Pastor
Steve Geiger Baptism of Our Lord
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Acts 10:34-38
34 Then Peter began to speak: “I now realize how
true it is that God does not show favoritism 35 but accepts men from every
nation who fear him and do what is right. 36 You know the message God sent to
the people of Israel, telling the good news of peace through Jesus Christ, who
is Lord of all. 37 You know what has happened throughout Judea, beginning in
Galilee after the baptism that John preached— 38 how God anointed Jesus of
Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and how he went around doing good and
healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with him.
See What God Sees Acts
10:34-38
1. We all are the same
2. We are different
because of Baptism
What do you see when you
look in the mirror? Do you see a nose
and eyes and teeth to be brushed, or do you see your soul?
What do you see when you
walk down the street? Do you see the
sun most brilliant, a towering tree trunk and sky so high and blue, or do you
see creation groaning in eager expectation for the Last Day, when the sons of
God will be revealed?
What do you see when you
watch tsunami reports? People finally
being helped by international aid groups, or souls, so many still hurting as
they continue to worship false gods?
What do you see when you
look at yourself, at creation, at the sea of humanity?
We put our eyes up to funny
machines to help the doctor correct our vision. Today we put our eyes to the Word of God to correct our spiritual
vision, that we might see what God sees.
Peter needed new
glasses. He had grown up imagining that
things like the color of a nose put a barrier between God and a human. “God likes Jewish noses, not foreign ones,”
Peter thought. Jesus had said that he came
first for the lost sheep of Israel, but when a particular foreign lady expressed
confidence that he was her Savior too, he praised that confidence as greater
than any he had found in Israel. Had
Peter forgotten?
It’s easy to understand his
confusion, and discomfort, with things foreign. For over a thousand years God had asked the Jews to be
different. Jews couldn’t eat ham. Gentiles did. Jews, no bacon. Gentiles,
bacon. Jews, no pork chops. Gentiles, pork chops, with apple sauce if
they wanted. God asked Jews to be
different. It seems, though, that the
Jews of Jesus’ day had taken this “we’re different” idea one step too far. They even made a human law that said it
would be wrong even to enter the home of a foreigner. Unclean, they concluded.
Peter needed new
glasses. To see clearly. That some of those human laws were flat
wrong. To see also that God was
changing things. No longer would he be
shining the spotlight of his love in such a unique way on Jews. He did that for a time as judgment on so
many who rejected him after the flood, after the Tower of Babel. He did it also to bring a Savior into the
world, the Savior of the world.
Now God gave Peter new
glasses. In a vision. A big sheet from heaven with cows and sheep
and pigs in it. Cows and sheep and
pigs? Pigs? Yuck. “No ham. No bacon.
No pork chops.” Except the voice
of God said to Peter, “Kill and eat it all.”
A change.
Then a chance to try out the
new way. A voice. The Holy Spirit. Divine doorbell. “Peter,
three guys downstairs. Go with them.”
You know where they
went? To the home of a Gentile, where
Peter couldn’t go. But he could now eat
ham, and he realized it was OK to visit a foreigner, because God didn’t love
based on ethnicity nor on anything else the human eye might see.
God doesn’t judge by
faces. Norwegian. Canadian.
African. Or American.
God accepts people from
every nation who fear him and do what is right.
Who fear him. God isn’t saying that he accepts people from
every nation who fear any god. In Acts
4:12, speaking of Jesus the same Peter says, “Salvation is found in no one
else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be
saved.”
Those who respect, who fear,
who worship him, they are accepted.
That matters. But not what you
look like.
We are tempted to look
differently at people of other cultures who are different from us. They can’t speak our language, so they’re
less intelligent. They don’t look like
us, so they can’t fit in. Our sinful
flesh is tempted to see something not even God sees.
This is true not only as we
are tempted to demean another race. We
see things not even God sees as we demean ourselves. Judging ourselves based not on what God sees, but on what other
people see.
You’re at work. You accidentally catch someone whispering
something bad about you. You feel crushed. You go home. You feel crushed. You’re
sure that everyone at work is talking about you, looking down on you. “Nobody likes me.” But would that matter?
Even if true, a reason to despair?
We, judging ourselves based on what others think of us when not even God
judges based on what human eyes can see.
What God is teaching us is
that he doesn’t care whether we have the funniest personality or the most
boring one. He doesn’t care if all your
neighbors are in awe of you or if your neighbors make fun of you behind your
back. He doesn’t care whether you are,
in the eyes of the world, beautiful or ugly, whether you are African or
Spanish, whether you are rich or poor.
He doesn’t care whether you have the highest position in your company or
the very lowest.
God does not accept people
based on their face, or what others think of you, or what talents you have, or
what color skin your parents gave you.
God accepts people who fear
him, who respect him, who do what is right.
That is the only thing that matters.
Is that the only thing that matters to us?
Or have we overlooked
that? Suddenly we may have a whole new
concern. People who do what is right?
I haven’t. I’ve done that face-judging thing. Judged others, judged myself based on
outward stuff. We are more excited to
hang out with a rich person who can do something nice for us than we are to
hang out with a poorer person who might need our help. Our flesh plays the rating game, putting
people as we walk down school halls into “cool” category, “popular, weird,
geek, slob.” Never talk with him. Or we rip ourselves--totally
depressed--because we treat as important what others think.
Do what is right? What happens if you did what is wrong?
Who then is there whom God
can accept?
There is another verse. We need to read that one. “The message God sent to the people of
Israel, telling the good news of peace through Jesus Christ.”
Knowing you’ve done wrong is
not being at peace. It’s being
scared. Something’s not right. Do you want to know how to get peace? It comes through Jesus Christ.
Cornelius, that Roman
soldier--the foreigner visited by Peter--he had heard of Jesus. Who knows what he had heard. What Peter told him next must have blown his
mind.
Peter announces to Cornelius
that this Jesus brought peace. That
this Jesus was Lord over all. That this
Jesus was killed, but he was raised from the dead. He is now judge of the living and the dead.
Oh, man. That’s not good. Until you remember that it’s the same one who brought you peace.
Tell me more.
Well, it began in Galilee
with the baptism which John preached.
It all started with baptism.
Jesus was baptized. Baptism, it
gave a mind change. It gave the
forgiveness of sins to crowds of troubled sinners, like you and me.
Jesus, baptized? John didn’t quite understand, but Jesus said
he had to do it. It was part of the
plan. What a blessing for you who have
been baptized.
It’s not just water. It’s not just a human invention that we do
for fun. God was baptized. Talk about a celebrity endorsement. If God drank Pepsi, you’d probably toss out
the Coke. God was baptized, because he
wanted you to know that this was the best.
And what does baptism do?
Well, Paul says that all of
you who have been baptized were buried with Jesus into his death. That you were united with Jesus in his
death. Now Jesus’ death was Jesus being
punished by the Father for all our sins.
So if baptism unites you with him in his death, then you have already
died and you have already been punished.
It’s like being guilty of a crime worthy of prison but then being told
you’ve already done your time.
In your baptism, in Jesus,
you already did your time.
And not only isn’t the
suffering completed. The stigma is
gone.
On this earth a criminal
might do his time, but he then might get put on a public computer list and feel
that everyone knows what he did. A
stigma.
We may feel that a stigma
will always remain with us for the bad things that we have done. No.
Once Jesus has done your time, the sin is gone. Completely.
The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses you from all your sins. You’re totally clean.
That’s
peace. Yes, “God was pleased to have
all his fullness dwell in [Jesus], and through him to reconcile to himself all
things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through
his blood, shed on the cross” (Colossians 1).
Jesus’
blood. Jesus. Who went about doing good and healing all who were under the
power of the devil. Setting free people
like you and me from the captivity of sin and its guilt. Doing good.
Doing righteous things.
Then,
“God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become
the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). We, declared righteous in the sight of God. And “all of you who have been baptized into
Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ” (Galatians 3). Given credit for Jesus’ good things in our
baptism.
What
a gift, and it has changed who you are.
God
accepts those who fear him and do what is right. Because God gave you new birth in your baptism, or new birth
through the Word as you heard these truths, you became something you were
not. You did not fear him. You did not do what is right. But: “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new
creation. The old has gone. The new has
come” (2 Corinthians 5:17).
Hear
it again. In baptism “we know that our
old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away
with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin . . . in the same way count
yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Romans 6)
You
aren’t a slave to sin anymore. It will
attack you. Your flesh will try to
exaggerate its power over you. But sin
shall not be your master. It’s a
loser. In Jesus you are a winner.
Because
this is what you are, fear God. Do what
is right. Be what God has made
you. Don’t offer your bodies to
sin. Offer them to God.
Say,
“I don’t care whether that person is rich, poor, popular, or weird. I see what God sees, a soul for whom Jesus
died.” And love them. Say, “I don’t care what people say about
me. I see what God sees, a soul for
whom Jesus died and a soul reborn through baptism. I am a servant of the Almighty God. My master. My judge. My Savior.
Vision
corrected. Your new glasses are now
on. See what God sees.
Amen.