Confession of Faith

This morning, I have the privilege of witnessing a special moment in the life of six young Christians, but not only just for them, but in the life of the church. This morning, we celebrate with the De Toit family, the Rousseau's, the Houses, the Rings, the Fonte Marvelles. We celebrate the fact that their sons or their daughters or their brothers or their sisters or their grandkids are publicly professing their faith in Jesus Christ. And I've had the privilege over the last year to share regular time with these guys as we wrestled with our faith. And it is a genuine wrestling.

Lots of questions, lots of debates. And we work through exactly what do Christians believe, what do we do. And to be with them at this moment is really a blessing for me too. Today, I'd like us to think about the significance of this moment. Why do we do it?

A lot of us come from various backgrounds, church backgrounds, church traditions. Some of us haven't been part of a church for a lot of our life. So this morning, while we have all these individuals up here, I actually want us to look at the much larger story of what is happening at this moment. The celebration this morning is actually not so much about these young people having arrived, ticking the boxes, and now being set. It's actually about celebrating a milestone that has been reached. And we, as a church, are all part of this road trip.

And we see that white little milestone on the side of the road. And this morning, although it is emotional, it is a happy day, it's not something that's merely sentimental and gooey that I'm going to be talking about. Did you know that one of the greatest or the most used metaphors in the Bible about the church, about who we are, is actually the metaphor that we are a family. That we are a family. One of the most used images when the Bible talks about the church is that the church is a family.

Ephesians 3:14 says that God is our heavenly Father and we are His sons and His daughters. In 2 Corinthians 6:18, when we have decided, Paul says, to leave our old ways behind, our old lives behind and follow Jesus, God literally says, I will be a father to you, and you will be my sons and my daughters. This means then that we are all brothers and sisters. We all belong to one another. We are all part of the family.

Paul even tells Timothy in 1 Timothy 5, do not rebuke an older man harshly, but exhort him as if he were your father. Treat younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters with absolute purity. So we are a family. We are a family, whether you like it or not. Now because we are family, there are things that prove to us and to the outside world that we belong to one another.

This morning, I want to point out two specific components to understanding ourselves as being part of God's family, the church. And the interesting thing is they're not too different to how we distinguish or understand ourselves as being part of our physical families. Firstly, we know we belong to the family of God because people have witnessed and can testify to our birth into the family. We know we are part of God's family because people have witnessed or they can testify to the birth into this family. Now, I remember when I was 10, my little baby sister was born.

And I remember very distinctly the moment when I realised this had happened. We had gone to school and roughly around lunchtime, my dad came in our town ace Toyota van and picked us up and took us to the hospital to go and see mum and the baby. Now, I distinctly remember the experience of going from two siblings to three. And for a little 10 year old, the realisation that I had a sister in my family now. Such a massive change.

And in my mind, that had simply happened overnight. But I know and I knew that little baby belonged to us because I experienced that birth. I may not have witnessed it, thank God I didn't, but I experienced the fact that one day there was nothing, and then one day, we had an extra person in the family. That little girl belonged to us. She was one of us.

In the same way, our faith experience and entry into the family of God happens through a birth. We symbolise that moment when we baptise people. We as a church baptise both infants and adults. Some people say that we only baptise babies, but we actually do both. But what we believe of baptism is that it symbolises a spiritual reality.

It symbolises a spiritual reality. And that is the coming to faith of Jesus is like being born again. Baptism is not so much about having our own personal moment with God where we promise a lot of things and we promise to be faithful to Him. Baptism is not so much that. Rather, it is what we call the continuation of a promise from God, a covenant that God has made with us.

In reality, Jesus' words in John 15:16 sums up that moment of baptism. You did not choose Me, but I chose you. You did not choose Me, I chose you. At baptism, whether you are baptised as a baby with believing parents in a believing Christian family or as an adult believer, whether that is in a Christian family or not. Baptism celebrates that God has reached down to us first.

God has reached down to us first and promised, I want to be your God. And I want you to be my people. It is God's sovereign grace and love that causes us to be born again. And receiving the baptism is a sign of this covenant promise. I want to be your God, and I want you to be my person, my son, my daughter.

And that is made possible, we believe, only through the death and the resurrection of Jesus, which is also symbolised in that moment. So why do we feel comfortable baptising babies who have no way to say that they believe in Jesus or perhaps don't even have the cognitive ability to understand faith? Because baptism is not about us. Baptism is about what God has done and is doing. He has sent Jesus Christ for that baby.

He has sent Jesus Christ for that 15 year old person, for that 80 year old person. So age doesn't matter. Mental ascent doesn't matter. The promise of God is what matters. So in baptism, we recognise the truth that when we ultimately do come to a moment where the penny drops, and we understand and we believe in Jesus Christ, that moment, in that moment, we are born again.

That is when the promise of baptism becomes a reality. And most people, whether you believe in infant baptism or believers baptism or adult baptism, will admit that a baptism on a Sunday morning is not the exact time when that person is born again. It happens somewhere between before or after that. Baptism is a physical symbol of a spiritual reality. But what it does is it serves as a reminder that a baby or an adult has entered into God's family, and that's the important thing.

Baptism is the initiation into the family of God. But we know that when a baby is born, a process starts. No one after having a baby comes back from the hospital, goes upstairs, places the baby in the crib and says, baby, here are your nappies, here are your baby wipes and your baby powder. If you have an accident, feel free to use these. No one says, baby, if you get hungry, feel free to go downstairs and fix yourself a meal.

Breast milk is available on demand. Just make sure you ask politely. But if that's not your thing, there's some formula in the fridge or pureed vegetables if that's your thing. Meal times are at seven, twelve, three and eight. Enjoy your time with us as a family, and I guess we'll be seeing you around the house. No, of course not.

Having a baby is a growth process. These young people here this morning were all baptised, in fact, as babies and into various different churches. But at their baptisms, at their baptisms, a promise was made in response to God's initial promise, I want to be your God. The parents promised to God and to their church to raise these babies as children of God, making sacrifices and efforts to live lives as examples to their kids of what disciples and followers of Jesus look like. At the same time, their churches, their congregations made promises to these babies and to their parents that they would look after these babies, that they would nurture their faith.

And that is why in our tradition, we put a great emphasis on Sunday school. We put a great emphasis on catechism and classes and Bible studies because we believe it is our responsibility, rather, to nurture this faith, to grow people in their faith. Why? Because we believe we are part of a family. Just like a family doesn't leave a baby to try and change their own nappies or feed themselves, but instead happily and willingly does it on their behalf, we as a family, older brothers, younger brothers, sisters, mothers, all are part of the growth and the nurture of these babies.

So we know people belong to the family. Why? Because they've been born into the family. People have witnessed that, can testify to that. Your parents will be able to tell you of that moment.

But the second way we know that we belong to the family is because of a family resemblance. I know that I belong to my family because of my height, because of my nose, because of my accent. Similarly, there are family resemblances that show that we belong to Jesus Christ and to one another. Family resemblances in the church can be seen in the common faith we share. Family resemblances can be seen in the obedience that we have to following Christ's commandments.

And this is where profession of faith comes in. This is where profession of faith comes in. The Bible says in Romans 10:9-10 that if you confess, if you profess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified. In other words, made right with Him.

And it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved. This second component shows that you are part of the family and that you have the opportunity now to tell the entire family meeting here today that you recognise your resemblance, that you really believe, and that you want to follow Jesus like everyone else is. When we profess our faith, we say that we belong to God and the family since we have been baptised into the family, and secondly, recognise our family resemblance. We have put our trust in Jesus Christ as the only one who can get us right with God and help us overcome our selfish ways. When these young people this morning come and profess their faith, the cycle has come full circle.

As babies, they were presented to the church, their spiritual family, and they symbolically received the promise of a new life. Now as they profess their faith today, they symbolically receive this new life. It doesn't mean that at this moment, they have received new life or that at their baptism, they received new life. But somewhere in between, in very special and unique ways that they'll hopefully be sharing with us a little bit, they came to a point where they realised that they need God, that they need Jesus, and that they desire to live for Him. And once they have done this to us, they enter into the full rights, the full privileges of being part of the family.

It means that they can do things like practical things like voting, that they can become elders and deacons and leaders in the church, and in that way, guide how this family operates and works. But it's not saying that right now, for the first time, they receive salvation because the actual moment, when they were born again, may have happened somewhere between their baptism and today. But when they profess their faith this morning, they recognise their resemblance, their solidarity, their oneness with their spiritual family. They will say, yes, I have a crooked nose. Yes, I have a monobrow.

Like all of you guys, but I have also come to understand that I have a gracious father who loves me despite all those things. So as Christians, we believe both things need to happen. That you should be baptised to symbolise that promise that God has made to us, and that you should publicly declare your faith in Christ. Now for some of us sitting here, this may have happened in other churches, in other denominations, but you'll notice that even if you came from a Baptist church who only baptises adult believers, at that moment, when you were baptised, you also made a public declaration of your faith. So between the different churches, the same things happen, just at different times.

If anyone and this is a side note. If anyone is interested in being baptised, if anyone is interested in having their babies baptised, or to do this course that these people have done, understanding the essence, the basics of Christianity, what they really believe, what Christianity stands for, come and talk to me. We'd love to run this course with you because we get to celebrate, we get to reap the benefits from this amazing process with you guys. So that is what we are doing here. The cycle has come full circle.

And I'm going to ask these young people to stand up this morning. Stand before your family. Face them. Congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, today we have the privilege to present to you the following baptised people who wish to profess their faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour, and who wish to become communicant members sharing in all the rights and the responsibilities that belong to a full and active membership in the Church of Christ. When they were baptised, God made clear His claim on them as His own, and they were received into the church.

Through God's word and spirit, they have come to faith in Christ and an understanding of their place in God's covenant of grace. Now they wish to share fully in the life of this congregation and of the whole worldwide church of God. So today, they will publicly accept and confirm what was sealed to them in their baptism. They will profess their faith in the Lord Jesus and offer themselves to God to be His willing servants. We thank God for them, for giving them the desire, and we pray that as we now witness their profession, He will favour us with the presence and the guidance of His holy spirit.

Badner, Mara, Megan, Cornell, Courtney, and Anay. The Lord Jesus said, you did not choose Me, but I chose you to go bear fruit, fruit that will last. Whoever acknowledges Me before men, I will acknowledge him before My father in heaven. It is God's sovereign grace and love that made you enter life as children of His people, receiving baptism as a sign of His covenant when you were still very young. It is God's sovereign grace and love that made you hear the good news of Christ in the years gone by.

And so you were left not ignorant of the way open to the Father. It is God's sovereign grace also and His love that led you to repentance, to make you humbly see your need of the gospel of salvation. And it is God's sovereign grace and love that calls us all who were once doomed to die eternally, to live instead and be bearers of hope and life in a dark world. In the presence of God and His people, we now invite you to profess your faith in Him.