One of the greatest joys that I have as a pastor is when an individual who is far from God visits our community of believers, begins to hear the voice of God calling them to a higher place, a fresh beginning, a new life, and that person responds to the call of God by committing their life to Him through a public proclamation of faith and through baptism. When we experience those times we are seeing unquestionable evidence that God is present among us, and that we as a church are fulfilling the mission Christ gave to his church...to make disciples.
Today is one of those very special days. We have two individuals who have become part of our church family, have heard God very clearly speaking to them; calling them to a new life, and following the service today are going to publicly declare their entrance into that new life through baptism.
We are between sermon series today. We’ve just finished a series called “Charting The Course” where we’ve talked about the five core values of New Prairie Community of Faith. Next week we will begin a six-week series in which we’ll take you on a journey through the book of Romans. In praying about what to talk with you about today, I sensed that God would like for us to spend a little time talking about what we’re going to experience together in an hour or so. Baptism is one of many things in the church that most everyone is familiar with; we’ve heard the word, we’ve seen it done, we know that it is an important part of the Christian experience. But I wonder if we really understand what it’s all about. When did it begin? Why do we do it? What’s the purpose of being baptized? There are several things that we recognize as a part of “church-life” but may not really understand; baptism being one.
To begin understanding this thing called Christian baptism, we first have to understand that Christianity was born out of Judaism. Jesus Christ, in his flesh, was a Jew - descended from the lineage of King David. After his birth he was presented to the high-priest and was circumcised. He grew up in a Jewish home. He was taught all of the Jewish laws, customs and traditions. He fully participated in the Jewish religion, celebrating in all of the feasts and festivals. He would have had a bar-mitzvah like ceremony at the age of 13. As an adult, he was recognized as a Jewish rabbi - giving him authority to speak to people gathered at the synagogue.
As Jesus began his ministry, he called 12 men to follow him and be his disciples. These men were all Jews. During the 3 1/2 years they spent together, before Jesus death, resurrection, and ascension—they remained Jews. They continued to observe and practice the fundamentals of the Jewish religion, with Jesus helping them to look outside of the legalistic box constructed by the Pharisees and Sadducees, and see the true, rich meaning behind their religious practices. Jesus mission was never to destroy, discard, or eliminate in any way the Jewish faith. Rather, his mission was to simply illuminate it, helping Jews & Gentiles alike to see that the centuries of religious custom and tradition were to serve one purpose - to demonstrate and foreshadow that Jesus Christ is the long-awaited Messiah. Everything that Jesus taught his disciples, his friends, the crowds gathered on the hillside or the shore, he taught as a Jewish rabbi, from a Jewish context.
Once we understand this, we can begin to understand why we as Christians do some of the things we do today. For instance - when we celebrate communion in our churches today, we are really celebrating the Jewish Passover which was fulfilled by Jesus Christ and fully explained by Him during the last supper with his disciples. Our Christian marriage ceremonies today are a beautiful picture of the Jewish understanding of covenant. Like these and many others, baptism finds it’s roots in the ancient Jewish practice of proselyte baptism. Let’s take few moments to examine this practice together.
From the time of Abraham to the time of Jesus, the Jewish people were the chosen people of God. They were the only people on the face of the earth who knew the one, true God. From Abraham, God raised up this nation to be his voice to the entire world. It was to them that God introduced Himself, gave his laws and commands. His manifest presence was confined to the Ark of the Covenant in the tabernacle and later the temple. The only way for a human being to know and understand God was to be born a Jew, or to become a Jew through conversion. Here is where we introduce ourselves to the term proselyte. In the simplest sense, this word means convert. In our context here, a proselyte is a non-Jewish person becoming a Jewish person.
There was process through which a non-Jew could become a Jewish proselyte, and that process involved three things. A sacrifice, circumcision, and baptism. The sacrifice was a heifer or a pair of turtledoves. It was brought to the priest and given as a burnt offering to God.
The next thing that had to take place was circumcision. Now, out of sensitivity, I won’t be graphic with this. I think most of us probably understand what circumcision is. It is a cutting away of a piece of flesh from a man’s body. This is usually done with an infant who is 8 days old, thus the pain isn’t remembered. But an adult male, who wanted to become a Jewish proselyte had to undergo this procedure, regardless of his age. This circumcision was a really strange thing that was done to separate the Jewish people from every other nation. It was their distinguishing mark, the permanent, irreversible brand on their body that designated them as the only people on earth who were in covenant relationship with God.
Finally, after the circumcision wound had healed the proselyte had to go through the final step, which was baptism. The person was stripped of all of their clothes, completely naked. They then went into the water, and dipped themselves being sure to fully immerse their entire body in the water. They were very careful that not one bit of their flesh remained dry. When males were baptized, the priest was present. When females were baptized, they were attended by other females while the male priest or rabbi stood outside the door.
Once this process had been completed, the proselyte was now considered to be a Jew in every way. He had fully renounced his previous life, his previous nationality, all allegiances he had to his previous life ceased to exist, he was fully Jewish. He or she was not someone who had simply added Jewish-ness to his old identity. In a sense, the Gentile died when he went under the water and a new person with a new name, and a new identity was born when he came out of the water.
Everything instituted by God in the Jewish religious custom was meant to be a picture of Jesus Christ and the new covenant that God would make with humanity through Messiah. This process is a beautiful picture of what happens with us when we enter into covenant with God through Christ. Let’s draw the parallels.
We begin with the sacrifice. The Jewish proselyte had to obtain and present an offering to be burnt as a sacrifice. This was usually a heifer, or a pair of turtle doves. But let’s read together Ephesians 2:11-22. You see, the relationship between Jew’s and Gentiles was one of hostility. But the conversion process brought the Gentile into the covenant and eliminated the hostility and made the Gentile one of them. The relationship between us and God is one of hostility. But we too can enter into this covenant and eliminate the hostility between God and ourselves and the sacrifice portion of this was accomplished by Jesus and the shedding of his blood on the cross. He was the sacrifice that brings us into covenant with God, eliminating hostility, tearing down the wall between Jews and Gentiles, making us all one people...the people of God.
Next is the circumcision. Remember, this is the irreversible mark, or brand identifying the person as belonging to God. When we enter into relationship with God, through Christ, there is a circumcision that takes place with us as well. But it is not a circumcision of the flesh performed by the hands of men. It is a circumcision of the heart, performed by Christ himself. The circumcision of the flesh was a cutting away, an alteration, a change that could not be undone. What does the circumcision of our hearts look like? Scripture has a lot to say about this.
First, it is a heart that is made new. Jeremiah speaks about the heart of a person who is not in relationship with God. It is stubborn, evil, and deceitful above all things and beyond all cure. But when Christ circumcises our hearts, according to Ezekiel, this stubborn, evil, deceitful heart of stone that is beyond cure is removed - cut away and replaced with a heart of flesh that is soft, tender, receptive, able to hear and respond to the voice of God. A circumcised heart is one upon which God is writing his laws so we gladly obey God from the heart, not under compulsion by a religious system. The circumcised heart is one that is no longer under the control of the evil desires of our flesh, but one that beats in harmony with the heart of Christ and overflows with his righteousness. Listen to the words of Colossians 2:9-15
And finally, this brings us to baptism. There’s so much symbolism to see here. Baptism begins with the person removing their clothing. Now...don’t worry...we remain fully clothed when we baptize around here! But this nakedness represents a stripping away of everything external, an abandoning of that which identifies us, vulnerability, and the understanding that apart from God we are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked. Then we enter into the water. The water represents cleansing. Ceremonial cleansing was incredibly important in Jewish custom. The proselyte, who was previously considered to be unclean by the Jews was now placing his whole body in cleansing water that would now make him ceremonially clean and acceptable. And finally, the complete submersion represents a complete abandoning of their old identity and full acceptance of the new identity.
Today, when we baptize, the water represents cleansing of sin. It is a visual representation that all of our sin, regardless of how vile and filthy it may have been, regardless of how unclean and unworthy we feel we are in the eyes of God, that sin has been completely washed away through the blood of Christ and we have been cleansed of all unrighteousness. The submersion that takes place represents death of our old self, our old identity, our old way of life. Just as we lay a dead body in the ground, a person who allows themselves to be submerged in the water of baptism proclaims that sinful, godless person you knew before is as good as good as dead. She no longer exists. The sinful habits, dead. The godless attitudes, dead. The selfish desires, dead. The control of Satan over her life, dead. Hostility with God, forever dead!
And as the person is lifted out of the water, what a beautiful picture of resurrection. Being raised from the dead into new life, with a new name, a new identity, new habits, attitudes, and desires written upon our hearts by God and brought to life within us! When we baptize, we declare that we are baptizing that person in the name of the Father, the Son Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. What we are saying here, is we are baptizing you INTO the name of God. When you enter into covenant relationship with God, his name becomes your identity. Just as a bride forsakes her maiden name and accepts for herself the name of her husband, we take for ourselves the name of God. We are now His.
Many things that we do in our church experience, are taken far too lightly. Because we are told that we should, we do them, not fully understanding what we are doing, and then these rituals end up having very little true meaning in our lives. When we see how baptism has emerged out of this Jewish custom, there’s no way we can take lightly what it is we are doing when we allow ourselves to be baptized. We can’t look upon the sacrifice Christ made, experience the circumcision of our hearts, acknowledge that this means the death of one person and the birth of a new person, and then continue to hold on to the godless values, habits, attitudes, and lifestyles of this world. So many Christians do that. We decide to add a little religion to our lives by getting baptized, when what God is really inviting us to do is end one life and begin a new one with an entirely new identity.
I want to close this morning by reading to you the first portion of Romans 6 from The Message by Eugene Peterson.
“So what do we do? Keep on sinning so God can keep forgiving? I should hope not! If we’ve left the country where sin is sovereign, how can we still live in our old house there? Or didn’t you realize we packed up and left there for good? That is what happened in baptism. When we went under the water, we left the old country of sin behind; when we came up out of the water, we entered into the new country of grace—a new life in a new land!
That’s what baptism into the life of Jesus means. When we are lowered into the water, it is like the burial of Jesus; when we are raised up out of the water, it is like the resurrection of Jesus. Each of us is raised into a light-filled world by our Father so that we can see where we’re going in our new grace-sovereign country.
Could it be any clearer? Our old way of life was nailed to the cross with Christ, a decisive end to that sin—miserable life—no longer at sin’s every beck and call! What we believe is this: If we get included in Christ’s sin-conquering death, we also get included in his life-saving resurrection. We know that when Jesus was raised from the dead it was a signal of the end of death-as-the-end. Never again will death have the last word. When Jesus died, he took sin down with him, but alive he brings God down to us. From now on, think of it this way: Sin speaks a dead language that means nothing to you; God speaks your mother tongue, and you hang on every word. You are dead to sin and alive to God. That’s what Jesus did.
That means you must not give sin a vote in the way you conduct your lives. Don’t give it the time of day. Don’t even run little errands that are connected with that old way of life. Throw yourselves wholeheartedly and full-time—remember, you’ve been raised from the dead! - into God’s way of doing things. Sin can’t tell you how to live. After all, you’re not living under that old tyranny any longer. You’re living in the freedom of God.
