As I have already mentioned, water has always
played an important part in the plan and purpose of God.
Perhaps that is because it, like the Trinity,
exists in three forms – gas, liquid and solid.
But, for those reasons and more, there are
several very familiar stories in the Bible where God used water to save and
deliver His people! I can’t think of a more appropriate way to set the stage
for water baptisms than to review these stories.
THE FLOOD
"The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on
the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart
was only evil all the time. The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was
deeply troubled. So the Lord said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the
birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have
made them.” But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.” Genesis 6:5-8
WATER DELIVERED FROM
GOD’S PENALTY
THE RED SEA
“I want you to bear in mind, Brothers,
that all our ancestors were beneath the cloud, and all passed through the sea; That
in the cloud and in the sea they all underwent baptism as followers of Moses” I
Corinthians 10:1-2
The
late Pat Summerall spent 50 years with the national Football League. He was drafted
by the Detroit Lions in 1952 and played with the Chicago Cardinals and New York
Giants until 1961. After his retirement from the game, he joined CBS as a
broadcaster, and in 1993 switched to Fox. During his CBS years he and a fellow
broadcaster partied hard off the field. "We raised Cain. I was the first
guy at the bar and the last to leave." Summerall was told that if he kept
on drinking he was going to die.
After checking himself into the Betty Ford Clinic, his counselor urged him to
seek a better life through faith. At age 66, Pat Summerall was baptized. In USA
Today he told a reporter that when the minister "leaned me back in the
water, I never felt so helpless." Summerall testified, "I knew I just
became a Christian. I can’t tell you how great life has been since then."
There
may have been a helpless feeling when the Israelites walked through the waters
seeing the past coming after them. But when they came up out of the water and
the waters rushed back – they had a brand new life in a new land.
WATER DELIVERED THEM
FROM THEIR PAST
CROSSING THE JORDAN
“So when the people broke camp to cross the Jordan, the
priests carrying the ark of the covenant went ahead of them. Now
the Jordan is at flood stage all during harvest. Yet as soon as the priests who carried the ark reached the
Jordan and their feet touched the water’s edge, the water from upstream stopped flowing. It piled up in a heap a great distance away, at a town called Adam in the vicinity
of Zarethan, while the water flowing down to the Sea of the Arabah (that is, the Dead Sea) was completely cut off. So the people crossed over opposite Jericho. The priests who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord stopped in the middle of the Jordan and stood on dry ground, while all Israel passed by until the whole nation had
completed the crossing on dry ground” Joshua
3:14-17
WATER BROUGHT THEM
INTO GOD’S PROMISE
DEATH AND
RESURRECTION OF JESUS
“What
shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin
live any longer in it? Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized
into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore we were buried with
Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by
the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if
we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also
shall be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old man
was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we
should no longer be slaves of sin. For he who has died has been freed from sin.
Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him,” Romans
6:1-8
Baptism is a visual representation of the
death and burial of Jesus (going under the water) and the resurrection of Jesus
(rising from the water). Through His sacrificial death and supernatural
resurrection, Jesus destroyed the two most powerful weapons the enemy used
against us!
WATER DEMONSTRATES THE POWER OF GOD!
Greek poet and physician Nicander, who lived
about 200 B.C. gives an interesting insight into the Greek verbs “bapto” and
“baptizo” in a recipe for making pickles and is helpful because it uses both
words. Nicander says that in order to make a pickle, the vegetable should first
be `dipped’ (bapto) into boiling water and then `baptized’ (baptizo) in the
vinegar solution. Both verbs concern the immersing of vegetables in a solution.
But the first is temporary. The second, the act of baptizing the vegetable,
produces a permanent change. When used in the New Testament, this word more
often refers to our union and identification with Christ than to our water
baptism. For example: Mark 16:16. “He
that believes and is baptized shall be saved.” Christ is saying that mere
intellectual assent is not enough. There must be a union with him, a real
change, like the vegetable to the pickle!
Here’s the beauty
of what we are doing this morning as we celebrate the Sacrament of Baptism. As
these five candidates go into the baptismal waters this morning – as they get “ALL WASHED UP” – they are testifying to
the grace of God and the fact that the Devil in all his efforts to destroy and
defeat them – IS ALL WASHED UP!
THE BAPTISMAL WATERS TESTIFY:
1) WE ARE DELIVERED FROM GOD’S
PENALTY! – (Or You Can Be)
2) WE ARE DELIVERED FROM OUR PAST –
(Or You Can Be)
3) WE ARE DELIVERED INTO GOD’S PROMISE
– (Or You Can Be)
4) WE ARE A DEMONSTRATION OF GOD’S
PROMISE – (Or It Can Be)