Through the Waters
Notes
Transcript
TENSION NEEDING REDEMPTION:
TENSION NEEDING REDEMPTION:
We crave safe adventures
CENTRAL TRUTH EXPRESSED (MAIN POINT):
CENTRAL TRUTH EXPRESSED (MAIN POINT):
Baptism symbolizes the remarkable safety we now have as people who have been brought by God through the water from the land of chaos to the land of promise and peace
GOD'S HEART REVEALED:
GOD'S HEART REVEALED:
God’s desire is for us to experience life with him, that does not automatically resolve all the chaos in our world but does promise us lasting peace and safety
OUR RIGHT RESPONSE:
OUR RIGHT RESPONSE:
Go make disciples of Jesus
1 | How have I experienced the tension?
1 | How have I experienced the tension?
You might have noticed there is a trough up here At the front. This is because tonight we are going to be celebrating the beauty and wonder of baptism. We have three individuals who are going to be baptized tHis evening.
Before we get there though, as I was praying for this Gathering I believe the Spirit led me to a space of realizing we need to unpack the WHY behind baptism. Why does baptism matter? What does it mean?
We humans crave safe adventures.
That is a little bit broad brush, but go with me on this…
Why do we want a thrill so we do things like roller coasters or go to haunted houses like at Halloween Horror Nights but we typically don’t jump into volcanoes or actively seek opportunities to outrun grizzly bears for an adrenaline rush?
All those things would produce the same reaction physiological reaction right?
What is the difference?
Well you go to Disney and ride Tower of Terror or Cosmic Rewind trusting that you will ultimately be safe. You trust the work of the engineers, that they are making safety the number one priority. You know that at Horror Nights the scareactors cannot and will not actually hurt you.
But an active volcano or a grizzly bear likely will.
We crave safe adventures.
I like the rush of an adventure, going to new places, discovering new trails, trying new things.
But I also prefer to continue to maintain the beating of my heart so there is a limit to how adventurous I am willing to go.
2 | How have you experienced this tension?
2 | How have you experienced this tension?
But we live in a world that doesn’t promise safe adventures.
We live in a world where chaos ensues around us.
Pandemic, inflation, threats of war, culture shifts, human effects to our environment, broken relationships, job stability, housing affordability, poor leadership…
Perhaps you feel the regular dose of anxiety that some of all of these out of your control realities produce, whether it is the effects to your physical or mental health and safety or for that of others.
I know for me I hold so much of my anxieties about what is out of my control in my chest and it can flat out feel hard to breath sometimes.
One time Ali and I and her family were out on a tourist boat excursion for a day and we were in these pristine waters, it was gorgeous. Then when it was time to make the hour long boat ride back to the shore a nasty storm rolled in, the winds stirred up the seas, and for the next hour we got poured on while the boat hit every. Single. Wave. Sooooo hard.
The once peaceful waters had become chaotic.
We might crave safe adventures but all too often the chaotic waters of life make safe adventures seem like something reserved for theme parks not real life.
Why is life so chaotic? And does God offer a real solution to it?
3 | What do the Scriptures say about this tension?
3 | What do the Scriptures say about this tension?
Seperation of the Chaotic Waters
In the second week of this series Brady brought us to the moment when the chaotic waters were separated as the Spirit of God hovered over the waters…
Read Genesis 1:9-10
And God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good.
Out of the dark waters and chaotic wastelands God brings up a new world for all of creation and humanity to flourish.
Main Idea: Through the waters, God takes his people to a land of promise and peace
But in Genesis 3, humanity unleashes chaos back into the world through the arrival of sin into the story. We see the introduction of chaos into humanities story right here.
The question remaining is does God offer a real solution to it?
What we begin to see is a replaying of the pattern of God continually bringing order, life, and peace where humanity continually brings chaos.
Noah’s Ark in the Chaotic Waters
By Genesis 7-8, we see humanity’s chaos has polluted the world to an unrecognizable point. God allows a moment of de-creation when the chaotic waters cover the earth again, an anti-Genesis.
Read Genesis 8:1
But God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the livestock that were with him in the ark. And God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters subsided.
God remembers Noah, and brings him and his family back to the dry land on a ta-va (an ark). It is a new opportunity for humanity to flourish in the land.
Main Idea: Through the waters, God takes his people to a land of promise and peace
Unfortunately, quickly humanity begins to spiral into chaos first with Noah and his sons and then through their descendants.
The story continues and God calls out a chosen remnant, the people of Israel… they end up engulfed in chaos as slaves to the Pharoah of Egypt.
Pharoah becomes suspicious and fearful that their slave labor could multiply to the point that they overtake his control and power… So he engages in the chaotic evil of genocide, ordering the murder of every male baby to stop from overpopulation.
But a child survives.
Read Exodus 2:1-3
Now a man from the house of Levi went and took as his wife a Levite woman. The woman conceived and bore a son, and when she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him three months. When she could hide him no longer, she took for him a basket made of bulrushes and daubed it with bitumen and pitch. She put the child in it and placed it among the reeds by the river bank.
Once again in a ta-va, a remnant is brought through the waters to save from the chaotic space of death.
Main Idea: Through the waters, God takes his people to a land of promise and peace
So instead God rescues Moses and has him raised within Pharaoh's household…
Moses grows up and eventually…
God chooses him as a remnant to bring the people of Israel to a land of promise And peace.
God cares about this people group so much, he refers to them as his firstborn son In Exodus 4.
These Hebrews are preserved by God making a way through the plagues to both reveal His power and to bring them out of their bondage and chaos.
Eventually though they come up to the chaotic waters of what is translated in Hebrew as the Sea of Reeds, chaotic waters in front of them, a chaotic enemy seeking to destroy them behind them…
What are they supposed to do now?
Read Exodus 14:16
Lift up your staff, and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it, that the people of Israel may go through the sea on dry ground.
The Israelites are delivered from slavery and death through the waters and they head to Mount Sinai, where they are invited to become God's representatives to the nations through a covenant commitment.
Main Idea: Through the waters, God takes his people to a land of promise and peace
40 years go by and the Hebrews have been pretty awful to God, unfaithful to their promises to Him, desiring to define good and bad on their own terms, unhelpful, ungrateful, lacking trust, they were the worst and it led to them having to wander for an entire generation until they could cross the waters to the land of promise and peace.
So as Moses leaves the picture, Joshua is called to lead them out of the wasteland desert through the water.
This time it is the Jordan River.
While they were not trying to outrun Pharoah’s army this time around…. They had the problem of getting 2 million people across a river during flood season in a section of the river that is incredibly turbulent.
Read Joshua 3:13
And when the soles of the feet of the priests bearing the ark of the Lord, the Lord of all the earth, shall rest in the waters of the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan shall be cut off from flowing, and the waters coming down from above shall stand in one heap.”
So we get this image of the people called to now exercise faith, that as the priests put their feet into the waters God’s presence would create a dam effect in the middle of flooding season to the point that the ground is literally described as DRY, and the people would walk on dry ground over to the land of promise.
The chaos of the wilderness is behind them as God leads them into a land of promise and peace.
Main Idea: Through the waters, God takes his people to a land of promise and peace
Of course the people continued a life of pursuing what is right in their own eyes and that leads them always back to chaos, war, famine, death, and heartache. All the way to the point where they are taken out of the land of promise across the waters to foreign lands.
Eventually a remnant is allowed to come back, but still under oppressive forces.
The thought is will the chaos ever be dealt with? Has God given up on bringing His people to the land of promise?
A prophet named John begins to do two things… proclaim a Gospel message… “repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand” He begins proclaiming that the awaited Messiah is on his way to bring the people to the true land of promise and peace… the Kingdom. He also begins to baptize. A symbolic submersion into the waters to display a renewed comitment as God’s people.
Just as God took Noah, Moses, and Joshua and the nation through the waters to a land of promise and peace, John is calling the people to renew themselves to this same reality.
As they pass through the waters, they repent of Israel's faithlessness and covenantal compromise and prepare to be the new Israel that God is going to form when the promised Messiah arrives.
Then one day on the bank of the Jordan River walks a rabbi (teacher) we know as Jesus, John knew as cousin, and his followers would soon know as Messiah.
He comes to John and asks to be baptized.
Isn’t that an odd thought? Why would the Messiah need to be brought through the waters?
Well we actually discover a culmination to each of these stories in one act.
Read Mark 1:9-11
In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”
He passes through the waters of the Jordan like Israel did with Joshua.
He is brought up out of the water like the Hebrews did when they were brought across the Sea of Reeds.
The Heavens split open like the waters did in Genesis when God separated the waters in the second day of creation
The Spirit of God descends like a dove over the waters like the first day of creation when the rhu ah of God is hovering over the waters.
And the Father then tells him he is the beloved Son just as Israel was declared to Moses to be His chosen Son.
Each of these lines are not stretching the story, but ancient writing patterns that the Spirit of God ensured were captured to reveal the ultimate validation for what Jesus was doing and what He would soon accomplish.
Jesus was identifying with our chaotic existence and bringing hope of His secure life.
Main Idea: Through the waters, God takes his people to a land of promise and peace
But here is something important to note, baptism, being brought through the waters doesn’t mean that all difficulty is ended immediately.
For Jesus he literally leaves that moments and heads straight BACK into the wilderness where he is tempted by the Satan for 40 days as he fasted and prayed.
But you know what was unshakable and unquestionable at his baptism? His belovedness by the Father and His purpose.
Which are the two realities that would carry Him through His execution on the cross where he bore the brokenness of our sinfulness on Himself, he becomes the living water Himself who would carry us into a land of promise and peace.
And then He comes from the chaos of death and into resurrected life!
Read Matthew 28:16-20
Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
Have you ever wondered why baptism matters?
It matters because it serves like communion an external proclamation of what God has done internally…
He has come to bring us from the chaotic waters and deserted wastelands into the land of promise and peace!
And Jesus’ followers were called to take this message to the world, to teach them the ways of Jesus, to baptize them in front of community of this beautiful reality!
You see, baptism is not just a religious ritual it is also a commissioning ceremony.
When someone in the military gets commissioned they receive a command, duty, or responsibility.
When we are baptized we are reminded of two realities like Jesus, that we are adopted into the family of God. In other words we are secure. We are loved. We are seen. We are unshakably God’s.
We are also given purpose and responsibility… to go make disciples, teaching them what Jesus taught, and passing on the beautiful reality of baptism to others.
Main Idea: Through the waters, God takes his people to a land of promise and peace
We see in the Scriptures that this is exactly what the early church began to do… immediately in Acts we discover thousands responded to Jesus and were baptized, commissioned to take what they had received and passed it on to the world.
We even discover their understanding of baptism in Paul’s letters and how relates to passing through the waters… in 1 Corinthians 10, Paul talks about how the nation of Israel was baptized as they crossed the sea out of Egypt.
In Romans, Paul writes about the beauty of baptism, that we identify in baptism with Jesus’ death when we go under the water and his new life as we come up from it!
In 1 Peter, Peter even writes about baptism as saving us, which is confusing it is symbolic, but makes much more sense when we read the whole passage…
Read 1 Peter 3:20-21
because they formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ,
Peter draws the line from passing through the waters of the flood on the ta-va to passing through the waters of death through the true and better ta-va… Jesus.
In other words, baptism is symbolic for the same type of saving that the ark did for Noah, Jesus now does for us.
Main Idea: Through the waters, God takes his people to a land of promise and peace
Ever since then, each day, men, women and children across the globe are baptized symbolizing their new life through the waters.
There are various thoughts and beliefs on baptism, whether it is just reserved for those who have surrendered their lives to Jesus and trusted in His saving work on the Cross or if children who have yet to believe can be baptized before the point of belief as a sign of the covenant family.
There are those who sprinkle and others who submerge, and more differences.
Mosaic holds the distinctive belief and practice of believers baptism, reserving baptism only for those who are prepared to stand in front of biblical community to express their faith in Jesus, that their ultimate security is found in Him, and their purpose to go make disciples.
This is not a criticism of other churches or faith traditions, but our desire to be faithful to what we see expressed in the Scriptures.
When we were in China, I was fascinated to find out that many Chinese parents had little problem with their adult children attending a Christian church, but if they desired to be baptized they were often disowned and dishonored.
I have heard stories like this in other cultural contexts.
What is so fascinating about this is that it shows that these other cultures probably have a better understanding of baptism then many Christians do in our culture today.
They understand it means something. A changing of identification and allegiance. A new life and a new purpose.
The reality though is that going through the waters has never symbolized a perfect life filled with ease and void of difficulty.
The reality is that because of the lingering realities of sin in our world, we don’t get baptized and come out perfect nor do our lives get perfect.
But it is a visual reminder that while the chapter we are in is dangerous, the story we are in is safe.
The early church displayed this consistently, as they went out and made disciples of Jesus and baptized them, they taught one another to obey Jesus in the midst of a broken world.
They faced suffering and persecution, yet the waters of baptism was the ultimate reminder that while the waters might be chaotic right now, God was bringing them to the Kingdom of Heaven where promise and peace will reign forever.
We discover this vision in John’s Revelation when justice finally is completely dealt out, Satan is handled, sin is no more, and the chaos has ceased…
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.
The Sea is no more.
In the Jewish imagination throughout the Scriptures the seas were a place of chaos, so this doesn’t necessarily mean that the oceans have all been dried up on planet earth.
What it definitely means is the people have finally fully and forever passed through the waters of chaos.
No more chaotic waters. No death. No fear. No anxiety. No tears.
Just life of promise and flourishing with Jesus, forever.
4 | How can the Gospel bring resolution to this tension in your life?
4 | How can the Gospel bring resolution to this tension in your life?
When we get baptized and witness the baptism of others we are being reminded of the truth that we identify with the one who has taken us through the waters of death and into the land of life!
We are reminded that we are ultimately safe.
We are reminded that there will be a day when the chaotic waters of life will be fully and ultimately handled.
In that we have hope for today, that we don’t have to fear the chaotic waters of life any longer.
We can trust that the one who was strong enough to go to the cross for us, has the strength to sustain us wherever you are at tonight, tomorrow, and next week.
We crave safe adventures, and in the Gospel this is what we are offered, we journey with Jesus on an adventure, realizing that no matter what happens in this world to us we can rest in the safety of His ultimate presence, care, and protection.
5 | What would the world see if the church embraced this resolution?
5 | What would the world see if the church embraced this resolution?
Imagine if we lived in this reality?
We are forgetful people and we need to reminded of it, often.
Tonight we are going to be reminded of it as Annelise Mool, Dre Torres, and Brad Smith get baptized.
Each of them has their own story of why they are coming to the waters tonight. Each of them have experienced the life of Jesus, and surrendered their lives to Him, and now desire to express that desire through baptism. Each of them are aware that baptism is not a means for salvation but a visual expression of it. That this is the commissioning service for each of them to be reminded of their belovedness and participate in carrying the Gospel forward to make disciples of Jesus.