Can you imagine life without water? Think of the ways that we use it everyday – brushing our teeth, taking a shower, washing our hands, wiping off the kitchen counter, cooking, watering the lawn. Water is indispensable!
Plants need water to grow. They can’t life without it. When Linda and I were living in St. Louis, we had to make an emergency trip to Wisconsin in the middle of summer. Linda’s dad was very ill and we had to leave very quickly. We had to leave so quickly we didn’t have time to set up someone to take care of her flowers. We had been getting some rain so I thought they would be all right for a few days. When we left though, we got a real blast of heat and no rain. We were worried about our Vincas, Petunias and Ivy as we pulled back into town. Linda wanted me to assess the situation and prepare her for the gruesome sight before she would come around the corner and look at them. Our flowers had badly wilted and were dried up. We were somewhat sad about the flowers. However, I decided that if we watered them they might come back. They did. Water brings new life to plants.
Sure plants need water. That’s true. All too true. We saw how much a lack of water can affect our lives. It recently touched our lives, didn’t it? As we saw this past summer, water has a tremendous impact on our lives. With the severe drought that this area endured this past year, we are reminded of the importance of water. Many ponds dried up. Crops suffered. Lots of money was spent trying to irrigate farmland. A temporary halt to the watering of lawns was instituted because of the water shortage. All living creatures need water. It is indispensable for all life to exist.
When I was in the Army, my unit was deployed to the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California. Fort Irwin is the Army’s desert warfare training facility and is adjacent to Death Valley. For a month, my unit was sent out into the Mohave Desert to train under extreme conditions. With the daily high temperatures well over 100 degrees, everyone drank a lot of water and knew where the nearest water supply was located. Once in awhile, someone would get careless and not drink enough water. Eventually, the temperature and physical exertion would wear on them and they would succumb to a heat-related injury. Every month at least one person was air evacuated due to heat stroke. For soldiers at Fort Irwin, water is indispensable. It is a matter of survival. All people need water for survival. Not just soldiers at Fort Irwin. Not just people who live in desert regions. All people need water to live.
This is truer than we may realize. What people need most, whether they realize it or not, is the saving power of God through the water of baptism and the Word of God. The Bible tells us that all people have sinned and fallen short of God’s perfect standards. We also know that we are unable to save ourselves. But God loves us so much that He provided a way out of our sad situation. He gave us the gift of baptism to take away all of our sins. That is life-giving water that all people need.
In our message on the Sunday after Christmas, we discovered that baptism is one of God’s ways of giving us all the blessings that Jesus earned for us on the cross. Through our baptism into Christ, we receive the complete forgiveness of all of our sins and become heirs of everlasting life. In addition, we are given the gift of faith through baptism as God’s spirit plants the seed of faith in the heart of even the tiniest infant.
Christ has given to the church the gift of baptism in order to make new Christians out of those who live in the desert of their sin. Baptism is not only a gift for those already in His family but also a gift we are to share with those outside of His family. God wishes to bring more people into His kingdom through this blessed gift. Everyone needs the blessings of baptism. We all need it.
God forgives our sins through baptism and gives to us faith to follow Him but it doesn’t make us perfect. Unfortunately, we still sin.
Man non-Christians level a charge against Christians. A recent USA Today editorial showed that many non-Christians feel threatened by Christians. They feel that we are bigoted and hypocritical They say that Christians do not follow Christ’s teaching of loving those God has placed in our lives. They believe that we are judgemental.
In our text, Peter struggled with the same issue of how to relate with people different from him. But he made an important discovery. Peter states, “I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism but accepts people from every nation.” It is true. God does not show favoritism. A person’s national origin means nothing to God. What a person looks like is inconsequential to God. What a person has done is immaterial to God. “God does not show favoritism.” God loves everyone. He made us all in His image. He sent His only Son to earth to die for everybody. He loves us all the same. He desires that all people, everywhere, be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth.
Do you remember during the recent drought when it just rained on every Christian’s yard? Do you remember when it only rained on the fields of every Christian farmer? You remember that right? That’s silly of course. But just as rain does not show favoritism in where it falls, neither does God show favoritism. He loves all people the same. That’s why the Bible says that He sent His son to die for us and pay for the sins of the whole world. That’s why He gave us the gift of so that all people could be born anew into His family.
As Christians who already know the love that God has for all, we are to seek out the lost and hurting in this world. Our job as Christians is to take the message that God loves all people into a world that does not know that truth. Not just to people like us but people that are different from us as well. Especially people unlike us. Why especially people not like us?
Let’s see what’s going on in this portion of the book of Acts to see if that sheds any light on the question. Before this sermon from Peter, he had been in Joppa. He saw a vision of unclean animals coming down out of heaven and heard a voice telling him to eat them. He refused because they were unclean for Jews, even Jewish Christians. Then he heard a voice telling him, “What God has cleansed, no longer consider unholy.”
Then Peter is invited to Caesarea by a Roman centurion named Cornelius. Remember that Jews had no association with Gentiles. But Peter is invited into his home and asked to speak with Cornelius and his assembled family and friends. At this point in the book of Acts, none of Jesus’ disciples realized that God had intended the Gospel to be proclaimed to the Gentiles as well. Peter addresses those assembled with the worlds of our text. In response, we have the first recorded conversion of a group of Gentiles. Afterwards they were all baptized with the water that brings new life through the power of the Holy Spirit working through the Word of God.
Taking the message that God loves all people, out into the world is what Peter did. It is also, what Jesus commands us to do. He said, “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” You see, for us to fulfill this task that the Lord has given us, we need to cross social, cultural and racial barriers. He said, “Go and make disciples of all nations.” This means all people groups.
Jesus led by example. Jesus went to those not like Himself. He healed the child of Syro-Phoenician woman and the servant of the Roman centurion in Capernaum. Peter, likewise, took the Gospel to a group of Gentiles. Paul spent most of his life reaching out to those unlike him. We owe a debt of gratitude to these mission-minded people who crossed boundaries and obstacles so that our own ancestors might hear the Gospel and pass it on to us. Likewise, we too cross social, cultural and racial boundaries to pass on the Good News of the Gospel by telling those that don’t know Jesus that He loves them too. In doing so, we demonstrate to our accusers that God does not show favoritism but accepts people from every background into His kingdom and neither do we.
Jesus showed His love for us and all people by fully identifying with us struggling human beings. He began His ministry by being baptized in the Jordan Rive by John the Baptist. Jesus was baptized in obedience to His Heavenly Father. Sinless Jesus didn’t need to be baptized, but he needed to enter into the water, as Matthew writes, “in order to fulfill all righteousness.” That is, to fulfill the entire will and law of God on our behalf, as our substitute.
Just as Jesus submitted to baptism in order to identify with us. Just as Jesus yielded to baptism in order to associate with us in our struggles. So too, by being baptized we also join with others in their trials and difficulties in life. We too know the struggle of battling against sin. We know the helplessness of battling sin and Satan on our own. We know the winner if you try to battle on your own. But, we also know the victor who overcame sin, death and the devil. Therefore, we can point those who still struggle to the one who struggled for them and won – Jesus Christ, our risen and victorious Savior.
Through our baptism into Christ and our trusting faith in Him, God gives to us the power to carry out our mission in life of sharing our faith with others. He gives to us the Holy Spirit who empowers us as witnesses of His love. The Holy Spirit also helps us to live holy and God-pleasing lives as we follow His leaving and share His life-giving love and forgiveness with others.
Some of the early Lutherans to come to the United States settled in Frankenmuth, Michigan. They were committed to reaching out to those that didn’t know Jesus. They soon found some Native Americans and founded some of the most successful missions to them in our nation’s history. Many Native Americans believed in Christ and received the blessings of baptism.
Likewise, we too follow our forefathers in reaching out to those different from us. We share with them the life-giving message of the Gospel and invite them to place their trust in Jesus Christ and to be baptized in His name. There are many people around us, living in the drought of sin and dying for a drink of the water of life. What a joy and privilege it is to share with others the life giving power that our Lord offers to all people – through the water and the Word of God.
