This was the main text that I just preached on this past Sunday. There is so much here and I have been told so much that sometimes we miss what is right infront of us. One person was telling me about their Bible study where they parked on the line “and the heavens were torn apart”. The vividness and rawness of this sentence and this has stuck with me for ten to fifteen years. I talked about how baptism was a part of ceremonial washing, a turning back to God, Jesus’ obedience, dying to ourselves and being raised in the new life with Jesus, but there is even more than this.
One thing I like about these blogs is that I can come here and share with you things that I did not include in the sermon but also things that really struck me as I was thinking back over the sermon/message. John the baptist was teaching about repentance, and when you think about this even more, the big idea here is that there is a second/third/forth/etc chance to come to God. In my own life I doubted that God could or would possibly forgive me, and yet the simplicity of this event is that John was saying there is still hope for someone like you. No matter what your sin is, God still has love for you. This is incredibly important because there are people like myself who do or have thought cast out by God and John is saying turn back to God, turn away from your sins and turn to the God who loves you. Not will love you (i.e. if you do something, then God will love you) but does love you (right now this instant without any action on your part).