Good morning, Watermark.
That was good, that was good.
We're awake this morning.
It's great to see you guys here today.
I'm going to grab a stool so I can put my water on it.
You know, some of you I know really well.
Some of you today is my first time ever seeing your face.
But regardless of who you are, I know something about you.
I know that you want somewhere to belong in life.
And I know that because that's very basic to what it means to be a human.
We want somewhere to belong.
And that desire drives so much of what we do in life.
It's why a five-year-old cuddles up against her father on the couch
because she knows that with her father in her family is a place where she belongs.
It's why a 15-year-old starts to rebel against their parents
because they know I want somewhere new to belong
and I need to create separation between the place I've always belonged and myself
so that I can begin to belong somewhere else.
It's why we work crazy long hours at the workplace
because we need to prove to our boss that they made the right choice in hiring us
and that we belong here.
It's why people get married because there's this promise
that there's this one person and for the rest of your lives
you are going to have at least one person that you will belong with forever.
However, this desire to belong is basic to what it means to be a human.
Old or young, rich or poor, all of us have this desire to belong somewhere.
And today, we're here to celebrate belonging.
When we celebrate baptism, we are celebrating the fact that we belong.
We're celebrating the fact that we belong in a relationship with God
and we're celebrating the fact that we belong in a relationship with each other.
So first, we're celebrating the fact that we belong in a relationship with God.
Now, in today's passage, in verse 6,
Paul talks about how there's one God and Father of all.
That when you have a father, you belong in the family.
Baptism is about the fact that we belong in God's family.
And if you're not a regular in church, that might seem weird.
Like, doesn't God just love everyone?
Doesn't everyone sort of belong with him?
Isn't he a father to everyone?
Well, yes and no.
Yes, in the sense that God created us in his image.
God made us for a relationship with himself.
That God created us all to know him.
So in that sense, yes.
However, as the creator, as the one who made everything,
we owe God total allegiance and obedience in everything in life.
And you and I, again and again and again and again,
fail to give God the allegiance and obedience that we owe him.
Silly illustration of what this looks like in my life.
God says don't lie.
In my early days in Watermark,
I believed that my job security
and my ability to belong here at the church
depended on how many teenagers I could get to show up at events.
And so we would have an event,
and the turnout would maybe be a little lower than I was hoping for.
And I'd go in for a meeting with my boss,
and he would say how many kids turned up the other night.
And I had counted while the kids were there
and knew that the number was, say, 13.
And I would always round up.
I would say, you know, we had about 15 to 20.
And I would justify it to myself by being like,
yeah, 13 is about 15 to 20.
You know, technically I'm not lying.
But what was I doing?
I was skewing the truth and misrepresenting it
so that I could make myself look better than I was
because I wanted to belong.
I wanted him to know that he had made the right choice in hiring me.
And so I misrepresented the facts to make myself look better than I was.
And here's what happened when I chose to lie.
I was looking at this situation,
and I was saying, you know, God says not to lie,
but I know better than God.
I know better than God what's good for me, what's best for me.
I don't want God to tell me what to do.
I can handle this myself.
I make a better God of my life than the God of the universe does.
And so I'm going to live by my way.
And this attitude of saying, I know better than God.
I'm going to do what I want is what the Bible calls sin.
It's this attitude that tries to replace God
and set myself up as God
rather than worship the God of the universe.
And it's not just lying.
He also says things like, don't steal.
Don't get angry at other people.
Children, he says, don't disobey your parents.
Over and over and over again,
each of us has this response of sin towards God,
this response of saying, don't tell me how to live my life.
Let me be God.
You just stay out of my way.
And every day, each one of us puts these barriers
in the way of our relationship with God,
so much so that in Ephesians chapter two, verse one,
Paul says that we were children of wrath,
that we were dead in our trespasses and sins,
that we were completely separated from God.
We were hopeless.
And so what happens?
How do we get from there to chapter four, verse six,
where it says that God is our father?
Well, some people think the right response of God
to our sin is for him to just ignore it, overlook it.
You know, if he really loves me,
then he won't get upset at me
for doing things that are wrong.
But that doesn't work.
Because my sin impacts other people who God loves.
And if God cares about these other people
who my sin affects,
then he has to do something to me because of that.
Think of it this way.
I'm married.
I'm walking down the street with my wife.
Some guy walks up to her and starts saying
just horribly offensive things to her and shoving her.
And I just stand back and I'm watching.
And finally, after a few minutes of this,
the guy walks away and my wife comes over to me
and she's like, what were you doing?
I'm like, well, you know, I was just watching.
She's like, why didn't you stand up for me?
This did not happen in real life, by the way.
This is just an illustration, an example.
She comes up and she's like, why didn't you defend me?
And I say to her, well, you know, I wanted to.
I just, I really love those guys
who are picking on you so much.
I didn't want to do anything to hurt them.
Now, what should her response be in that situation?
No, I'm not showing love for them.
I'm showing apathy for her when I do that, right?
If I say, I just really love those guys so much,
I didn't want to do anything to hurt them.
Her response should be,
your love for me should lead you to defend me
in this situation, right?
And in the same way,
if God looks at all the things that we do
that hurt the people that he loves
and he ignores it and says,
well, I love you too much to do anything about it,
then what he's really saying is not, I love you.
What he's really saying is, I don't care about them.
He's saying, they're not worthy of my love.
And so I'm not going to defend them.
I'm not going to protect them.
I'm not going to take care of them.
And so because of that, God, if he truly loves humanity,
he has to defend us and stand up for justice
against those who hurt us and attack us.
But here's the problem.
We're the ones who hurt us and attack us, right?
When I tell a lie or when I steal or when I get angry,
I'm not doing those things in a vacuum.
I'm lying to people that God loves,
typically with the goal of harming them
or at least getting myself an advantage at their expense.
When I steal, I'm stealing from people who God loves.
When I get angry, I'm getting angry at people who God loves,
which means that if God truly loves them,
if God truly cares about them and cares about justice,
his love for them requires him
to respond against me with justice.
And that means that every single one of us
is in a terrible, terrible situation
because God can't just look past our sin
and say, oh, well, don't worry about it.
But God loves us.
He loves us and he doesn't want to destroy us,
even though that's what we deserve.
And so what does he do?
He comes up with a solution.
He sends his son to the earth
who lives a perfect life that we could never live
and is murdered for it.
And here's the great irony
of what happened in the trial of Jesus.
See, every time I do something wrong,
it's typically with the goal of belonging.
I lie because I think the truth will make me not belong,
so I tell a lie.
I get angry because someone mistreated me
and made me feel like I don't belong.
And so now I want to either do something to them
to get them to change their mind
or do something to them to get them to feel
the same way that they made me feel.
And what happens with Jesus is
he steps into this picture.
He lives this perfect life.
He gets arrested and put on this trial
that just made a mockery of the judicial system of his day.
And at his trial, every single person there
except for him is acting in terrible, terrible ways
because they want to belong.
They bring in these witnesses who tell lies
about what they've seen him do and heard him say.
And they tell these lies
because they want the crowds to like them.
They have these crowds of people shouting out,
crucify him, crucify him, kill him.
And these exact same crowds a week before
were standing in the city welcoming him,
saying, save us.
What happens to change you from shouting out,
save us one week to shouting out, kill him the next week?
You have a desire to belong and realize that
you have to change your tune if you want to belong.
Pilate, the guy who was in charge of giving the sentence for Jesus
and making a judgment about whether he was innocent or guilty,
he stood up in front of the entire crowd and he said,
I find no guilt in this man.
He's innocent.
He should go free.
And then someone reminds him,
you know, if you have that type of attitude,
you might not belong in government too much more.
Your boss might take you out of power.
And so Pilate says, fine, you do what you want.
My hands are clean, but you do what you want.
And they took him away to kill him.
And it's not just people who are against Jesus.
Peter, one of his best friends,
he's there watching this whole trial.
And he lies about the fact that he's ever even met Jesus
because he doesn't want to stick out from a crowd
in a way that's going to get him hurt or maybe even killed.
And in all of this,
everyone is doing these things to try and get themselves to belong
with the crowd around them.
And in the process is murdering God.
And in the midst of this whole thing,
Jesus is the only one who's focused on belonging with God,
not the crowd.
And he gets killed for it.
But what the Bible tells us is that in that process,
Jesus was rejected on our behalf.
All of the rejection,
all of the alienation that we have deserved
for everything we've ever done wrong,
he took on himself in that moment.
And to prove that that's true,
God raised him from the dead three days later
so that we can have forgiveness,
so that we can have a place to belong with God forever.
And so Jesus purchases our belonging with God
despite everything we've ever done
to alienate ourselves from him.
And the Bible says that this forgiveness from God
is available to all of us who believe in him.
In this passage in Ephesians chapter four,
when it says there's one faith,
what that's saying is,
the one thing that all Christians have in common
is our belief,
our faith that Jesus rescues us,
that Jesus forgives us,
and he gives us a place to belong with God.
And so if you're here today,
God is offering you a chance to belong with him.
And that's what we're celebrating in the baptism
of these seven people today,
is the fact that God has given them a place
to belong with him forever.
And that is worth celebrating.
So that's the first thing we're celebrating in baptism,
the fact that they have a place to belong with God forever.
But it's not just celebrating
that they have a place to belong with God.
It's also celebrating that they have a place
to belong with God's people.
See, this passage in Ephesians four,
it's all about interpersonal relationships.
He talks about how we're supposed to bear with one another
in love, maintain unity,
how there's one body, one spirit,
one hope, one Lord, one faith,
one baptism, one God, one Father of all.
He's talking about unity.
He's talking about connection
between us and one another.
And that connection is something
that is purchased for us by Jesus on the cross.
And this connection that Jesus offers us
is very different than any type of connection
or belonging that we typically get in the world,
which is really good news for us.
Because typically in the world,
if I want to belong somewhere,
I have to prove that I belong there.
So in high school,
I wanted to belong on the baseball team.
And what it took to belong on the baseball team
is you have to go to tryouts,
you have to play really hard,
and you have to convince the coach
that you're one of the 15 or 20 best players there.
And then he'll tell you you belong.
So I wanted to belong on the baseball team.
I went to the tryouts,
and the coach said,
Eric, you don't belong.
And that's what it takes to belong in our world.
You have to prove yourself.
We want to belong in a workplace.
So we build up our CV for our entire career
so we can prove that we belong.
We go in and we spend the interview
convincing the boss that we're brilliant
so we can prove that we belong.
And then we get hired,
and we can't sit back and relax.
We have to prove day in, day out,
every single moment
that we continue to belong
because we've achieved it,
because we've put in the effort,
and we've made it work.
And here's the thing about belonging
with God's people.
There's nothing we can do to achieve it.
The standard is perfection.
We all fall short of that.
What we deserve is separation,
alienation, exile.
And yet God looks down at us,
he loves us,
he rescues us,
and he gives us a place to belong
with his people forever.
Not because of anything that we've achieved,
but because of what Jesus
has accomplished for us on the cross.
The fact that he purchased for us
belonging with God
and with his people.
And so we don't belong in the church
because we've passed this
moral achievement test.
We don't belong in the church
because we got an A in Sunday school.
No, actually, to belong in the church
requires us to admit
that we're broken and messed up people.
But we're broken and messed up people
who have received an incredible love
and been given a place to belong by God.
And the fact that we're broken
and messed up people
means that we're going to make mistakes a lot.
But the fact that we're here
because we've been rescued by a God
who loved us when we didn't deserve it
means that we now have power and strength
to love one another
and forgive one another
and walk with one another
when the people around us
also don't deserve it.
That's the nature of what this family is
that God has brought us into
and given us a place to belong in.
So today we're celebrating
the fact that these baptism candidates
have a place to belong with God.
We're celebrating that they have a place
to belong with us.
And I want to give a couple challenges here
in closing
to some different groups of people
that we have with us today.
First off,
if you're one of the people
getting baptized today,
my challenge to you,
celebrate this day.
This is an awesome day.
We're celebrating the fact
that you've gone from being alienated
from God to belonging with God,
from being alienated from God's people
to belonging with God's people.
And it's not because you've done anything great,
but because God looked at you
and he loved you
and he rescued you
and he did something great for you.
That deserves to be celebrated.
So celebrate that today.
Next up,
if you're here today
and you're a Christian
and you've been baptized already,
my challenge for you,
celebrate this day.
This is awesome.
We have new people
coming into our family.
This is,
if there's ever a reason to celebrate,
this is it.
God has rescued them.
God has made them
our brothers and sisters.
God has brought us together
and given us all a place
to belong with him.
And today
is an awesome opportunity
for you to remember your baptism,
to remember what God did in your life,
how he rescued you,
how he brought you in.
And made you part of his people as well.
Baptism isn't just something
we should do once
and then forget about it.
It's something we should remind ourselves of
again and again and again
and celebrate what God has done for us.
And today is an awesome day
for you to do that.
Third up,
if you're here today
and you're not a Christian,
I don't know why you came here today.
I don't know whether
you got dragged along by someone,
whether you got invited for the baptism,
whether you just rolled out of bed
and we're like,
I wonder what church is like.
I guess I'll go check it out today.
But I believe
that God has you here
because he wants you to hear
about what he has done for you
and about the acceptance
that he is offering to you today.
You know,
as you hear about this,
this opportunity to belong with God
and his people
and about baptism
and the celebration,
I don't know what your response is.
I think a common response
in our culture is like,
oh, that's nice for you,
but it's not really my thing.
That's a terrible response.
And here's why.
Because if what we're talking about here
is anything less than absolutely true,
you should not be celebrating
or cheering these other people on
as they get baptized.
You should be pitying them
and trying to convince them to stop.
Because what they're doing
is they're throwing away their lives,
chasing after a lie.
And you should not celebrate that.
However,
if this message is absolutely true,
then there's no room for you
to stand on the sideline as a bystander.
The only appropriate response,
if this is true,
is for you to join,
to become a Christian,
to commit your life
to following Jesus as well.
There's a man named C.S. Lewis.
You probably have heard
of the Chronicles of Narnia series.
He said,
Christianity,
if false,
is of no importance.
And if true,
of infinite importance.
The only thing it cannot be
is moderately important.
So my challenge for you is this.
Examine the claims of Christianity.
Examine Jesus.
Look at who he is.
Look at what he claimed to be.
And when you discover that it's true,
yes, I said when,
because I'm very confident
that if you take the time to look,
you will find that it's true.
Commit your life to following him.
And the final group
I want to challenge today
is if you're here today
and you say that you're a Christian
but you haven't been baptized yet,
I want to challenge you
to get baptized.
Because baptism is the way
that we say to ourselves,
to the world,
to God,
that we belong in his family.
Baptism is an awesome privilege
that God gives to his people.
And if you're saying
that you belong to God's people
but you don't want
to acknowledge that publicly,
I think you have to ask yourself why.
You know, being baptized
doesn't make you a Christian,
but if you're not willing
to get baptized,
you should really take a step back
and examine whether you are a Christian.
At the very least,
if you're not willing to get baptized,
you shouldn't be taking communion.
I heard a story recently
about this guy.
He'd been dating a girl
for several months.
And there were some issues
in the relationship,
but he said the thing that happened
that was like the last straw
is there was a picture
of the two of them.
He wanted her to put it online
so everyone could see
that they were together
and they were happy
and she didn't want
to put it online.
She didn't actually want
any evidence online
of the fact that the two of them
were together.
She said,
I'm happy to be in a relationship
with you,
but I don't want the world
to know about it.
And do you know how he responded?
He broke up with her.
Guys,
don't be like that girl
in your relationship with Jesus.
If this is something
that you say
is important enough
that you're going to trust in him,
then it's something
that's important enough
that you should be willing
to let others know
that you're trusting in him
as well.
So if you haven't been baptized yet,
my challenge to you
is get baptized.
I know it's a big commitment.
I know that it may cost you,
but guys,
it costs God his life.
To give you an opportunity
to belong with him.
Any sacrifice
we have to make in comparison
is going to be small.
And it's going to be
absolutely worth it.
Let's pray.
Father,
we thank you for your love.
We thank you
that you are a God
who looks at us
when we are at our worst
and doesn't wait
for us to change,
doesn't wait for us
to prove ourselves,
doesn't wait for us
to earn your love,
but who reaches out
to us in love
and rescues us
despite everything
we've done wrong.
God,
we thank you
for giving us a place
to belong with you
and with your people.
We pray that
today would be
an awesome day
to celebrate
what you have done,
to celebrate
the new life
that you've given
to these people.
We pray that we would be
a supportive community,
a loving community,
a community
that points each other
towards you.
In Jesus' name,
Amen.