Thank you very much. If you're visiting, just want you to know that was not an easy statement to be able to make. It is true, though, through the commitment of my family and the people of this church. That's what's made it possible, that's something I will never forget. Welcome, especially if you are visiting us, have visited us maybe last Sunday or here today. Welcome to you. You're here on a special Sunday. Once the quarter, we receive new members into our community, both young and old. And we use these days that we do that as covenant entrance days to explore the meaning of the sign that God has given us to mark entrance into the church, into what we call the covenant community. And we're going to be baptizing at least Claire Farhi today this morning, so I want to talk about the entrance sign that her parents want to put on her. And even though we only do this once the quarter, it's still going to take us a long time to understand what this thing, this thing, baptism, really means. That's because it means so much. If you think that baptism in the New Testament is a simple matter, let me invite you just to do a word study. Get a concordant and forget the places that allude to baptism without using the word. There are places that are very illuminating that do that, but forget those, make it easy on yourself. Just look up all the places where baptized baptism occurs. And then write them down, and then write down what baptism means for them. Have fun. You'll find us in New Testament seasons variously about the meaning of this sign. And the fact that they do creates a difficulty in trying to define baptism, not a characteristic of the posity, but of the richness of this covenant sign. And we're going to keep at it, because baptism is one of those keys to the universe. And also because here in verse 1 Paul says that not knowing, not understanding, causes problems. He would not have this Corinthian church, these brethren, be ignorant, he says, because that ignorance might lead to their downfall. And it's a big problem in churches, because there's a lot of problems. And it's not insignificant, dear village church, that what he does not want them to be ignorant of is the Old Testament. Maybe the apostle is addressing a mixed group here of Jews and Gentiles, and he seems to care very deeply that they understand this story from the Pentateuch. That they all consider the guys in the story as their forefathers. But don't get over that point in your mind. That's what he wants them to understand, not be ignorant of. So he's using here a story from Exodus as an example. Now I would love to say here, well you all know the story, but at this point in the culture I had better not. I'm liable to say, do you know Exodus? And you're liable to say, well, what label did they sign with? Now, would they cross over? No, that was Genesis. No, I missed Exodus. I'm waiting for a band to come out called Leviticus. I don't think it's going to happen actually. Well, what is Paul referring to? He's referring to the crossing of the Red Sea by the proto-Nation of Israel after God freed them from slavery in Egypt through Moses sometime in the Second millennium BC. There was a miraculous parting of the waters, according to the Mosaic account, Israelites went into the sea that they never should have come out of. Israelites should have perished, folks, but a mysterious pillar of cloud that Paul mentions here that was going before them moved across them to behind them. And it's shown as light to them on one side and darkness on the opposite side, confounding the Egyptian army that was pursuing them. The freed slaves passed through the sea in safety. The Egyptian army found their way into the sea, but not out. They perished in the waters. This Paul called a baptism. This Paul called a baptism. And it is important to note first that these waters of this baptism meant judgment upon those who would fight God. The one in the same waters both brought blessing and cursing, cursing to some blessing to others. And I think that Paul refers to the cloud here as well as the sea because the cloud helps save them. The same cloud brought judgment to some redemption and rescue to others. Darkness on one side, light on the other.
Think about this because this is all tied up in the meaning of baptism. Baptism of water signifies a judgment, a division, a distinction between people. It's a sign of danger. In fact, all the signs that God made covenant in the Bible signify a potential punishment for people as well as an escape from punishment. That's important. And before we look at the main burden of Paul's message here, there's one more point to make, introductory here. Dear Village Church, I want you to see that the example that Paul chooses is designed to get us to identify with Israel. To get us to see that we, the Christian Church, are the covenant people, according to Paul, like Israel was the covenant people. Paul is trying to get you to read the Old Testament by this cultural distance with a sense of continuity rather than discontinuity. So he goes on in verses following that added one there, but they aren't printed in your vault in the verses 6, verse 11, verse 18 to claim that Israel's dealings, Israel's experiences, Israel's warnings are examples for us. He's trying to get us to connect. He's trying to get us to read with continuity in our minds. That the new way of God dealing with us since Christ came is more similar to the Old Testament way than different. And that view underlies his use of this example here. Okay, now one way that we could put the burden of what the Apostle is trying to say in this passage is this way. What he's essentially trying to say is the world is not divided into two groups of people. World is divided into three groups of people. At the Red Sea there weren't two groups, but there were three groups. What do I mean? You see, he looks at the great benefits of being in the covenant community. One, the initiation. You got to get baptized in the sea. Something very real happened there. A very real salvation. You got to eat mana. You got to drink water in the desert. You got to live under essentially an air conditioning system out in the desert. Similarly, there are great benefits to coming into the life of a local church, a community that works because it's founded on a transcendent. Great benefits. He's listening to you. At the same time, the warning here is that people could really be in the church, in the community, but not be pleasing to God. It's a sobering message for the folks who are joining today and for all of us, really. Five times in the Greek, Paul says this. Five times all of them, all of them, all of them, all of them, all of them, all of them. All of them experienced these gifts. All of them went through the new membership class. All of them sat under sensible preaching. All of them drank from the fellowship of the saints. All of them benefited from the love of the community. All of them experienced something in church. And they all kicked it off with baptism as a child or as an adult. All the gifts were theirs. And most of them, says Paul, were not found pleasing to God. They were in the covenant community, but they still got judged later in their unbelief. Now that is scary. There aren't two groups of people at the Red Sea. There are three. There are non-believers on one side of the cloud. There are believers on the other side of the cloud. And there are non-believers right there with them.
And I think that the word that Paul uses here that translates, their bodies were scattered. It's actually one word. And it's a particular word that he's used. I would say that he's trying to signify there that he's referring to the Israelites specifically judged by God out in the desert later on. Not those who died of natural causes, but specifically judged by God. And the whole flow of the thought here in his words is like giving a concession, but something contrary to our expectation. All of them had this, yet most of them did not. Dealing with spiritual things doesn't mean that you're living a spiritual life. Well, us too. Us too, folks. You can enjoy the benefits of being in a church, but it doesn't mean that you are learning what those benefits mean. I don't doubt that there are folks in our church who aren't believing who are eating spiritual food and drinking spiritual drink, but not living a spiritual life that these gifts are meant to sustain. Let me tell you upfront, you can fool us pretty easily, especially me. I am not a particularly discerning person. Sometimes I meet with some of you, and you know, I look at you, I can tell that you're thinking, he's looking into my very soul. All my sins are uncovered before him. But I'm not really. I'm probably thinking, this is a neat person. What could possibly be wrong? Nice shoes. How come they know how to dress and I don't? All you need to do here is come in and behave yourself. Service to the community is big here. I make up big curves. I know you need that as part of your following of Christ, part of your discipleship. But you can come in and contribute. Don't cause trouble. Be nice. And we'll be fooled. You can fly right underneath our radar. Now we could go through all sorts of gyrations about trying to tell if you're really a Christian, if you're really pleasing to God, you know, God doesn't design a community that way. There's a new thing out as a portable lie detector. You carry around with you. It's very portable. Perhaps you've seen it come across than that at you. Now we could think about incorporating that into our membership process, but we won't because God doesn't do it that way. If you say so, we certainly talk to you. Are you a believer? And there seems to be fruit there. We take your word for it. Now I wouldn't do it this way. But you know what? God is not me. God is incredibly generous. He will send sunshine on the and rain upon the tears as well as the weed. It's just this thing about him. That's how he works. His covenant gifts and blessings are meant to edify those who are his own while meanwhile overflowing upon those who are not. But it also means that I have a responsibility here appointing out the warnings of the scriptures to you and to say as Paul does just in the later in this chapter. If you think that you stand, take heed. Lest you fall. This is the chapter he says that in. Because there are three types of people here. And the covenant community is a gateway to spiritual life. It is the spiritual life to those who are pleasing to God who are pleased with God. What was going on in that desert? I've got to somehow try to bring this out to you. What happened out there? Maybe I could do it this way. Poor poor Mel Gibson. Poor Mel Gibson. You know, sure, he might have some wacky ideas, but you know what? We all have wacky ideas really. I mean, if you talk to any of us for long enough, eventually, you know, you'll hit our wacky ideas sooner or later. All of us do. The consequence of being a celebrity is that your wacky ideas get published. But he has great courage, Gibson does, and he's made an admirable effort to bring the reality of the passion account to the screen. In a way that's true to the text. Now, that's a great thing that he's been lambasted because he portrays certain Jews as being angry enough to kill Jesus. Angry enough with Jesus to kill him, which must have been the case, you know, the gospels aside since Jesus was crucified on the Passover. Most of the Jewish leaders couldn't have liked Jesus. Now, they hated him. It shows that they hated goodness. In this respect, you know, the New Testament is anti-Semitic. But you know what? The New Testament is anti-Helonistic too. It turns out the Greeks turned out to hate Jesus also. In fact, it's anti-hyberian. And I say that as someone who had Jewish, Greek, and Irish. If anybody else has a reason to boast, I far more. Both Greek and Jew. In fact, you know, when I married my wife, who is just purebred wasp, there was a big to do because I really diluted the bloodline there. And I apologize to her often for this. I ruined the pedigree. You see, the problem is not with any particular nationality, according to the New Testament. It's with a human heart. There are a number of parties of different nationalities there who helped pull the switch, so to speak, on Jesus Christ. But it was we who put Jesus on the cross. In fact, if you want to get technical, the New Testament is really anti-Christian because it was arson that he died for. Ultimately, it was arson that put him on the cross. It's anti-SAM because it was my sense that put him out there. I'm responsible. Now, there's plenty there to be offended about. But, be offended at the right story. The story, as John says, is that his own came to him. He created us all. He came to his own, and they received him not. And this kind of hatred of folks of God, it shows up. Particularly, it's just because the Israelites were the people that God, with whom he chose to deal. It's a characteristic, you see, of the Israelites. Not just in the New Testament, but in the Old Testament. I mean, just read the pre-exile prophets. The Bible is a lousy book. I wish to try to build a national pride for anybody. And that's what was happening now in the desert, folks. God gave the covenant community means upon means, blessings upon blessings, and they did not believe in him in response. For example, the point of man, and the point of the spiritual food that he brings up in verse three was to teach them a lesson, but it was a lesson that many of them did not learn. Moses says just that in a quote that's often, often wrongly attributed to Jesus Christ, is really Moses. Moses said, God gave you a manner to teach you that man does not live on a fied bread alone, but upon every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. To live on God, he came onto his own, and his own did not receive him. Now, this brings us really to the crucial issue, right? What is it that makes you pleasing to God? Because if you're sufficiently frightened now, I hope that you're wondering that. What is it? You are pleasing to God by believing something. And that's why we must not be ignorant of the meaning of baptism this morning. Just take a look at Moses to start with Moses. You see how Paul says that the Israelites were all baptized into Moses? Does that seem strange? What does that into mean? Well, it doesn't just mean that they were went under Moses's guidance or ministry by going through the sea, although that was true. There was no turning back then. They were signing on to Moses, sure. But more than that, being baptized into Moses means that they came into union with Moses' experience. They identified with him as their representative. You see, Moses faced a similar watery ordealist Meredith Klein would call it. He faced it a long time ago, long before. He began his life by being thrown into the Nile, by being baptized in other waters of judgment, a baptism from which he should have never emerged. He should have been swallowed by a crocodile. He should have sunk in the waves. It took another miracle instead. Moses came out on the other side alive. He came back to Egypt to lead his people through their own watery ordeal. I mean, you think that this was neat having the waters part, but would you have been the first to put your foot on that path through the sea? The people were experiencing their own watery judgment in Moses. In a way, because of Moses, they came out alive on the other side. Folks, Paul thinks of Christian baptism when he thinks of this experience because the same thing is going on, not with Moses, but with Jesus Christ. The waters are judgment. Claire is going to go through symbolically the experience of Jesus Christ bearing the judgment of God. The difference is that Claire is going to come out alive because Jesus went through death and hell. Claire is only going to get wet. Jesus once put it. I have a baptism. He wants to be baptized, referring to the cross. You can feel him shuddering as he speaks his words, even as he brings it up. You have to believe something to be believing in God. What do you have to believe? The rock that Paul was Christ. It's essentially what you have to believe. It's another story we don't have time to go into, but Israelites were prevented from dying of thirst when Moses struck a rock and water came forth. The point is that the water was produced supernaturally. It's what he means. He says, the rock was Christ. The physical rock was the symbol of exhibiting Christ to them. Again, because Christ was struck, or the water came out, because Christ was struck, the covenant community is sustained. That's what makes a difference. Being pleasing to God is living in that reality. That it's not how you do in your ideals, but how Christ did in his ordeal. That's what makes a difference between the two groups of people out in the desert. It's not in you. It's in Christ. That's why baptism must be about what Christ has done and not what you do. That's why it's wrong to believe that baptism is primarily about something that you do. It's why some people are uncomfortable seeing babies baptized because a child can't do anything. It just can't do anything. So something that is wrong to baptize them, I would say, is just the opposite. It works against the grain of the covenant sign to believe that it's about what you are doing. It's a passive exercise on which you can look back as you grow, acknowledging and receiving what Christ has done for you, whether you receive a sign as an adult or as a child. You know, it is sometimes asserted by our dear baptist brethren, our dear baptists and brothers, that there is no infant baptism for trade in a New Testament. Well, much as I love baptists, and I really do love baptists, I love them. Some of my best friends are, no. I owe a great deal to my baptist friends. I have to disagree here. There are quite a few per trade right here in verse two. There's a whole nation that was baptized. Whole nation that went through. Baptism must be about what Christ has done and not what you do, or else when you get out in the desert, your bodies will fall. You rip the heart out of baptism to make it a stand up and proclaim activity. It's really just a sit down and shut up activity that thereby exalts Christ. It's remembering of his judgment so that the one being baptized comes out alive. Let me conclude this with this way. You know, it's fascinating to me that the really controversial line in Mel Gibson's script, that people are fighting about, that people want out, is so ironic. It's a particular line from Matthew's gospel, and a big mystery is whether the movie is going to come out with that line or without it. And the line is spoken by the crowds, or Caiaphas the High Priest, may his blood be upon our heads, and upon the heads of our children. That's something that the Caiaphas cries out. May his blood be upon us, or upon the heads of our children. To make that statement about the culpability of the Jews in a crucifixion is to miss the irony of the gospel writer. So what Matthew meant really is if only they would embrace him, his blood would be on there, and their children's heads. Salvation, you cannot and you cannot be saved, you cannot come in unless you admit your guilt for his cross. So what Matthew means is that those among the crowd who afterward did convert and received Jesus's death on the cross as their salvation did have his blood on their heads and as a their children, as a covering as salvation. Would you? This is what we now do. Let me ask Claire Farhi to come up at this time and bring her parents with her if she's ready with her godparents too. Let me ask that we try to heed this teaching of Paul by making us a solemn occasion. I know it's kind of cute, baby my cry, it's funny. I ask you with refrain from laughing and let's give this a lemnity. To understand these waters, this waters of judgment is very serious and Claire is escaping from by what we're doing. Okay, ready? Hi. Okay, for to you, the promise is given and to your children and to all that are far off. Even as many as the Lord our god shall call to him. Thank you, Judy. And I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee throughout all their generations for everlasting covenant to be a god unto thee and to thy seed after thee. Believe on the Lord Jesus and now shall be saved, thou and thy house. Let me ask you, Alan and Alan, do you acknowledge your child's need of the cleansing blood of Jesus Christ and the renewing grace of the Holy Spirit? Do you claim God's covenant promises in her behalf and do you look in faith to the Lord Jesus Christ for her salvation as you do for your own? Do you now unreservedly dedicate your child to God and promise in humble reliance upon divine grace that you will endeavor to step before her a godly example, that you will pray with her and for her, that you will teach her the doctrines of our holy religion, that you will strive by all the means of God's appointment to bring her up in the nurture and ammunition of the Lord. Let me ask you all a question. And it's so you say I do. Do you, as a congregation, undertake the responsibility of assisting a parents and a Christian nurture of this child? Let me pray for her first and then baptize her. A miracle, a miracle again in our arms. You have brought this child into the world. And if brought her to this community, God thank you. Thank you for what you have done. Lord, we pray for her right now, altogether we pray for her. God, she is going to fail in many ways. She is going to fail again and again. God, she is going to deserve the waters of judgment. But you know, you have made a way for her. You have made a way for her from the beginning. And we lift her up in that way to you. God, let her come out alive. Let her come out alive. Look upon the sign that we put upon her right now. Remember your mercy in her life so that she will come through this waters and go through no others. We pray, God, let her come out alive, let her come out alive. Claire Mary, Elizabeth Farhi, baptize you in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost. Behold the new simmer of the village church. Thank you very much. We also have some people who are coming forth to become members at this time. To experience the sign, but coming to the area, various stories they have. And I want to ask them to come up at this time. Let me call their names. A little different from what's printed in the bulletin. These names. I want to ask first, Carrie loves to come up. She has been waiting a long time to join. Our process sometimes doesn't work immediately, but thank you so much for your patience and welcome. She always has a great ministry in her smile, which is often present on her face. She's very precious to me and to this community. We're glad, glad to be welcoming you, Carrie. Let me also call Tara Shawsh. Tara has been in the city a while. What she really appreciates about the city is its diversity. And we're great to have you here, Tara. Let me now call Rebecca Elliott. She's been here about a year in the city. And she's really attracted to the busyness of a city, which is kind of hard looking at her. She just seems like the most placid individual. But she's great. It's wonderful to have her and her sister. We'll be joining her sister in this community. Let me call up Hayoung Kwan from JC. How are you here? Good morning. Let me call up Stuart Nelson. He's also been here about a year and you kind of know him. The guy behind the base there, sometimes behind the guitar. Great asset to our music here at the village church. We're so happy to have you, Stuart. Stuart also really likes the entertainment of the city. In fact, he's in the entertainment business. So I guess you can call him an entertaining guy. Glad that you're here. Let me call up Peter Sheasley. Peter, you already know if he's been around, you heard him give a testimony a little while back. And it's great to have him. If you remember that testimony, his experience here typifies many people in the village church. He's just coming to the city and being confronted with the hardness of the city and how this church played a role in his life. And seeing him through that, especially that initial time. So thank you, Peter. Thank you for joining us. And I guess lastly, then, I want to call up Kristen Beznell and Darren Beznell. Would you come up here please? Let me ask you to mark this couple. Really an extraordinary couple in that they moved to the city to be a part of our church. They moved because they wanted to serve. They moved because they wanted to serve the city to be a part of us, to be a part what's going on. And I say, mark them well because they're a great asset to our community here, what we're doing, and are already getting very much involved. I just want to express my admiration for them, folks that are willing to really change their lives around for the work of God, really order their lives on a basis of the work of God. So we are grateful for them. And as I've been talking about these people, I hope you can see what a benefit we have, and then coming up here to make this decision today to come and join us. They are each of us. They are each of them. Have a wonderful story to tell us they have a wonderful gift to bring to our community. We are so happy and blessed to have them. And I'm just delighted to be able to do this. It's terrific. Okay, what we do now is ask you some questions. Okay, all of you being here present to make this public, professional, public promise. Are to ascend to the following, which you're familiar with, and to find which you enter into a solemn covenant with God in this church. Do you acknowledge yourselves to be sinners in the sight of God, justly deserving His displeasure, without hope, save in His sovereign mercy? If so say I do. Do you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as the Son of God and Savior of sinners? And do you receive and rest upon Him alone for salvation as He is offered in the gospel? Do you now resolve and promise in humble reliance upon the grace of the Holy Spirit that you will endeavor to live as becomes the followers of Christ?