Easter Baptism 2016
Transcript
Well, good morning. Happy Easter. My name is Chet. I'm one of the pastors here. We're going to be in Matthew chapter 27 this morning. We're going to spend a little bit of time there.
That's on page 540 if your Bible looks like this. Grab one of the blue and white Bibles on the row. If you don't own a Bible, this is our gift to you. Take it home with you. So I found, it seems to me that when it comes to people's viewpoints of Christianity, what Christianity is, what it's about, specifically people who maybe haven't, aren't Christians.
Like if you just went down the street and just kind of took a poll, I think you kind of get two major viewpoints about what the Bible is, what it's about, what Christianity is about. And usually it seems like people fall into two camps. So on one side you have, the Bible is a book of rules, mostly. Like mostly is a book of morals. It's, you read this, it's going to teach you how to live. It's God's roadmap to life.
It's how to make good decisions. It's God's plan for us, what he wants us to do, how we ought to behave. That Jesus was a great moral teacher. And that he came to show us how to follow the rules. How to behave. How to be very moral.
And that's kind of one side. And so people would say maybe that if you just follow the rules, all of life would be better. Which is pretty much true for all sets of rules, all belief systems. If you just kind of followed what they said, most of the time it's like that people would get along better. That's what people say. That's what Christianity is.
It's a set of rules that if we follow, we'll get along better. And if you follow them really well, maybe God will love you or maybe God will be pleased with you. Maybe God will bless you. Or maybe when you die you can stand before him and you get to go to heaven because you've been a good person. That's one of the major popular beliefs about Christianity. The other side is kind of a no.
The Bible is primarily about love. It's about how we treat one another. How we love one another. It's not about God's rules. It's about love. That God loves us.
He loves us so much that God forgives us. And Jesus came to show us how to love. And if you just follow the rules, then you'll end up being really hypocritical or you'll be really proud. Or you'll be one of those religious old ladies that's just mean to everybody. But you just need to learn how to love.
And that's what Jesus was all about. The problem with both of those, though, is that the one thing that most people know about Christianity is that Jesus... You say, okay, he was a great moral teacher or, you know, he taught us how to love. So he loved and he followed the rules. And because of that, because he was so loving and so rule-following, they brutally murdered him. Right?
Because that's how it works at school. Like the girl that always follows the rules and is nice to everyone, everybody hates her and she gets expelled. Like that's... Right? No. That's not how that works.
So what we know, the primary thing about Christianity is that Jesus went to a cross. And the problem with both of these viewpoints, if the Bible is primarily about us following rules or if the Bible is primarily about us being loving, neither one of those accurately, intelligently explains the cross. If you're just supposed to follow rules, why did Jesus die? If it's about your behavior, why did Jesus die? And if you're just supposed to be loving and if God is just loving, like he's just out there floating in a field of warm fuzzies. And when he thinks about you, he giggles in his heart.
If that's the case, if that's God, if he's just some love force out there in the universe, then what is the cross? How does that make any sense whatsoever? The problem with both of these viewpoints is that they're really incomplete. They don't make sense of what the Bible actually holds up as primary. What the Bible says, no, no, this is the main thing you need to focus on is a cross, is that Jesus died. And so let's go to Matthew chapter 27 and try to figure out why that would be primary and how that helps us understand what the Bible really is about and what the point actually is.
So we're going to read through Matthew chapter 27, we're just going to talk a little bit about what we see here, what we're told here, what these eyewitnesses relate to us here. And then we're going to jump to 1 Corinthians to try to help explain it. So what we're doing right now is we're just going to look at it and then we're going to jump over and say, okay, if that's the main thing, then what does it mean? Why is it the main thing? Why does it matter? 27, we're going to start in verse 57.
When it was evening, there came a rich man. This is the evening that Jesus was crucified. Jesus is still on the cross. There came a rich man from Arimathea named Joseph, who was also a disciple of Jesus. That meant he followed him. He went to Pilate, that's the Roman governor, and asked for the body of Jesus.
Then Pilate ordered it to be given to him. So it, Jesus is dead. He's a thing at this point. He's a corpse. Pilate ordered it to be given to him, Jesus' body. And Joseph took the body, the dead body of Jesus, wrapped it in a clean linen shroud, and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had cut in the rock.
And he rolled a great stone to the entrance of the tomb and went away. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, that's Jesus' mother, were there sitting opposite the tomb. So they saw where the dead Jesus was placed. The next day, that is the day of preparation, the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered before Pilate. So those are the people who killed him.
And they say, Sir, we remember how this imposter said while he was still alive that after three days I will rise. Therefore, order the tomb to be made secure until the third day, lest his disciples go and steal him away and tell the people he has risen from the dead, and the last fraud will be worse than the first. So Pilate said to them, You have a guard of soldiers. Go make it as secure as you can. So they went and made the tomb secure by sealing the stone and setting a guard.
Okay, so they kill Jesus, and then they go to Pilate and they say, Hey, thanks for killing Jesus. But Jesus, when he walked around, used to tell people that he wasn't going to stay dead. And so we need to put some guards around his body. So they won't steal him, hide him, bury him somewhere else and go, He's alive! That's actually really smart. That was a good plan.
Like, let's seal the tomb. So they put a seal on the tomb, and they put guards to guard the tomb so nobody could come steal the body. They're not afraid Jesus is going to try to get out. They just are afraid somebody's going to try to come take him. Chapter 28. Now, after the Sabbath, so the Sabbath is the Saturday, toward the dawn of the first day of the week, that's Sunday.
That's why we celebrate Easter on Sunday. That's today. Good morning. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. So these are the two people who saw where Jesus was buried.
And behold, there was a great earthquake. For an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning and his clothing white as snow. This guy was hard to look at. Aggressively shiny, maybe is a way to put that. His clothing was as white as snow.
And for fear of him, the guards trembled and became like dead men. Okay, I don't think it means they died. I think it means they probably just like passed out. Because there was an earthquake and then a lightning guy pushes the stone away and then just sits on it and like looks at you. And your job is to not let that happen. At this point though, I think they look at him and they're like, there's this moment of, should we fight this guy?
And then immediately there's this moment of, no, that ain't happening. And then I think they look at each other and they're like, tin like you sleep. Just, just late. We just, we just going to lay down. Fight over. I probably just passed out.
Like, boom, earthquake, stone, guy, eye contact, lightning, close, and boom, out. So, they at least deserve a demotion. They have done their job poorly. But the angel said to the women. So, women didn't get terrified. I mean, they're scared in some, some form or fashion, but not, they didn't pass out.
Do not be afraid. Thank you. That's the first thing. If you see an angel, that's the first thing you want them to say. You meet an angel and he doesn't start with, do not be afraid. You should be afraid.
Do not be afraid for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here for he has risen. As he said, yeah. Woo. Look, if we're going to, like, you either got to woo or just don't do it. Like, we missed our chance.
We can't go back. We can't go back. I know most of us are white, but you got to, we got to up it up a little bit. I know we don't usually, woo. I know we don't usually, we'll, we'll work later. We'll get to baptize people.
We'll get to holler some more. Do not be afraid for I know that you seek Jesus who has crucified. He is not here for he has risen. As he said, come, see the place where he lay. So, he says, you can come in the tomb. You can see that it's empty.
Jesus told you he was going to rise and he did. Then go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead. And behold, behold, he is going before you to Galilee. There you will see him. See, I have told you. So, they departed quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy and ran to tell his disciples.
And behold, Jesus met them and said greetings. And they came up and took hold of his feet and worshipped him. Then Jesus said to them, do not be afraid. Go tell my brothers to go to Galilee and there they will see me. So, if you, Jesus told people he was God and he told people that he was going to be murdered. And then he told people that he was going to rise again.
And then he was murdered and then he rose again. And that's why they grab his feet and worshipped him. Because he said he was God and that this was going to happen. And once he actually, it happened and he came back to life, then it was like, oh, you must actually be God. Like, what you said must actually be true. So, they fall down and worshipped him.
And Christianity says it's not just about God's love and Jesus being loving. It's not just about rules and Jesus being a good moral teacher. The point of Christianity is that Jesus went to a cross, that he died and that he rose again. That's the point. That the tomb is empty. That's what we celebrate.
This is the major holiday for Christians. Easter. The tomb is empty. Now, the question is, why is that the point? I mean, it sounds nice. It proves he was God, I guess, that Jesus died.
He rose again. He's not in the tomb anymore. But why do we celebrate that? Why is that the point? So, let's jump to 1 Corinthians. It's going to be to the right.
And it should be on the screen. It'll be page 624. If your Bible looks like this. If your Bible doesn't look like this, it's to the right. It's going to say 1 Corinthians at the top. 624, chapter 15.
This is Paul helping us understand why the cross, why the empty tomb is primary. Why we would actually want to celebrate that. 17, verse 17. And if Christ, that's Jesus. If Christ has not been raised, did not come back from the dead, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then all those who have fallen asleep, he means those who have died in Christ, believing in Christ, is what he's saying there, have perished.
They're just dead. And if in Christ we have hope only in this life or in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied. So what Paul says is if Christ didn't rise from the dead, if what we celebrate on Easter isn't true, then people should feel sorry for us. And we're everything we believe is a lie, is a waste, is dumb and useless. That's what Paul's saying. He's saying that the cross, the empty tomb, are so vital to Christianity that if you take them out, just what, he taught us to love, just he taught us to follow rules, it's a waste of time.
We should be pitied. People should feel sorry for us because without the empty tomb we have nothing. So here's what he says. But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. So he's the first one who would die and rise from the grave and be brought back to God.
For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all shall be made alive. So this will take just a second to explain what he's saying there. What he's saying is that through Adam, so way back in history, Adam and Eve, famous duo, worse than Bonnie and Clyde, caused more problems for everybody. Adam and Eve. So he says back in the day, Adam and Eve were created in a relationship with God.
They were designed to exist in a loving, harmonious relationship. And Adam sins. And when Adam sins, when Adam rebels, he brings death into the world. That death didn't exist, but death now reigns from Adam to us. Like death has taken over because we're all sinful. And we're born sinful.
We all innately rebel against God. This becomes like obvious to us in different ways. Like some of you, maybe you work law enforcement. Maybe you work social services. Like some of us get to see sinfulness and depravity and brokenness in the world on a daily basis. Others of us are a little bit more separated from it.
But there's sometimes in life it just becomes clear. So when we started planning this church, we started this church up and we were starting to do some kid city stuff. We were going to work with children. One of the things we had to put in our children's handbook for your sweet little baby angels was what to do when one child bites another child. Did y'all know that? We come from a race of biters.
Look around the room. Some of these people sitting next to you all dressed up looking nice today had to be taught forcefully and repeatedly not to bite other humans. Had to be taught. Had to be trained. Like this isn't an appropriate way. Like if you're in a business meeting and it goes poorly, you can't jump up from your desk and be like, ah!
Like you can't do it. And people have seen too much zombie shows at this point. It would freak everybody out. You can't bite people. Like you have to teach children to share. And even as we grow older and we know I should share, I should be kind, I should be gracious.
We still don't want to. It's still really hard. Like I mostly just want other people to share. The time I see this most is when my sweet little wife reaches her grubby hand across the table and takes something off of my plate. And in that moment, something deep and flaming wells up inside of me. And I really have to think, dude, that's your wife.
She can have everything on your plate she wants. But there's part of me that's like... Especially when I'm like, do you want some of this? And she's like, no, I'm not hungry. And then I make it. And then she's like, can I have half of that?
And I'm like, I don't want to fight you. But there's in me like I have to actually go back to like preschool and go, share? You should share. Sharing is good. And be like, mm-hmm. Smile at her.
You want some more? Say no. Say no. Please say no. Say no. No, I'm good.
Okay, but you can have as much as you want. That's good though if you ain't going to eat it. Like... I know sharing is good. It has never actually felt good to me. I just know that it's good because I've been taught that.
Like there's... We know we're supposed to be generous. We know we're supposed to be kind. We know we're supposed to be gracious. And then we know we're supposed to forgive. And then we actually have something to forgive somebody of?
Mm-mm. Mm-mm. I could forgive a lot of things but not this thing. We know we're supposed to be generous. But then somebody says, hey, can I borrow some money?
Mm-mm. I'm pretty strapped right now. Like we just... We... Since Adam, all of us are busted. And here's the point.
Here's the reason why. God made the world good. We live in a world created by a gracious, loving God. So we understand that we ought to be gracious and loving and generous and kind. But we walk around in bodies that have been busted up by Adam.
And our sin overwhelms us. And the truth is, the more we try to be not sinful, the harder it gets. So that's what Paul's going to say as we keep moving through here. We're going to jump down to... Jump over a page if you're in this Bible. We're going to look at 57 as kind of Paul wraps this up.
Verse 54, sorry. As Paul wraps this up. When the perishable puts on the imperishable and mortal puts on immortality, then we shall come to pass the saying that is written. So he's quoting this old saying, saying this is what happens through the resurrection. This is what happens through what Jesus accomplished for us. Death is swallowed up in victory.
Oh, death, where is your victory? Oh, death, where is your sting? The sting of death is sin. And the power of sin is the law. So here's what he's saying.
Sin, death is a problem for us because sin leads us to death. And then when we're sinful and we die and we stand before God, we have nothing to offer him. Except for our rebellion and our guilt and our shame, we have nothing to bring to him. That our sin goes before God and he looks at our life and he doesn't say, you're welcome. He says, you've rebelled against me. You've broken the law.
We're in trouble. That's why death is so terrible because sin goes with us. And the law only makes sin stronger. It only shows how much more we fail. My dad and my mom, when I was growing up, they both worked. And I've got two brothers and we were all kind of, you know, little at the same time and just a couple of years apart each.
And when my dad would go to work and my mom would be at home watching us, and sometimes we had people watch us while they both worked. But when my dad would go to work and my mom would be home watching us, my dad would always come home and he'd say, you know, just some of the laundry wasn't done. Maybe dinner wasn't cooked. Maybe one of us looked like a hot mess, was just wearing underwear and had ketchup spattered all over us for some reason. Like he just, every time he would come home and the house wasn't clean and he just got the feeling like, you know, he would look at my mom and be like, you can do this.
Like you can get everything done. It's possible. Like he just assumed she was just not really trying that hard. And so he said a couple of times that when she would go to work and he was watching us by ourselves, he just decided, I'm going to get it done. I'm going to do everything. I'm going to cook.
I'm going to do all the laundry. Kids are going to look right when she gets home. House is going to be nice. And he said every time it was like a race against the clock and she would walk in the door. One of us wouldn't have pants on. Something would be on fire.
Laundry wouldn't be done. Like he just, he was like, y'all wouldn't stop like puking and bleeding and getting stuff messed up. There was just no way. There was no way to get it done. Like he just couldn't. And the truth was he was a really good mom until he tried.
And then he was pretty terrible at it. And for most of us, we think, the reason the power of sin is in the law is that most of us think, no, I'm a pretty nice person. I'm pretty kind. I'm pretty good. God's got to kind of love me. Like I've got good intentions.
And the truth is once we actually start seeing what the law is, what it takes to be perfect before God, and we actually try to do it, it becomes massively difficult. Us trying to behave and be good only shows how far away from it we are. Every single person in this room has nothing to offer God that makes you redeemable. We have all sinned. We have all fallen short. We all deserve death and hell and punishment.
That's the place we stand before a holy God. Each of us is headed towards death, hell, and destruction, except Jesus went to the cross. Except for Jesus went to the cross and died for our sin. He took our sin. You see, Jesus hadn't sinned. He didn't deserve death.
He hadn't rebelled. He didn't deserve to be punished or crushed. But he was. And that's why when Christians say he died for our sins, what they mean is he didn't die for his own. He died for ours. And because he didn't deserve to die, he actually broke death and rose again from the grave.
Because he hadn't earned death. He just took ours for us. So God dies to pay for our sin and then rises again so that all of us who place faith in him can have life. And that's the point of this. Death is swallowed up in victory. Oh, death, where is your victory?
Oh, death, where is your sting? The sting of death is sin and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through Jesus Christ our Lord. Do you know why we sing to Jesus? Why we holler? Why in a minute when people are getting baptized, we're going to clap and yell and be excited?
It's because Jesus has won the victory for us. When I went to college and I played college football, my freshman year I was redshirted, so I just went to practice. I didn't do anything. And we almost won a championship my freshman year. We really should have. It was a game that kind of went south, but we were there.
We were one game away. We would have won the championship. If we had, I would have been given a ring. And I would have worn it on Sundays and tapped it on the... No, I'm just kidding. But I would have been given a championship ring.
And I would have been a champion. And what would I have done? Not a dang thing. Except for go to practice. Like I wouldn't have done anything, but I would have been victorious. I would have been a champion through other people on my behalf.
You know how when you go to watch a game that you just are a fan of, and they win? You know what you say when it's over? We won. And sometimes when they lose, you go, yeah, they lost. Because you're smart. But when they win, you say, we won.
Why? Because they won on behalf of their city. They won on behalf of their fans. That's why when it's... The chips are down, and they're losing at halftime, and they come back out, and they rally, and they finally score. You jump up, lose your mind, kick something over, like break your television, because you're so excited that they won.
The reason Christians sing, the reason we gather together in the morning and celebrate, the reason we're going to lose our mind in a minute when people get baptized is because Jesus has won the victory for us. The empty tomb stands as the forever scoreboard that sin does not claim us, sin does not hold us, death has no hold over us any longer. We can have life through Jesus. That's the empty tomb. That's the cross. People say, why would you pick something so bloody and terrible to celebrate?
Why would Christians wear crosses? That's when we were down 40 to nothing at halftime. It's fun to see that now. It's fun to see the moment in history when it looked so bleak, so wrong, so broken, that humanity had gathered together to murder God. And we can celebrate now because it was in that moment that Jesus died for our sin and there's, it's not, he wasn't always on the cross. He was buried in the tomb and he didn't stay in the tomb and he's risen to a throne and we get to celebrate forever that the cross and the empty tomb prove to us that death has no claim over us once we've placed our faith in Jesus.
That our sin and our brokenness no longer holds us. That we have life forever in the one who's given us victory. Who's conquered death on our behalf. So in a minute, five people are gonna be on a screen and they're gonna tell you why they believe in Jesus and then they're gonna get baptized and we're gonna scream and yell and clap because we're celebrating that victory has been given to us through Jesus. That he was good, that he paid our penalty and that we have life forever in him. Through the victory that's been won on our behalf.
Let's pray. God, we thank you that we have victory. We thank you that the tomb is empty and that seals forever our hope in you. That when we place our faith in you, that when we repent of our sin, that we come to you and say, I have nothing to offer but you died for me. I have nothing to bring to the table but you loved me so much that you died for me. That you lived righteously on my behalf.
That you paid for our sin and that you set us free and we praise you for the tomb and we praise you for the people that are getting baptized today to proclaim that. In Jesus' name, amen. Here's what's about to happen. Christians celebrate baptism because it's a symbol that when Jesus was buried, our sin, our shame, our guilt, our brokenness was buried with him. That when he died, death died with him. That all the things that had a hold and a claim over us are gone.
And so we baptize somebody and we say basically they're buried with Jesus. And that when Jesus rose from the grave, he gave life to them because they placed their faith in him. That's what baptism is. It's a celebration that Jesus has won the victory on our behalf.
Mar 27