Quest. I had many more questions about baptism, and I thought it would be wise to address them in another sermon. And generally, don’t say this, but it would be worth your while to listen to the first one. We’re going to cover a new ground this morning, and that one I gave the Old Testament underpinnings the baptism as well as a discussion of infant baptism. So I just encourage you to go back and to listen to that to fill out the rest of what you will hear today. So we look to the reading of God’s word. If you please join me in prayer. Father Almighty, as we come before you this day, we are grateful that you have given us your words of truth. And Father, as we come to your word, we ask that you continue to reveal it to us that your spirit in us, working by, with, and through your word, would continue to show us to illuminate to us, to open our eyes to see our savior Jesus here. We pray that we would continue to be transformed by your living words. We ask this all in Jesus’ name. Amen. Beginning in verse 28, chapter 18.
All right, chapter 28, verse 18. And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age. The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. A longtime family friend was able to make three trips to Israel, and each time she went, she was baptized in the Jordan River. That made a total of, at the time, five baptisms for her. No doubt for her, this was done because of a sentimental and emotional experience. I was both impressed and appalled at the same time. Clearly, she did not understand the meaning of baptism. In reality, she has one baptism and four times getting wet in a pseudo-religious experience. I’m sure it’s significant and meaningful to her at a personal level, but the waters of her first baptism in Montana were used by the Lord to signify her entry into his kingdom. The Jordan River is not a deeper and more powerful religious reality.
Twice in the Book of Judges, we are given this summary statement of the sad state of Israel at the time of the Judges. Very familiar. It said, In those days, there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes. That is probably an apt summary of large parts of American Christianity. Emotional experience validates and even determines what is true for many people. Well, what makes your baptism valid and true is the powerful working of the Lord Jesus on behalf of you in the sacrament. Baptism is a sign of what he has done for you and not of what you have done. So no matter what age you were baptized at or how good your memory of it is, it’s founded on the act of Jesus. Your memory will fade over time about everything, including if you were older, about your baptism, how you felt about it. But what Jesus has accomplished and applied to you in your baptism is forever. That’s really good news. I’m sure some of you have been married long enough. You don’t really remember the as you said. I don’t because our pastor did the not the normal ones.
I know I’m still married. It’s based on what we did in our marriage ceremony, and the same is true of your baptism. Same is true of many things that God has done. Your memory fates. The significance of it isn’t the same. That was never what validated it. What validated is what Jesus has done for you. You are a new creature in Christ Jesus because of what he has done. Because the Lord has accomplished his redemptive work in us, we continue to apply these truths to our lives as we walk in forgiveness and reconciliation with other people. Last week I said a sacrament is an act or it’s a ritual given by God which points to a greater reality. The sign participates in the very thing that it points to. It’s not just a mental reminder. We speak of it as a means of grace. Visible signs of what God has done, and they are about him and his saving work. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper connect us to God’s covenant, his covenant of grace that he started, as we said last week, all the way back in Genesis 3:15. The Old Testament sacruments of circumcision and the Passover, there the very seeds from which baptism and the Lord’s Supper grow, form, and mature.
We see then that in the new sacrament for the new covenant, in Matthew 28, which we actively we call the great commission, it’s the last thing that Jesus tells his disciples while he’s still with them. The very last word to Jesus in Matthew’s gospel. And Jesus said to them, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and the Holy spirit, teaching them to observe all that I’ve commanded. Behold, I am with you always to the end of the ages. Jesus then ascends to the Father, and the disciples are sent into the world to do their commission. They are to make disciples throughout the world, and they are to teach them what Jesus has commanded. And unlike the rabbis of the time, Jesus disciples, they bring converts into direct discipleship to Jesus. They don’t start schools. This was what the rabbis did, the school of this rabbi, the school of this rabbi, and everybody was connected through these schools and these particular teachers. Not so with Jesus. He has always remained the one and only teacher of Christianity.
The disciples point people back to him. But notice that this includes baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy spirit. From the very beginning, baptism has been an integral part of the preaching of the gospel because Jesus set it up that way. I mentioned before, modern Westerners, we have a hard time thinking that an act or a can actually do anything by itself. We often downplay these types of acts because we want to think of them as just spiritual and mental and not attach them to something that actually happened. Jesus is the one who commanded us. All the rituals we see in the Bible were instituted by God. It’s never a good idea to be wiser than God about the things that he tells us to do. It’s so funny. People talk about rituals as this bad thing. It’s like, well, we’re made for that, and God’s the one who gave them to us. It’s not a manmade issue. Jesus commands to be baptized. Well, a side note, an observation on ritual and liturgy. I’m sure you’ve seen this, where someone has been asked to do something in a ceremony.
It’s a formal way, and they intentionally do it mockingly or sarcastically to show that they’re not pretentious. That’s being pretentious. I don’t know why people can’t connect the dots there. If you go up and make fun of something to show that you’re not pretentious, you’re being pretentious. If you have had the privilege to see the changing of the guard of the tomb of the unknown soldier in Arlene Cemetery, or maybe see a military honors and a gun salute at a funeral, what you will notice is how deeply moving it is because of the formality. Why? Because the ceremony is done with excellence that flows out of a deep conviction and belief in what it points to. In that case, honor, courage, duty, valor. If a group of ragtags big men, slovenly dressed, coming up in flip-flops, shuffle up and to try any of these these formal acts in the military, it would be a disgrace. It would be terrible. You cannot be casual and maintain a meaningful right that requires a high level of formality. Flippancy is pretentious. It has happened in the church where people have dressed up in clown costumes to do the Lord’s Supper, to show the celebration.
It’s flippant. There have been dunk tanks for baptism and treating it with such casualness. It’s flippant. We do what Jesus has commanded because he’s commanded it. And we do it with the convictions behind and undergirding those beliefs. So why is baptism so important? The Lord has always tied his covenantal acts to physical rituals. That has always been the case because we are body and soul. He doesn’t just redeem our spirit. He redeems all of who he made us to in our totality, which is good news. And so he brings those elements always together. John the Baptist came baptizing to prepare God’s people for the coming of Jesus. In Mark Chapter 1, verse 4, it says, John appeared baptizing in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Again, not going to cover last week, but John’s baptism is different than Jesus’ baptism. John is setting the stage for what Jesus completes. Heets. John is transitional, Jesus is permanent. John has only affected those few years before and during Jesus’ ministry. Think about it, John’s baptism, as it was a pretty narrow window that it was actually being done. Why? Because the covenant of grace was about to find its final completion in Jesus.
A new work required a new covenantal sign. The bloodright of circumcision pointed forward to the blood sacrifice sacrifice of the seed of Abraham who would fulfill all righteousness. Jesus fulfilled the righteousness of circumcision in his circumcision. Jesus fulfilled the righteousness of baptism in his baptism. He identifies with sinners so that we could identify with him. And the water right of baptism, it points back to the cleansing blood of Christ, even while the blood right of circumcision and pointed forward to that final sacrifice of Jesus. In Colossians 2:11, Paul clearly ties the circumcision of Christ to be applied to us now in our baptism. He uses that language expressly. For Gentiles, circumcision holds no religious significance. He makes that very clear. I was asked, in the English-speaking world, in the late 1800s, circumcision was brought back into practice for medical reasons, not religious ones. Particularly two physicians, an American and an English, weren’t responsible for this shift of practice based on cleanliness and disease mitigation. If you have a problem, go deal with them about the current state of circumcision in at least English-speaking West. A medical reason, not a religious one. In the same way, there were acts acts of water cleansing in the Old Covenant as well.
Purification and cleansing. Jesus disciples were arguing in John 3 over some of these purification rights about what that meant. Jesus disciples baptized people as well during the time, even when John the Baptist was there. They were continually done, though, the other rights, the purification, not a one and done. So if you were needing to be cleansed, you went and you purified yourself. But in John’s baptism, it was done once and for all, and you did not do it yourself because you cannot cleanse yourself. That’s the point. You don’t baptize yourself because you are not the one who cleanses yourself. When Jesus ascended to the Father, his disciples, they go and they proclaim and they baptize. And we see this all through the Book of Acts. In Acts 8, Philip baptizes the Ethiopian eunic. In Acts 10, Peter baptizes Cornelius and his whole household. World. Acts 16, there in your bulletin, one who heard was a woman named Lydia from Thierry Tyra, a seller of Purple goods who was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul. Notice that the Lord opened her heart. And after she was baptized, and her and her household as well.
Acts 16, this is the Philippian jailer, and he has come, and he said he took them, Paul and Silas, out and washed their wounds, and he was baptized at once, he and all his family. We see a whole household because it represented everybody in the house. It wasn’t simply an individual act. Baptism is a sacrament of entering to the visible church. It’s the naming ceremony where you are now identified in our Triune God. Baptism tells you what God has done on your behalf. The visible church, just like when Paul said, Is all Israel, Israel? No, he’s saying that not everybody who belongs to Israel, actually spiritual Israel. In the same way in the visible church, not everybody in the church is a believer. But that’s God to determine. He’s the one who sees. We are brought in to the visible community of faith. That’s part of what is signified in your baptism. You now belong to all of God’s people who share in the redemption purchased by Jesus, the family of God. Well, not only do we have new signs with the new sacrament, we also have new controversies for a new church. You can’t do anything in the church without somebody arguing about it.
In Acts 19, Paul had met some people who said they had been baptized. And they said, into what then were you baptized? And they said, into John’s baptism. And Paul said, John’s baptism was the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one to come after him, that is Jesus. And on hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. So these were people who were somewhat of an anomaly. They were part of that first generation of Christians. They were there probably before Jesus was actually in his ministry or not actively so, and they had left in that region. And because they had left Palestine, they were there before Jesus took off in his ministry. Their hearts had been prepared for him, but they had not yet heard of him. And so they were baptized into the name of Jesus. Now the question comes, well, what about all the rest of them? Did they have to baptize them again? If John baptized them, did they have to baptize them again. Honestly, we’re not entirely sure. Some think so, and others would say, no, their transition with Jesus was sufficient for those who were with him.
But the disciples weren’t baptized twice. But the controversy has arisen in some circles over, whose name are you baptized into? Luke says they were baptized in the name of Jesus. Well, that’s just shorthand. But some are like, no, the only way to baptize is in the name of Jesus. No, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy spirit. And we fight about that. The early church baptized in the Triune name and has done ever since. And the controversy is largely around groups who really don’t have any connection to church history. We have baptized in the Triune name of God, shorthand saying in the name of Jesus. However, however you were baptized, I don’t think when you stand before the Lord, he’s going to exclude you because the person baptizing you didn’t do the right correctly in that case. I’m sorry, you be led in heaven, but it wasn’t in the name of the Father, the Son, the spirit. It was just in the name of Jesus or Dedeway. What is important is that we are named in the ceremony into God’s family. And another controversy that comes, of course, the mode of baptism.
Do you submerge them in water? Do you pour water on? Do you sprinkle them? A book called the Dittike, which in Greek means teaching, is one of the earliest Christian writings outside of the New Testament, first century, likely from Jewish Christians in the area of Syria. It specifically says that people should be baptized in the Triune name in running water, which means a stream. Unless you don’t have running water, then you’re to pour. So it made an accommodation for people on their circumstances. Some of the earliest Christian art of baptism, third century, showed people standing in water and someone pouring water over the top of them. The Greek Eastern Church immerses The Catholic Western Church pours or sprinkles. Christians have always adapted early church to where they were at. There were some places that you didn’t have enough water to put anybody in. And then when you went north in the cold climates of Northern Europe, you didn’t put people in freezing cold water. It wasn’t something they often could live through. And so That changes with where you are at. In Matthew 3:16, it says, When Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water.
It can be understood as saying he came up out of where he was baptized, meaning coming up out of the Riverside, or out of the water he was submerged in. We don’t know. The language can be understood in either way. The Book of Hebrews repeatedly tells us of the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus for cleansing That’s what happened often in the Old Testament, was sprinkling. Cleansing in the Old Testament was done ceremoniously by pouring, by washing, by sprinkling. Nowhere do we have a direct command of the mode that we should use. Go and baptize. It doesn’t say go and baptize in at least 18 inches of water with a certain water flow and a certain cubic volume. It just says go and baptize. But it’s done with water. The Greek word baptize is baptizo. That’s where we get the word baptize. It usually means to dip. But in context, it can also mean to destroy, to sink, to wash. The word doesn’t tell us exactly what was taking place. It always surprises me how adamant some are about the mode when we’re not expressly told, but these same groups of people have no problem with grape juice instead of wine and communion.
Well, We do know that, but the mode we’re not told about. It just tells us that the church culture you come from often dictates a lot of the beliefs that you have. There’s a lot of passion associated with a culture that isn’t necessarily something that flows out of the Bible. So charity extended towards one another about something that hasn’t been that clear. In reformed churches, the mode has not mattered. The symbol used matters water. To say that you must have your body completely covered or it’s not valid, it seems to misunderstand the point of the symbol. Jesus cleanses us body and soul by his sacrificial death. The amount of water used is not the issue. It’s what the water points to. The water points to what Jesus has done. That’s the issue. Another controversy, whether or not baptism is necessary for salvation. The thief on the cross was not baptized, and Jesus told him, Today you will be with me in paradise. The ordinary means is baptism, but the exception proves the point. It’s a part of the life of obedience of a believer, to be sure. But there are circumstances that can occur where that’s not possible.
You shouldn’t avoid doing that in is obedience, but it’s telling us it is Jesus who saves. These things point to what Jesus has done. It’s Jesus who saves us. And does baptism then save in the act itself? Again, Jesus is the one who saves. He’s the one who makes the sacrament effective. He chooses to do so in a person that’s determined by him. I don’t know. I’m just called to be obedient to what he said. When Jesus applies that to somebody’s life, that is for him alone to determine. But again, as Westerners, we often have a hard time wanting to say that a sacrament did anything. That wasn’t a problem with other cultures and times. Baptism is a sign and a seal of the cleansing that we have from our sin and being grafted into Jesus Christ. It is more than simply an outward sign of a new spiritual reality. It’s more than that. It is the act of God where he promises to apply to his children the benefits that the sacrament points to. It does not speak so much about what you do. It’s not about your profession. If you’re getting your life squared away, it’s a sign of what God has done on your behalf.
He draws you through his son. He marks you as now belonging to him. That is the good news. It’s all about his grace. Our own catechism is speaks about improving upon your baptism, which is another way of saying we walk in the newness of life that Jesus has given us in our baptismal declaration. Luther’s larger catechism, it’s in your bulletin, Therefore, let all Christians regard their baptism as the daily garment that they are to wear all the time. Every day they should be found in faith with its fruits, suppressing the old creature, growing up in the new. If we want to be Christians, we must practice the work that makes us Christians. Be very clear, Luther is a man of grace. He is not saying we do this in order to get. He’s saying because of the grace of God and who has transformed your heart, you are now unable to walk in newness of life. And therefore we walk in newness of life. How do we practice this? Well, baptism is a continuous call to reconciliation. Jesus has reconciled the baptized to God. Forgiveness and reconciliation include loving and forgiving your enemies, those who have hurt you, extending the forgiveness that you have received to them.
Why? Because you have been washed clean of your sins. Therefore, as the washed bride of Christ, you extend that forgiveness to others as the outflow of what you have received. In your baptism, you have been declared as belonging to Jesus. Quoting again from Romans 6, Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried, therefore, with him by baptism into his death so that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. And so when you loved your enemies, you are walking in your baptismal clothes When you forgive those who have wronged you, you are walking in your baptismal garments. That’s what that looks like. At the times of a baptism, when you see that being done, regardless of the age of that, it is always a call for you to look back and to see what God has done on your behalf. In the same way, when you’re at a wedding and you’re hearing these two and the declaration that is being made to them, it is always a call to those who have walked through the vows of marriage to hear again God’s intent for their life.
And so that you should be encouraged and exhorted in a marriage ceremony, even as you are in a baptismal, the call back to what God has done as your memory fades, maybe as an infant you never knew. And certainly long enough for some that he’s like, I don’t remember all the details. Well, when we baptize, you have a chance to come back to that, to see the reality, to embrace that, to walk in it, say, I have been baptized. The foundation of this is not in me and the quality of my faith. The foundation is in the quality of Jesus. That doesn’t change. We change, but that doesn’t change. And that is the good news. You have been marked, you have been sealed by God Almighty, through the person and work of Jesus. His righteousness has been counted to you by faith alone. You have been called out of darkness the light. You are now a part of the body of Christ, the church. And I hear this. I know you have two people always want to say, I don’t like church because it’s full of hypocrites. Well, don’t go to the bar, the school, the gym to work anywhere where you’re present with somebody else because there are hypocrites present.
We’ve confessed our sins, the Ten Commandments, and we recognize we have broken these. Hypocrisy rains in my heart. It rains in your heart. And the solution to that is not to avoid the church. The solution that is to come and repent that is sin with the body of Christ, to be encouraged with one another, to share in our burdens, That we together, who wear the garment of our baptism, bear the burdens of one another, extending that love and forgiveness here in this place as a precursor of what Jesus is going to bring us into in his glorious consummation of history at the end of the age. We experience that now in part. And yes, it’s broken because we’re broken and sinful, but it’s no less true. It is a real participation that is longing for and awaiting a consummation. All of that, brothers and sisters, is in your baptism. It is not a mean, paltry, insignificant sacrament. It is a declaration of Almighty God coming, bearing our sins through the person and work of Jesus, who has now enabled us, set us free, commissioned us, go into the world, making disciples of the nation, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy spirit, teaching them my Commandments.
That is what we’ve been commissioned to do. Not to argue about the mode, the amount, some of the details, but to go to make disciples, to walk in baptismal garments. That is an incredible thing that the living God has given to his people, Let us rejoice, brothers and sisters, that you have been named by God personally to be his child. Pray with me. Father, we do thank we thank you. We thank you that you have called us from darkness into light. Father, we thank you that you have washed us clean. And Lord, we see that each time we watch a baptism. Father, thank you that our hearts have and cleansed by the blood of Christ. And Lord, we would ask and pray that you would continue to refine us, that you would continue, Father, to teach us the practice of our baptism, to walk in it afresh and anew. Lord, that we would bring glory and honor to our savior, Jesus. And Father, we would pray and ask simply, Lord, that you would bring your son soon. Father, we’re waiting for that day when you will set us free entirely to be what you have created us to be in your son.
We pray for all these things to you in his mighty name. Amen.
Discaimer: This sermon text was generated by an automated transcription service.