Something Different
Christmas • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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One professional athlete has the testimony of being near suicidal, calling out for God, and over a weekend giving his life to Christ. This happened over 25 years ago but I never forgot what was said about him on the NFL pregame shows. One other athlete says, “I know what people think about religious stuff, but this guy, he is completely different. This is real.”
Something different.
In most people’s lives they are looking for something different and good in their life. Transforming. Every romance movie right now is about how a woman gets purpose and meaning in her life from love. Other action heroes who save the world. People rightly and wrongly come to Jesus in the same way. Desperate for something to make there lives happily ever after.
Baptism girl, “I want it to change my life”
What’s the purpose of Baptism?
What’s the purpose of Baptism?
I know you might have come today with anxieties, horrible stuff in your life, or things to do and I am talking about Baptism? What does that have to do with Tuesday! What I mean by that is baptism doesn’t happen in every day life. Your not standing in line at Walmart and a baptism breaks out.
I doubt you go to your doctor appointment this Wednesday and She says, “you need a baptism.” Would be funny though.
But I think it is because we don’t really understand Baptism. I study Bible, I have a masters degree in this stuff and I got a better understanding of it, because if you really understand it than, yeah, baptism makes a difference at Walmart, at work, at home, in the bedroom and on the bus.
You can get it from a better understanding of these dialogue:
Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. But John tried to stop him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and yet you come to me?”
Jesus answered him, “Allow it for now, because this is the way for us to fulfill all righteousness.” Then John allowed him to be baptized.
Good stuff, Great stuff, but confusing stuff, Perhaps you can see it better in this translation of the verses
But Jesus said, “It should be done, for we must carry out all that God requires.” So John agreed to baptize him.
Baptism is about saying to the whole world, “My life is about doing all that God requires.”
Baptism is the outword symbol, the action, the performance of an internal happening, that God is now Lord of your life. You are not your own.
For you know that God paid a ransom to save you from the empty life you inherited from your ancestors. And it was not paid with mere gold or silver, which lose their value. It was the precious blood of Christ, the sinless, spotless Lamb of God.
Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body.
I learned from a friend this story of a Marine who was in training and was forced to do PT in the blazing Sun. He ended up with a horrible sunburn. Then he was punished even more because He had damaged government property. He was the government’s property.
You are not government property a person who gets baptized is saying, I am a part of the Kingdom of God.
Why am I talking about Baptism in December? December is supposed to be about Christmas. If you’ve been out to the Christmas Light Show you’ll know that everyone’s been learning about the baptism of Jesus because we share it as our tour moves from Jesus’ birth to Jesus life and then death and then resurrection!
It’s fitting than that we spend time knowing why this is in our tour especially if it matters in our everything about who we are and who Jesus is.
If you will let me go back in the Christmas story because if you read the Christmas story in Luke it actually begins with the story of not Joseph and Mary but Elizabeth and Zechariah. Elizabeth, a post menopausal childless woman and her priest husband getting to represent his people before the Lord in the Temple where he learns from an angel that He will have a son and He is to name him John.
It’s really cool but we are on a limited time frame so I’m going to speed it up. John was sent by God to “prepare the way of the Lord.” He was the last of the prophets. A person whom God spoke through, Many years pass, probably about 30 years and once again, we learn about what John is doing.
Now John had a camel-hair garment with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. Then people from Jerusalem, all Judea, and all the vicinity of the Jordan were going out to him, and they were baptized by him in the Jordan River, confessing their sins.
Like the prophets of old John looked weird. He lived differently, while people might have ate locusts that wouldn’t be the only thing they were eating.
While He may have looked weird, people came to him, and when they did they recognized that God was speaking through Him, because lots of people were coming.
Now He became known as the Baptizer, to put someone into water, not because what He was doing was weird. Baptism was well known to Jews. John was a Jew, Jesus was a Jew, most of those coming to John was Jewish.
Here’s the thing, you ready, this is the thing.
Baptism was how a person who wasn’t Jewish became a Jew. It was a one of four things a man who was not a Jew, which is known as a Gentile had to do to become a Jew (the other three were sacrifice, circumcision, and memorization of portions of Moses’ Law).
If a man did that He became a part of God’s chosen people, he became a Jew. He because a part of the covenant of Abraham, the covenant of Moses. Follow God’s law and He is part of God’s people.
The metaphor goes like this, if you put cloth into red dye, it gets stained red, so much so that it will always be a shade of red, it will never go back.
Thus when a person is baptized they become Jewish.
So then why was John known as the Baptizer. I have baptized people and I’m not known as Bill the baptizer.
Look at the verse on the screen and see if you can figure it out. It’s right there. Can you discover the mystery?
Then people from Jerusalem, all Judea, and all the vicinity of the Jordan were going out to him, and they were baptized by him in the Jordan River, confessing their sins.
I underlined the important part, who lives in Jerusalem, Judea and the vicinity of the Jordan. Jews do! John was baptizing Jews. Jews couldn’t get stained more Jewish, I can’t become more white, Phil can’t become more Phil.
So why was he baptizing.
The covenant God made between the Jewish people and Himself is called the Mosaic covenant.
Then Moses climbed the mountain to appear before God. The Lord called to him from the mountain and said, “Give these instructions to the family of Jacob; announce it to the descendants of Israel: ‘You have seen what I did to the Egyptians. You know how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now if you will obey me and keep my covenant, you will be my own special treasure from among all the peoples on earth; for all the earth belongs to me. And you will be my kingdom of priests, my holy nation.’ This is the message you must give to the people of Israel.”
So Moses returned from the mountain and called together the elders of the people and told them everything the Lord had commanded him. And all the people responded together, “We will do everything the Lord has commanded.” So Moses brought the people’s answer back to the Lord.
There is the covenant. God gave to the Jewish people, obey God by doing what He told them to do in the first five books of the Bible and then He will protect them as His special people.
Yet the Jewish were more like everyone else. Justice was given to the powerful, not to everyone. Mercy was for those who were admired.
Listen to what was said by John.
What counts is your life. Is it green and blossoming? Because if it’s deadwood, it goes on the fire.”
The crowd asked him, “Then what are we supposed to do?”
“If you have two coats, give one away,” he said. “Do the same with your food.”
Tax men also came to be baptized and said, “Teacher, what should we do?”
He told them, “No more extortion—collect only what is required by law.”
Soldiers asked him, “And what should we do?”
He told them, “No shakedowns, no blackmail—and be content with your rations.”
It sounds simple. Live doing right. Treat money as a way to help others.
Sometimes when we read the Bible, people can be like, “Im not a tax collector so not my problem.” “I’m not a cop or a soldier so not my problem.”
Go deeper. Look at yourself, for example, I am your pastor and a teacher. When I am a teacher am I only concerned with getting as much out of my job as possible, or doing only what will allow me to keep my job.
Am I treating others as God would have me treat them or am I treating them in a way that gets me what I want.
Am I living as a pastor so that people are terrified of me or so that they can hear from God. As perhaps the only Christian some people know are people attracted by your faith, gentleness and love or afraid of your wrath
Because John’s highest criticism was for those who felt they were close to God.
But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming to watch him baptize, he denounced them. “You brood of snakes!” he exclaimed. “Who warned you to flee the coming wrath? Prove by the way you live that you have repented of your sins and turned to God. Don’t just say to each other, ‘We’re safe, for we are descendants of Abraham.’ That means nothing, for I tell you, God can create children of Abraham from these very stones.
What a good understanding you can get from the Chosen, the shows about the scriptures. These Pharisees and Sadducees, political religious leaders, were coming to check out what is popular because they wanted to make sure no one was a threat. Genuinely believing that if they didn’t defend God no one would, but forgetting to inquire of what God was actually doing, forgetting to look for what God wanted from them, and instead saying, we are God’s chosen people, we were born into being the very best. That’s what He means by saying they were children of Abraham.
But just the act of baptism of Jewish people was a betaryal of the understanding that a person is born God’s special people.
Remember, baptism was a sign of conversion, from being a gentile to a jew, but these were jews being baptized. They were saying, we are not upholding the Mosaic covenant. We are not upholding our end of what it means to be God’s chosen people. We need to change. Each and every person saying, “I will change, I will be converted to what I am supposed to be by God.”
That’s a threat to the Pharisees and Sadducees because they believe it is their birthright and their duty to use power to make sure everyone actually is a good Jew and they are failing at it so miserably they miss God walking among them.
Yet, they missed it. John doesn’t.
Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. But John tried to stop him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and yet you come to me?”
Jesus answered him, “Allow it for now, because this is the way for us to fulfill all righteousness.” Then John allowed him to be baptized.
It’s hard to figure out anything that makes sense here. First, why would Jesus get baptized. He doesn’t need forgiveness of sin. He doesn’t need to right himself. He doesn’t need to remember His Jewishness. Jesus is the perfect Jew. He is the perfect person, sinless. Why be baptized.
There is an interesting statement Jesus said. The Baptism is to fulfill all righteousness. It is to do what is right.
How do you know what is right?
Well for this lets think about Jesus’ step-Dad. Joseph. When God came upon Mary, she obeyed the Lord. A baby started inside of her. But Joseph didn’t have anything happen to him. He was a nice guy so he didn’t want Mary to be killed for adultery but he also wasn’t going to let this go.
But an angel appeared to him in a dream and told him, that this child would be “God with us.”
Think about this, Joseph didn’t do anything wrong. He could have left. He still wouldn’t have done any sin. There was no law against leaving your fiancé if she was pregnant. Engagements can end and that wasn’t wrong.
BUT, Joseph leaving would have been wrong. Because wrong is not doing whatever God has called you to do. Right is doing what God has called you to do.
There doesn’t have to be laws. There doesn’t have to be Tic-Tok videos saying this is the right thing to do, how nice a person is. Right is what God has told us to do.
Yes, wrong is often written down. Don’t steal, violent, abusive, or sexually immoral. Right is more than just following the written stuff, it is doing what God has told you to do.
It means realizing that you are not the point of this life. You are not the most important. God is.
So when Jesus comes to John and says about baptism, He is syaing He will do what God has told him to do.
But Jesus said, “It should be done, for we must carry out all that God requires.” So John agreed to baptize him.
This is it. Thus when we are baptized, we get to follow Jesus example. We are dying to ourselves. My body isn’t mine. My mind isn’t mine. My money isn’t mine. I am bought by Jesus. I die to myself, and He washes me from all un-rightness, because of what He did on the cross, I identify with Him, I believe Him and follow Him with my life. In this baptism I tell the whole world. I am crucified with Jesus, now I am a new creation. Im part of the family of God.
The act of getting dunked in water by someone else, even in a church, even sprinkled, is not anything. The act is not the thing. It is the person. The person knowing, doing, ready for change, ready to give up, ready to say yes Jesus. Then baptism matters. Then baptism is a surrendering of self and following through on what God desires.
Ask yourself, are you saying yes to Jesus. Not are you not doing bad are you checking off what people say is good, Are you saying yes to God?
Are you carrying out all that God requires. If you answer that with but I ‘m poor, I’m busy, I’m not that smart, I’m too old. Than you are carrying out someone else’s list of what is Good.
Because God knows how many hairs are on your head, as well as the fact that your knees hurt every morning you wake up and that you puke when you think about talking to a stranger. God will equip you for whatever He is calling you to do and His burden on you is easy and light. All of this He could do without you. He is inviting you to see His power, to see the Holy Spirit at work. To get caught in His wonder. To see his judgment. All you must do is say yes and remember your baptism. Give up yourself and follow Him.
