Baptism: God's Promise of Grace

This morning, we've witnessed just this beautiful moment of little Addy's baptism. And it's, as a pastor, a huge privilege to be a part of that. I hear often, and even as I was in South Africa recently, how parents will say in just a, I don't know, a really beautiful warm way that this is the pastor who baptised so and so. This is the pastor who baptised you thirty four years ago. It's a wonderful, special connection with some of these older pastors and Tony might be able to reflect on some of those conversations as well.

People that probably as pastors we kind of forget because we do them so often, but it's a special, special privilege to be reminded of that every now and then. But as we've done that this morning, I also realised that for many of us, it's a strange phenomenon. There's this idea of a baby being baptised. We are called Open House because in many ways we want to open these doors to anyone to come and listen and learn and grow. And so we have a very diverse bunch of people here, if you haven't realised that yet.

And so one of those diverse aspects is our understandings of baptism. There are people, and a significant part of our people here, that believe in a baptism later in life called a believer's baptism or a credo baptism. A baptism at the point of professing or announcing your faith. And so perhaps for some of us, this question of little Addy's baptism may raise some questions in our minds. Why baptise a child that cannot express their faith yet?

Does this church believe that baptism saves this child automatically? Does the child not have to grow and confess their own personal faith? How does this all work this morning? And I want to say to you that those are good questions. Those are worthwhile questions to ask.

And so this morning, I want to explain our understanding of baptism. And instead of calling it infant baptism as we often do, I want to tell you how I see it or how I what I call it, which is covenantal baptism. How it works this morning, I want to explain and also make the point or the case to you that it's not only logical, but it also deals very consistently with scripture. We may still disagree at the end and we're going to have morning tea and you may come and tell me I disagree for these reasons. That's fine.

That's okay. I think we can still be friends, but let me explain to you why Moray and Annalise this morning have decided to baptise little Addy. So the baptism of Adeline is grounded in love. And the first point we want to make this morning is that baptism, and I think all of us can agree on that, is a physical sign of the spiritual reality of salvation in Christ Jesus. A really important verse in this theology of baptism, the sacrament of baptism, which is a holy action, a holy tradition in the church, is found in Romans 6:4, which explains why this tradition happens in the church.

Romans 6:4 says, this is Paul writing, "We were buried, therefore, with Him who is Christ, by baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life." In other words, Paul is saying that baptism visually represents a dying with Christ and a raising with Christ. Baptism is tied with the crux of the gospel, which is the sacrificial death of Jesus. And some have argued then that baptism, the mode of baptism, is therefore also significant. Because the imagery that Paul uses here is of one being submerged into water, going down into water as if they are being buried in the ground.

And then they must come out, fully out of this water, so that they are raised out of the grave, so to speak. But it is also significant to point out that baptism and the word itself in the Bible means sprinkling. The Greek word baptizo, which is where we literally get the word baptism from, means to sprinkle. And we find the connection of a cleansing sprinkling, as though like a shower, that sort of sprinkling, a cleansing sprinkling also in scripture in Hebrews 9:13, where we get the connection of the saving work of Jesus Christ sprinkling us clean from our sin.

So Hebrews 9:13, this is the NIV translation of it. The author writes, "The blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer are sprinkled, the Greek word baptizo, on those who are ceremonially unclean, to sanctify them so that they are outwardly clean. How much more then will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered himself unblemished to God, how much more will He cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death so that we may serve the living God?" So if you remember the book of Hebrews, Hebrews is all about seeing how Jesus is the fulfilment of the Old Testament.

And the case being made here is Jesus is the great sacrifice that can fully and finally cleanse us of our sin. In the past, animal sacrifice was used as a sign of God's impending forgiveness. Blood of bulls and goats were used to sprinkle on people. They would splash that on a person to signify that they had been forgiven. But now with Jesus Christ and death and resurrection, how much more can we be saved by being sprinkled by that blood?

So even in the New Testament, baptism has moments of both symbolising submersion into water and death, and then life and resurrection, but also a washing and a sprinkling of saving grace to cleanse from sin. So at Open House, it's worth mentioning that we don't have a problem baptising adults when they come to faith later in life and when they haven't been baptised before. And we also baptise people and we have baptised people in pools, fully submerging them. But we are just as comfortable using a bowl full of water this morning. Why?

Because how much water there is is far less important than what the symbol of the water is expressing. This water represents a dying and a living with Christ, and it represents a washing and a cleansing of guilt. Now the next question you may ask then is, okay, that's fair enough if that's what the water represents, but why baptise a baby who has never had a choice whether they want to be baptised or not? And so this leads us to the second point. Baptism is an ancient promise from God and not man.

The main argument for a person to be baptised as an adult, as a believer, points to the idea that faith needs to be active when salvation occurs. Faith needs to be active when salvation occurs, and therefore baptism is at or around that time of faith, of belief. Someone needs to have the mental capacity of a certain age to be able to say, yes, I believe in Jesus in order to receive this sacrament. But I and many others as well would argue that this argument is ignoring a hugely significant understanding of who God is and what role God plays in salvation. A significant understanding within reformed theology is the understanding that God is the one who saves and not us.

God is the one who saves and not us. God, in other words, is so gracious, so big, so merciful, and we are so lost and so inept and so broken that He must do all the work in saving us. Salvation, and I'm sure we all agree, is never by our work and it is always by His grace. And this truth about God is, we also agree, all throughout the Bible. It goes back all the way to the earliest chapters of the Old Testament.

And I want to make the case that in the first book of the Bible, Genesis, we find God making a significant promise of this salvation. And this promise is made to a man called Abraham. This promise is called, according to the Bible, the covenant. And we know what the covenant is. A covenant is a serious promise.

It is a really, really earnest promise made between two parties. And this covenant is a promise that cannot be broken by mankind or by God. And this promise that God makes to mankind is that He will make a nation, a special nation out of this man through whom He will save and bless the nations. In Genesis 17, this covenant moment when God commands that God's people will be marked by this circumcision, every male child at the age of eight days must go through that. Every infant male will be circumcised.

And in this physical sign, God was giving an initiation rite into God's special people. So God makes a promise at this point in time in Genesis 17:7. He says, "I will establish My covenant as an everlasting covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come. What is the object of this promise? To be your God and to be the God of your descendants after you."

That is what God promises with this physical sign. From this special people of God comes Jesus, we know. The Bible draws that out over hundreds and thousands of years. Jesus comes and through Jesus, God flings open the doors to His salvation so that Gentiles, Gentiles like the majority of us, I would say ninety nine per cent of us, we may receive this salvation as well. And so in the New Testament, the followers of Christ, they don't do away with covenantal language.

They still talk about the promise of God. They still talk about this same promise made in Genesis, but they capture the essence of the meaning of the sign of circumcision and it is replaced with the sign of baptism. With the New Testament, circumcision, the sign for the Jews, is replaced with baptism, the sign of Christ followers of the whole world. I believe a lot of people, when we talk about baptism, actually miss this really significant teaching. They miss the significant connection between the covenant promise of circumcision and the New Testament sacrament of baptism.

And so this is why I believe that many people have a misunderstanding of what baptism is representing. Baptism has never meant a promise of me to God. God, I will follow you and now I will be baptised. Because we know from the Old Testament, an eight day old boy could never make that promise to God at their circumcision. The circumcision was God's promise to that child, to those parents, to the grandparents, to the descendants after this little boy, that God was making an everlasting promise with them to be your God and you to be my people.

If you still don't believe me, this promise keeping aspect, this promise keeping aspect is part of baptism. I want to then jump forward to the New Testament where Paul himself explains the connection between the sign of baptism and the sign of circumcision. This is one of the clearest bits of teaching, I believe, of how we can understand the two being connected. Colossians 2:11-12, the apostle Paul says, "In Him, meaning in Christ, in Him you were also, what? Circumcised.

In the putting off of the sinful nature. However, not with a circumcision done by the hands of men, but with the circumcision done by Christ, having been buried with Him in baptism." You can see the connection there between circumcision and the sacrament of baptism. In other words, baptism is about a promise, but not your promise, God's promise. We saw this morning in the gospel story actually being played out. God is giving His grace to an undeserving young person.

As helpless as a little baby is to save himself or herself from someone who would do them harm, as helpless as a little baby is to feed themselves, to look after themselves, so helpless were we in saving ourselves from our sin. Whatever you believe about the age of baptism, this thing you must believe: you could never save yourself. You never even had a God to choose to go to. He chose you first.

In the water, we see God making this promise just as He made in the circumcision. He's making this promise now. I am your God and I want you to be mine. I give you this command: believe the cleansing I have provided for you in Jesus. That is what God is promising little Addy today.

Believe the promise that Jesus Christ has cleansed you. It's the exact same ancient promise that God has made right from the beginning. The physical symbols have changed, and it has changed so that it can mark the widening, not of just a certain people of certain ethnicity, but of the whole world. The promise, however, has not changed. And just to drive it home, in the book of Acts, when the apostle Peter describes baptism, he uses virtually the same covenant promissory language as God used in Genesis 17 of circumcision.

Look at this. Acts 2. After Paul preaches a wonderful sermon and there are so many thousands that want to say, what do we do now? What do we do now? He says this to them: "Repent and be baptised 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. The promise, there's the word, the promise is for you and for your children. And then for all who are far off. For all whom the Lord our God will call." The promise of the baptism is still this: it is for you and it is for your descendants that I may be your God and that you may be my people.

So even when we baptise adults, we say the meaning of baptism hasn't changed. When Brian was baptised last Easter, beautiful, wonderful, it wasn't to do with his mental capacity, although he does have a good mental capacity. Some might disagree. It is to do with what God is promising him in that moment as well. It is a promise from God.

I will be your God, Brian. And I want you to be my child. And so where circumcision then was a sign pointing forward to sin that needed to be cut away, that's what the circumcision was meant to represent, a sin being cut away. It pointed forward to that day of Jesus.

Baptism now is a sign that is pointing us back that sin has been washed away in Jesus. Where circumcision pointed to the coming of the Messiah, baptism points back to the Messiah. Circumcision said, one day the Lord will do this. Baptism says, God has done this in Jesus Christ. And so our last point deals with the question: why can parents make that decision for their child to be baptised?

Why did Annalise and Marey have to make a promise to raise Addy in a godly way? Why do they have to make that decision or that promise this morning, ensuring that Addy will come to church regularly, ensuring that Addy will come and be in a church where there is Sunday school and where there is catechism training in the Christian faith? Well, this is also part of the baptism sacrament. Baptism involves far more than just one person. It involves an entire community.

Our church's understanding of baptism is deeply embedded with the belief that baptism isn't a me and God moment. Baptism isn't a me and God moment. It's a moment for the whole community to bear witness, to be a part of. We heard how Peter says in Acts 2 that the promise is for you and for your children. The promise is for the parents as well as for the children and all those who are far off.

And the practice of baptising children as part of that household of God is actually something again that we can point to in scripture. People will say no, but, you know, the Ethiopian eunuch, he was an older person. He got baptised then. There are the disciples of John in Acts who were also baptised at that moment. So these were adults.

So the Bible's pointing to these as examples for us to follow. But we also find in the book of Acts that as the church is expanding all over the world, entire families come to faith by the power of the Holy Spirit. In Acts 10, we see Cornelius and his family believe, and then in Acts 16, we see the Philippian jailer and his family come to faith. And in both instances, it says the entire family are baptised. The entire family are baptised.

So let's have a look at this example in Acts 16 where the Philippian jailer hears a gospel from Paul and Silas, and this is what happens. Acts 16:31. They replied, Paul and Silas, "Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, you and your household." Then they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all the others in his house. At that hour of the night, the jailer took them, washed their wounds, then immediately he and all his household were baptised.

Now it doesn't list who is in that household and what their ages are. That's true. But this word household is the all encompassing word for everyone that believed, everyone that belonged to this family. It is an inclusive word. It's not just mum and dad.

And when an entire household is mentioned, it probably included all the men, all the women, all the slaves that that house owned, the teenagers, and yes, the children. Not once are children said to be explicitly excluded from a household baptism. So why can entire households be baptised in this way? Because God is making that promise to them as well. I want to be your God, and I want you to be my people through faith in the Lord Jesus.

Maybe an analogy is helpful here just to explain how this concept works. All of us have probably been surprised or shocked to see a tree growing in the side of a cliff where there is very little soil. In South Africa, I saw a tree growing out of this little crack of this beautiful old bridge. There's nothing there for this tree to really grow in, but a tree is growing. God, in other words, enables this tree to grow in the most unlikeliest of places.

And yet, we know that if we want a tree to really thrive in most circumstances, we will plant it in good soil. We will make sure that that tree gets proper sunlight, and we will make sure that it gets enough water. Even though we know that ultimately the welfare of this tree is in the hands of God. My poor plants on my balcony obviously don't have the blessing of God because they keep dying. But ultimately, you can even have the best environment for this tree and it may also die.

We believe that if God doesn't want that tree to live, it will not cause it to be alive. In a similar way, baptism acknowledges that as children of believers, these children are in a covenant relationship with God through Moray and Annalise's faith and commitment to the Lord and through the community of which Addie will be a part of. This relationship to her parents and to this community is the richest environment for possible growth in faith. This is where you want to bring your kids. This is also why I'm uncomfortable when I hear people baptising other people in bathtubs, away from a church, or in a backyard pool after a barbecue. It is a moment where they become a part of a church community.

And so far, we've heard that baptism is pointing to the salvation of Jesus. That is what baptism is pointing to, or the washing away of guilt. We've seen that it is an ancient promise that God makes right at the beginning to be the God of a special people. And that, thirdly, we said it involves the entire community of faith to be involved in as a nurturing, nourishing community. But I want to finish with one final point this morning.

And that is to say what baptism isn't. What baptism isn't. And that is that baptism doesn't guarantee salvation. To all of us bearing witness to this special sacrament of baptism, we need to hear this as well. In order to be saved, a person must possess their own personal faith in Jesus as saviour.

Baptism doesn't instil faith in some magical way. There are people that have tried to argue that case. But that's not true according to scripture. What makes baptism effective is when it is combined with inward faith, personal faith. So physical act of baptism doesn't save, but there is a special promise connected with this sign of the baptism.

Not everyone we know in Israel were saved, even though they were part of Israel. And yet, everyone who was part of Israel received special blessings. They received the prophets to come back to them and repeatedly say, turn back to God. They had messengers being sent to them because they were special, even though they did not believe. We know that God treated His people in a special way.

They were given far more chances to return to Him than other people would. In baptism, whether it be as a child or an adult, the initial seeds of faith may not have happened at the same time as that baptism. We believe that God is the one who gives faith. In fact, it could happen at any point. Addie may have saving faith right now, even though she cannot express that.

But she may not have that just yet. Our prayer should be, along with Addy's parents, that God will reveal Himself to her in a personal way. When Adeline comes to a point in her life where she is ready to announce her faith in Christ to her church family, when that may be in a few years' time, then that becomes the moment in which baptism and all that it signifies comes into full effect. This is why I want to encourage everyone who has never made a public profession of their faith, who has never sat down and considered where they stand with the Lord Jesus, even if they've received baptism, to consider coming full circle, closing the loop, to say, yes. I believe this promise of cleansing that has been signified and promised to me in my baptism.

I am a child of God. I am a recipient of His grace and I will live for Him. And so today is about promise. And we hear God saying this to little Addy: I will be your God. And I, little Addy, have sent My Son Jesus for you.

And I'm calling you to trust and believe in Me because this baptism shows that I love you and that I'm calling you to be Mine. And so in summary, God's covenant promise, that firm promise He made thousands of years before we knew Him, was fulfilled in Jesus Christ. All the riches of Christ, all the expenses paid for by Jesus, have been credited to us, and that is grace. Wherever we stand on the age of baptism or the mode of baptism, this truth remains: that baptism reflects God's grace. A promise given to us before we could understand or know or love Him.

A promise of God's grace that He made through the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, for the forgiveness of our sin. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for this helpful reminder from your word that what has happened here this morning is a wonderful gift. It's a wonderful promise of your faithfulness to generations of those who love you. We know, Lord, that there is a special, significant, spiritual blessing that is tied with families of faith, of faithful grandparents and parents and grandchildren and children.

We pray, Lord, that for our church, we will be faithful to those promises we make. Lord, that we will consider being Sunday school teachers because we make a promise to raise these kids in the faith. That we will be youth leaders because we promise to keep our children, our young people walking in the faith. That we will have good pastors that will preach on our pulpits. That we will make available at every opportunity knowledge and information about the saving work of Jesus Christ.

Lord, help us to understand that this comes from these incredible truths, these incredible commands and promises that you have placed in the sign of baptism. I pray, Lord, that we might understand it. I pray, Lord, that we will commit it to our hearts. And then, Lord, we pray for our young people, all of them, that they may come to a personal knowledge of who you are. And for those, Lord, who, as we sit this morning with aching hearts, have walked away, have gone into the world for whatever reason, are actively suppressing the truth of Jesus Christ.

Lord, we pray that your power and your grace will be so strong that they cannot resist anymore. That you will bring them to the greatest thing that they will ever receive. Thank you, Lord, that at one point you have made that promise. We pray, Lord, that you'll be faithful to that promise. Have mercy on them, Lord, and help us in our ways to be the messengers and the family who love them back into the kingdom.

We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.