably are a little resistant to His commands, we know that He loves us. We know that He wouldn’t command us to do anything that isn’t good for us and for our protection.

This is how Jesus commands us concerning baptism. He says in Matthew 28:19, “Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit.” Why obey God? Sometimes we think that way. You know, God’s got these commandments. He has these rules. Why should we obey Him? What is the point? Why should we be baptized? Because we know He loves us. And nothing He commands us will cause us harm, only blessings and good things for our protection and for our good.

The Bible says that God has promises in baptism. And a good place to start looking at those promises is in Acts 2:38 where Peter is preaching to the crowd gathered at Pentecost and you remember Pentecost. That was the wonderful birth of the Christian Church when the Holy Spirit was poured out on the disciples and the crowd gathered because they heard a sound like the rushing of winds and they came together. And people from all over the world heard the wonders of God declared in their native language by these humble disciples who’d never studied those languages. It was a miracle at Pentecost. And as they heard the message of salvation, Peter was telling them, “You crucified Him. You crucified Jesus.” As they heard that powerful message, their hearts were cut to the core and they called out to Peter, “Brothers, what should we do?” And Peter said, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

Later on, the apostle Paul, the great missionary, was speaking about his conversion to Christianity and you know how that story went, too. He was a great enemy of the church and he was persecuting Christians and he had papers from Jerusalem to go and persecute the Christians in Damascus. And as he was making his journey there, a bright light shone from heaven and blinded him. He heard the voice of God speaking to him and he was led by the hand into Damascus. And then a Christian named Ananias came to visit him and he preached the gospel to him and he put his hands out and he said, “Brother Saul, receive your sight,” and something like scales fell from his eyes and, all of a sudden, he could see. And then as Paul had trusted in Christ, Ananias said to him, “And now what are you waiting for? Get up. Be baptized and wash your sins away calling on His name.” In baptism, God promises to wash our sins away and it’s important to note that God’s promise that He makes in baptism is not limited by who’s receiving it, who the person is, whether it’s a woman or a man or a child or an adult or a rich person or a poor person or a good person or a bad person. God’s promise is God’s promise and He always does what He says.

Luther had a funny way of illustrating this. He said, “The sun does not become soiled and impure by shining directly on filth and mud as on gold but it shines as bright on the manure pile as on a white veil.” That’s the way Luther was. Sometimes kind of crude. So, in Luther’s words, whether we are gold or manure, it doesn’t matter. What matters is God’s promise that He makes to us in baptism, to wash our sins away. It’s not just a simple washing of our physical body but a cleansing of our soul. That’s the supernatural aspect of baptism. It uses ordinary water combined with the command of God, included with the Word of God and it washes our soul.

Now you may not quite accept that. You may feel you’re unworthy, that the awful things you know in your heart you’ve done could never be taken away by a simple ceremony with water and you’re right. It isn’t just baptism, the washing with water. It’s what baptism gives us. It conveys to us what Jesus did on the cross, as it says in Romans 6, “Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death. We were, therefore, buried with Him through baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we, too, may live a new life. If we have been united with Him like this in His death, we will certainly also be united with Him in His resurrection.”

You know, I can’t imagine what it was like for Jesus to have those nails pounded through His hands into the wood and through His feet into the wood and to be hung there on the cross, left there to die. And I can’t imagine what it was like for Him when He suffered the fires of hell for us. And I can’t imagine what it was like when He was raised from the dead to life. I can’t imagine all of that. But the Bible tells me that in my baptism, all those things are given to me and I am connected to Jesus in such a way that it’s as if I did them. Because of my baptism, it’s as if I was crucified. It was as if I died on the cross, was buried with Him, raised from the dead and I have a new life and will live forever with Him. Our baptism connects us to Jesus in a wonderful and beautiful way.

In the responses that we got from our surveys What’s On Your Mind?, one of the questions was “If baptism is when the Holy Spirit enters your heart, how can an adult believe in God before being baptized?” The answer is, in the Bible, we find that God describes another way that people come to faith. In the Bible, we read in Romans 10, “Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message and the message is heard through the Word of Christ.” So when people are hearing God’s Word preached or reading their bibles, that living and active Word of God, the Holy Spirit works through the Word and creates faith in a person’s heart enabling them to trust in God and His promises.

Later on, in the book of Acts, we find another passage, Chapter 16, when Paul is on one of his missionary journeys. He’s traveling about and everywhere he goes, he preaches the gospel. And this was on the Sabbath Day, Chapter 16:13, it says “On the Sabbath, we went outside the city gate to the river where we expected to find a place of prayer. We sat down and began to speak to the women who had gathered there. One of those listening was a woman named Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth from the city of Thyatira, who was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul’s message. When she and the members of her household were baptized, she invited us to her home.” So as the Word of God is preached, the Holy Spirit works and opens our hearts to trust in Jesus. So it is possible for a person, before they are baptized, to come to faith. And then, in faith, they say, “I want to be baptized because Jesus commanded it.” And He also promised wonderful things in baptism.

Another question that was asked was, “What happens if a person is never baptized?” Well, Mark 16:16 says, “He who believes and is baptized shall be saved. He who believes not shall be condemned.” So you see, in that sense, it’s possible for a person to be saved without baptism, such as in the case of the thief on the cross, right? Remember the conversation? There were two thieves, one on each side of Jesus as He hung there and one was rebuking Jesus and saying all kinds of rude and insulting things and the other one was humble and he said, “Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Remember what Jesus’ response was? “This day, I tell you, you will be with me in paradise.” That man wasn’t baptized but it was guaranteed that he would be in heaven. So it’s possible for a person to not be baptized and yet still go to heaven. But when you think about that, you have to ask the question, “What is it that prevents you from being baptized?” If you truly believe in Jesus as your Savior and you know everything He’s done for you and you know how much your heavenly Father loves you, then He tells you to be baptized, what prevents you? Why not do what He commands?

In conclusion, I want to tell you recently I received some precious little gifts. My grandfather and I were very close. He died in 1982 and I got this little bag on my desk about three weeks ago and, in it, one of the things is a songbook, a church songbook for the Evangelical Lutheran Church and, on the cover, it has my grandfather’s name and the date 1915. Now I had never seen this before and it was very precious to me to receive it. My grandfather and I were very close and when I look at this and the other items in this little bag, pictures, their wedding announcement, all kinds of neat things, it reminds me of the wonderful relationship that my grandfather and I shared. And it reminds me of all the things he did for me to help me be who I am today, the example of a Christian man and leading in worship and things like that.

And I want that to be the way you think of baptism. As you remember your baptism, as you take a drink of water and it reminds you of the sermon or when you remember your baptism, washing your hands or you see a baby baptized and you remember you were baptized, too, as you remember it, I pray that it will remind you of the relationship that you have with your loving Father in heaven and all the things that He has done for you. May you treasure the treasure that is baptism. Amen.

Copyright 2009 Gloria Dei Lutheran Church