Baptism: A Public Declaration of Dependence
Theme Christian baptism is an important act of declaration, promise, and identification with which to begin the Christian pilgrimage.
Prelude
Welcome
Call to Worship
One: Let us make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth.
All: Let us break into joyous song and sing praises.
One: Let us praise the Lord with children, dedications and baptisms.
All: Let us worship the Lord, to whom the seas, the floods, and the hills sing with joy.
*Hymn of Praise # 134 Hosanna, Loud Hosanna
*Invocation (the Lord’s Prayer) Let us celebrate the God who calls us friends. Let us sing songs of joy,for great is the faithfulness of God to us. Let us live lives of generous love in honor of the love given to us. Let us walk in freedom because the hand of God embraces our life.
Parent, Child, and Holy Spirit, Creator, Sustainer, and Redeemer, we, your friends, have come to worship you.
Be revealed to us as friend this day, Holy Spirit of Christ, Holy Spirit of God. Show to us your face in understanding and inspiration as we wait in hope here.
*Gloria Patri # 575
Just for Kids Kum ba yah, Pass It On, Jesus Loves Me
Piano, Nick Berouty Voices, Just for Kids Director, Rick Irish
Our Offering to God The church stands vulnerable as people look at us to see what God is like. The only way we can live with that vulnerability is to tell the good news that, as friends of God, we witness to grace beyond measure.
Let us, as friends of Jesus, give generously for God's work in the world. Our offering will now be received.
*Doxology #572
*Prayer of Dedication We bring our gifts to you with confidence, Holy God. Give to us the wisdom and kindness that we need in planning for their use, so that your justice may be spread in ever-widening circles. Amen.
*Hymn of Prayer Lord I Lift Your Name on High (W&P #88)
Pastoral Prayer Thank you, O God, for the miracle of your kindness to us. Thank you for the endless possibilities that we find in each other when we look with the eyes of love and the faithfulness of friendship. Thank you for choosing us as your people, and for the wonder of grace that is reborn every day, like the rising of the sun. Thanks be to you, O God. Loving Jesus, because you have chosen us to be agents of your love in all the earth, we bring you our prayers for others and ourselves. We know that you have given to us a sacred responsibility because, when we claim to be your friends, the world watches our lives to see what you may be like and waits for us to share that good news.
Be close to us, Jesus Christ. Move deeply into the mind and heart and soul of our lives, gracious God, that we may more truly be your people. And now we bring before you those we see, who wait with longing for a greater love from us and others:
Hear our prayers, O God. Give to us lives like a tree of life, with branches that spread a cool shade of comfort over the distressed and give shelter to the dispossessed; whose leaves are for the healing of the nations and whose trunk stands firm like a pillar of justice; whose roots go deep into the earth, touching the springs of your water of life to refresh the world, and that rest on the rock of your faithfulness. Be our friend, Jesus Christ, as we walk the journey with you. Amen.
*Hymn of Praise # 260 Just As I Am
Scripture Reading Matthew 28:19-20
Message Baptism: A Public Declaration of Dependence
Nick Berouty and Rev. Irish
Baptism declares we are unashamed of the Christ who died for us.
Nick-Baptism: A Public Declaration of Dependence
Baptism declares we are unashamed of the Christ who died for us. the song "Mercy Came Running." is a picture of the temple. There was a very special place in the temple called the Holy of Holies where the ark of the covenant resided. It was a place where God chose to let his presence rest. In that little room was the justice of God, the righteousness of God, but also mixed in were the grace of God and the mercy of God. This room was sectioned off from all the people of Israel because they had sin in their life and they could not approach the presence and the mercy and the grace of God because there was a veil. There was a physical veil but there was also the spiritual veil of sin in their life and they could not gain access to God. But God's presence was in this room.
The writers of this song say, "Once there was a holy place, evidence of God's embrace." "I can almost see mercy's face pressed against the veil." I want you to go there with me. I want you to picture in the Holy of Holies this place where no one but the high priest was allowed to enter once a year to offer a sacrifice of atonement for the people. Imagine the face of mercy just pressed against the veil wanting to get out. The song goes on to say, "Looking down with longing eyes, mercy must have realized once his blood was sacrificed freedom would prevail." The scene shifts over from the Holy of Holies to Golgotha where Jesus is hanging on a cross and God the Father is looking down and says: Once this transaction takes place, all mercy will break loose. And the sky grew dark and the earth began to shake, with justice no longer in the way. The veil was rent from the top to the bottom and mercy came running. And it chased us down and it wrapped his arms around us, and we experienced it.
Esther-Baptism is an act of worship
We come today in humility and we thank him for chasing us down through the death of Christ. That's what worship is. If that doesn't do something for you, you need to become a Christian today because whatever you did didn't work.
Jesus himself said he wanted everyone who had been embraced by this mercy to come to him in an act of worship called baptism. Upon profession of our faith, upon recognition that God apart from our deserving it, saved us from our self and from death for eternity, God invites us to stand in front of a group of people and be baptized.
Baptism is something that our Leader, our Savior asked us to do. Every single one of us. You may recall the words of Jesus before he left the earth in Matthew 28:19-20. These are some of the final words he left with us. It's called the Great Commission, things that he has given us to do. Those of us who have come to faith in Christ are to make it our life to share what we've experienced to others. When they come to faith in Christ, we are to encourage them to get baptized in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Our Leader told us that we are to engage in the practice of worship called baptism.
Nick-Baptism is a reminder that we cannot save ourselves
The question is what is baptism? Look at the idea Paul presents in Romans 6. What shall we say? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? 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. For those of us who have trusted Christ, he is talking about something that has happened in a very private and inner moment in our life. Baptism is an external expression of this internal reality that took place. The Bible teaches us, and particularly the first three chapters of Romans, that all of us were born into sin. And the Bible says that because this nature exists within all of us we cannot enter into the presence of God. God is a holy God, and he cannot be in the presence of evil without that evil being atoned for, being made right.
The problem is that I cannot and you cannot rid yourself of this sin nature. So what happens to us is that we must live our life separated from God, much like that Holy of Holies. We cannot break through the veil. And the Bible says that on the day that we come to the point of death, if we have not been able to make right before God the sin nature within us, if we have not been able to rid ourselves 100 percent from it, then we will die. Our lives will be offered up as the wages or the price of our sin. So we will continue for all of eternity to be separated from God. The beginning of the Christian conversion takes place when an individual recognizes and admits that they have a sin nature within them that's keeping them separate from God now and for all eternity.
God recognized this problem and he sent his own Son to earth. His Son is God who knew no sin. So he not only is God but he took on the likeness of man, and he is fully man. He lived his life for 30 years, and then we decided to place him on a cross for something he did not do. When he offered up his life, the Bible says that God chose to take all the sins of the world, every one of our sins past, present and future, and laid it on Jesus at his death. And he was crucified and he died. Three days Jesus was dead. But because Jesus did not know sin, he conquered death and he rose again.
Esther- Baptism is an external expression of an internal reality
This is mercy at the highest level. God said to every one of us:
You're in trouble and you cannot fix your problem. I'm going to make a deal with you. If you will come to terms with the fact that you're in trouble and that you're on death row, I will allow you to claim my Son's death for yourself; so that when you die, I attribute the righteousness of his death to you so that your sins, although they are still a part of you, I do not see and they have been made right not by the works which you have done but by the work my Son has done for you. But you must receive it, so that when you die, you will spend eternity with me. Not only will you spend eternity with me when you die, but also at the moment you accept me, you are no longer separated from me. From that day forward you will have access to me.
What Jesus is saying to us is that when he died on the cross we were crucified with him. What enables a person to come to faith in Christ is the acknowledgement of that and one day standing before the Lord and saying "I can't do this on my own. I am claiming the death of Christ for myself. I believe that he is the Son of God and rose from the dead." And at that moment, in that very private moment of our lives we are washed clean with the blood of Christ. And we forever have a relationship with God now and for all eternity.
Baptism is an outward expression of what took place in us internally. Baptism doesn't save us; Jesus' blood saves us. Baptism is an act where the believer in Jesus Christ chooses to stand before the world to give an outward picture of something that happened to them when they trusted Christ. It could have taken place ten years ago or just that day.
The imagery we have as we stand in the water is that when the person puts you under the water it represents being buried with Christ in his death. When you are brought up, it symbolizes being raised with him to new life.
The word baptism in Romans 6 is the Greek word baptizō. That word means to drown. And the imagery is that when we baptize somebody in obedience to what Christ invited us to do we immerse him or her completely in water, because we understand that is the meaning behind the word. And we understand that everyone who was baptized in the Scriptures, were baptized after placing their faith in Christ. So we don't believe in adult baptism, we believe in believers' baptism. That is, baptism is something that we do after we have accepted Christ. Baptism is the act of being immersed in water to publicly identify a private decision one has made regarding Jesus Christ. The question is: Why is it so important?
Baptism publicly announces that we are not ashamed of Christ .
Dedication of Children
Alyson Warner
Desiree Dunham
Destiny Dunham
James Oakes
Baptism
Pat Bianchi
Breanna Bianchi
Gary Budlong
Diane Garvin
*Sending forth
*Postlude
Thought for the Day The road that unfolds before us after Baptism is the pathway to spiritual maturity as a brother or sister of Christ and a child of God forever.