Matthew 3:13-17
“The Amazing Grace of Baptism”
By: Kenneth Emerson Sauer, Pastor of Parkview United Methodist Church, Newport
News, VA
Why was Jesus baptized?
Scholars have debated this question over and over again , and have found no single
answer.
But it happened, and Jesus initiated it.
Jesus came to John the Baptist in order to be baptized.
The very fact that the Son of God would be baptized is startling.
Jesus is the Author and Finisher of our faith, the Founder of the movement of
Christianity.
He was God-made-flesh, through whom everything was made.
Jesus needed no repentance; He was already perfectly righteous.
John the Baptist even recognized this ironic twist. John tried to deter Jesus and said, “I
need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?”
And Jesus’ response?
“Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness.”
I admire people who stop along the road when others have mechanical failure.
We certainly saw a lot of that last week during the snow storm.
Three years ago, Jeanne, Ben and myself were driving back to Macon, Georgia from
Syracuse, NewYork when all of a sudden one of the tires blew-out on our car.
I had been coming upon an exit, so I drove the car and stopped it on the exit ramp in a
small town in Pennsylvania.
It was bitter cold, and snowing, and we did not have a spare tire.
So I got out of the car, and decided to try and flag down a passing motorist.
I was sure that this would take some time, but to my surprise, the first car that came
by....stopped.
They had a cell phone, and allowed me to use it in order to call triple A.
What a moment of grace that was!
Within an hour or so we were back on the road with a new tire.
And in Christ’s baptism we a shocked by a moment of grace.
Through His baptism Jesus was making baptism possible and effective for human kind.
Christ purchased righteousness for us.
The righteousness that Christ fulfilled through His baptism is the very righteousness that
can stand and cover every one that follows Jesus in baptism.
What an act of grace!
And baptism is a window through which we can see the grace of God.
John saw it, and those around him saw it.
“As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was
opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting upon him.”
At this moment, Christ was demonstrating the fullest extent of his humiliation in
becoming a human being. He had emptied Himself and as Phillipians chapter two says, He
“made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.”
Christ was identifying with those of us He came to save, and He was insisting that all
who follow Him should be identified with Him through the sacrament of baptism.
In this moment of self-surrender, God spoke from heaven saying, “This is my Son, whom
I love; with him I am well pleased.”
And while Christ’s baptism did not have the same significance as our baptisms, there are
some points of commonality.
Both baptisms are acts of obedience through which the baptized experiences God’s grace
and favor.
It’s an affirmation that is both personal and public, and both the person being baptized
and the people who witness the baptism are made aware of God’s grace.
The difference between between Jesus’ baptism and our own is that Jesus had earned
God’s favor, and we have not and can not.
It is an experience of unmerited grace.
In a similar sense, my family and I did nothing to merit the person’s favor who decided to
stop and help us when we were stuck on the side of the road.
He didn’t know us from Adam. He just did it because he cared.
This is the way that God’s grace works.
There is nothing we can do on our own to earn it or deserve it--God just gives it to us
becasue He cares and He loves us beyond anything we can fathom.
And there is no real life or growth apart from God’s grace.
As human beings, we have some basic needs.
We need to be loved, we need to belong, and we need to feel as if we are important.
And through the grace of Christian baptism, God fulfills all these needs for us.
Baptism generally occurs at the beginning of our spiritual lives.
If we are baptized as infants, this is a sign of what John Wesley called God’s Prevenient
Grace.
This is God’s grace that goes before us, that surrounds us by the community of faith, that
gives us roots, and shows us love.
This grace works within our lives--calling us, forming our spiritual lives and bringing us
to the point where we are convicted by the Holy Spirit to give our lives completly over to God.
How amazing God’s grace is!
Once we have accepted God’s grace for ourselves, and confessed our faith in Christ Jesus
as Lord we enter a new stage of grace.
This stage of grace is what John Wesly called Justifying Grace.
This is the point at which we are born again, or saved, and strike out on our Christain
journeys.
If a person was not baptized as an infant, this is the point where they make their public
confession of faith, and are baptized in order to witness to the world the outward and visible sign
of God’s inward and invisible grace in their lives!
Whether we are baptized as infants, or adults....God bestows His grace upon us.
And Holy Baptism is the foremost sign of God’s grace or favor.
Baptism is a priviledge...a priviledge which is completely undeserved.
But it is a priviledge that gives us evidence that we are loved by God, that we now belong
to a community of faith, and that we are important!
I mean, we have to feel pretty important when we come to realize that the God who
created this entire Universe, chose to come down to earth and die so that we can live!
And through the amazing grace of baptism God provides us with acceptance, identity,
and purpose.
Wow, God accepts me!
God gives me the name Christian, and God is calling all of us to fulfill His purpose here
on earth.
We have all experienced the pain of not measuring up. This is the opposite of grace.
A friend of mine told me about one such experience in his life.
His name is Tommy, and Tommy was going to the local amusement park with his family.
With joy, he anticipated the little boats with bells, the happy carousel and the carnival
games. But what Tommy really wanted to do was to ride the big one, the roller coaster!
What a thrill!
He could share it with his friends and it would prove that he was no longer a little boy.
So the big day came, and he rode the little boats, cars and carousel.
He threw darts at the balloons and baseballs at the bowling pins--and all the while--in the
back of his mind was the thought: “Today I’m going to ride the big one!”
Finally, they got in line for the coaster, a line that appeared to be infinite.
Eventually they worked their way to the front, and Tommy was ready to board his
dream ride.
Just as he was about to step down, the gate keeper pulled him back and over to a
measuring post--explaining that he had to be a certain height; it was the regulation.
You guessed it.
Tommy was three inches too short.
He didn’t measure up.
But thank God that in Christ we are acceptable to God--because of God’s amazing
grace!
The world might tell us that we are not good enough.
We might tell ourselves that we are not good enough.
And it’s true. We don’t measure up.
But God loves us anyway....and when we accept what God has done for us through Jesus
Christ--God’s grace shines so bright--that we find that we do indeed measure up. We
measure up to God.
And after all, that is what really matters!
Through the sacrament of baptism, we accept the acceptance of God.
And there is no greater security in all the earth!
After Justifying Grace, we enter a new stage of grace that John Wesley called
Sanctifying Grace.
This means that now that we have been saved, it’s time to get on with the journey.
And as we get on with the journey...God’s grace moves us toward maturity in the
Christian faith as we study His Word, live according to His Word, devote ourselves to a
disciplined life of prayer, visit the sick, participate in worship, and the life in the community of
faith.
As we are being sanctified, we are doing the good works which God prepared in advance
for us to do.
And though there are peaks and valleys, through God’s grace, we continue to grow in our
faith, in our knowledge of God...and we become more and more like Christ.
This is the Christian journey--the journey toward perfection.
None of us will ever obtain perfection in this life, but as we continue to walk hand in
hand with Jesus, we find ourselves being more and more transformed into the people we were
created to be.....and there is nothing more exciting in the entire world!
In our Lord’s baptism, Jesus was empowered by the holy Spirit for mission.
And Christian baptism commissions us to be Christ’s witness’s--as we too become
empowered by the Holy Spirit.
We need to know that we are loved, valued and cared for before we can
accomplish any good, and God gives us this love, value and care through His Amazing
Grace!!!
Baptism means belonging.
It means that we belong to God and to each other.
In a few moments we are going to reaffirm our baptisms.
This means that we are going to remember our baptisms, and be thankful.
After the words of institution, if you so choose, I encourage everyone who has been
baptized to come up front to the baptismal font, touch the water, and thank God for His grace.
You may want to spend some time at the altar after doing this.
If you have not yet experienced Christian baptism--but you feel God calling you toward
this, I encourage you to come up front, and let me know that you would like to be baptized this
morning.
Let us now turn in our hymnals to page 605, and join in singing the baptismal hymn,
“Wash O God Our Sons and Daughters”.
