Bible Talks - Family Church (9:45am)
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Bible Talk Text
There is an old Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times." Well, we live in interesting times. Every time we turn on the TV or radio, or open a newspaper, we see that our world is hovering on the brink of war. We see two renegade nations going down the route of "Weapons of mass destruction" one chemical and biological and the other nuclear. We see strong nations, who already have these weapons, saying no you can't have them too. And we see the UN dithering around, afraid to take a stand.
Tomorrow our world may be plunged into war. Will it be short, sharp and localized? Or will it spread like wildfire? Will it be a tightly confined police action or the beginning of WW3? I don't know the answers any more than you do.
In Matthew's Gospel Chapter 24 we read of Jesus' reply when his disciples ask him about the end times, "Watch out that no one deceives you. For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Christ,’ and will deceive many. You will hear of wars and rumours of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of birth pains."
Down through the ages, whenever these types of events have occurred, the doomsday prophets come out of the woodwork and predict that the end of the world is near. The final judgement is upon us. A few years ago one such group was telling its people to sell everything, turn all their assets into cash, for the end was near, Jesus was about to return. So people sold their homes and their businesses and Jesus didn't come. To this day I wonder that if Jesus had come, what were they were going to do with all that cash.
Never-the-less, whenever we see these harbingers of the end times, we should be thinking about the final judgement and where we stand when we face Jesus, not as the baby in the manger, not as the incarnate saviour, but as the judge who will decide our eternal destiny. When a friend or family member dies we are reminded that judgement doesn't come at some long removed distant time in the future but perhaps soon as we don't know when our time on this earth will be up.
But this is a baptism service, a time for joy and celebration, not a time for thinking morbid thoughts about death and judgement. But that is the whole point. They are linked. This morning Jon and Vicki and Donna have had their children baptised because they want the assurance that they have of being acceptable to God at that final judgement to apply to their children as well.
In his speech on the day of Pentecost, the Apostle Peter had taken the people of Jerusalem to task for crucifying Jesus, he finished with these words, “Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ.”
We're told as we read on in the book of Acts, "When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, ‘Brothers, what shall we do?’
And Peter replied, ‘Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call.’ ”
This promise is taken to mean that the children of believers are included in the promises made to their believing parents, and so the children should be baptized.
As we read on in the book of Acts we find three incidents in which the head of a household was converted to faith in Jesus Christ and the whole household was baptized. One of those was read as our Bible reading a few minutes ago.
As we progress through early church history we find that our earliest records of how Christian services were conducted include infant baptism. Believing parents claim God's covenant blessings on their children, so that their children share in everything God has promised them as believers in Jesus Christ. So in these interesting, uncertain times, we can be sure our God is interested in the welfare of his people, be they adults, children, or new born infants.
The baptism ceremony which we have just conducted is a symbolic act. The water didn't actually cleanse the children from sin, the words and actions didn't actually confer eternal life on the children. The reality of the symbols of water and words lies in the faith of the parents and god-parents. You'll recall, I hope, that the parents and godparents promised to bring up the children knowing about the things promised in their name today. To come to know about God and Jesus and to profess faith in Jesus for themselves when they are old enough to understand. As Christians we want our children to be brought up as Christians, and by having our children baptised we're taking a first step in this process.
Back in the olden days, at least back when I was a teenager, when people who had been baptized as children were preparing to be confirmed or more correctly to confirm for themselves the promises made on their behalf at baptism, we had to learn the catechism. The format of the catechism was question and answer.
Q1. What is your name?
A. My name is Philip.
Actually the old catechism used to say : Answer N or M which were printers abbreviations for name or names. My wife Margaret thought she was OK because her name started with M, but what about people like me who weren't named Mary or Nicholas or something?
Q2. Who gave you this name?
A. My parents and godparents at my baptism in which I was made a member of Christ, a child of God and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven.
Now notice this second answer. At our baptism we're not made members of the Anglican Church. We're not made sinlessly perfect. But our parents and godparents have claimed for us exactly the blessings that they have through their faith in Jesus Christ.
- Membership in Christ
- The special relationship between God our Heavenly Father and us his children.
- The promise of eternal life in God's kingdom.
Back to these interesting, uncertain, times in which we live. What better things can we give our children than these three promises? What better things can we have than belonging to Christ, knowing that our Heavenly Father is looking after our interests and the assurance of a place in heaven, come what may.
We know that our God will keep his promises to his people and today we've welcomed these three children into the fellowship of God's people, under the umbrella of his saving grace.
No wonder this is a happy occasion.
Let us pray.
