INFANT BAPTISM
(I. Samuel 1:3-11)
One thing I have learned in my ministry over the years is that there are many different reasons why people want to be baptized. Having just baptized young Javen, I thought it would be a good time to look again at the story of Hannah to see how that story relates to the biblical meaning of baptism.
As the story is told Elkanah had two wives, Hannah and Peninnah. Hannah was barren with no children and Peninnah had sons and daughters. Each year the family would go up to Shiloh to make their annual sacrifice to God and to worship. Elkanah would give each family member a portion of the sacrifice to offer to God. Elkanah’s love for Hannah must have been greater for her than
Peninnah because Peninnah tormented Hannah to the point that Hannah became so desperate to have children that on this particular year at worship in Shiloh she went into the temple and prayed to the point of tears and anguish that if God would give her a son, she would give the boy to the Lord all the days of his life.
The Lord answered her prayer with a “yes”. A year later Hannah bore a son and called him Samuel. True to her promise to the Lord when the child was
weaned at age three when the family went up to Shiloh, she gave Samuel to the temple priest, Eli. Samuel grew up under the teaching and instruction of Eli and became Israel’s first great prophet of the Lord.
Any mother here knows or can identify with Hannah in the wanting and bearing of a child, but it is this giving the child to God that I want to emphasize.
Hannah could have easily rationalized her way out of her promise by telling herself that I was just too distraught at the time with Peninnah ridiculing and harassing me about not having a child that I didn’t realize or mean what I said
or “I just can’t do it; yes, I told God I would give Him the child but now
that the time has come; this is my child and I love him too much to give him to anybody.
If that were to happen today many friends of Hannah would likely say
we understand, Hannah, you’re right Samuel is your child and you have
the right as the parent to keep and raise that child.
But such a sin did not occur, the moment that child came out of the womb, Hannah knew whose child it was- there was never a question or doubt in her mind. And it was not as if she would never see her son again; each year
the family continued to go to the Temple at Shiloh and Hannah would bring gifts and/or make clothes for him as she watched Samuel grow up into a man of God.
Best of all she knew what she had done by keeping her promise to the Lord, was right and good; she carried no guilt or shame or regret in her heart.
Her giving to the Lord was done freely and the rewards to her were far greater than she could have imagined; for she went on to have 5 more
children, three sons and two daughters. Listen to part of Hannah’s prayer of thanksgiving to God when she had given Samuel to Eli:
My heart finds joy in the Lord. My head is liftedto the Lord. My mouth mocks my enemies. I rejoice because You (Lord) saved me. There is no one holy like the Lord. There is no one but You O Lord. There is no rock like our God. (I.Sam.2:1-2)
The story may sound a bit extreme something out of the past when people did radical things to win God’s favor which seems out of step and impractical to us today.
But my point is:
For the Christian be it today or yesterday or tomorrow, Hannah has shown to us what every Christian is called to do if he or she is to be a follower of Jesus Christ
and that is to surrender our life to God, as we say in the prayer not my will but thine be done – thy kingdom come thy will be done.
Once again a mother has come into the Temple of God and has made a promise:
Do you desire to have this child baptized into the Christian faith and do
you promise with God’s help by your life and teaching to lead the child
toward an understanding of this faith and into the service of Jesus Christ?
I DO
If the person were an adult being baptized after the questions of faith comes
this question: Will you then obediently keep God’s holy will and commandments and walk in the same all the days of your life?
Response: I will by God’s help.
Promises, vows are being made not to ourselves but to God here at His altar in His temple just as Hannah made. We are not committing the child or the adult to
be a full time pastor or priest in the sense of giving a sermon every Sunday and the like, but we are promising, saying: I surrender.
I surrender my will to Your will, Lord; my life is not my life but your life,
Lord; my child is not my child but your child, Lord.
Of course, most parents or adults find the reality of that promise far too demanding and risky. As soon as we go out the door of the church
our mind set goes right back to the fact that this is my child to raise as
I see fit; this is my life to live the way I want to live it- God or no god,Bible or no Bible. We may have only gotten baptized in the first place
because it seemed like a good thing to do, didn’t cost that much,
and maybe it will serve like an insurance policy to get into heaven.
But when you think a little more about baptism as an act of surrender
to the will and way of God- that this child is not my child but God’s
that my life is not mine to do with as I please but is God’s, consider
what happens to “my” child as he or she grows up. By the time they are teenagers and in a state of rebellion- doing things they shouldn’t do, having friends they shouldn’t have- you are beginning to wonder who’s child is this.
And is it not true when “my” child begins driving alone, what am I praying especially when he or she is not home on time- God please take care and
protect my child from danger. And if is not the car, what about going into the service or into a war zone; or going to another state or country
to work or to marry- now out of the nest – we are praying daily for God to watch over and protect “my” child.
What if in our mind, when I brought
my child to be baptized I truly could have said and believed, Lord, I surrender
I give my child back to you. Later when “my” child is out on the darkened highways of life, in the war zones of battle, in the far distant
places of the world, I can pray as I did at the altar long ago,
God, I gave the child You gave to me to You then, he/she is still yours, keep him save and secure. I taught her to pray, I taught him to daily read your Word as I read it with him as a child,
I taught her to worship You as we worshipped you together in your Temple; I taught him to always follow your Will as I tried to by my example before him at home and work and play.
Considering what will happen to a child as he or she grows up, the vow of Hannah is hardly radical or out of place today.
When Jesus spoke to Nicodemus in John 3, He told the man you must be born again. Nicodemus couldn’t imagine how a person could go back into the womb a second time. The “born again”
Jesus meant was not a physical rebirth, but it was this mental mind-set of surrender that I am speaking about; that this child is not really my child
but your child God, that this life of mine is not really mine to do as I
please but to be clay in the Potter’s hand.
Paul said it like this:
…You are not your own; you were bought with a price….” (I.Cor.6:20)
And what a price we were each purchased for; when another mother named
Mary watched her Son crucified. Do you think she was thinking to herself:
“that is my child dying on the cross ….”
I don’t think so; yes her heart was bleeding in sorrow and agony; but she
knew then as she watched that terrible scene of torture and death that
Jesus belonged to God and was God incarnate from the day the angel Gabriel had announced to her that she would be with child by the Holy Spirit and Mary’s response:
…let it be done to me according to your Word…I surrender, not my will but thine be done.
It is not an easy truth to accept or live; most of us who claim Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, end up surrendering only a part or portion of our life or will to the Lord. You can tell so by how easily and how often we fall away from the faith. Daily worship, prayer, bible study are not vital to us, for we are still
determined to keep this or that part of our life to our self and surely our children remain my children not His.
Many of you know the story of Abraham taking his only son, Isaac, up to the mountain to sacrifice to God at God’s command. We know the outcome of that story too- that at the point of death, Abraham was told not to strike Isaac but to sacrifice a lamb that had been caught in the thicket nearby. But the test was
clear for Abraham- whose child is this, whose only son is this, yours or mine Abraham?
James 2: 23 says about this incident in Abraham’s life:
Abraham believed God (believed that God had given him the child but believing too that the child belonged to God) and that faith (that
faith that Abraham had in being willing to sacrifice his son to God) was
regarded by God to be His approval of Abraham. So Abraham was called God’s friend.
On this day of baptism may we take note of the saints before us and by their example with the help of God surrender ourselves into the loving and
protecting and providing arms of our great and glorious Savior,Jesus Christ that we too become God’s friend.
