A friend shared this story with me: While preaching in a church in Mississippi, a pastor announced that their prison quartet would be singing the following evening. He wasn't aware there was a prison in the vicinity and he looked forward to hearing them.
The next evening, he was puzzled when four members of the church approached the stage. Then the pastor introduced them. "This is our prison quartet," he said, "behind a few bars and always looking for the key."
Our study of Christian baptism concludes this morning with a visit to prison. Paul the beloved apostle wrote his letter to the Ephesians from behind bars as he reminds his readers in 4:1. Actually this is the turning point in his letter. Many of Paul’s writings begin with teaching and reminding about the doctrines of the faith then a shift occurs with the word “therefore” and he transitions to speaking of ethics. In Paul’s mind ethics grow out of doctrine. You’ve got to know what to believe before you know how to act. Doctrine and ethics are a seamless garment in Paul’s mind. Paul would never be a party to the anti-intellectual spirit which pervades so much of modern protestant thought that says, “It doesn’t matter what you think or believe so long as you act in love.” But, said Paul in his great discourse on love in 1 Corinthians 13:6, “Love rejoices in the truth.” Indeed, love grows out of truth and truth gives birth to love.
Paul is a self-described “prisoner for the Lord” (4:1) This points to two things: 1) It’s an obvious sign Paul is a deeply committed man, who is willing to go to jail for his belief and practice of the Gospel. And 2) it points to the fact that Paul is compelled and obsessed with serving his Lord and Savior. He can’t really stop himself. To the Corinthians he said this, “If we are out of our mind, it is for the sake of God…for Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all…” (2Cor ,14)
Then he tells us to live a worthy life!
What’s a worthy life? It’s having a conviction so deep in you that you are willing to go to jail for it, even to die for it. It is a burning-in-your-bones sense of mission. One of our eight core values as a church is Christ: that a saving relationship with him is more important that anything else in life. A value should not be an aspiration or a dream it should describe deep-down current reality—who we really are. It should show spontaneously in our behavior. Before we can really move forward as a church we need to own something about ourselves. Many of us don’t have this kind of conviction. We just play at being a church. We have never said this in so many words and we don’t need to. Young people can smell this from ten miles away. Young people have a nose for superficiality and shallow institutionalism and they are running from our doors just as fast as we can confirm and graduate them. They know it doesn’t really matter to us. They know it’s not really important to us. They know we are not really serious and so they are all out there looking for something—anything in this world that is serious, that is worth dying for. If I want to attract a new generation the first thing that needs to change is me. I need to get serious. I need to find the kind of conviction that compelled Paul and sent him to jail.
There is only one place to get such conviction and that is from the Holy Spirit. Jesus said the Holy Spirit convicts people about sin, righteousness and judgment. The Holy Spirit leads us into sorrow for our sins, repentance from our sins and faith in new beginnings, a new birth and a whole new life.
The Holy Spirit makes us humble. He teaches us to not be conceited and to think of ourselves with sober judgment. He leads us to associate with people of low position. He helps us to know our selves as forgiven sinners who follow a God who washed our dirty feet.
The Holy Spirit makes us gentle. We are not a people given to paybacks, revenge and backbiting. We don’t lead through intimidation, coercion or ridicule. We are not rude, self-seeking or easily given to anger (1Cor 13:5).
The Holy Spirit makes us patient with others. We know it takes time for seeds to find good soil, sprout, grow, blossom and bear fruit. It took an average of 3 generations to build a cathedral in medieval Europe do we have the patience to build something beautiful for God today?
The Holy Spirit pours the love of God into our hearts. Three years ago during a blizzard weekend, a colleague of mine cancelled services at one of the three churches she served. One member was so angry about this she won’t talk to the pastor and to this day goes about the small town bad mouthing the ministry of her own church. This is love? If spirituality makes you hard and mean and judgmental of others it’s not of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit enlarges the heart and that is what all the disciplines of worship, Bible Study and prayer are all about. We’re not trying to rack up brownie points with God here so we can judge others. We’re doing this in order to enlarge our hearts with the love of God.
Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. (4:3) Paul says keep not build. Here’s the thing about unity: we don’t build it; it doesn’t come from us; it is not a human construct; it comes from God. God provides unity through our baptism in the Holy Spirit. We can never unite ourselves as a human race and we’ve got 6 millennia of recorded history to prove it. God alone can reverse the tower of Babel and bring us together in unity.
The diversity of culture, language, race, politics, economics, and religion is utterly astounding in the world today. As amateur anthropologists, we study the achievements and the heights of culture and it is then we see the most dramatic differences between humans on this planet. Then we see enormous chasms in our thoughts, values and philosophies. We are most alike at the low points of life. We find our highest unity in the depressions we experience—a tsunami in Malaysia, a hurricane in the Gulf, an earthquake in China—these images of grief and suffering are a universal language that speaks to every man and woman. It’s in our sins and grief that we experience unity. But the great unifier of the human race is the grave. We are very uncomfortable with universal and absolute truth that is valid for all people at all times but there is no escaping death. Death is the one thing we all have in common. It is the one common center which gathers the entire mass of humanity into one. The grave unites us like no other fact. It’s not a happy unity. It’s not one that we either chose or can avoid. It is a given fact of our existence and it makes us one with each other rich and poor, African, Asian, American or Australian.
But what if I told you that behind death there was another new and very different center to human existence? That is who Jesus Christ is. He is the new center for the human race given by God to replace death. In this new center our language is transformed. What we once called sin is renamed forgiveness. What we once called fate is renamed mercy. What we once called death is renamed life. What we once called luck or chance is renamed God’s providence. What we called living by your wits is transformed to living by God’s word. In this new center, you see there is a great reversal of the old center. It is a new unity, you don’t build it God gives it and you enter into this unity around Jesus Christ the center through your baptism.
The miracle of the Holy Spirit is the point when you first understand Jesus Christ the center and you realize you didn’t figure this out for yourself, but God revealed it to you. You who believe in Christ and have been baptized are as close to him as anyone has ever been. You are as close as any apostle or Mary or Joseph or martyr or evangelist. Because he is the center of human history and the entire human race is gathered around him at equidistant points. This is what our Lord meant when he said the Kingdom of God is near. Who would not rejoice at this? Who would not what to tell others?
But the question remains for us: why do we feel so little and know so little of the closeness of our Lord and His Kingdom? Why does the Holy Spirit seem to be hiding behind a great rock wall? Now we must speak of the responsibility of our baptism. Either baptism is a weird little ceremony full of sound and fury but signify nothing or it is the center of the universe. Either we are remembering that we have been baptized or we are forgetting it. Either we are worshipping death or we are worshipping the power of love. Truth be told, many of us just want to be comfortable in the world of death. We are too easily pacified, medicated and comforted. We are experts and avoiding, deceiving and minimizing our true condition that sin and death have complete possession of us. But the Spirit’s power is very, very near to each of us. He is there just for the asking, seeking and knocking. Your heavenly Father gives the Holy Spirit to those who ask. What keeps us from asking? The answer is really very simple: most of us don’t seriously think we need him.
Author and pastor Max Dupree had a young grandson who once locked himself in the bathroom. Nothing his mother did could get him out. She called the police, and they too were helpless. Next she tried the fire department, who came in full force with several trucks. They broke down the bathroom door with their axes.
The boy's father got home when things were in an uproar. He could not figure out why, when there was no smoke or fire, his door and frame were in shambles. He was still grousing about it the next day to a friend, who passed on a sage observation. A fireman has two tools: an axe, and a hose. If you want someone to pick a lock with a paper clip, try a locksmith or a cat burglar. If you call a fireman, you're either going to get the axe or the hose.
Too many of us are asking for paperclips. God is a fireman. People know this instinctively. They know if they call on him he’s going to take an ax to the root of their sins. They know the destructive power of a high pressure hose called baptism. What they can’t see is the new construction and the new life that comes with Jesus Christ himself the chief cornerstone.
I’m giving you each a paperclip this morning. Carry it with you to remind yourself to ask for the Holy Spirit to come with his ax and his hose.
A Cleansing Bath
1Corinthians 6:9-11Pastor Tom Anderson
In autumn 2002, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, a priceless 15th century marble statue of Adam toppled and shattered while no one was in the room. Although vandalism was initially suspected, curators determined that the life-sized Venetian sculpture "buckled of its own accord" said Time magazine. "It will take a great deal of time and skill, but the piece can be restored," the museum's director said.
Does anyone appreciate the irony? Adam was the first guy to topple and break-up in the Bible. It was an event so momentous that theologians for centuries have simply called it The Fall. The Good News is that it did take a good deal of time and skill but on the Cross of Christ, Adam was finally and completely put back together again. This is what baptism signifies and celebrates: how Jesus Christ restores broken people. And we are all broken. The theological word for our brokenness is sin.
The American College Dictionary defines sin very simply: “transgression of divine law…to offend against a principle or a standard.” The word carries two important assertions: 1) the act of sin is willful, freely chosen and rebellious and 2) It assumes the existence of some kind of universal moral standard. This perhaps helps to explain why sin is such a pesky, offensive word in the modern ear.
We live in a multi-cultural society in which we really don’t believe there are any truly universal standards of morality. One person’s murder is another person’s mercy killing. One person’s pre-emptive strike against terrorism is another person’s unjust and unholy war. One person’s holy union is another person’s act of licentiousness. It’s really not such a bad thing to lie, take a bribe or commit adultery just be discrete and don’t get caught. Morals and customs are evolving and changing no need to worry too much about it. The concept of morality is nearly incomprehensible to modern ears. Sin is dead and it died on the rocks of evolution and diversity.
Then there is the willful rebellion thing. Isn’t that just way too judgmental and insensitive? People do bad things for lots of good reasons like the economy—the lack of jobs and opportunity pushes people over the edge; or education—the accumulative effects of ignorance bred by poor schools and lack of access to information; or society—the negative effects of the culture and media or peer groups; and then there’s psychological reasons—the poor self-esteem that comes from the lack of positive role models in one’s childhood years. Sin is dead because it died on the rocks of a therapeutic society. There’s nothing wrong with us that couldn’t be fixed with a good counselor.
The proper and acceptable word to talk about undesirable behavior in your life is mistake. “I made a mistake” is far easy for us to say than something like “Have mercy on me for my sins.” The dictionary definition of mistake is “an error in action, opinion, or judgment.”Mistakes are not big deals. No one is perfect. I might have been a little careless or poorly informed. My thinking and reasoning might have been cloudy because of my emotional condition but it’s just a mistake. I’m not likely to repeat it, you should be able to be tolerant and understanding. Let’s just move on.
We are all mistakers now. We are not sinners we say to ourselves—just mistakers. We’ll know better next time; we’ll try harder next time and we will succeed because we’ve learned from our mistakes. Mistakers don’t need to be saved—they don’t need a savior, they already have what they need to overcome their mistakes.
Andrew Nichol is a Hollywood screenwriter, producer and director. In a recent interview with the New York Times he said this, “It’s gotten to the point where our ability to manufacture fraud now exceeds our ability to detect it.” Fraud is the essential practice of the Western world. We are experts at fooling both others and ourselves.
Marilee Jones, dean of admissions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), recently resigned after admitting the résumé she submitted 28 years ago for an entry level position in the admissions department was filled with lies. As far as the school knew, Ms. Jones had attended and graduated AlbanyMedicalCollege, UnionCollege, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute—three well-respected schools in New York. Rensselaer is the only institution to have any record of her ever being there—and only as a part-time student for just one school year!
"I misrepresented my academic degrees when I first applied to MIT 28 years ago and did not have the courage to correct my résumé when I applied for my current job or at any time since," Ms. Jones said in a statement posted on MIT's website. "I am deeply sorry for this and for disappointing so many in the MIT community and beyond who supported me, believed in me, and who have given me extraordinary opportunities."
Since Ms. Jones took the position of dean of admissions in 1997, she has been seen as a guru in the field. In fact, she's wrote a number of books, including Less Stress, More Success, where she says: "Holding integrity is sometimes very hard to do because the temptation may be to cheat or cut corners. But just remember that 'what goes around comes around,' meaning that life has a funny way of giving back what you put out."
Phillip L. Clay, MIT's chancellor, says since Ms. Jones had been in the admissions office for so many years, very few people ever questioned her credentials. "In the future," he said, "we will take a big lesson from this experience." Well, it was all a mistake and Ms. Jones and all of us will know better and do better next time.
But when the cell phone is switched off, the TV is unplugged and the network is down and we stand alone looking into the mirror we know we do what we do on purpose, we just didn’t think we’d get caught. Not only that we’re hoping to be able to do it again. It was not unintentional. It wasn’t a mistake or an act of ignorance. We knew exactly what we were doing. It was way deeper than “I’m sorry I made a mistake.”
You don’t feel guilty about a mistake. Feeling guilt is not such a bad thing. It’s a sign your conscious is working. Guilt is moral anxiety over your behavior. It’s much better to be able to feel it than to crow that you don’t have any and don’t believe in it anyhow.
Then we open the Bible and we read verses like 1Corinthians 6:9 “the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God.” The Bible seems to whack us all on the head and tell us we are all wicked people and then it turns around and says, “God loves you.” So which is it? Actually, it’s both. You are wicked beyond your ability to fathom but because of God’s love for you he sent Jesus Christ to save you from yourself.
Mistakers don’t like this. That’s why the Bible really sends them over the edge. Mistakers don’t need salvation, they can do it themselves. Sinners, on the other hand, know they’re circling the drain and they are looking and hoping and praying that God will indeed intervene.
Soren Kierkegaard once said upon considering the Bible’s message: “There are, in the end, only two ways open to us: to honestly and honorably make an admission of how far we are from the Christianity of the New Testament, or to perform skillful tricks to conceal the true situation.”
Here’s the application: embrace your sins. It’s only as you embrace yourself as a sinner that you will be ready to receive God’s saving intervention and get to know Jesus Christ personally.
The honest skeptic asks us: “Why does sin matter so much to you Christians?”
If life is a machine, sin is the bad gear that causes the whole thing to malfunction. If life is a kingdom, then sin is a terrorist movement within it. If life is a family, then sin is a deadly feud between members. If life is a body, then sin is the untreated disease that threatens it. If life is a river, then sin is high concentrations of mercury that poisons it. If life is a garden, then sin is the army of slugs eating your tomatoes. If life is a computer, sin is the virus that eats your hard drive. Sin is the name for what is wrong with the world and with me.
G. K. Chesterton, the famous philosopher/theologian, was once asked, "What do you think of civilization?" Chesterton said, "I think it's a great idea. Why doesn't somebody start one." Later on, after seeing a series of articles on "What's Wrong with the World?" Chesterton sent a short letter to the editor. "Dear Sir: Regarding your article 'What's Wrong with the World?' I am. Yours truly, G. K. Chesterton."
This brings me to 1Corinthians “And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”
Sinners need to be washed, sanctified and justified. These things are not available to mistakers—only sinners. And note further that the verbs are all in the passive voice: you didn’t wash yourself—God bathed you. You didn’t sanctify yourself—God cleansed you. You don’t justify yourself—God pardoned you. Baptism celebrates how God intervened to rescue us from sin, it opens the way to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, the Lord of the universe.
Here’s the thing: Mistakers trust in themselves to get it right next time. Sinners know they won’t; they can’t. They know they don’t need a motivational speaker or a cheer leader, they need a Savior. You become a Christian the moment you realize I sin, I’m a sinner, I need a Savior—Jesus came to be my savior and you transfer all your hope and confidence to him. This is the moment of Baptism and it becomes the movement of life as we engage God’s grace and put the weight of our trust in Him.
The New Birth
John 3:1-8 and 1 Peter 1:3-9Pastor Tom Anderson
Let me begin with an aside about one of the most remarkable moments in American history that has happened this past week. I’m not talking here about the Red Wing’s mighty victory over the hapless Pittsburgh Penguins. I am speaking of Dr. Martin Luther Kings’ famous dream wherein his four little children “would one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character”. The dream arrived this week with the first African American nominee for the American presidency. He is old enough to be one of Dr. King’s children. All Americans of both parties should rejoice in this day because skin color no longer matters at the highest levels of our political process. The nomination of Barack Obama drives a stake right through the heart of the demon of racism in America. This is not the end of all bigotry but it is clear that the teeth of bigotry have been decisively pulled. Whatever may happen in the general election this November, praise God Almighty we have lived to see this day!
Our theme this month is Baptism as the Model for the Christian life. Last week we learned the meaning of God choosing us to be baptized. Today we look at the connection between baptism and the great doctrine of the New Birth which is the central miracle of the Christian faith. Baptism does not cause the new birth any more than putting on a ring makes you married. But the water both symbolizes and points to the great mystery of being born of God. John says, “To all who receive Christ, who believe in his name, he gives the power to become children of God who are born…,of God.” New birth is God’s answer to all the problems of the world; it is the central promise of the Gospel brought home to the human heart.
What is the New Birth? John tells us it’s what Jesus came to offer and Peter tells us it is the central confession of the Christian faith: “we have been born again.” Can you join in that confession today? It is all my hope and prayer that each one of you be born of God. I labor and pray as a pastor that every member of this community would be born of God. I think of myself as a spiritual midwife trying to help people in the process of being spiritually re-born.
The first thing to know about the New Birth is that it is not a do it yourself event. You cannot give birth to yourself. It is a sovereign act of God’s grace in your life. “In his great mercy he has given us…” There are a lot of religious things you can do but New Birth is not one of them. We can change our clothes. We can change our hair. We can change our eating and exercise habits. We can change our friends. We can change our major, our job or our house but who can change their nature? Can a leopard change his spots? Can a human create within himself a clean heart and renew a right spirit within himself all by himself? Birth is something only your mother can do for you. And New Birth is something only God can do for you. It is a given, not available in stores and impossible to duplicate at home. It’s a God–thing through and through.
The New Birth is made possible by the actual historical events of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It’s not the product of some mystical mumbo-jumbo nor is it an achievement induced by some spiritual techniques and applied wisdom. It is grounded in the blood, sweat and tears of Jesus of Nazareth in 33 A.D. His death atones for the sin of the world. Your guilt was loaded upon his shoulders and he bore it away to death. His death is the window for the release of the Holy Spirit into the world. When the problem of sin has been resolved and the Holy Spirit made available, then and only then is the stage is set for people to be born again. Paul makes the connection in Romans 6:4, “We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.”
The New Birth means three things: First, the inner re-creation of a human being. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” 2 Cor .It is a decisive change in human nature.
Second, in the New Birth one acquires a new human nature. The old human nature we inherited from Adam and Eve. It is broken and bent to selfish pride, stinginess, rudeness, ungodliness and sin. It is the source of all the tears that soak this earth from its crust to its core. “…You have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.” (Colossians 3:9, 10)
Third it is radical transformation. “He saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.” Titus 3:5
This transformation was the intimate personal experience of the Apostles. Paul gave a deeply personal testimony in Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” He was aware of forgiveness. He was aware of the reality of God’s love in Christ and He was aware that a significant and permanent change had taken place within him. This is the New Birth and this is what is being celebrated in baptism.
We are baptized into a living hope. Here is the mathematical equation for living hope: the new creation is the sum of regeneration (the new birth) and sanctification (growing up into salvation). In 1Peter 1:3, he says we have been born again but in the next chapter (2:2) he tells us to “grow up into our salvation.” New Birth is a moment that turns into a movement. Baptism is not the end of one’s spiritual birth, it’s the beginning.
We are baptized into a living hope and hope is what is most needed in the world today.
When families in the Middle East send their children off to suicide bombing missions, it is a sure and certain sign they have lost all hope for the future.
As a massive security wall goes up around Israel, it is a signal of lost hope for peace.
We are surrounded by marriages, families, children and youth and elderly who have no grounds for hope. We are inundated with change, changes happening so fast and furious the price of gas can’t be counted on for more than an hour anymore, but despite all the change the people are starving for hope. When you have no hope you start eating your seed corn—so we are sacrificing our future to the tyranny of a self-serving present.
People of hope who believe in children; who believe in marriage and who believe in peace and justice are a distinct minority. Their numbers can only increase if we spread the Gospel of New Birth.
Hope is something you must be baptized into. Hope is a distinctively Christian concept. The practice of hope is not found in Eastern religions with their endless loops governed by the unyielding laws of karma and reincarnation. Hope is a biblical concept and its source is Easter. People who are convinced that resurrection has occurred have grounds for hope. Ours is a faith that was born in a graveyard. More than ever the world needs us to be apostles of hope. To pray our hope, to speak our hope, and to act out of hope
In his book, God Is Closer than You Think, John Ortberg includes this story about the power of prayer.
When my friend Kim was a young girl, her dad pulled the car off the road one day to help a woman change a flat tire. While he was lying under her car, another vehicle accidentally swerved to the shoulder, and in the collision the car was shoved onto his chest. His right thumb was torn off at the joint, five of his ribs were broken, and his left lung was pierced and began filling with blood. His wife, who is barely five-feet-tall, placed her hands on the bumper of the car and prayed, "In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ," and lifted the car off his chest so he could be dragged out. (Some weeks later she found out that she broke a vertebra in the effort).
Kim's father was in a state of shock as he was taken to the hospital. Doctors prepared him for emergency surgery. "His thumb won't do him any good if he's dead," one of them said. His survival was iffy.
Suddenly, spontaneously, the man's skin changed from ashen to pink. He experienced a miraculous healing. He invited a surprised surgical team to join him in singing "Fairest Lord Jesus." They did not even bother to hook him up to oxygen. He did not find out until later that this was the precise moment his father-in-law, who was a pastor, had his congregation start to pray for him.
Sometimes these stories come from not-very-credible sources—such as publications sold in grocery checkout lines that also carry news about extraterrestrial creatures secretly playing third base for the Boston Red Sox. In this case, however, the subject was James Loder, a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary. His life was not only saved, but changed. Until then, although he taught at a seminary, God had been mostly an abstract idea to him. Now Jesus became a living Presence. Kim writes that her father's heart grew so tender that he became known at Princeton as "the weeping professor." He began to live from one moment to the next in a God-bathed, God-soaked, God-intoxicated world.
We have been baptized into a living hope. We know God is for real. We pray our hope. We speak our hope and we act our hope. This is the journey of baptism.
