Well, hey everybody, I'm Adam Schell, the pastor of Albert Heitzen. Welcome to our sermon podcast. And I just want to start out by thanking you for spending part of your day with us. And if you're blessed during our time together today, let me invite you to come and worship with us live on Sunday mornings at 10.30am.
Eastern time. You can worship with us live on our church website at mhbcleuable.com slash live. Or if you're in the Louisville, Kentucky area, we would love to have you come and join us in person. With that, let's get right into this episode, sermon.
Last Sunday was the first Sunday in a season that we at a church called Efifty. But even though the church has been celebrating the season of Efifty for over 1600 years, that doesn't mean that we know much about it. So why does the season of Efifty all about? Well, last week I told you that when most of us hear the word Efifty, what we immediately think of as someone who is having or has had an Efifty, that moment of sudden realization where a light bulb clicks on and they're able to understand something in a way that they've never been able to see it or understand it for.
And I told you that's kind of what the season of Efifty is like for us in the church. Season of Efifty is a time when we experience that light bulb moment where something clicks and we're able to have a deeper realization of who God is. Because Efifty comes right after Christmas. When God reveals himself to us in a brand new way, when Jesus was born and God entered our world as a human being.
But during the season of Efifty, we remember that Jesus doesn't stay a baby in a manger. Instead, Jesus grows. He is the one who reveals to us the very nature of God, who God is and what God values. So the season of Efifty is a chance where we are able to have a deeper realization of who God is by taking a closer look at Jesus's time on this earth.
See what he reveals to us about who God is. But Efifty is also a time that may challenge us to see God in a way that we've never seen or understood God before. And that may have happened for you last Sunday when we started out the season by talking about the familiar story of the wise men. But even though most of us feel like we know the story of the wise men really well because we've been putting our little figurines in our nativity sense our entire lives.
We very rarely take the time to stop and think about who the wise men were. We don't realize the wise men were foreign priests who came from a far off country. And that meant that the wise men were outsiders in just about every way they could have been outsiders for the people of Israel. They were outsiders ethnically.
They were outsiders. Religiously, they were outsiders geographically. They were outsiders in so many different ways. So the wise men should have been the last people.
They would have been the last people. They'd have been the one in Israel. They would have expected to come and visit Jesus. But instead of being the last ones that would ever come and visit Jesus in the book of Matthew, the wise men were the very first people to come visit Jesus after he was born.
And not only that, they were the first ones to recognize Jesus for who he is and to bow down and worship him. So the story of the wise men reveals something new to us about the nature and the character of God. It shows to us how God feels about outsiders. The story of the wise men shows us that there are no outsiders in God's kingdom.
There are no outsiders in God's kingdom. And that may have been something that you didn't realize or hadn't thought about before last week. But this week we're going to continue on. And today we're going to take a look at another story from Jesus's life that might be a familiar story for you.
But just like the story of the wise men, we don't often take the time to slow down and really think about what's happening in the story, and what the story may be showing and revealing to us about who God is. So what story we're going to be taking a closer look at today. We're going to be taking a closer look at the story of Jesus's baptism. But I know that when I say that word, we're going to be talking about Jesus's baptism.
A lot of us cannot help but think about our own experiences with baptism. So when you hear me talking about baptism, you may remember when you went out to the creek that was behind the church and that you grew up in and you got baptized wearing an old pair of blue jeans and a t-shirt. Or maybe when you think about baptism, you remember putting on one of those long, flowing white baptismal robes and wading down into the baptism street in our old church building. I know there's at least a few people that are worshiping with us right now that when you think about your baptism, you remember getting baptized in a portable hot tub right over there in the corner of this church.
And all of these experiences are part of the Christian sacrament of baptism. They are all part of this experience where we symbolically have our sins washed away and we begin a new relationship with God. But even though we can't help but think about our experiences with the Christian sacrament of baptism, we think about the word baptism, it's not exactly what's happening in the story of Jesus's baptism. Because you have to remember that when Jesus was baptized, he hadn't started as early ministry yet.
When Jesus was baptized, he didn't have any followers yet. When Jesus was baptized, he hadn't started teaching about the kingdom of God yet. So when Jesus was baptized, he wasn't participating in the Christian sacrament of baptism because there wasn't a Christianity yet. Because on top of all of that, Jesus was Jewish.
John the Baptist was Jewish. All of the people who had lined up along the Jordan River to be baptized were Jewish. So if baptism wasn't a Christian practice when Jesus was baptized, then what was it? Well, to understand that, we've got to be able to understand a little bit more about Jewish religious practices.
The thing that you have to understand about Jewish religious practices to understand what was happening with baptism is just how important the difference between being clean and being unclean were for the people of Israel. And when I talk about being clean versus being unclean, I'm not talking about taking a shower or washing your hands or practicing good personal hygiene. Now, what I'm talking about is ritual purity. And ritual purity was extremely important to the people of Israel because they believed that they needed to be ritually pure in order for God to continue to reside with them.
So if someone was allowed to be religiously impure or unclean, that could mean that God would no longer be with the people of Israel. And there were a whole lot of different ways, a whole lot of different things that you could do that would make you impure or unclean. If you touched that body, you were unclean. If you had any kind of rash on your body, you were unclean.
If you ate certain kinds of food that were prohibited by the law of Moses, like pork or shrimp, you were unclean. If you even touched someone else that was unclean, you became unclean. And once you were unclean, you couldn't just ignore it. Because if you just ignored it, God might turn away from all of your people.
So you had to do something about it. So what did you have to do if you became richly impure, richly unclean? You needed to take part in a purification ritual, which meant that you had to wash your body from head to toe in water where you were immersed in that water. So when John the Baptist is baptizing people in the Jordan River, John's not inventing a new Christian sacrament.
He's doing something that the people of Israel had been doing for generations. He was engaging in a practice that they knew and that they were familiar with. But John the Baptist wasn't solely concerned with people's ritual purity when he was practicing his baptism. Now the book of Matthew will tell us that John wanted the people that he was baptizing to turn away from their sin and to change their hearts and their lives.
So what this means is that John's baptism was all about sinners. And that word sinners comes from a Greek word that refers to missing the mark. So everyone who came to John wanting to be baptized, they would have known that they missed the mark. They would have known that they messed up.
They would have known that they had made mistakes. They would have known that they had become unclean, that they needed to be purified on the outside and made clean on the inside as well. And this brings us to the story of Jesus's baptism. So if you've got a Bible close by or a Bible app on your phone, I encourage you to open it to Matthew chapter three.
And we'll take a closer look at the story, but as you're finding it quickly remind you, book of Matthew is basically a biography of Jesus. So as you're reading the book of Matthew, you can read all about Jesus's time on his earth, from his birth, all the way to his resurrection. But in Matthew chapter three, we're going to look at the story of Jesus's baptism. We're going to start reading in verse 13.
This is what Matthew tells us. Matthew writes, At that time, Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan River so that John would baptize him. John tried to stop him and said, I need to be baptized by you. Yet you come to me?
But Jesus answered, Allow me to be baptized now. This is necessary to fulfill all righteousness. So John agreed to baptize Jesus. When Jesus was baptized, he immediately came up out of the water.
Heaven was opened to him and he saw the spirit of God coming down like a dove and resting on him. A voice from heaven said, This is my son, whom I dearly love. I find happiness in him. Now, I want you to remember what I told you just a second ago.
I told you that John the Baptist's baptism was for sinners. But there are numerous passages in the New Testament like Hebrews chapter four verse 15 or first Peter chapter two verse 22. And second Corinthians chapter five verse 21 that tells us that Jesus was without sin. But even though Jesus was without sin, He still came to the Jordan River to be baptized by John.
That just doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense though. And if you've ever wondered why someone who was without sin needed to go and be baptized, you're in good company. It's actually something that followers of Jesus have been wrestling with since at least the second century. So you find early leaders in the church like Ignatius of Antioch who theorizes that Jesus needed to be baptized, not so that the water would purify him, but so that he would purify the water.
Or another early leader in the church, Justin Martyr explains that Jesus was baptized solely for the sake of humanity. He did it for our good. But when you look at John's response, John the Baptist what he says, when Jesus comes to him, when John says, I need to be baptized by you. You're the one coming to me.
John's response makes it pretty clear that we've never really understood why Jesus wanted to be baptized in the first place. But in the story, Jesus insists. Jesus says, This is necessary. But why?
Why was it necessary for Jesus to be baptized? Like I told you just a second ago, this is a question that followers of Jesus have been wrestling with for 1800-1900 years. So guess what? I'm not going to give you a definitive answer in a 25 minute sermon, okay?
Because we still don't have a definitive answer. But what I can do is I can talk with you about one explanation for why Jesus needed to be baptized. It will show us a whole lot about the nature of God and what God values. But before I can talk with you about this explanation for why Jesus needed to be baptized, there's another story that you need to be familiar with first.
And this story took place several years after Jesus's crucifixion and his resurrection. So when this story takes place, there is a version of Christianity, although it's still considered a sect of Judaism at this point. So there are followers of Jesus and these followers of Jesus are meeting in something that will eventually become known as the church. And one of the leaders in the early church was a man named Peter.
And Peter of course was one of Jesus's first followers and one of Jesus's closest friends. And he is leading in the church. And at this point in history, the church starts experiencing a problem that they have never experienced before. They're wrestling with a question that they have never had to wrestle with before.
And the question that they're having to wrestle with is what do we do about Gentiles, non-Jewish people who want to follow Jesus? Because up to this point in time, you have to remember Jesus's first followers, his disciples were all Jewish. His first followers were Jewish. So they had all grown up following these ritual laws of purity that were so important to their faith.
So they knew that there were certain things that they were not allowed to do. They knew that they were allowed to eat certain foods. They knew they weren't allowed to hang out with Gentiles. They knew that they weren't allowed to go to Gentiles homes because it would make them unclean.
But now you have leaders in the early church who are wrestling with the question of what do we do? What do we do with these Gentiles because they're coming and they're wanting to follow Jesus? So they've got to figure out do these Gentiles have to follow the same purity laws that we've been following in order to follow Jesus? And initially, the church's answer to that is yes, they are going to have to follow the same rules that we've been following.
But Peter is about to have an experience that's going to change all of that. So as the story takes place, Peter is up on his rooftop one day and he's praying. He sees a vision from God. And in this mission, a blanket, a sheet comes down from the heavens.
And it is covered with all sorts of animals that Peter has been forbidden his entire life to eat. And as Peter is looking at all of these animals that are on this blanket, a voice from the heavens tells him, get up Peter, kill and eat. Thean. Now I'll be honest with you here.
I have never heard an audible voice from the heavens. I've never heard an audible voice that I know has come from the Lord as Peter put it in verse 14. But I'm pretty sure that if you ever hear a voice that you know is coming from heaven, that you know is from the Lord, you should probably do what it says. But that's not what Peter does.
Peter would rather disobey this voice from heaven. He would rather disobey what the Lord is telling him to do than to eat something that is unclean, than to break one of these purity laws. That's how important these laws were to the people of Israel. But the voice doesn't stop there.
The voice is going to tell Peter in Acts 10 verse 15, it says to him, and the voice will tell this to Peter three different times. Never consider unclean what God has made. Here. And then the vision ends.
And Peter is sitting on his rooftop trying to figure out what in the world he's just experienced. But while he's sitting there trying to wrap his mind around this vision that he's just had, someone comes knocking on his door. Peter goes down and opens up the door. He finds two people that are standing there and they are messengers who have come from a man named Cornelius.
And Cornelius wants Peter to come over to his home. But Cornelius isn't Jewish. Cornelius is a Gentile. And not only is Cornelius a Gentile, he is also a Roman soldier.
So, for Peter, when he gets this invitation from this Gentile Roman soldier to come to his house, Peter would have thought is he's a Roman. He's a Roman soldier. This guy's my enemy. And not only is he my enemy because his people are occupying my nation.
But what Moses also says he's unclean. So I'm not supposed to have anything to do with him because he's a Gentile. If I go to his house, it's going to make me unclean. And then I'm going to have to go through all these rituals to purify myself all over again.
So there's no good reason for Peter to go to Cornelius's house. But Peter remembers the vision that he just had. And he agrees to go and visit with Cornelius. And while he is there, when he arrives at Cornelius's house, Peter says something that is going to change not only the course of our faith, but also our very understanding of who God is.
And actually after 10 verse 28, this is what Peter says when he arrives at Cornelius's house. He says, you all realize that it is forbidden for a Jew to associate or visit with outsiders. However, God has shown me that I should never call a person impure or unclean. Did you hear what Peter just said here?
Peter says, God has shown me that I should never call a person impure or unclean. So when Peter arrives at Cornelius's house, he understands that vision that he had, it wasn't about food, it was about people. That vision wasn't about what is clean and what is unclean. His vision was about who is clean and unclean.
And this vision shows Peter that while we try to avoid what is unclean, God moves toward it. While we try to avoid what is unclean, God moves toward it. Like God wanted Peter to do it with Cornelius. And that is why Jesus went down to the Jordan River to be baptized that day.
Because just like there is no good reason for Peter to go to Cornelius's house, there was no good reason for Jesus to go to the Jordan River where all these people were being baptized. Jesus was without sin. He was ritually here. He didn't need to go there at all.
And just by going to the Jordan River and being surrounded by these people who were unclean, if Jesus had brushed shoulders with them, the law of Moses would have said he was unclean too, so there was no good reason for Jesus to go there. But he goes there anyway. And not only does he show up at the Jordan River, not only does he stand on the shores of the Jordan River, Jesus climbs down, wades out into the waters of the Jordan River, where all of the sins, all of the ritual impurities of everyone who'd been baptized that day, were symbolically washed away. So Jesus symbolically weighed it in to the midst of everything that makes us unclean, everything that makes us sinful.
That's who God is. But we're trying to avoid what's unclean. God moves toward it. That's the nature of God.
That's who God is. That's what God does. So if we want to follow God, if we want to follow Jesus, we need to do the same thing. But before we can do that, we have to start by asking ourselves a question.
Before we can move toward the people that we consider unclean, the first thing we have to do is ask ourselves this question. Who do we treat like they're unclean today? Who do we treat like they are unclean today? Because even though we don't follow the same rules of related to ritual purity, the people of Israel were following back then, the same rules that Peter was following, there are still people that we treat like they're unclean today.
There are still people that we treat like they are impure today. There are people whose lives are so messy that we are afraid that they will contaminate us if we let them get too close to us. So there are people that we are afraid to move toward. There are people that we are afraid to move toward, even though they are still children of God.
There are people that we are afraid to move toward, even though they are created in the image of God. There are people that we are afraid to move toward, even though Jesus came for them, every bit as much as Jesus came for you and for me. But what's even worse is that there are people that we are afraid to move toward, even when they're hurting. There are people that we are afraid to move toward, even when they need help.
There are people that we are afraid to move toward, even when they need someone to minister to them. But even though there are people that we still desperately want to avoid because we think that they're unclean and they might contaminate us, Jesus tells us to move toward them. And what this means is that we have to do more than just have a good theology about who it is that God loves. This means that we have to be more than just say nice things about who belongs in God's kingdom from a safe distance.
This means that we have to do more than just pay lip service to the things that we believe. If we're gonna follow Jesus, we have to be willing to step down into the water with him, toward the people that were constantly avoiding. And right now in the United States of America, it's not hard to see the people that we are trying to avoid. The people that we are treating like they are unclean, like they don't belong here.
Like they aren't children of God created in the image of God like Jesus didn't come for them just like he came for us. We've seen it play out this past week with undocumented immigrants, with people whose skin is a little browner than ours. Because we're seeing people who are treated like they are less than human. Not even because of their legal status in the United States.
People are being hauled away by ICE officers simply because they look like they may have come from another place. ICE is detaining American citizens, Native Americans. It's detaining people from all over the place because they look different than us. And most of us, we want to move away from it.
We want to keep out of what's happening in the world around us. We want to have the good theology that says everyone belongs in God's kingdom. There are no outsiders in God's kingdom. God loves everyone.
We don't want to step down into the waters where people need us. But that's what Jesus does. When Jesus was born, God could have chosen any people at any point in time to send his son into this world as. But he sent his son into this world as part of a minority population that was being oppressed by the Roman government.
Want to talk about moving towards someone and how much God was willing to do that? Okay. There are no easy answers that solve the problems of why we treat some people like they are clean and they are welcome and why we treat other people like we want to keep them at arms distance. There is no good explanation for why there are some people that we will always seem to be treating as a nation like they are less than human.
But our call isn't to be able to answer these big theoretical problems. Our calling is to get down into the water. Our life is messy. We're sin swirls around us.
So what does this look like for us? If we're going to go toward the people that we often try to avoid. If we're going to move toward the people that Jesus moves toward, maybe it means that you decide to sit by somebody in church services. That everybody else has been keeping their distance from.
Maybe it means that you're willing to invite someone into your house that your neighbors are going to judge you for welcoming into your home. Maybe it means that you find ways that you can stand up with people who are being pushed to the margins, even if it costs you something. Means doing these things even when people will question your faith because of it. So we think about the problems that are happening in the world around us.
You can post about it on social media to try to raise awareness for it. But that's about the best you're going to get out of social media. You're going to tend marches and try to raise your voice to show the world around us that this is not acceptable. That we continue to dehumanize other individuals.
The best thing that most of us can probably do is pick up our phones or sit down at our keyboards and contact our senators, our representatives, and let them know our thoughts on what's happening in the world around us. Because as long as people's voices remain silent, the assumption is going to be that everything that is happening around us is okay. But we have to be willing to get down into the waters. We're sin swirls around us.
We're life is messy around us because that's what Jesus did. Jesus stepped down into the water with sinners. Jesus identified with people that everyone else said were unclean and unworthy. And Jesus wants us to do the same thing.
So if we're going to follow Jesus, we have to stop being afraid of contaminating ourselves. And we have to start moving toward the people that God loves. And in God's kingdom, there is no one that God does not love. In God's kingdom, there are no outsiders for us to avoid.
So let's stop acting like some people are too unclean or impure for us to get close to. That's pretty good. God, as we come to you in this time of prayer, you know that we live in a world that feels like it is sometimes so broken that it's falling apart. We live in a world where far too many of your children are treated like they are not human.
And far too often, it's because of something as small as the color of their skin. God. So maybe the first thing we need to do in a time of prayer is to lament the state for the world we live in. Maybe the first thing we need to do in times of prayer is admit the way that we can be complicit to what's happening around us by turning a blind eye or keeping our mouth shut.
But God, none of us want the world to look like it does. None of us want violence to be an everyday occurrence on the streets and the cities and this country that we live in. So help us God. Help us work as you work around us.
For we believe that there is a long moral arc to this universe that moves toward justice. But we want that justice to come. Now, help us to be your people, your hands and your feet. Help us to be willing to walk down into the waters where life gets dirty and messy and complicated so that we can truly be there to help people who are hurting, to minister to people who need you.
Because God, there are no outsiders in your kingdom. There are no people that you avoid. So God help us to stop acting like there are people we shouldn't get close to. We pray this all in Jesus' name.
Amen. Also worship with us in person. And that's going to do it for this episode of our sermon podcast. But I want to invite you to come back and join us again when our next episode drops next week.
But until then, I'll be praying for you. I hope that you have a great week and we'll see you back here soon for another sermon podcast.