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Terminator: Genisys – Endings & Beginnings

July 13, 2015 by Leave a Comment

GodOnFilm

Terminator: Genisys – Endings & Beginnings
Sycamore Creek Church
July 12/13, 2015
Tom Arthur

 

 

I’ll be back!

Have you ever tried to stop doing something?  It’s hard.  Maybe you’re trying to stop eating sugar or greasy foods.  Or stop staying yes to everything.  Or stop watching too much TV.  Or stop smoking.  Or stop telling white lies.  Or stop looking at porn.  Or stop criticizing your spouse.  Or stop raising your voice at your kids.  Or stop worrying.  Or stop spending money impulsively.  Or stop speeding.  Or stop texting while driving.  Or stop posing.  The habit just keeps saying “I’ll be back.”  What in your life do you need to terminate?

Homer Simpson says, “Trying is the first step toward failure.”  Trying to stop something is hard.  That’s why the first step toward termination is dying.  Paul, the first missionary of the church and the author of many of the books of the Bible said:

Or have you forgotten that when we were joined with Christ Jesus in baptism, we joined him in his death? For we died and were buried with Christ by baptism.
~Romans 6:3-4 NLT

Today as we celebrate the baptism of many in our church we continue in this series, God on Film, with the movie Terminator: Genisys.  Each week we’re looking at a theme the summer’s blockbusters evoke.  This week I’m struck by the irony in the title.  Terminator implies ending.  Genisys implies beginning.  So as we move toward baptism today I want to explore two things that we terminate in baptism and two things that begin in baptism.  You can call them our “to stop doing list” and our “to do list.”

2 Things that Need to be Terminated: Shifting Allegiances

If you’re not that familiar with the Terminator movies, let me give you a quick recap.  Skynet is an Evil Artificial Intelligence that launches an attack to exterminate humanity on a day called “Judgement Day.” John Connor is the Tech-Com human resistance leader.  Sarah Connor is John Connor’s mom.  Kyle Reese is a Tech-Com lieutenant sent back to save Sarah from Skynet’s plan to kill her through time travel.  The Terminator is played by Arnold Schwarznegger, but there are more than one terminator.  There’s the T-1000, T-X, T-800 are other future Terminator Models.

Some version of the terminator is always trying to, well, terminate Sarah or John Connor or some other key person to the future human resistance.  In the first Terminator movie (1984), Arnold Schwarzenegger is a bad guy.  He’s out to kill Sarah.  But in Terminator 2, Judgment Day (1991), Schwarzenegger changes allegiances and is a good guy. He’s out to save Sarah.  In Terminator 3, Rise of the Machines (2003), Schwarzenegger’s Terminator alternates allegiances between good guy, bad guy, good guy.  Then  Schwarzenegger takes a break from 2003 to 2011 to be the Governator and Terminator 4, Salvation (2009) comes out and Schwarzenegger is rendered in CGI.  Then this summer we get Terminator 5, Genisys (2015), and Schwarzenegger is once again the good guy protecting Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese from, the last person you expected to be the bad guy, John Connor, Sarah’s son!  Talk about shifting allegiances.  Back and forth.  Flip flop.  Good guy.  Bad guy.

Paul knows that we’re tempted to shift our allegiances back and forth and so he tells us:

Well then, should we keep on sinning so that God can show us more and more of his wonderful grace? Of course not! Since we have died to sin, how can we continue to live in it?
~Romans 6:1-2 NLT

Sin is a force inside us that causes us to miss the mark, intentionally and unintentionally, and we keep flip flopping our allegiance back and forth with it.  This causes our external allegiances to be constantly shifting.  What’s really worth our allegiance?  What determines our allegiances?  Sometimes we form allegiances based on where we were born: Neighborhood, City, State, Region, or Country (“I pledge allegiance to the flag…”).  Or we base our allegiances on our education: High School, College (Spartans vs. Wolverines), or Grad School (Blue Devils).  Or we base our allegiances upon politics: Republican, Democrat, Green Party, Natural Law, or Independent.  In our culture our allegiances are often to price:  Sales, Deals, and Coupons or advertising and marketing: brand and celebrity.  Or novelty: the latest tech, ideas, or fads.  Or maybe we base our allegiances on our family: spouse, parents, grandparents, or kids.  All the while God is asking for our full allegiance.  Yet our allegiances are cyclical.  Self – God – Self – God

We keep telling God: “I’ll be back.”

Today, those being baptized are making a choice to TERMINATE shifting allegiances.  That’s the first thing to stop doing.

2 Things that Need to be Terminated: Sin’s Control

The second thing that is on our “to stop doing” list is sin’s control over our lives.  Paul says:

Do not let sin control the way you live; do not give in to sinful desires.
~Romans 6:12 NLT

Remember, sin is a force inside us that causes us to miss the mark, intentionally and unintentionally.  It has control over us.  We give it control.  We succumb to its control.  Yet Paul tells us to not let sin control the way we live.  Yet we often feel helpless against the power of sin within us.

Today those being baptized are being given a new power to TERMINATE sin’s power and hold over us. The new power is the Holy Spirit!  The Holy Spirit is God’s presence and power at work in us.  It’s not that God isn’t at work in you before you are baptized, but that in baptism you’re fully submitting to participate and cooperate with God’s Presence, the Holy Spirit’s work in you.  This is why we anoint with oil after baptism.  Oil is a symbol of the Holy Spirit.

So does this mean that we never sin again after we’re baptized?  No.  But as John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist church says, “Sin remains but it does not reign.”  Tide of the war is won, but battles remain.  Daily we have to “repent” or turnaround from the ways we’re heading away from God and turn toward God.  And yet, something significant changes.  I’m reminded of my son learning to ride a bike.  In the last month he’s gone to a peddle two-wheel bike with no training wheels.  He knows how to balance.  He’ll never forget how to balance on a bike.  You can’t unlearn how to ride a bike.  (Yeah.  Yeah.  Yeah.  The skeptics are thinking about how you can lose your inner ear balance ability.  Stop stretching my analogies to the breaking point!)  But just because Micah can’t unlearn how to ride a bike doesn’t mean he won’t fall and scrape himself up.  Sin remains but it does not reign.

Today those being baptized are TERMINATE-ing two things:

  1. Shifting Allegiances
  2. Sin’s Control

Say it with me: “Hasta la vista baby.”

2 Beginnings in Baptism: Give yourselves completely to God

So we’ve talked about what gets terminated in baptism but what about two things that begin in baptism?  The first is this: you give yourself completely to God.  No more shifting allegiances.  Complete and total devotion to God. Paul says:

Instead, give yourselves completely to God, for you were dead, but now you have new life.
~Romans 6:13 NLT

“Completely.”  Other translations say “yield.”  One thing I love to do on water is sail.  There are a whole set of rules governing who yields to who on the water.  Motor boats yield to sail boats because they’re more maneuverable.  Smaller boats yield to bigger boats.  And everybody yields to freighters!  A freighter sometimes takes several miles to stop or turn.  You can’t half-yield with a freighter.  You can’t partially yield with a boat that takes a mile to stop.  You yield completely or you sink.  You yield ALL THE TIME: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow!  In baptism we give ourselves completely to God.

At Sycamore Creek Church our mission is to ignite authentic life in Christ and fan it into an all-consuming flame.  When we say “authentic” we mean completely or all the time.  We’re not one way today and another way tomorrow.  When we say “all-consuming” we mean not just one part of the pie belongs to God, but God is the filling throughout all the pie.

We live this mission with three values: Curious, Creative, and Compassionate.  When we say “Curious” we mean that your questions are welcome.  You don’t have to have it all figured out to join in.  You will never have all your questions answered to give yourself completely to God.  Curiosity is welcome.  When we say “Creative” we mean that we experiment with new ways to reach new people.  And when we say “Compassionate” we mean that no matter who you are, where you’ve been, what you’ve done, or where we meet you we’ll do our best to show you God’s compassion, completely.

Those being baptized today are BEGINNING a life of giving themselves completely to God.

2 Beginnings in Baptism: Live a New Life

The second beginning in baptism is BEGINNING to live a new life.  Paul says:

For we died and were buried with Christ by baptism. And just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious power of the Father, now we also may live new lives.
~Romans 6:4 NLT

We live new lives by choosing a new master.  Do you know that we all serve something?  Paul reminds us of this:

Don’t you realize that you become the slave of whatever you choose to obey?
~Romans 6:16 NLT

Bernard Shaw says that “Hell is where you must do what you want to do.”  Or as another writer has said, we are all struggling with the “tyranny of our own desires” (Willimon & Hauerwas, Resident Aliens).  We are slave to our desires, to our stomachs, to our sex drives, to our emotions, to our fashion, to our philosophy, or to our group.  Yet in Christ, Paul reminds us that something new begins:

Now you are free from your slavery to sin, and you have become slaves to righteous living.
~Romans 6:18 NLT

“Slave to righteous living”?   What does that mean?  I think it means that we’re now serving a new master and that service leads to the life well-lived.  You become fully who God has called and created you to be. Irenaeus, a second century church leader, says, “The glory of God is a human fully alive.” Who is the most fully alive human?  Jesus was the most fully alive human.  He lived with complete allegiance and devotion to God.  Sin had no hold over him.  His perfect life gave the most glory to God!

But who is Jesus?  Christians believe that Jesus was not just a great guy.  He was not just a “fully realized” human being.  Jesus wasn’t just a prophetic voice.  Those being baptized today will confess an ancient creed, a set of statements about what they believe and who they trust.  The Apostles’ Creed has three parts:

  1. I believe and trust in God
  2. I believe and trust in Jesus Christ, God’s only son.
  3. I believe and trust in the Holy Spirit.

Jesus was fully God and fully human.  Humans were the ones who were stuck in the power of sin and God was the only one who could break the power of sin.  So God became a human in Jesus.  Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection heals, forgives, and sets us free.  Jesus is able to heal, forgive and set us free because of who he is: the Son of God.  When we are baptized we join in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.

To understand how baptism works and what baptism is, let’s think about water for a moment.  What is water?  Water is death.  People die in water.  Today those being baptized die to multiple allegiances.  Water is birth.  We think about the waters of the womb.  Baptism is rebirth and new life.  Water is cleansing.  We wash our bodies in water.  Baptism is a washing and cleansing and forgiveness.  Water is a renewal of life.  We can go three weeks without food but only three days without water.  Baptism is renewal of life.  Water is protection.  We build motes around castles to protect us from danger.  You can only go three hours in a harsh environment without shelter.  Baptism is the protection of the Holy Spirit.  Water is fun.  We play in and with water.  Baptism is joining God’s fun adventure.  Water is community.  We always build cities by or near water.  Baptism is the door to the church, the family and mission of God.

When we are baptized we terminate our changing allegiances and sin’s control over us dies.  When we are baptized we begin giving ourselves completely to God and living a new life.

I want to invite those being baptized or reaffirming their baptism to come forward and join me in making these commitments:

To the parents and candidates
Tom: Do you seek to avoid evil and do good?
Parents/Candidates: I do.

Tom: Do you confess Jesus as Savior and Lord in community with the church?
Parents/Candidates: I do.

Tom: Will you stay in love with God?
Parents/Candidates: By God’s grace, I will

Tom: Do you believe in God?
Parents/Candidates:
I believe in God, the Father almighty, Creator of heaven and earth.

Tom: Do you believe in Jesus Christ?
I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord.
He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary.
He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended to the dead.
On the third day He rose again.
He ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again to judge the living and the dead.

Tom: Do you believe in the Holy Spirit?
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy Catholic Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and life everlasting. Amen.

To parents
Tom: Will you along with the church nurture these children by teaching and example guiding them to accept God’s grace for themselves when they are able?
Parents: I will.

To the church
Tom: Do you as the body of Christ, the church, reaffirm your own desire to avoid evil, do good, and stay in love with God?
Church: We do.

Tom: Do you commit to connecting with God and one another, growing in the character of Christ, and serving the church, community and world?
Church: We do.

Tom: Will you nurture one another and these new partners and members of the family of God in the Christian faith and life, and surround them with a community of love and forgiveness?
Church: We will.

Confirmation (for those reaffirming their faith) & Anointing with Oil
When they come up out of the water…
Tom: NAME, the Lord defend you with his heavenly grace and by his Spirit confirm you in the faith and fellowship of all true disciples of Jesus Christ.
or
The Lord bless you, and keep you;
The Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you.
The Lord lift up His countenance upon you,
and give you peace. Numbers 6: 24-26

Congregational Remembrance
Tom: Friends, remember your baptism and be thankful.

 

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Failing Forward

January 28, 2014 by Leave a Comment

samson

 

 

 

 

Samson – Failing Forward *
Sycamore Creek Church
Tom Arthur
January 26/27, 2013

Peace friends!

Today we wrap up a series on the life of Samson.  Samson was a judge of Israel, a kind of tribal leader.  He was dedicated from before his birth to save God’s people from the Philistines.  Samson is one of the most frustrating characters in the Bible.  He was given so much from God, but messed up again and again and again.  We’ve learned over the last three weeks that Samson:

  1. Was an incredibly strong man with a destructively weak will;
  2. Was emotion driven, not Spirit-led;
  3. Ruined his life one step at a time.

In the end he had his eyes gouged out, was put in shackles, and was relegated to grinding a mill.  The question we want to wrestle with today is this:

What do you do when you realize you’ve blown it?

What do you do when you’ve done something you can’t undo, when you’ve hurt people you’ve loved, or when you’ve lost all your money?

In this series I’ve been speaking especially to the men in our church.  That’s not to say that women don’t blow it.  But there is something a little bigger that happens when a man blows it.  That’s because women receive value in relationships.  As long as the relationship is intact at the end of the day, all is well.  On the other hand, men tend to like being liked, but it’s not everything.  Men tend to receive value in accomplishments.  At times even relationships are considered “accomplishments.”  Men want respect.  Generally speaking, a man’s greatest fear is failure and his greatest pain is regret.

Men are told to measure up, be successful, live up to your own or others expectations.  And we don’t.  We hold regrets.  You have to tell your faithful wife about your online porn addiction or your office affair.  You are in a career that feels beneath you while your friends are doing better.  You regret not marrying someone, and now you’re alone years later.  Your marriage is pathetic, and you know it and are resigned to it and don’t do anything about it.  You’ve failed inwardly by not living up to a promise made to yourself or God: “I’ll never do it again”…until Thursday.  What regrets do you carry?

Here’s a truth to wrap your mind around: A failure is an event, never a person.  Samson failed over and over and over again, and God still accomplished his purposes through him.  Just because you’re down, doesn’t mean your out.  Let’s look and see what happens when Samson is down.

Judges 16:23-26 NRSV
Now the lords of the Philistines gathered to offer a great sacrifice to their god Dagon, and to rejoice; for they said, “Our god has given Samson our enemy into our hand.” When the people saw him, they praised their god; for they said, “Our god has given our enemy into our hand, the ravager of our country, who has killed many of us.” 

And when their hearts were merry, they said, “Call Samson, and let him entertain us.” So they called Samson out of the prison, and he performed for them. They made him stand between the pillars; and Samson said to the attendant who held him by the hand, “Let me feel the pillars on which the house rests, so that I may lean against them.” 

Here’s the context.  The Philistines are gathered in a coliseum-like temple that holds between 3000 and 5000 people.  They’re there to worship their god Dagon, the god of the harvest who has a man head and fish body.  They’re recounting how Samson has caused them all kinds of problems remembering the foxes and jawbone incidents.  And now Samson is told to perform for their entertainment.  It doesn’t get any lower than this!  Samson is surely at the bottom of his life as a failure.

Remorse
There are two responses to failure I want to explore today. The natural response to failure is remorse: “I feel bad about what I did.”  Too often men stop here.  Inward they say, “I’m a failure.”  Outward they say, “I’m a victim.  It’s all someone else’s fault.”  There is a better response to failure than remorse.

Repentance
The better response to failure is repentance.  Repentance is one of those really churchy words, isn’t it?  It conjures images of street corner preachers on soap boxes with bull horns.  “Repent you sinners.  You’re going to burn and fry in hell!”  But that’s not necessarily what a biblical idea of repentance is.

There are two words in the Bible that get translated as repentance.  The first is the Greek word “metnoia.”  Metnoia means to change one’s heart and mind.  The second is the Hebrew word “shuv.”  Shuv means to turn.  So repentance can be understood as changing one’s heart and mind in a way that leads to turning ones life in a different direction.  It’s not just an intellectual or emotional thing.  Although it includes both.  It’s not just an action thing.  But it definitely includes action.  It is an inward change that results in an outward change.  It is being convinced that you are going the wrong way and turning around and going the other way.  It means owning your fault.  “It’s my fault.  I blew it.”  Then turning away from that which you did that was wrong and turning toward that which you know to be right.  You ruin your life one step at a time, but when you repent you turn around and point your life back in the right direction.

Repentance doesn’t always mean that everything gets better quick.  There are some things that are hard to undo.  There are even some things you can’t undo.  When Sarah and I had our first boy, Micah, I took lots of pictures during labor.  When I got home but before I caught up on sleep, I uploaded them to iPhoto on my iMac computer.  Now iPhoto has a feature where you can instantly upload pictures you choose to share on Facebook.  I thought I carefully selected some photos to share on Facebook but what I did instead was shared all the photos on Facebook!  I realized my mistake only when I got a notification from Facebook that one of the teenagers in our church had commented on the album saying, “Wow.  Thanks for sharing such intimate moments with us.”  I did  my best to quickly pull the photos off of Facebook, but to those of you who were subjected to my mistake, I apologize.  Actually, I should apologize to my wife!  Very few pictures were actually of me!

Thankfully I could undo that mistake for the most part.  But there are moments in our digital culture when you can’t undo it, like this commercial:

 

While you can’t “unsend,” you can repent.  You can be both motivated to change and actually change your behavior.  You can remember who you were created to be—you were created to honor and glorify God with your life—and you can choose to honor and glorify God with your life.  You can choose not to let what you did keep you from doing what God wants you to do now.  You cannot change the past, but you can change your future with God’s help.

Samson realizes that he’s blown it pretty hard, and he prays to God:

Then Samson prayed to the Lord, “Sovereign Lord, remember me. Please, God, strengthen me just once more, and let me with one blow get revenge on the Philistines for my two eyes.”
Judges 16:28 NIV

Samson prays, “God, I only need one more chance.”  Is this prayer of Samson’s about Samson or about God?  It seems to me that it is still about Samson’s revenge.  Sometimes when we’re down and out and feel the remorse of failure, we pray to God out of desperation, but we don’t really want to live a new life.  We want God to make it all right.  We want our lives back.

Here’s the amazing moment of God’s grace.  Even in the mixed motives of Samson’s last prayer and in our own mixed motives, God is gracious and merciful.  Even in our failures, God can still accomplish his purposes.  God’s purpose in Samson’s life was to start to deliver Israel from the Philistines.  The Israelites had begun to so closely assimilate into Philistine culture that they were close to being indistinguishable.  God used Samson’s failures to save God’s people from being absorbed into the broader culture and lost forever.

God strengthened Samson again.  Friends, you have the same Spirit living in you that raised Christ from the dead!  Sure you messed up.  Sure you feel weak.  Sure you feel remorse.  But Jesus was dead.  No pulse.  Down and out.  There’s no coming back from that.  And God raised him from the dead!  So you messed up.  That’s makes your story even better!

Men, it’s time to push some pillars down.  What pillars do you need to push down? How are you going to do it?  You’ve got a pillar of pride in your life: I can handle it.  Push it down.  Say, “I need help. I’m alone. I messed up. I don’t know how to get out.”  Tell someone you need help!  You’ve got a pillar of anger in your life: I’m mad at the world;  I’m mad at myself.  Push it down.  Get a counselor.  Read a book about anger.  Find a mentor who has overcome their anger.  You’ve got a pillar of slacker spirituality in your life: you’re an occasional attender at worship.  Don’t just feel bad about it.  Turn around and get to worship regularly.  You’ve got a pillar of a dead marriage in your life.  So be honest about it and set up a good time to have an honest talk with your wife and recommit to new positive behaviors.  Find a couple you appreciate and have them mentor you.  Go to a marriage retreat.  Pick up a book or audio CD or listen to marriage sermons.  You’ve got a pillar of debt in your life.  Push it down!  Tighten the belt.  Set a budget.   Break greed by giving generously the full tithe or more. What pillar or pillars need to be pushed down in your life?

Now we can’t ignore one crucial fact about the end of Samson’s life.  It was a suicide.  Is that how you push down the pillar?  You just decide that you’re so far gone that this world would be better off without you?  Yes, Samson took his life, and God ended an age of judges ruling Israel.  He was the last.  God then brought in the age of the Kings.  But here’s the hitch.  Suicide is easy.  You give your life one time.  Here’s what’s hard: give your life daily.  They give their lives to God daily.  They give their lives to their wives daily.  They give their lives to their kids daily.  They give their lives to their church daily.  They give their lives to their community daily.  They give their lives to the job daily.  Real men give their lives daily so that God’s purposes might come true in their own lives and the lives of those around them.  Real men push down the pillars that get in the way of God’s purposes daily.  Are you pushing down pillars today?

Here’s the first pillar you need to push down: give up your life.  Give it up to the one who has already given up his life for you.  Give it up to the one who showed his love for us by dying not just for friends but for his enemies.  Give your life up to following Jesus and his way.  How do you do that?   You ask Jesus to be your forgiver and leader.  You give your failures to him and you say, “Jesus, forgive me for the things I have done wrong.”  Then you let him lead you.  You say, “Jesus, I give you my entire life to lead.  Do with me as it pleases you.”  Then you get in the adventure of the rescue mission that Jesus has begun here on this earth, helping others push down the pillars in their lives.  Are you ready?

God may it be true in the lives of the men at Sycamore Creek Church.  May you use the men in our church to push down the pillars daily in their own lives and the lives of others around us.  Push down the pillars that keep us from being fully committed to you.  In the name of Jesus and the power of your Holy Spirit.  Amen!

* This sermon is based on a sermon first preached by Craig Groeschel

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Mission Drop

June 25, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Amazing Stories - Wrestle Mania

Amazing Stories – Mission Drop
Sycamore Creek Church
Mark 1:1-11 & Acts 2:38-41
Tom Arthur
June 24, 2012 

Peace Friends!

What’s your life mission?  Are you on a mission?  Or are you just plodding along each day reacting to whatever comes your way?  Being on a mission adds a deep sense of purpose to your life.  Many of us wander around aimlessly because we haven’t signed up for a mission.

I remember the first deep sense of mission I received in life.  I was in a class in college called “African American Experience.”  We were watching a Dateline undercover investigation of racism in Chicago. Not the deep south.  North. Chicago. Midwest.  Big city.  Two guys, one black and one white, went around town with hidden cameras and interacted with the same people and situations.  They both went to a used car salesman.  The white guy was given a “rock bottom” price $1500 cheaper than the black guy.  They both went to a department store.  The white guy was given great service.  The black guy was followed around the store by a sales associate who didn’t talk to him.  They both went to rent the same apartment.  The landlord was courteous to the black guy who went first, but when the white guy asked about the neighborhood, the landlord said, “It’s OK, but it’s going downhill.  I showed it to ‘one of them’ earlier today.”  I came out of that class furious, with a righteous anger I had never experienced before.  In that moment God signed me up for a mission: to make right the injustice I had just seen.  Later on I gave that mission a name: racial and economic reconciliation.

What’s your mission?  Today we’re in the middle of a series called Amazing Stories.  We’re looking at some of the lesser known but still amazing stories in the Bible.  There are a lot of different stories in the Bible about being on a mission.  Today I want to look at a story of the beginning of Jesus’ mission.  And it’s a mission that we all can join.  It’s the amazing story of baptism.  Let’s read it.

Mark 1:1-11 NLT
Here begins the Good News about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God.
In the book of the prophet Isaiah, God said, 

“Look, I am sending my messenger before you,
and he will prepare your way.
He is a voice shouting in the wilderness:
‘Prepare a pathway for the Lord’s coming!
Make a straight road for him!'”  

This messenger was John the Baptist. He lived in the wilderness and was preaching that people should be baptized to show that they had turned from their sins and turned to God to be forgiven.  People from Jerusalem and from all over Judea traveled out into the wilderness to see and hear John. And when they confessed their sins, he baptized them in the Jordan River. His clothes were woven from camel hair, and he wore a leather belt; his food was locusts and wild honey. He announced: “Someone is coming soon who is far greater than I am — so much greater that I am not even worthy to be his slave.   I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit!”

One day Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee, and he was baptized by John in the Jordan River.  And when Jesus came up out of the water, he saw the heavens split open and the Holy Spirit descending like a dove on him.  And a voice came from heaven saying, “You are my beloved Son, and I am fully pleased with you.”

Here we see Jesus joining the mission of God.  Have you ever seen one of those spy movies where one spy drops a case or bag or box or envelope in one spot for another spy to pick up and run with the mission?  That’s kind of what’s happening here.  John the Baptist is making a mission drop with Jesus.  Jesus is picking up the package (or going under the water) and running with the mission.

Now this story by itself doesn’t tell us much about the amazing character of this mission.  For that we have to look elsewhere.  One great place is in a sermon that Peter, one of Jesus’ fellow “spies”, preaches after Jesus has ascended (it’s the same sermon that Gaelen McIntee preached on a couple of weeks ago on graduation Sunday).  Let’s take a look at parts of that sermon and we’ll see that the character of the mission of God is closely related to the character of water itself.  Maybe that’s why baptism is done with water.

Death: Acts 2:38 NLT
Peter replied, “Each of you must turn from your sins and turn to God, and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. Then you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

Water is a dangerous thing.  Water can mean death.   This past week I took my 19-month-old son to the tot swim at the Holt Jr. High. He had never seen or been in a pool before.  He was naturally anxious and nervous as we stepped down into the pool.  For about the first thirty minutes he had a choke hold on me and wouldn’t even consider letting go.  He had a healthy respect for the dangerous situation he was in.  Should he let go, I think he instinctually knew that things would not turn out well (of course, as his daddy, I would do all I could to never let that happen).  Water is death.

When we sign up for the mission of God by being baptized, something in us has to die.  We have to turn from our sins.  This is called repentance.  You have to give up every other mission you’re on to join this one. It’s no good to think you can be on two missions.  You can’t.  If you’re going to join God’s mission, all other missions in your life must be put to death in the waters of baptism.  This doesn’t mean that you no longer care about other things.  It means that you now see all things you care for through the lens of the mission of God.

The mission of God is characterized first by dying to self, repenting, and turning toward God.

Cleansing: Acts 2:38 NLT
Peter replied, “Each of you must turn from your sins and turn to God, and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. Then you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

One of the important uses of water is to clean dirty things.  This past week I had drywallers working in my basement.  I was amazed at the speed with which they worked.  They put up seven rooms of drywall and a hallway in a day and a half.  One time I went down to see how things were going, and one of the guys was putting screws in a piece of dry wall on the ceiling while a fine dust was showering down on top of him.  Later that day when they left, he said to me, “I’ll give you an ‘air’ hand shake because my hands are so dirty and dusty.”  I looked at his hands and was glad he didn’t want to shake my hand.  He was dustier than I had seen anyone in a long time.  I’m sure when he got home he immediately jumped in the shower to wash away all that dust, and when he got out of the shower, I’m sure he felt like a new man.  Water cleanses.

When you sign up for the mission of God by being baptized, you die to the sin in your life and you are cleansed from it.  The mission of God is characterized by forgiveness, God’s forgiveness of our sins, and our forgiveness of others’ sins against us.  Just as water cleans the hands after a long day of working, so too does baptism clean our souls and make us pure before God.

The mission of God is characterized by the forgiveness of sins.

Life – New life through Union with Christ: Acts 2:38 NLT
Peter replied, “Each of you must turn from your sins and turn to God, and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. Then you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

Water is life.  Have you ever run out of water and been unable to get water for an extended period of time?  There’s an amazing survival story about a guy named Aron Ralston that’s told in a movie titled 127 Hours.  Aron was hiking by himself in slot canyons out west when a boulder fell on him and pinned his hand to the side of the canyon.  He was pinned there for 127 hours before freeing himself by cutting his own forearm off.  Public Service Announcement: The biggest mistake he made in this whole ordeal was that he was hiking by himself and he hadn’t told anyone where he was going.  So how was he going to survive?  Almost miraculously there was no bleeding, so Ralston really had to confront one major obstacle: how could he stay alive until someone found him.  What’s your number one problem in this situation?  Besides staying warm, it’s water.  You can live for days or weeks without food. But you can only go a fraction of that time without water.

Water is life, and the waters of baptism give you new life in Jesus.  If we die in the waters of baptism, then we die with Jesus.  But when we come up out of the water, we also join in the resurrection of Jesus.  Our dead dry bodies are given new spiritual life.  We are in a very real sense, reborn.

Life – Holy Spirit: Acts 2:38 NLT
Peter replied, “Each of you must turn from your sins and turn to God, and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. Then you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

There’s another sense in which we are given new life in the waters of baptism.  We are given the gift of the Holy Spirit.  What exactly is the Holy Spirit?  The Holy Spirit is God’s presence working in you (transformation) and through you (ministry to others).  God’s love being made real in your life.  God’s friendship helping you to learn new habits and continue to turn from all those old ones.  Because even though we’re cleansed and forgiven of our sins in the waters of baptism, those old habits continue to intrude on the mission of God.  They’re like old enemy spies that keep showing up at inopportune times.  Except the difference is that God’s presence, God’s love, God’s friends, God’s Holy Spirit walks with you in a new and powerful way helping you to overcome those old habits and sins.  As one preacher has said, “Sin remains but it does not reign” (John Wesley).

The mission of God is characterized by new life in the waters of baptism.

Community – Acts 2:41 NLT
Those who believed what Peter said were baptized and added to the church — about three thousand in all.

What do all these things have in common: soda, tea, coffee, beer, wine, juice?  There’s probably a lot of things that they have in common but here are two that are pertinent to our discussion this morning: they’re mostly water, and they’re best shared with friends.  Water is something that community gathers around.  We gather around it when we choose where to live.  We gather around it at the table, in a restaurant, at the café, in a coffee shop, and around the communion table in worship.

Water is community, and in the waters of baptism you join the community called the church.  Baptism is the door to the church.  Now the church gets a lot of negative press in the world these days, some of it earned, but at its most fundamental level, the church is the community of friends seeking to follow Jesus.  It’s a community on a mission, and that mission is best done with spiritual friends.

The mission of God is characterized by the community you join in the waters of baptism.

So there’s only one question left for you today:

Will you join the mission of God?

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