Crosspoint Community Church Podcast

Baptism Sunday

• Crosspoint Community Church

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SPEAKER_00:

Amen. You can have a seat. Good morning. My name is Cameron. I'm one of the pastors here at Cross Point. Good to be here with you guys. Surprised how many people are here given it was trick-or-treating last night. For those of you with kids, how many kids you actually got out of bed? All men were asleep when I left. And, you know, one of the things you may know about me if you've been around for a while is I was a huge Star Wars fan growing up. So the year the Phantom Menace came out, this was me in elementary school. I was Obi-Wan Kenomi. I even had a little like uh thing. My friend was Darth Maul, so we fought all night. Ton of fun. Um, you know, I was a Star Wars fan before it was cool to be a Star Wars fan back in elementary school. So when I was just like the really nerdy kid who liked Star Wars a little bit too much. Um, and I remember when this movie came out that all of a sudden it was like, whoa, people thought the like, I went from being a nerd to like, whoa, this Star Wars thing is pretty cool. And I'm like, I know, right? And I kind of expected that all of my friends would, you know, become like big Star Wars fans, just like I was. You know, turned out not all of them were gonna go out and buy a Star Wars encyclopedia to read before bed each night. But they were just kind of more like passing fans, like, oh, it's a cool movie, and then move on to the next thing. Now, I say all this, not just to reminisce down memory lane, um, but also because we are looking at the Sermon on the Mount as a church. We've been studying it the last, you know, many months, a couple years. Uh, in this sermon, Jesus is talking, he's talking about the kingdom of God, what it means to be in the kingdom, and he's talking to kind of like two audiences this whole time. So he's talking to the disciples, the people who have decided to follow him, who are bought in, who are like, you know, invested and want to know what it looks like to live the way Jesus has called them to live. But he's also talking to the crowds, right? The passing fans, the ones that are just kind of like checking it out. Maybe they thought, like, hey, is there gonna be like free food at this little talk over here? The ones who are like, you know, maybe just exploring, like they've heard about Jesus and just want to find out more about him. So Jesus is kind of talking to both people. He's building up those that are on the inside, uh, and he is inviting those who are on the outside to come in and to experience life in the kingdom. Right? Because Jesus' kingdom, as we've seen, is like very upside down how the normal world works, right? Where instead of just being about what we do on the outside, it's about our heart and how we think and feel about people. About instead of hating our enemies, it's about loving our enemies. Like all these pretty radical things. Now, when Jesus was alive, the invitation to follow him, to go from being just part of the crowd to a disciple, was pretty easy, right? He'd just be walking around and he'd say, Hey, follow me, and you'd get up and follow him, or you wouldn't, right? But after he was crucified, after he was buried, after he rose from the dead, uh, we see in the book of Acts, the invitation is similar. It's still about following Jesus, um, but it's also a little different because Jesus isn't just like walking around the same way he was before. So it's about putting your faith in Jesus, repenting from sin, receiving forgiveness, living in the power of the Spirit, living in the kingdom of God. And if you were to read through the book of Acts and some of the New Testament, you'd see there's not like one thing you have to do to follow Jesus. There's not like a checklist where Paul's just like, all right, if you do these five things, you're following Jesus. There's not like one prayer you have to say. There's kind of like a whole host of different things we see, depending on the story, but there are some pretty big themes, right? About repenting from sin. Um, and one of the things we see all throughout the New Testament and then all throughout the early church is for people who have really decided to follow Jesus, who've gone from just checking it out to actually like following him and investing their life in the kingdom, there's this moment that we do to celebrate that and to show that. And that is baptism. Now we're gonna be celebrating a few baptisms today at both services, which is really exciting. So we want to take some space in our service to just talk about what baptism is, why we do it, what it symbolizes, uh just to both to better understand what it is that we're witnessing, and for those of us who have been like following Jesus for a while, maybe you've already been baptized, it is easy to forget how life-altering and powerful the gospel is. Right? It's easy just to kind of slip into like normal life, like your faith just becomes routine, you know, you've kind of heard it all a thousand times before. And it's easy to forget how good the good news is, how radically maybe Jesus has altered and reshaped your life. And so spending some time, it's been really encouraging for me spending some time uh meditating and thinking about and reading about baptism, but like, man, like thinking about all that Jesus has done for me. So before we get to some of the symbolism, I want to explain a couple of the things that are maybe more distinctive to Cross Point, especially if you grew up in different church traditions. Here at Crosspoint, we believe that baptism is primarily a response to deciding to follow Jesus. Um, it's what we see in the book of Acts. So at the beginning of the book of Acts, Peter is preaching, he's talking about Jesus as the Messiah. Um, and the people are like, Cool, this sounds great. What do we do now? And Peter basically says this in Acts chapter two. He replies, Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. Kind of moving on a couple verses. Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about 3,000 were added to their number that day. So the people who got baptized weren't the ones who were just checking it out, or because like that's just what you do. Like they did it because they received and accepted the message and repented and wanted to follow Jesus. So other traditions practice infant baptism, uh, but you know, we see over and over in the Bible how it's about a decision to follow Jesus, and then baptism follows that to go from being in the crowd to being a disciple. And so we at Crosspoint baptize people who are ready to make their faith in Jesus their own decision, right? They're old enough to do that if they're kids, um, and they really understand what they're doing if they're adults too. And so for babies, we just don't want to celebrate that moment. Uh, so we do child dedication, which we'll do in a few weeks here, um, of committing children to raising them in the way of Jesus. We also practice, which might be different depending on um where you're from or what you grew up with, like immersion baptism. So going all the way in the water. Now, if there was some like medical condition, we would do sprinkling to like if that's what it needed to be, and that would be great. Uh, but the imagery is so much more powerful going into the water and coming out of it. And it's what was practiced all throughout early church history. Now, baptism is like an outward thing to show point to a spiritual reality, to show what's happening in our heart, right? Similar to communion, it's like this physical, tangible thing that points to a spiritual reality. There's nothing magical about the water, right? Mac and I didn't like bless it or anything like that. Um, baptism doesn't save us, right? It's not about the water, it's about the blood of Jesus that saves us. Um, I've been leading the baptism class for many years now at Crosspoint, and one question I get a lot, or kind of a theme that comes up, is I've been a Christian, a follower of Jesus for a long time, but I never really got baptized. Do I need to be baptized if there's nothing like magical about it? Like, do I really need to? Um, and even though there's nothing magic, it's still super important because Jesus commands us to. And it's this like public profession of this is who I am now. I am no longer about this, I am now about this. The example I use uh in the baptism class is in getting married. Okay, so my wife and I got married uh almost 15 years ago, on December 18th at 7 o'clock was when the ceremony was. And in some ways, between the hour of 7 o'clock and 8 o'clock, nothing changed, right? The pastor didn't sprinkle like magic love dust on us, so now our love was like 10,000 times better than it was before, right? And so in some ways nothing changed, but in a lot of ways, everything changed, right? That we are now in together. We have told the whole world, like, no, this is who we are now. In some ways, the piece of paper we hold is just like meaning, it's just a piece of paper, right? Whatever, you could say that. But at the same time, having this sign of our commitment means everything. It represents this moment we've decided to be together, declare our love to each other publicly, and say, like, hey, this is what we're about now. Right? So, in the same way, baptism, yeah, there's nothing magical about it, but it's still very significant. Now, it doesn't mean you have to have it all together to be baptized, right? My wife and I, our relationship was not perfect, go back to that example, but it's about the beginning of a journey, saying we're gonna journey together, right? And with baptism, we're saying I'm journeying with Jesus. No matter where I'm starting, this is now where I'm going and which road I am on. Now, baptism is rich with symbolism, and we'll talk about some of these, you know, in other services as we as we continue to talk about baptism. Uh, things like being brought into a new community, things like repentance, things like being washed clean, uh, new creation, new birth. But what I want to explore a little bit more today is one of the symbols that's talked about in Romans 6, which is it symbolizes death and resurrection. So just a little context in Romans 6, if you were to read through Romans 1 through 5, Paul is spending some time talking about sin and grace, right? Sin is what brings us away from God. It's like uh missing the mark, we're we're going against God's law. Um, but God has grace for us. So he says, through Adam, sin has entered the world. Adam, the first person, disobeyed God, and so now there is sin in the world, there's death in the world. But through Jesus, grace is in the world. And so now we don't have to fear that death. We are now, we can be rooted in God's grace. Death is a great consequence of going against God and the way God created us to live. We are all guilty of sin and therefore should expect death. But the good news is that Jesus pours grace upon grace upon us. Right? God's grace wipes away our sin because of the blood of Jesus. Adam's act brought condemnation. Jesus' act brings relationship and life with God. Sin brings death, God's grace brings life. And Paul said he just right before this passage, he says, and you know, the more sin there is, the more God's grace just covers it, right? And then he kind of answers the stupid question from the back room. What shall we say then? Should we just keep sinning so that grace may increase, right? Like, this would be like, you know, the question some of us might have like, oh, cool, so if we sin more, does that just mean God's grace keeps covering us? Which is true, but he's like, no, that's stupid, right? By no means. We are those who have died to sin. How can we live in it any longer? The point of grace isn't just so we can keep living the life we were living before. The point of grace is to free us from the power of sin. Right? We can come to think of sin as like, hey, it's bad, we shouldn't do it, but it's fun, and we kind of wish we could do it. But sin only looks that way on the outside, right? It's enticing, it pulls us in. The reality is that sin is full of darkness and death, and it's actually really bad for us. Right? So Paul's saying, why would we keep living in sin if we've been set free from it? Why would I why would we re-chain ourselves to that? Says, or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death. 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. Right? So we want to actually die to our old self so that we can be raised to live in the new life with Jesus. Verse 5 says, For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his. So when we go into the water, it's like we're united with his death going into the grave. We also get to be united with his raising from the dead. For we know that our old self was crucified with him, so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin, because anyone who has died has been set free from sin. So we're buried in the waters of baptism, right? To represent the spiritual reality that if you've decided to follow Jesus, you are now dead to your old life full of sin, and you get to come and be raised into a new life full of life. Right? It's an invitation to let go of your life, old life, and take on a new one. Now, if we died with Christ, we believe we will also live with him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again. Death no longer has mastery or power over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all. But the life he lives, he lives to God. In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.

unknown:

Right?

SPEAKER_00:

So when we participate in like Jesus' passion, his death, burial, and resurrection, it's an invitation to let go of our old life, right? And to take on a new one. We like to think we can do both, like I can hold on to my old life and I can follow Jesus. But following Jesus is an exclusive thing. We die to our old life in order to live this new life. Our former sinful self needs to be crucified and buried in the waters of baptism. Now, as I was doing some research, what I found was in the early church, they really like took hold of this idea, and I thought it was really cool. That ancient baptistries were actually created to remind people of this reality. So here's one that I found that was shaped like a cross. So you would literally, you'd walk in from the sunset side, so from the west, right? Like sunset death, and you'd rise in the east like the sunrise side. But then you would literally be like baptized as if you were being crucified with Jesus to remind you that you were crucified with Christ. Um, another kind of image that comes up in the early church baptistries is they look kind of like tombs. So here's one of the oldest ones we have in Syria. It looks like a little spot for a tomb to be. And here's one uh from Italy. It's like you're actually walking into like a crypt. So when you go to get baptized, it feels like you're walking to your death. And it's this dark building, right, where it looks kind of like a tomb or somewhere where bodies would be kept or ashes. And so you really feel like you're walking to your death when you walk there. I mean, even our stage, our baptistry is here on the ground. You guys can't see it. Uh, but it's shaped like a grave. Like if you were gonna dig a grave, this is what it would look like, like a big rectangle, right? So when you go and it's like you're walking into the grave to be buried in death and then rise out to a new life. One of the other weird things uh in the early church, we are not gonna do this, people were baptized naked back in the early church. Uh, you would literally take off your old clothes, get baptized, and put on new clothes, right? Which is super weird, but also like a really cool image of like I am just leaving all that is old behind and taking on something new. So this moment of baptism was this moment where you chose to leave your old life behind, to die to it, to tell everyone, like, that is no longer me, I am someone else. This is a death that can be difficult, right? Because there's things about our life that we like and that we want to hold on to. Uh, but it's full of life as well, because when we die to our old self, that's when we get to take on the new self found in Jesus. When we empty ourselves, we make room for God to fill us up with his presence and his life and his grace in our life. Right, this is why Jesus says those who seek to keep their life are gonna lose it because they're gonna miss out on the real life God has. But those who are willing to lose their life will receive something better. They will find it. So our bottom line for today is living in Christ requires dying to your old self. So it's not an optional thing you do to be a super Christian. This is like what it means to follow Jesus. And it feels painful, but it's actually really good news. Now, today we have some young people who are being baptized, um, which is awesome. People who've grown up in church heard about God most of their life, but for them, this is a significant moment where they're deciding like this isn't just something my parents do, this isn't just something I do because it's easy to do, but I am making this decision for myself and deciding to follow Jesus because that's what they want to be about. So uh we're gonna hear, we're gonna hear their stories, kind of hear their testimonies, celebrate with them, and worship together before we wrap up. So if you are in here and you are getting baptized, you can head back to the green room. Uh, Drew is back there and we'll be with you. Um, and then the worship team is gonna come out. Um and we're gonna sing a song to kind of worship together as they get ready. So you guys can stand up. Uh, just sing this song, I think, is a beautiful representation of what it means to live the new life with Jesus. So why don't you stand and we can sing it together?

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