Sermon Tone Analysis

We’re here today to celebrate the baptism of our brothers and sisters in Christ, from whom we’ll hear in a moment.

But before they get up here I’d like to take a minute to talk about what we’re doing here.

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.”

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.”

Anon, 2016.

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version, Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

We’re here today to celebrate the baptism of our brothers and sisters in Christ, from whom we’ll hear in a moment.

But before they get up here I’d like to take a minute to talk about what it is we’re doing here.

Baptism isn’t unique to Christianity; it’s been practiced in purification rituals for millenia.

Depending on the context, it can mean different things.

So when we read about baptism in the Bible, the authors take great pains to distinguish what makes Christian baptism unique.

There are a lot of ways to answer that question, but perhaps the simplest distinction would be this: Christian baptism is distinct from other types of baptism in that it happens in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

We see this at the very end of Matthew’s gospel, in .

Jesus has died, been raised from the dead, and now he is commissioning his disciples for the task of going out and telling the world about him.

We read in :

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.”

So we see something here that’s pretty strange, if we’re not used to hearing it.

“Making disciples” is easy to grasp: go tell others about Jesus.

“Teaching them to observe all that I have commanded” is easy: teach these new followers of Christ how to live like him.

It’s the baptism part that’s complicated, because you would naturally expect him to say, “Baptize them in my name,” or, “Baptize them in the name of God.” Everyone knows that Christians believe there is only One True God: we are monotheistic.

And yet, Jesus identifies three people—or persons, to use the correct term—in whose name we should be baptized: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

So what’s that about?

The Bible teaches us that there is indeed only One True God.

But at the same time, the One True God exists eternally in three distinct persons: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

(Theologians refer to these three persons as “the Trinity”.)

The Father isn’t the Son; the Son isn’t the Father; the Father and Son aren’t the Spirit; and the Spirit isn’t the Father or Son.

And yet, the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Spirit is God.

People try all the time to find fun illustrations to help describe what this three-in-one dynamic might be like, but no illustration can come close to the complexity of God.

God is so high above our understanding that we have no idea how he can be one God in three persons…but the Bible says, loud and clear, that he is.

The best we can do, in the long run, is to affirm that God is so high above our understanding that we have no idea how he can be one God in three persons…but he is.

But that confusion is kind of the point.

No illustration can come close to the complexity of God.

Rather than saying that God is like water, it would be better to say that God is so high above our understanding that we have no idea how he can be one God in three persons…but he is.

When we come to a baptism, it’s important to understand at least the idea of the Trinity, because as Jesus said, the Trinity is at the heart of baptism: it’s not just in the name of God that Christians are baptized, but in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

And the reason he took the time to say that is because each person of the Trinity has a distinct role to play in baptism, and in what happened in these people’s lives to bring them here.

As we say, salvation comes from the Father, through the Son, by the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit

Let’s start in reverse order, with the Holy Spirit.

What does the Holy Spirit do?

The Holy Spirit takes people who want nothing to do with God, who are blind to the gospel and spiritually dead, and he raises us to new life.

The apostle Paul wrote to Titus (in ):

Go make disciples, everywhere;

3 For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another.

Naturally, on our own, we are all like this.

Human beings are nothing if not divisive, jealous and self-centered, hungry for power and pleasure—we need look no further than the history of the last hundred years to know that.

We were free to do what we wanted, but what we wanted was to have nothing to do with God—to be our own masters.

When we talk about “sin” in the church, that’s what we’re talking about: sin is, simply put, rebellion against God.

And we are all guilty of sin, without exception.

So what did God do?

V. 4:

4 But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, 5 he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit...

For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another.

4 But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, 5 he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit

The word “regeneration” simply means that the Holy Spirit took our spiritually dead hearts, and brought them back to life.

It had nothing to do with anything good we did, because we couldn’t do anything good.

HE did it, in us.

He took us, dead as we were, and raised us to life.

Anon, 2016.

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version, Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

But he doesn’t raise us to an esoteric, mystical, generically “spiritual” life.

He raises us to new life in...

The Son

The Holy Spirit, when he brings us from death to life, does it through the gospel of Jesus Christ: the good news of what Jesus Christ, the Son, the second person of the Trinity, did for us.

So what is that message?

What is that good news?

Well, it starts with bad news.

Because God is a just God, he is angry against our sin; he is angry against our rebellion.

It is offensive to him, because it runs counter to everything he is.

God cannot mingle with sin—if he is truly just, sin must be punished.

And because God is a just God, he is angry against our sin; he is angry against our rebellion.

It is offensive to him, because the call to be like God is essentially a call to be happy, to do what we are on this planet to do.

God cannot mingle with sin—if he is truly just, sin must be punished.

But no good parent takes pleasure in punishing his children.

Because God is just, he wants to punish our sin; but because he loves us, he doesn’t want to punish us, his children.

So he did the most amazing thing: he sent the Son, Jesus Christ, to become a man.

God became a man.

He lived the perfect life we were supposed to live; he took our sin on himself; and he was punished by God in our place, so that we wouldn’t have to be.

He suffered a horrible death on the cross, and there he absorbed all the wrath of God against our sin.

On that cross, in punishment for our sin, Jesus died.

And three days later, he was raised from the dead.

And here’s the crazy thing: through the Holy Spirit, he took everything that he had just done, and applied it to his children.

That means everything that happened to Jesus, happened to whoever puts their faith in him.

When he died for our sin, we died to that sin.

When he was raised from the dead, we were raised to new life with him.

Paul says in :

What shall we say then?

Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? 2 By no means!

How can we who died to sin still live in it?

3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

So here we see what baptism is meant to symbolize: it is a picture of death and resurrection.

Spiritually speaking, we died with him on that cross.

The old person I was before, who wanted nothing to do with God, died—not fifteen years ago when I became a Christian, but two thousand years ago, on the cross.

I was buried with Jesus in that tomb for three days.

And I came out of that tomb with him to live a new life.