Outdoor Service & Baptism
Outdoor Service • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
0 ratings
· 6 viewsNotes
Transcript
Introduction
Good Morning Church and welcome to our Outdoor Service. What a great opportunity to remind ourselves that the Church is not that building that we meet in every week, as great a blessing as that is, the Church is the gathering of God’s people. And we gather together to worship God, learn from his Word and practice those things that he has given to his church to practice. And we have a special opportunity today to practice the ordinance of baptism.
If you didn’t know at the end of the message we are going to have three people come up and share their testimonies of faith in Jesus Christ, then while you all sing a son we will get in the pool behind me and invite you all to come over to witness the baptism of all three of them.
As I considered the message for this week I realized that I don’t think I have ever told you my experience with baptism. Growing up my family weekly drove across town to attend this fairly large big-city Baptist Church. Our building was a three stories high, four if you counted the balcony. The walls inside and out were all brick even in the sanctuary where the stained glass windows rested on brick window sills.
In the front of the sactuary there were three steps that led up to the stage where the pulpit sat and behind that was a three tiered choir loft and high above that loft was this little stone inlet that was built into the center of the back wall. That inlet, looming high above the choir loft, the pulpit and the rows of pews below... was the baptismal.
As a young kid that space was as mysterious as it was intimidating. For one thing you were way up there looking down at all the people below… for another thing, all of the people below were looking up at you. And with all those eyes peering up at you, you were supposed to talk them...share your testimony into a powered microphone.... that you definitely didn’t want to touch because you were standing up your chest in a tub full of water! At least at 13 years old it came up to my chest. And on top of all that social pressure... many of you know that growing up I had a great fear of water and didn’t even know how to swim.
Needless to say...none of this sounded like a fun idea to the 13 year old version of me.
Tension
And the fears that I had to overcome in order to be baptized are nothing compared to the kind of fears that many of our brothers and sisters around the world have to face when they are considering baptism. In nations where becoming a Christian is against the law, choosing to be baptized is the last straw. Your family might tolerate catching you listening to a Christian sermon or reading a Bible. They may even tolerate you saying that you are Christian now, they would just choose to not believe you.
But to be baptized...is a point of no return. That is at best a choice that means you will be completely cut off by your family and hated by all your childhood friends. That is best case scenario. At worst, it makes you a target for religious zealots to physically attack or even kill you with little to no response from the governing officials.
So why do they do it? I mean someone could argue that my experience was just social conditioning because I grew up in a Christian home that encouraged and celebrated baptism so I pushed past my little fears… but why would those people do it? Why not just keep Jesus in your heart alone? Why step up and step out to publicly proclaim your allegiance to Jesus in an environment that brutally punishes such a choice?
No matter the degree of fear we have to overcome, our answer should always be the same.
We do it because we are a follower of Jesus Christ and that is what Jesus has called us to do.
So this morning we are going to take a break from our “BLAMELESS” series from 1st and 2nd Thessalonians and take a look at this calling from Jesus for His followers to be baptized. Hopefully it will serve as a good reminder to those who have already been baptized, an encouragement to those who have not yet done so and a good charge for the three people who have come here today to do this very thing.
I know this is very different setting, but if you have your Bible and want to use it this morning, you could open up to Jesus’ command for us to baptize people that is found in Matthew 28. We will be other places as well, but we will spend a good deal of our time there.
So let’s pray together and we will dive into this topic a little more, before we get to hear some testimonies and celebrate baptism together as a Church.
Truth
So lets take a look together at this Baptism thing to see what it is all about and why it is that we make such a big deal of it. So much so that we are called to lay aside any of the fears involved in order to follow through with Jesus command to be baptized.
At the end of the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus has risen from the dead and appeared to hundreds of people and He is about to ascend into heaven... but before He does he gives his disciples something that we call the “Great Commission”. It is found in Matthew chapter 28 starting in verse 18 where it says...
18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
And what Jesus began in the lives of those who were standing there in that moment has trickled down to His people for the past 2,000 years. This purpose is at the core of every expression of the Christian Church. We may used different wording to dress it up in different ways, but ultimately every Church exists to fulfill this singular objective: To make disciples of Jesus the Christ.
We have looked at these verses many times before, but it is good to be reminded that the only imperative, or command verb that we find in this verse is the instruction to “make disciples”. The other “verb-looking” words are actually participles describing how we are to follow through on the one command.
So we are commanded to “make disciples” and the way in which we are to do this is by:
Going into all the nations
Baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and
Teaching them to observe (obey) everything Jesus taught us
And the truth is that this is so familiar to us that most of us have no idea how revolutionary this statement really is. We kinda assume that most religions have some version of this kind of thing, but they really don’t. With the glaring exception of Islam, Christianity is one of the only major faiths in our world that even cares if anyone else believes the same way that they do. We probably just don’t realize it because we live here in America which was founded on the Christian Worldview.
You see, most world religions are tribal based so that the region, ethnicities or people group that you are born into… your “tribe”... determines the religion that you practice. And “tribal-based” religions have really no incentive to share their faith with people from outside of their tribe. Why bother going to other regions, ethnicities or people groups to tell them what you believe when you they are not us… so these things don’t apply to them. That is how they look at it…
This was, and still is, true with the Jewish people. With only a few exceptions, only those who were born of the people of Abraham, those who had the blood of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob coursing through their veins had the right to really be Jewish. And while they do have a process whereby one can practice the Jewish faith if they want to for some reason, the Jewish people are not going out of their way to show it to people. Truth is, unless you are ethnically Jewish they would rather you just not know about such a process.
Let me give you an example. Remember the Samaritan woman at the Well? Jesus gave her the honor of being the first person on earth that He told that he was the Christ... and it was Scandalous. The disciples returned from the city and were greatly alarmed to find Jesus even talking to this Samaritan woman...why? Because she was a woman, well yes that was culturally frowned upon… but more than that she was a Samaritan woman. The Jews hated the Samaritans because when the Jews were in exile the Samaritans did not keep the Jewish bloodline pure and married people from other regions, ethnicities and people groups.
So Jews and Samaritans hated each other, but Jesus didn’t hate this woman. Remember what He asked her? The Story is found in John 4 and starting in verse 7 it reads:
7 A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8 (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) 9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.)
That is what it says right here in the text… they had no dealings with Samaritans… but…
10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”
Wait what? Jesus is offering “living water” to this woman? A Samaritan Woman? An Outsider? What does he mean by this? Why would He be reaching out to her? The Woman wanted to know too and so they went round and round on the differenced between their two people groups until finally, almost dismissively…
25 The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.” 26 Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.”
Hear me Church, what Jesus started with that Samaritan woman he was continuing here in the Great Commission. The message that the good news of the Messiah, the Gospel of Jesus the Christ, was not “tribal”. It was not for a particular people or a particular nation. It was going to cross over into “all” regions, ethnicities and people groups.
18 ...Jesus...said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, ...
As Christians we often talk about hiding God’s Word in our hearts, but we don’t hide our faith from this world. Jesus is leading His followers to make disciples of all nations…from every region, ethnicity and people group… even the ones that will threaten or even take our lives for doing so.
Because Jesus has been given “All authority in heaven and earth” we are called to make disciples of all nations.
So going to these people is the first part of how we are commanded to “Make disciples… but it is the next part that is really our key focus for today and that is that a part of how we make disciples of all nations is by…
baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
Gentile & Jewish Baptisms
Gentile & Jewish Baptisms
Because baptism is so quickly associated with Christians in our world, too often we forget that Christians did not invent the idea. Long before Jesus walked the earth, the Greek and Roman religions practiced different forms of ceremonial washing, as did the Egyptians, the Persians, and the Hindus. But more important than what all these counterfeit faiths did was what God commanded His own people to do. The Old Testament Law lays out many different ceremonial washings, so much so that many of the ancient synagogues that archeologists have uncovered came with plumbing that led to a large tank near the entrance of their meeting room for just such a purpose.
But Jesus’ instructions were not to just keep doing something that had already been done. The concept was familiar, but the meaning was entirely different.
For one thing, the way that the Jews practiced most all of their ceremonial washings, baths or baptism was as a solo project. You washed yourself. No one else needed to be in the water with you, it was just something you did to yourself and for yourself. That is until John the Baptist came along.
God’s people had not had a prophet for more than 400 years until this John the Baptist guy showed up, and like so many of the ancient prophets… he was a weird dude. For one thing he lived out in the wilderness, he dressed funny and ate bugs with honey. And the reason that we call him John the Baptist, or John the Baptizer is because he was doing something that no one else was doing. Contrary to the self washing of all the other Jews, John’s baptism was done… by John.
He was teaching the people… “Repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near” (Matthew 3:2) Then he was hands-on touching the people... baptizing them. He wasn’t standing on the bank of the Jordan river pointing and saying… there is the water… why don’t you go baptize yourselves again. You have done it countless times before maybe it will stick this time…
No his role was more significant than that. His message and mission was far more important. Those repeated washings that had to be done over and over again were just a temporary stand in for something much greater that was coming. John wasn’t pointing the people to the water… the water was pointing the people to Jesus. For John said,
11 “I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.
This was John’s role. To prepare these people for the coming of the long awaited Messiah. The prophet Isaiah prophesied of him in Isaiah 40:3
3 A voice cries: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
And we know that these prophecies are talking about this John the Baptist guy because Jesus told us so, and Jesus also elevated John’s role above even a prophet. In Matthew chapter 11 Jesus said of John…
10 This is he of whom it is written, “ ‘Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way before you.’ 11 Truly, I say to you, among those born of women there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist. Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.
For a tribal people like the Jews there was no one more important to them than their prophets, but in this moment, Jesus elevated John over them.
The only thing that the ceremonial washings of the Old Testament Law could do was point us toward the idea of using water for a kind of purification. But John the Baptist was preparing God’s people for a new kind of washing. Something very different. Something that even Jesus went through.
This is Jesus’ story of baptism… of much more importance than mine…
13 Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John, to be baptized by him. 14 John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” 15 But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he consented.
I have to confess that this has always been a bit confusing to me, but I think I learned something this past week that is beginning to clear things up. The confusing part was that John’s baptism here in the story and even elsewhere in the book of Acts is described as a baptism of repentance. But Jesus was perfect… He didn’t need a baptism of repentance. And I think that is why John was so hesitant, even wanting to change roles so that Jesus would baptize him.
But did you know that the Bible only records one other place before John where God commanded someone to ceremonially wash another person? It is found in Leviticus 8 where the Lord commanded Moses to do so in order to consecrate or set aside Aaron and his sons for the position of priest. So I think that this means that Jesus’ baptism was not about a repentance that He didn’t need, but the reason it was “fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness” was because it consecrated Him in his role as our High priest.
I invite you to grapple with that and get back to me if you think I have missed something, but regardless of the strength of that connection there is no denying that Jesus’ baptism was something of a turning point in his ministry. Things were just different after this point, especially considering what unfolded. For it says…
16 And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him; 17 and behold, a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”
So here in Jesus’ baptism we see one of the clearest examples of all three persons of the Trinity being active at the same time. And I believe that this is the purpose behind why Jesus commanded us to baptize in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit! There is this deep and abiding connection between Jesus’ baptism and the baptism of all who want to follow Him. Something that is so significant that we don’t dare take it lightly. Something that is so significant that people push through all kinds of fears in order to follow through with this command.
And I can’t help but think that there is something significant in the connection between God’s command to Moses to baptize the priests and what that might mean for our baptisms today. For the Sons of Aaron were being set apart by God to serve the people and help them to worship God correctly and to obey God’s Word completely… and that is something that seems to fit with the final way which Jesus commanded us to “make disciples” which is to be
20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
Now please don’t misunderstand me, I am not in anyway suggesting a kind of “priestly” role where others need to go through us to get to God. That role belongs to Christ Jesus alone and would be something closer to the role of the “High Priest” like it says in Hebrews 4. What I am talking about is the kind of priests who are set apart to serve people in their desire to worship God rightly.
The kind of priests that the Apostle Peter calls us in 1 Peter chapter 2 verse 4 which says…
4 As you come to him [Jesus] , a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, 5 you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
Gospel Application
Jesus gave us the command to baptize people as one part of the process of “making disciples”. It is not to be an end in itself, but only an early step in the life of a believer to follow after Jesus in everything we do. We are not saved by our baptism, the Bible is clear that no physical act can save us, but our baptism plays an important role in that it says to the world that we are publicly declaring our faith in Jesus, and from this point forward we will be striving to faithfully obey all of the rest of the things that Jesus taught us.
This is why Jesus followers are willing to face any fears that come with following Jesus’ command to be baptized. It is because our faith in Him compells us to obey everything He said, and Jesus said to
18 ... make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
I am gonna pray and then I will call you guys who are ready to be baptized up to hear your testimony of faith in Jesus.
