and sacraments, that is, the church and baptism and the Lord's supper. And in the month of September, we looked at the church. It was for me a wonderful month of studying the scriptures and very little frustration. I get frustrated when I have more to say than time to say it. And I was frustrated for sure, but still blessed. I really enjoyed our studies there. But I still filled out way this morning. I just love the study of scriptures. And as we look at baptism, there's so much in the scriptures and it's good for you. If you are here today as one who likes to study, this is your day. Because it's almost like Professor Mark in the, in the whatever, this classroom. I apologize. No, I don't apologize. It's good teaching and you'll be blessed by this. Now, if you are the kind that says, look, just tell me what to do. And I'll go for it. And the deep intense study isn't your thing. I want to ask you to hang with me today. And to take the notes, and to think about this stuff, it's not so intense. You know, we're not talking about superlapse, serenism, and all this heavy kind of stuff. It's good content. It's good information. And this is why it's so important that you follow this first half where it's heavy on teaching. So that your joy is in the Lord with a strong foundation. That's so critical. This life is full of struggles, of toils, of disappointments, and discouragements. And if your joy is just shallowly based in Jesus Christ, it's going to be like up and down like a yo-yo. With that mind was less like a yo-yo. But the good foundation that we have in the Scriptures, the teaching that you're going to get today, gives you a solid foundation so that even when the days are hard and maybe your emotions are a bit down, you can still have strong joy in the Lord and on a strong foundation. So stay with me today. It will be worth your while. We're talking about baptism. I've got two general observations. I'm going to start then in the Old Testament based on my observations. And if it's confusing to you at the beginning, again, just stay with me. The Lord willing will make it all clear as we go through this. Here's the first observation. There is a close interlocking connection between the church baptism and the Lord's Supper. This is what I mean. It's almost hard to talk about baptism without talking about the church or without talking about the Lord's Supper. It's hard to talk about the Lord's Supper without talking about the church or about baptism. It's hard to talk about the church, you get the idea. That's my first general observation. The second one is this. There is much continuity between the Old Testament and the New Testament. What I mean is what is taught in the Old Testament is consistently brought through into the New Testament. And while things change, we no longer offer blood sacrifices because Christ is our blood sacrifice having been sacrificed once for all. While there's things like that to change, there's a continuity, a consistency in the way God works. Now, we saw that last month in talking about the church. For example, the Hebrew word for church, cahol, is translated in the Greek Old Testament, ecclesia. Our New Testament, which is written in Greek, has the word ecclesia 103 times and each time it's translated, well, a hundred times anyway, church. And so there's a continuity of what God was doing with His people in the Old Testament the day where He is and what He's doing in the New Testament era with us as people. Now, just a way of showing that, if you have your outline on the back, I showed you what's on top before that there's these metaphors that the Scriptures use to talk about the church, the body, the kingdom, the family. But look below, the Old Testament prefigures the church in every way except for one. I couldn't find anything really in the Old Testament using the metaphor of the people of God being the body. But other than that, the kingdom, it gets its roots in the Old Testament. The whole kingdom of David and so on and so forth expands and is the foundation upon which we talk and which our Lord Jesus talks about the kingdom of God. Household our family, brothers and sisters, God is our father. This finds its foundation in the Old Testament and it's brought into the New Testament. Wife and bride, you see the text I have there, I wish I had time for more, and if you like this kind of stuff, just jot this down. Ezekiel 16, 1 through 10, and Ephesians 5, 22 through the end. I think it's 31 or 33 verses. Read that. It'll bless your socks off as you see how God calls the church to Himself and calls her a radiant bride and what He's doing in her life and such. It's consistent through the Bible. The temple, it starts in the Old Testament as God dwells in the middle of His people and they literally camped around the tabernacle where God's presence was revealed and of course we have that taught in the New Testament. And I thought of another one that I added to the chart that of the vineyard. That the people are the vineyard of God and He expects the vineyard to produce good fruit, right? And Jesus talked about this. I am the vine. You are the branches. If a person abides in me, he bears much fruit and brings glory to God. This sort of stuff. So that continuity is really important. And I want to hopefully show you that and convince you of that as we go through the scriptures and look at these texts this morning. So we'll start with Exodus 34. That's already been read to you. To kind of like bring you up to where it is so you have kind of a historical framework for it. In the beginning of the book of Exodus we learn about this fellow Moses that was just a great little guy and God protected his life. And he wound up out in the desert and God spoke to him at the burning bush, right? You remember the burning bush? Take off your shoes from upon your feet, Moses, for the ground on which you stand as holy and God calls Moses to himself and says, I want you to go talk to Pharaoh. Tell him, let my people go. And Pharaoh says no. And so God brings all these plagues on Israel one after another and he begins during these plagues to differentiate between his people and Egypt. And the last plague is what's known as the over. Let's try this again. What's known as the Passover, right? This is the plague. God says to Moses, Moses have all the people in their families at their house, take a lamb, slaughter the lamb and eat it. They're going to eat the lamb. But take the blood of that lamb and put it on top of the doorpost and then on the two sides of the door, because tonight I'm sending my death angel to bring death to the Egyptians, to the firstborn throughout all Egypt, from Pharaoh to the servant of the lowliest servant, even the cattle, the firstborn is all going to die. But if I see the blood, if the death angel sees the blood it will pass over. So they do that and they have this meal. And then God says, I want you to remember this meal and do it all the time. And thus the reading that we had about how to kind of organize this meal when they get into the promised land. And one of the things that we saw is the foreigner, the outsider, must be circumcised in order to participate in the Passover. The outsider, the foreigner, the sojourner, the one who was in a part of Israel, and the question I want to ask and answer is why? Why couldn't they participate in the Passover? Especially if they wanted to. I mean, it's a nice community thing, and all Israel is supposed to do it. They're not to neglect it at all. Why not the foreigners who move into the lands? The immigrants that get their green cards and such. Why can't they take it? Well, and they can, but only after they're circumcised. Why? Well, there's two reasons and it's the second reason we'll spend the most time on. The first one is this. Passover was a ceremony remembering God's salvation. It was an annual reminder that God saved His people. An annual reminder that God rescued His people in two ways. He rescued them from oppression and slavery in Egypt, and He rescued them from God's judgment when the death angel went by. So Passover was to be a sign of God's salvation. And the outsider had to first come into that some sense of being saved by God. Some sense of being saved at least from the wrath of God. Otherwise, it would be inappropriate for them to eat. And that brings us to the second sign of circumcision, and this is a little more complicated. There's ABC. Circumcision is a sign of A, the believers covenant relationship with God. The believers covenant relationship with God. Just to show you this in the scriptures and talk about it a little bit. When Abraham lived far away, God called him and said, I'm going to bless you and I'm going to bless those who bless you and I'm going to curse those who curse you. And in you, all the families of the earth are going to be blessed. That's in chapter 12 of Genesis. In chapter 15, Abraham, God approaches him again and says, Abraham, I'm your very great reward. I'm going to bless you and give you many descendants in the land. And Abraham says, Abraham really, at the time, how can I know? And God says, let's make a covenant. And in chapter 17, he gives what's called the sign of the covenant. And this is just a little reading, verses 7 and verses 7 and 10. God says, I will establish my covenant between me and you and your descendants after you throughout their generations for a never lasting covenant to be God to you and your descendants after you. Here in that verse, I will make my covenant with you. God of the universe, right? This is critical stuff. The God of the universe, the one who is infinite and eternal and unchangeable who before there was anything, there was him. This God says, I'm going to make a relationship with you. And I wanted to say, when this God says I'm going to make a relationship with you and you respond by saying, yeah, I want a relationship, he calls the shots. Not you. God is God. And if you enter into a relationship with him, you need to know he's in the driver's seat and not you. That's just the way he talks. I will make my covenant with you and the Bible is filled with it. Nevertheless, this is what he says in verse 10. This is my covenant which you shall keep between me and your descendants after you, the everlasting one. Every male among you shall be circumcised. So there's this covenant relationship and the sign of the covenant is circumcision. How many of you guys are familiar with covenant? What is the covenant? You know, we make contracts today, right? Our church, we made a contract to, I think, lease this copier that does everything but make cappuccinos. It's awesome. It does two-sided copies from, you know, remotely from wherever I am. It'll fold and staple and yeah, it's just wonderful. But, you know, you make these five-year contracts and something better comes along. They do make cappuccinos now. It's incredible. Okay, not quite, but nevertheless, we're thinking about breaking the contract. And the contract's written in such a way that you can break it. In fact, the first people we talked to was the people in the contract. And they were like, okay, well, let's break it together and let me give you, you know, before this one's up, we'll start all over again. And that's just the way business is done. We, just so you know, are struggling. Well, do we even want to break it? Unless it's with the one we have it with because when we give our word, we want to keep it. Because we're more influenced by the idea of covenant. When you make a covenant, it's different than a contract. Contract assumes you can break it with consequences. In a covenant, you're supposed to keep it no matter what. We still have a covenant that most of us are familiar with, a modern version of the covenant. Now, I've never seen the cutting of animals and walking through the blood and so on. The stuff they did in the time of Abraham. But this is how a covenant works today. Have you ever been to a wedding ceremony? A traditional wedding ceremony. Do you know it's a covenant ceremony? In a covenant, you start in this ceremony by some sort of telling of the history of what brings you together to make this agreement. And there's agreements. You take an oath or a vow that you will keep. And usually there's a sign of the covenant circumcision, right? That's why I'm talking about this. Well, think about how a wedding starts. It says, it starts something like this, doesn't it? Dearly beloved, we are gathered here in the presence of God and these witnesses to join together this man and this woman and holy matrimony. And we tell a little bit about the history. Marriage was instituted by God in the time of man's innocence and uprightness. The Lord God said it is not good for a man. Does this sound familiar to you? All right. And it goes on. And maybe we talk about Jesus and how he blessed the first miracle was blessing a wedding when he turned the water into wine. And we say something like this. These two persons have come to join in the holy estate of marriage. If any man can show just cause where they may not lawfully be wedded, let him speak now or forever hold his peace. We take that out. That's not too modern. He doesn't like that. It scares us a little bit. Well, never mind. I won't go there. But we're familiar with that, aren't we? And there's the exchanging of vows. There's the first is their consent. Man, will you have this woman to be your wedded wife to live after God's commandments in the holy estate of marriage? Will you love her? Honor her? Cherish and keep her? Right. We know those words. And the vows. We know the vows. I woman take you man to be my wedded husband. And I do promise before God in these witnesses to be your loving and faithful wife, in sickness and in health, in plenty and in what? Enjoy and in sorrow so long as we both shall live or until death do us part. Isn't that how we say it? In the traditional service? That's a wedding. That's a covenant ceremony. And then there's a ring given, usually, right? Wedding ring. And it's a sign and a symbol of the relationship. It's not the marriage. But you see the ring, and you know. I see the ring, and I know. And we even filled the ring with information. Not only does it tell me, oh, I'm married. But we'll talk about it, right? Ring is, I can take it off. You know, it's made of gold which talks about purity and value because gold is something that represents that. And the dress is burned out and so on and so forth. And it's a circle. It's an unending ring that talks about the length of marriage. And we fill the symbol or the sign with meeting. That's what's going on in the covenant relationships. God is pledging himself to us in a way he won't break. That's amazing. Let's move on. It's a sign of our covenant relationship with God. It's a sign of the believer's inclusion into the covenant community. He's not only related to God, he's related to the other believers, right? And the sign points that out. In Exodus, the passage I read verse 48 says, But if a stranger sojourns with you and celebrates the Passover of the Lord, let all his males be circumcised and then let him come near to celebrate it. And he shall be like the native of the land. But no one, some circumcised person, may eat of it. Circumcised, you're like the native. You're part of the covenant community. We do this with initiations. If you've gone to college, you're familiar with the idea of sororities or fraternities. And there's usually a less than pleasant initiation involved in that. You know, you've probably heard about gangs and the initiation into that. And while these are unpleasant, much like circumcision, was probably not so pleasant. That there is a difference, but it isn't an initiatory right. It is a welcoming, because once the person is initiated, even if it's the initiation is learning or teaching or understanding the club or group or whatever it is, once you're in, you're in. And this was a sign that you're in. You're among the people of God. You're in the family. You have brothers and sisters, that sort of stuff. The see, circumcision was a sign of an outward physical, it was an outward physical sign of an inward spiritual reality. Now this is critical to understand that when God gave this sign, it was something that was outward, but it was supposed to represent something that was inward. Outward physical sign representing an inward spiritual reality. One of the reasons why I hope you grab some of this, so you can see how many verses I wanted to show you. But here's just a couple. Here's one from Deuteronomy. I chose it because it's short. Over the Lord, your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants to love the Lord, your God, with all your heart and with all your soul so that you may live. You see that spiritual, inward spiritual reality of loving the Lord from the heart and the outward sign of circumcision was supposed to signify that inward spiritual reality. Here's one from the New Testament from Romans chapter 2 verses 28 and 29. For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh. But he is a Jew who is one inwardly and circumcision is that which is of the heart by the Spirit. How about that? That says it just about as clear as it can be, isn't it? It was an outward physical sign of an inward spiritual reality, a sign of the heart. All right, so hopefully you've at least seen what I'm talking about from the text, but you may be saying, so what about baptism? What's the deal there? Well, I remember one of the things I want to show you is the continuity of the Bible. And I want to show you that by now just reminding you of what Colossians 2, one of the verses that was read said. It tells us, for in Jesus all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form and in Jesus you have been made complete and he is the head over all rule and authority in him that is Jesus. You were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands inward spiritual reality in the removal of the body of flesh by the circumcision of Christ. Here it is, having been buried with him in baptism. Ah, so there's some sort of continuity. When the person who's baptized has all the rights and benefits and spiritual blessings of being circumcised in Christ and even there notice what it says. It sums it all up all the signs in him you've been made complete. You've been made whole. Your sinful nature has been taken away. You have union with God, the creator of the universe, and you are part of this people. And Colossians is saying all that that circumcision was is yours in Christ and baptism. So now let's look at baptism and what the New Testament says about baptism. From Matthew's gospel and other places as well, baptism is a sign of the believers covenant relationship with God. Should sound very familiar. If you are, if you're anxious to get done just right in the rest of the answers, you already got it. You can figure it out. There's continuity. That's the point, right? The covenant relationship with God. Think about it from Matthew, from Jesus' words in the Great Commission. When he tells the disciples that all authority belongs to him, they're to go there for and make disciples which is the main verb in the Greek, the main verb, make disciples. And two ways you're supposed to do that. Baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all I have commanded you. So that's what it means to make disciples. Baptizing in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. Take of that first aspect of baptism. Baptizing them into, is the literal word, into the name singular of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. There he is, teaching the Trinity. We're Trinity, not in the Bible. The teaching of the Trinity right there. In the name singular of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. He's saying your relationship with God is signified in this baptism and the relationship is so close you're in him. It's not that you're put close personal friends, you're in him. And he's in you. See, what about the covenant? Well, I don't have time to do what I'd like to, so let me just give you some places to look and you'll have to study it out on your own. If you have your Bibles and you want to turn to Acts chapter 2, it is a verse that may be familiar to you. We've certainly looked at it. You remember Peter's preaching on the day of Pentecost. It's a powerful message. People are cut to the quick and they cry out, what do we do? And Peter in verse 38 says, repent. And each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit for the promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off as many as the Lord our God will call to himself. Now I want to tie together the word repent, be baptized for the forgiveness of your sins and promise. Okay? They're called to repent to turn to God. There's that idea, God's God not us. He's in the driver's seat. Repentance is just saying, God, you are the one who created all things, all together good, all together holy, all together just. And I'm turning to you. That's repentance. And in that kind of repentance, they were to be baptized for the forgiveness of sins. That's important. Baptism being a sign of the forgiveness of sins and then the promise is for so on and so forth. Well, promise is covenant language. It's covenant language. How are you forgiven your sins? That's kind of a nebulous question. I wouldn't be able to answer that if I were you. Does the water of baptism wash away your sins? No, what does? The blood of Christ, right? That's where I was really going. The blood of Christ, your sins are forgiven because Jesus' blood was shed for you. Now that's you can go, yeah, that's true, right? Yeah. So forgiveness of sins, while it's connected here with baptism and the promise, the forgiveness of sins has to do with the blood of Christ. Well, remember what I said about, it's hard to talk about the Lord's upper without talking about baptism or vice versa. Remember the words of our Lord Jesus when he was celebrating Passover and instituted the Lord's upper? He took the cup and he blessed it and he gave it to his disciples and he said, drink from this all of you for this is my blood of the covenant. Some of the gospel say the new covenant. Blood of the covenant for the forgiveness of sins. There's the idea of the covenant, all right? Just one more verse and I'll move on from there. And that is the benediction I often give is Hebrews 13-20. Now the God of peace who brought up from the dead, the great shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the eternal covenant. Even Jesus our Lord, eternal covenant, you know what? The same words in the Greek for eternal covenant is what God said to Abraham when he said, I want to make an everlasting covenant with you and your descendants. It's the same in the Greek Old Testament. It's the exact same word, eternal covenant, everlasting covenant. It's the blood of the covenant. It's a sign of your covenant relationship with God. Remember a covenant, it's not a contract. God has pledged himself to you. Number two, it's a... You're going to have to help me. It's a sign of our relationship with one another. I know what it is. I better find it on the paper so I can read it to you. A believer's inclusion into the covenant community, inclusion, right? Be baptized into the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. But it's in the context of make disciples. And so when Peter preached and he said repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Christ, you know what happens, right? People repenting and being baptized. And it says, and there were added to the number. And it tells us how many were saved. That's how they were added in. Here's another one. First Corinthians 12, 13. For by one Spirit you were all baptized into one body. Whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free. We were all made to drink of one Spirit. But it baptized into one body into the Lord Jesus because we're a family, right? And God is in us and we are in Him. He's in the congregation. He's in the assembly. He dwells in us as a body. And baptism is an outward physical sign of an inward spiritual reality. The water of baptism has never saved anyone. The water of baptism has never literally washed away the sins. But it has been a sign so closely connected with the thing that's being signified or symbolized that when Ananias went to the Apostle Paul and told him the Lord Jesus appeared to me that you may receive your sight, he said, and this is Paul's testimony as he tells it to someone else in Acts 22, 16. Now why do you delay? Get up and be baptized and wash away your sins calling on His name. The symbolism of that of washing away of sins. Outward physical expression? Water. Inward spiritual reality, washing away of sins. Now here's the part I've been waiting for all morning. So what? Well, I'll tell you what. So what? Your whole identity is wrapped up in your baptism. Let's think about this. Your whole identity. Do you ever struggle thinking, oh, I'm no good, oh, I'm bad self-esteem, so to speak? Listen, you will never have healthy self-esteem if you look for it inside yourself. God is the one who gets to say who you are. And what does he say? He says you're valuable. You have incredible worth. You want to know how much worth you have? Think about it. The God of the universe exists happily for who knows how long in eternity because that's kind of a weird way of saying. It existed for a long time in eternity. It's eternity. From everlasting before there was anything. There was God happy, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But when He creates time, and makes an earth in the heavens, and makes you, and you by your first parents fall into sin, he pledges to come himself. Do you remember? We looked at Acts 2038 where Paul is talking to the Ephesian elders, and he tells them, guard yourselves and over the flock, and the Holy Spirit has made you overseers of the Church of God, which he purchased with his own blood. You have such value and worth to God. He came to earth as a human being. That in and of itself, before his perfect obedience, and before his death on the cross, but he did that too. So the next time you're down and discouraged, and things aren't working so well, and you see your mistakes and your flaws are you, you don't see them, but the other people are saying you got them, and you don't like it, no matter what it is that's bringing you down, and you look at yourself, and you're tempted to say, who cares what you think and even what you're feeling? What does he say? Not only do you have incredible value, but you have incredible significance. That's number two. Incredible significance. Just a couple verses. Here's an easy one. First John 3-1. See how great the love of the Father has bestowed on us that we should be called children of God, and such we are. That's significant. The children of God, those who are made in his image, reclaimed and refashioned after the image of Christ, and knowledge, holiness, and righteousness, that's significant enough. You shine as the glory of God on earth. But if you want more, Exodus 19 tells us, tells the early church, you yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on Eagles' wings, and brought you to myself, now then, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, then you shall be my own possession among all the peoples for the earth's mine. Listen to this. And you shall be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation, a kingdom of priests and a holy nation, a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. Yes, one of those differences between the old and the New Testament, right? And the Old Testament, the priests were of the line of Aaron, from the tribe of Levi. And no one else were to offer the sacrifices, the priests, the line of Aaron, offered the prayers, offered the sacrifices, went into the presence of God, represented the people. But he made a promise here, didn't he? You will be a kingdom of priests. Now, if those of you who know your reformation history, know that this was one of the big things that Martin Luther said, is, hey, look, the New Testament says that there's a priesthood of all the believers. That's significance. Here's kind of a connection, too, to the Old Testament. I saw this in my studies. A circumcision is a bloody sign that's put away in Christ, and so there's a new sign. It's baptism. It's with water. But the idea of washing is not a new thing. Do you know where it's primarily seen in the Old Testament? I'll tell you how I stumbled upon it. In my personal devotions, Isaiah chapter one, and God is calling His people to repentance, and as He calls them to repentance, He says, wash yourselves and make yourselves clean. Now, this word wash is interesting. I was reading Alec Matier's commentary on it, and he says, this word, I'm going to get the numbers wrong, it's like you use 73 times, 55 times, something like that, times it's used of ceremonial cleansing. Ceremonial cleansing. Okay, let's look at that. Let's start looking up washing. In the tabernacle, right before the priest could go in, there was a wash basin for ceremonial cleansing, and the priests were to wash themselves. In fact, their consecration was a kind of, we might say, a thorough washing themselves and their clothes and so on and so forth. And in their ministry, there was this washing. And now you are a kingdom of priests. You have significance. One more thing. You can say this, I am holy. That's what the Bible says, the Testament and talking about the church is the word holy. It's just pluralized and why we came up with saints. I don't know. Never mind. But you can say that. I am holy. Now think about that. That's just like when you're down on yourself and I screwed up again. I messed up. God says, you're holy. Is he a liar? No. Well, what about the sin in my life? Well, remember this sign is something that's being worked out over time. And remember that marriage, metaphor, you are the bride of Christ. We as a church are the bride of Christ. And what God is doing on planet earth today is you're washing with the word so that he may present to himself a bride spotless and blameless and without blemish and all her glory. That's who you really are. You're not the sins that you do. You who are in Christ Jesus. They're not you. Yes, you do them. And yes, Christ had to die for them. But this is the significance. This is the great news. You're holy. And that's the final chapter of the book. You're we're related to God with such intimacy that marriages the metaphor and the beautiful bride is the picture. Let's pray. So, Father, thank you. You know we, like Abraham, are weak. And we ask, how can I know? And you give us outward physical signs in your covenant promises to help the weakness that we have in our own sinful nature. O God, have mercy on us. And grant us to know the significance that is ours in Christ Jesus.