This Is My Son

Scripture:

Mark 1:4–11 NLT

This messenger was John the Baptist. He was in the wilderness and preached that people should be baptized to show that they had repented of their sins and turned to God to be forgiven. All of Judea, including all the people of Jerusalem, went out to see and hear John. And when they confessed their sins, he baptized them in the Jordan River. His clothes were woven from coarse camel hair, and he wore a leather belt around his waist. For food he ate locusts and wild honey. John announced: “Someone is coming soon who is greater than I am—so much greater that I’m not even worthy to stoop down like a slave and untie the straps of his sandals. I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit!” One day Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee, and John baptized him in the Jordan River. As Jesus came up out of the water, he saw the heavens splitting apart and the Holy Spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice from heaven said, “You are my dearly loved Son, and you bring me great joy.”

Do you remember when you were invited to be a part of God’s family?

Before you answer, I want you to think about the question carefully. I’m not askng when you got saved or when you joined the church. I’m not asking when YOU did anything.

Do you remember when you were invited into God’s family?

Experiential Answers

Some of you have a recent experience where you felt like you found a people to whom you belong.

Others of you may remember a time many years ago when you connected into a family of faith

These are powerful experiences, often partnering with personal decisions. However, the experiences don’t last long, and people change their minds and make different decisions all the time. That sense of belonging can fade away rather quickly.

Some might point to the moment they decided to follow Jesus as the day they joined the big “C” Church, all across the world. It is a humbling thing to think about the great group of people all over the world, across all time, and to think that we have a place among them.

Academic Answers

Historians would point out that this is not when you were invited though. Instead, they would say none of us can remember the day because it was nearly 2000 years ago as Jesus died on the cross and begged God to forgive us. That was the day we were invited to be a part of God’s family. They might pat themselves on the back and congragulate themselves for giving the truest, most accurate answer.

Then the theologians would chuckle to themselves and slowly lift a hand. When the commotion died down, they might point out that scripture tells us that God had this plan from the very beginning of creation. (From 1 Peter 1 and Ephesians 3)

Relational Questions

We could go round and round all day long showing off who has a better answer or a more powerful experience, but when we get to the end, we won’t accomplish anything If the answer or feeling doesn’t have a lasting effect on our life.

What does have lasting effects on our lives?

Relationships

So let’s try that question again, but this time in the context of a specific relationship:

When was the first time you heard God call you His child?

Thesis: God wants to adopt us into His family.

That invitation has indeed been prepared since the beginning of Creation, and enacted upon the cross of Calvary. The message of it has been passed down through preaching, scripture, songs, movies, emails, and facebook to reach you today.

How do we respond to that invitation to turn it into a relationship with God?

Baptism of John

John the Baptist was a mighty man of God. We recounted some of his life last month during Advent. This is Mark’s introduction to him as John, the last prophet of the Old Covenant passes the baton on to Jesus, the beginning of the New Covenant.

That word Covenant is a old and somewhat fancy word for relationship. It was like a kind of holy contract that helped strangers develop family-like relationships with one another. The two main places we use it today is to describe marriage and church membership.

Repentance-Focus

Mark opens up the story of Jesus with an image of John baptizing people in the wilderness. He points out that people were coming to Him from all of Judea. Even Jerusalem, it says, as if it was unheard of that a big city person from the capitol would be caught dead out in the middle of nowhere, down by the river.

It says that John baptized those who were willing to repent, which means that this may not have been a big revival going on, but perhaps something more like an outdoor event with a group of folks coming to support the prophet and all he stood for, while others stood back and just watched. We know there were Pharisees and Sadducees among them, and possibly even the new King Herod (one of the children of the crazy king Herod we learned about last week). These folks, many from Jerusalem, were not getting into the water. But they were certainly watching.

So folks didn’t get baptized just because they wanted to be forgiven. They got baptized by John when they confessed their sins and made right the things they had done wrong.

Baptism of Preparation

It was a baptism that offered forgiveness, a chance to try again, for the price of confessing and turning away from sin. This was the perfect preparation for Jesus.

Mark 1:7–8 NLT

John announced: “Someone is coming soon who is greater than I am—so much greater that I’m not even worthy to stoop down like a slave and untie the straps of his sandals. I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit!”

John taught and preached that repentence and forgiveness prepared you to meet God, and he offered a baptism for that. Yet he believed that there was a better baptism on the way, and a better baptizer as well.

Baptism of Jesus

One way of explaining the difference between the baptism of John and the Baptism of Jesus is that John’s baptism was an act of people and Jesus’s baptism was an act of God. We can control the water. We cannot control the Holy Spirit. We cannot split the heavens open or make God speak. We can only respond to God with obedience.

In my experience, most people spend more time worrying about the water - the thing we have control over - than about the meaning of baptism. They leave that up to whoever is getting baptized. Yet in the early church we see just the opposite. They care less about what people do with the water and more about what God is doing in this act.

Acts 19:1–7 NLT

1 While Apollos was in Corinth, Paul traveled through the interior regions until he reached Ephesus, on the coast, where he found several believers. 2 “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” he asked them. “No,” they replied, “we haven’t even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.” 3 “Then what baptism did you experience?” he asked. And they replied, “The baptism of John.” 4 Paul said, “John’s baptism called for repentance from sin. But John himself told the people to believe in the one who would come later, meaning Jesus.” 5 As soon as they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. 6 Then when Paul laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they spoke in other tongues and prophesied. 7 There were about twelve men in all.

Just as John promised

Just as Jesus exemplified in His own baptism

God wants us to be part of His family, and we celebrate that in baptism.

When does this happen?

The historians are right. The theologians are right. You are right when you have heard God calling you His beloved child.

God has been calling out to you from the beginning of creation, on the cross of Calvary, and every day that you have been in this world because you are his child.

But we get lost.

We get rebellious.

We declare our independance from God and bind ourselves to other things.

And God knew that from the beginning… so he has already given you an invitation. He wants to adopt you back into His family.

God’s invitation is good, once and for all. He will pass that invitation on through anyone and anything He can to get you to come back and hear it from Himself.

So the first thing we have to do is Go to God, and thankfully you don’t have to go far, because God is right there with you, waiting for you to turn to Him and begin that relationships again.

When Church is not enough

Most people did not see a preacher in me when I was a teenager. In fact, the churches with the bigger youth groups didn’t see me at all. And to be honest, I didn’t care. I would have said that church was boring. While church was going on, I slipped away up to a classroom in the balcony and played cards. I didn’t pay attention to what was going on in the service.

I could say that the sunday morning worship service was not made with me in mind, but that would not be true. It wasn’t the music that turned me off or the preaching style. Youth group and Sunday school was made for people my age, and I think I liked it even less because you had to participate then. There was no place to hide.

My issues were with God, and there was nothing the church could do to fix that.

But they tried anyway.

My Story

There are a number of people (adults) that called me on weekdays, stopped by to visit, sent cards, got to know me for who I was, volunteered to help out with things inside and outside the church with one purpose in mind. They wanted me to be part of their family. It didn’t matter if I was a Christian or not. They wanted me to be part of their lives.

Almost 30 years later, I know their names and faces: Ron and Lil, Ardelle, The Wier family, even kids my own age who did more than just reach out to me… they made me part of their family. They weren’t just being Christians, they were being disciple-makers.

It felt so strange to be the stranger that they invited in, the one who was thirsty who they gave something to drink, the hungry one they fed, and to hear them talk to me as if they did it because they saw Jesus in me. I certainly didn’t see Jesus in me. I wasn’t sure I even wanted Jesus in me. But they saw God at work in my life and I was eventually curious enough to want to know more about that.

When did I first hear God call me His child? It was back then, as a child and especially as a teenager, when people from church invited me into their homes, their lives, and their family, and treated me like a brother in Christ until I wanted to become one. It was God’s voice coming through their’s even if I didn’t recognize it and they didn’t fully realize it.

CTA: The Fellowship

What is your part in becoming more a part of God’s family?

Treating others like brothers and sisters in Christ.

Just as God adopts us in as His children, we have the opportunity to “adopt” in one another as brothers and sisters. The more we treat others with that kind of love, the more we will “feel the fellowship”. As Jesus taught, it is more blessed to give than to receive. Those that give are usually closer knit into the family than those that are on the receiving end.

So, who is on the fringes of your family that you can draw in closer?

Who can you invest in and be the fellowship that everyone is so desperately craving?

Are your family groups closed, with no more room to include anyone else?

Are there people in your circle of fellowship that have dropped off and need to be pulled back in again?

Are you willing to go looking for those lost sheep?

If you are willing to step out of your comfort zone and Be the Family of God, don’t be surprised if you meet Jesus in the eyes of somdone you barely know, as God works through you to make a stranger into a sibling.