Sunday 07 • 07 • 19

For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison because they formally did not obey when God's patience awaited in the days of Noah while the ark was being prepared in which a few, that is eight persons, were brought safely through water. Baptism which corresponds to this now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience. Through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him. Amen. — 1 Peter 3:18-22

Father, we pray you'd open your word to us. Open our hearts to your word. Lord, we thank you that your word has power like no other book and father, we pray that you would come by your power and speak to us this morning in Jesus name. Amen.

The Challenge of This Passage

Did you ever play the game "going on a bear hunt" as a kid? Like the sing-song kind of kids call and response? There's all these things that the bear hunt encompasses that you have to get around. The refrain goes: "Can't go over it, can't go under it, can't go around it, gotta go through it." You gotta swim the river, you gotta climb it.

That's how I feel about this passage. We do preaching a lot of times in our church—sometimes topical, but a lot of times just going through a book of the Bible. One of the great things about that is we cover lots of great passages. One of the bad things about it as a preacher is you have to cover passages where you're like, "Can't go around it, gotta go through it."

That's how I feel about this one. We as a church believe that all of God's word is inspired, but that doesn't mean it's all the same clarity. This one's a hard one. In fact, Martin Luther, the reformer, is famously said about this passage: "This is a strange text and certainly a more obscure passage than any other in the New Testament. I still don't know for sure what the apostle meant."

Encouraging words for me. It's more like, "Okay, gotta go through it." So you're on a bear hunt with this guy this morning. Just hang in, okay?

But I do want to say this: this is an important passage even though it's an obscure one because it speaks to something that's really important but hard for us to talk about.

The Context: Resources for Suffering

To give you a clue what this passage is about—right before it, Russell preached a great sermon last week. If you missed it, go back and listen to it—"If it's God's will that you suffer in this life for doing good. That is part of what God calls his people to do: to suffer for doing good."

And then right after this passage, chapter four verse one, Peter says:

Therefore, since Christ has suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same purpose. — 1 Peter 4:1

This passage is squarely between those two to tell us the resources we have as Christians for walking through hardship, for walking through suffering and pain in this life. And this passage, although it's kind of complicated, that's what it's about.

I just want to ask you to hold that in your head because Peter is writing to a group of people who have suffered and who will suffer in ways that probably nobody in this room will ever experience. He's writing to a group of people who have had their houses destroyed because they were Christians. They've had their businesses plundered because they were Christians. They've had family members killed because they were Christians.

He's writing to a group of people who are facing hardship and he's already told them—as we've read over and over in this text—you are aliens and strangers. You are exiles in the land of your birth. You are not from here. You are different in a good way, and that's hard.

Suffering Comes for Everyone

Look, while this may not be you today—you may feel like you are just riding all the waves of awesomeness in your life and everything is in the "W" category for you right now. You may not be suffering this morning. You may not be having a hard thing. But here, I can guarantee this as your pastor: you will. There will be hard days that come. There will be times of suffering and trial when you're like, "Really Jesus? Really? This is how you treat your kids? This is what it means to follow you in this place?"

And so in my car on the parking lot, I have a can of Fix-A-Flat. You guys know what Fix-A-Flat is? Like it's the can with a tube on the top and you get a bad flat, you hook it up and you push the button, right? And it gets you down the road.

And so, this morning, just like the fix a flat, I don't need that right now and you may not feel like, "Hey, I need a sermon on hardship and how to get through it this morning," but you will. And so, like fix a flat, I want you to have this. I want you to put this away, file it in the back of your head. This is important stuff for you to have.

And Peter is going to tell us, "Here's the resource. Here's what you've got, follower of Jesus, exiles and sojourners. Here's what you have—your fix a flat. Remember Jesus, remember Noah, remember your baptism." That's about as clear as mud. So let's jump in here together.

Remember Jesus

Here's the easy part of the passage. Look at verse 18.

Remember Jesus, for Christ also died for sins once and for all, the just for the unjust, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order that he might bring us to God. — 1 Peter 3:18

Now, Jesus died for sins. That's about as clear a simple statement of what Jesus has done for us as there is. But let me just remind you of what you already know.

This is your biggest problem in life. It's not your evil boss. It's not your extended family conflicts. It's not a lack of marriageable men. It's not that your salary is never quite enough. It's not the problems with your car or your house or your husband or your kids—all those things that we think plague us as the biggest problems.

But Isaiah 59 says, "No, your biggest problem is that your iniquities, your sins have made a separation between you and your God." And the biggest problem that we face in life—every person on this planet—is that we are eternally separated from God, and nothing we can do about it. Save Jesus.

Jesus died once and for all. The righteous for the unrighteous—for sins to rescue us. And He says here, "Jesus died once for all." His death was the final and all-sufficient payment for this. This is why people all over the world throughout history have laid down their lives willingly as followers of Jesus. This is why people have been burned at the stake rather than deny Jesus. This is why people have given their lives in missions overseas, have packed all their clothes in a coffin in order to go preach the gospel, because they said, "This is bigger than anything. All the suffering, all the discomforts of my life are nothing compared to this truth. Jesus has paid everything for me."

And He's done it in such a complete way, done in such a full and complete way, that there's nothing I can do that adds to this, and there's nothing I can do that can take away from it.

The Absurdity of the Gospel

Jesus dies, and He says here, "The righteous for the unrighteous." Humanly speaking, that is absurd. But we have great stories throughout literature and history of people dying, laying down their lives willingly for a child—you know, somebody's got their whole future ahead of them—or laying down their lives for somebody who's going to make a big contribution in society.

But nobody expects a torture victim to lay down her life for her torturer. That is unconscionable. And that's the gospel. That is the gospel.

You ever heard of a man named Brian Widener? Brian Widener became a skinhead around the age of 14, and he spent sixteen years involved with racist organizations, neo-Nazi organizations in the Midwest. He co-founded a white supremacist group in Indiana that became a nationwide phenomenon because of its extreme violence against people of color in this country. Really, really angry, hateful person.

But Widener's story changed in 2006 when he and his brand new wife, named Julie, met the Lord Jesus Christ and they repented. They repented of their racist views. They repented of their evil, angry past, and they came to Jesus. And they were immediately on the run because the organization that they were part of threatened their lives. Former friends were out to kill them, and they had to go into hiding.

They finally got free from all that, had a baby, and tried to start life over. But shortly after this, Brian faced the need to get multiple medical procedures in order to make it in life, and he had nothing. He had nobody to turn to. And in his desperation, reaching out to group after group—"Please help me"—he turned to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Now, if you're not familiar with the Southern Poverty Law Center, it's an organization founded to combat groups like the KKK and the neo-Nazis in the United States. And not only did the SPLC reach their arms out to this man who had once killed people of color in this country, but they had an anonymous donor who came forward with $35,000 to pay for his surgeries.

Why does that story get you? Pastors love those kinds of stories, right? Why do we love those stories? I mean, it's the unrighteous. The unrighteous is shown incredible mercy by the righteous.

Someone who pays an extreme price and this is nothing compared to what God has done for us in Jesus Christ. God comes to you, his sworn enemies. And you look like a bunch of nice people but look, you are evil people and I am too. This is what the gospel tells us. We're made in his image and yet we rebel against him. We are his enemies naturally and yet God comes to us and he pays the ultimate price in Jesus Christ.

Christ died for sins once and for all. The unrighteous, the righteous for the unrighteous in order that he might bring us to God.

This is perfectly, completely true. If you are a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, Peter says, this is your hope in life and death. This is the banner over your life. It is finished. Paid in full. Nothing you can add to it. Nothing you can take away from it.

Why This Matters in Suffering

Now, why do we need to know this? Why is Peter telling us this in the midst of a passage about suffering? This is why. Because this is what happens to me. And this is what happens to you in places when things don't make sense. And when hardships come and you're like, I don't know. Like, Jesus, why would you treat your kids this way?

See, our enemy whispers in our ear, you're not really his. The whole thing's a joke. It's made up. Surely you send away your day of grace. Surely God is done with you and your heart is inclined to believe it. And so Peter says, this is your confidence. No matter what happens in your life, it is not evidence that God has wiped his hands from you. He has not done so. His sacrifice of Jesus is so complete and so sure that any sufferings and hardship that come in your life, they are God's discipline for his kids but they are not a sign of his cursing of you or his rejection of you. Amen. Amen.

So we need to know that. Remember Jesus and then he goes on from this. Peter says, remember Noah and this is where you start scratching your head at this passage, okay? So hang in with me on this. Y'all are smart people. Y'all can do this one. So just hang in. We're going on a bear hunt.

The Noah Account

Remember Noah. Listen to verses nineteen and twenty again.

In which, in the spirit, he—that is Jesus—went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison because they formally did not obey. When God's patience waited in the days of Noah while the ark was being prepared in which a few—that is eight persons—were brought safely through the water.

Right? Okay. So let's go through this one and kind of work through what does this mean? But before I do so, I just want to underscore this part. Yes, this is that Noah Ark story. This is the Noah and the animals. The pair of the two by two, right? This is that story but I want you to notice that Peter treats this as fact not fable. In fact, the Bible treats this as fact, not fable.

Now, this is hard for us. There are a lot of people who are like, yeah, there are lots of Bible parts that I really get but like this whole Noah's Ark story, like, really? A worldwide flood. Right. But can I just point out? The Bible consistently points to this as fact. Can I explain all the science behind it? No. But archaeological history points to this as a fact. If you look at Mesopotamian cultures, there are four Mesopotamian cultures surrounding Israel where this is imprinted on their coins. Variations of the Noah and the Ark worldwide flood story exist in their literature. Why? Because it's made up? No, because it happened.

And I have a good friend who has gone back and is doing helpful research to come alongside a find that was made in 2010 on Mount Ararat. 13,800 feet, 2010, they discovered a large wooden three-tiered structure the size of a football field with enormous wooden beams way, way above the tree line, buried under snow and rock. Now, they're doing all the archaeological research on this, but I just got to say, expand your mind a little bit on this. This isn't just stuff of children's Bible books.

So what does it mean that Jesus preached to the spirits in prison from Noah's day? Like, what do we do with this passage? So we're going to go through this Family Feud style, okay? So let me give you option A, option B, option C, and then we're going to go survey says, right? That's what they do on Family Feud. So you're going to hang in with me on this.

Option A, okay, let's do this one. We often read the Apostle's Creed. In fact, we'll do so later in the service. Printed right there in your bulletin underneath the scripture passage. And a lot of people look at this passage through the lens of the Apostle's Creed. The Apostle's Creed said, he descended into hell. He was raised again on the third day. And people go, okay, okay. So maybe this is describing that time, Holy Saturday, Jesus has died.

It's before he's resurrected and there's a prison somewhere that's in hell where there are some spirits that are imprisoned there and Jesus went and preached there between his death and resurrection. Now, here's the problem with that. None of the gospels say that. And here's the other problem with that—the word for preach there is the word evangelize. Euangelion means to proclaim eternal life to those and invite them to receive it. Evangelize.

So, let me ask you this class. You ready? Option A: do we believe that there is some kind of purgatory out there where Jesus went and preached and gave people a chance who were dead or spirits to receive Jesus from hell? No. Survey says, right? That doesn't work, right?

Alright. So, let's try option B. Maybe Jesus, again, same scenario between when he died on the cross and resurrected, maybe he went to the holding pen where all the people who died before Jesus became a baby. They're all now spirits and Jesus goes there and he preaches to them—all the ones who hadn't had a chance to hear him preach. He gives them a chance to hear the gospel. Now, that might make sense, except this passage says something weird. It says there's this particular group of spirits from Noah's day that Jesus was preaching to. Not everybody. And we know things from the Bible where Jesus says things like:

Abraham saw my day and was glad of it.

The Old Testament people understood enough of the promises of God. They didn't understand everything about his coming, his death, and resurrection, but they understood enough to be saved by faith. So survey says, that doesn't work yet.

Option C: The Spirit Speaking Through Noah

Well, let's try it again. Option C—now, this is a mind blower, but hang in with me. The whole passage refers back to the people who were living in Noah's day. They were disobedient people and Noah kept saying, "Come into the ark. Come join us," and they were like, "Nothing doing. Don't want anything to do with you or your giant football field-sized boat in the middle of a desert, right?" So they were disobedient, but Jesus, by the power of the Spirit, was preaching through Noah to the people in his day. Ding, ding, ding. I think we got a winner.

Now, here's why. How could Jesus, before he's born, be preaching through Noah? Well, this is biblical. Like we will find out in Ephesians chapter two. Paul says:

Jesus went and preached peace to you in Ephesus.

Now, if you've read the gospels, you know Jesus never went to Greece. He never even left Palestine. He spent his whole life in this one little area, never traveled over to Ephesus and Greece. But what is Paul saying? Through faithful preaching, regular people like this guy, right?—proclaiming Jesus. Jesus is preaching salvation to you. Jesus is offering you life. It's through that.

And we read in Second Peter two five that Noah was a "preacher of righteousness." We read in First Peter one that in the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit was speaking through people—regular people. The Spirit of Jesus was speaking through regular people prophesying about Jesus' own coming. So he's preaching through that.

Here's what it is: Jesus preached in the days of Noah through Noah and offered them an opportunity to escape judgment. Offered them an opportunity to escape and be saved.

What This Means for Us Today

Now, that's great, preacher boy, what does this have to do with us? Why is this helpful for you and me? Well, in your suffering, I would just want to remind you of a couple things.

One: it tells us again of the greatness of Jesus Christ. Jesus is not hampered by space or distance or time. He is able to save to the uttermost all kinds of people all over the world. So this morning, Jesus is at work in Uzbekistan and Michigan, Boston and Mozambique, Nicaragua and Northern Ireland. The Spirit of Jesus—yes, he is at the right hand of the Father in heaven, but the Holy Spirit takes what is his and promotes that throughout the world. He is not limited in any way. He is that powerful.

Second thing we see here: it's better to trust in Jesus and even suffer for it than to disobey and reject Jesus and be cast into prison like these people did. It's better. This is what happened to these spirits. The people who are now dead—they were like, "Really? An ark? You're building a boat in the desert?" And there are people all around you right now, all the time, where you are the representative of Jesus in their lives. You are the lone person. And sometimes you're like, "This—I feel like I'm selling popsicles to Eskimos. Like, nobody wants Jesus." But look, you're offering life to other people. You're offering life.

So look, they—those people in his day stayed comfortable, didn't want anything to do with him. There are people like that all around us. Do you know people right now who are more successful than you? Make better salaries and seem to be happier than you. Yes. Oh yes. Everybody in this room does, right? And yet you're still like, "This is life and that's death." Doesn't make any sense. Looks like up is down and down is up.

The Advantage of Being a Misunderstood Minority

The last thing I want to say is this: This is the other encouragement in hardship, and especially in this present cultural moment—it is no disadvantage to you to be a small, misunderstood minority. Welcome to America. Welcome to post-Christian America. More and more, this is going to be the case.

Yes, you can find churches that will tell you whatever you want to hear. I talk to people and they're like, "Well, my pastor said that's fine." Listen, we're a congregation that says our authority is this book. We're not making it up. We're not fudging it. We're not going to change it, right? And so this is what it means to be in post-Christian America—to be a person who says, "You know what? I may be misunderstood. I may be part of a small, persecuted minority." And these people did. These eight people who got on board this boat before it starts raining. And you know, that's what it means to be an exile, a foreigner, or a stranger in the land of your birth.

If you're a minority with God, you will be saved. The tables will be turned. Trust him.

Baptism as Spiritual Encouragement

But then, this is not why Peter brings up Noah. He's got a bigger point, and here's the weird one, okay? So put on your safety belt, put on your backpack and your helmet because you need it for this. The whole reason he brings up Noah is to point us to baptism, okay? And this is where it gets funky. So hang in with me.

Remember your baptism—verses 21 and 22. Now here's the thing: I talk to people all the time who are going through hard things, and I have yet to ever have, in all my ministry as a pastor, someone say to me, "You know, Jeff, what's really getting me through right now—just what is really pulling me through right now—is my baptism." Right? Doesn't that sound like crazy talk? I mean, it sounds like crazy talk to be like, "My baptism is such an encouragement. That's what's getting me through this hard time." And yet Peter would say, "That's exactly what I want you to think." And people in generations before us would say, "That's exactly true. That is exactly true."

Like this phrase—"remember your baptism?" I mean, aren't you like, "Really?" I mean, some of you were baptized as babies. You're like, "I don't remember nothing. I don't remember nothing, right?" Like, what does it mean to remember your baptism? Why is he so big on this?

Well, for example, Martin Luther—the monk who was the reformer—in 1517 kind of launches the Protestant Reformation by accident. Didn't really mean to, but that's what he was doing. And he was a man who struggled his whole life with doubts, with fears, with like, "Am I really still a Christian? Does God really still love me?" He would have these dreams. He would wake up in a cold sweat where he would see Satan standing over him and laughing at him and saying, "This is not you. I'm ready to usher you into the gates of hell."

And so Luther had made a plaque for his bedroom that said, "Remember your baptism." He would walk around on days when he was really discouraged and he would say to himself—and this sounds like crazyville to us, right?—"I'm baptized. I am baptized. I am baptized."

Now, why would he say that? Because he knew something about First Peter that we missed today. See, I think when we think about baptism, we think, "Yeah, I mean, that's a thing. I guess we do it in our church. You know, it's a thing. We do it." But we think of it as something we do that indicates a choice we've made, or something maybe your family did to you that you're like, "I guess that happened. I don't really remember. It just feels kind of like trivia."

So let's listen to what Peter says to us because he's like, "This is rocket fuel. This is rocket fuel for enduring hardship." And he shows us two things about baptism that I want you to have as part of your vocabulary. One is that baptism is a sign. Second, baptism is a seal.

Baptism is a sign. Baptism is a seal. Let's look at these together.

So first, listen again to Peter, verse 21:

Corresponding to that—corresponding to the flood, remember—when Peter sees Noah in the ark, he thinks baptism, not like us, but he's like, "Corresponding to that flood, baptism now saves you."

Say what? So what is he talking about here? He can't mean that baptism is a saving event. He can't mean that just the act of putting water on people would save them. I've told you guys this before.

I say it a little tongue in cheek. If that were the case, we would not be looking for a building. We would be looking for a firetruck as a church. With a big hose and like driving around Downtown Raleigh spraying people, right? Like if that worked, man, we would do it. It's not salvific. And we make that clarification. Every time we baptize a baby in this church, this is not magic water. We are not automatically turning a child into a Christian right now.

And we know this too from the rest of scripture. If you've read scripture, you know this. So, the thief on the cross, next to Jesus, Jesus never gets off the cross, runs up to him, throws a little water on him, gets back on the cross, and says, "Today, you'll be with me in paradise," right? He was an unbaptized person who was clearly saved. Esau, in the Old Testament, circumcised, which is later replaced with baptism, but clearly not a believer in God. So, baptism is not magic in that way.

What does this mean then? Rather, it's what baptism represents that's the big deal for Peter and for us. It's what baptism represents or symbolizes that saves you. Peter is speaking in a language that theologians call sacramental union—which you don't need to know that word, but you know what happens every week. If you've been around our church, you know we love this table. We love the Lord's Supper. And every week, I stand up or one of the other pastors stands up with a basket and a cup, and we say, "This is the body of Christ. This is the blood of Christ."

Now, you look at this. Does this look like a body? No. Does this look like blood? Right? This is grape juice and wine and bread or gluten-free crackers. But you know what we mean as shorthand. Every week, you know that what we mean is this represents so much. There's so much bound up in this symbol that what we're pointing to is beyond the symbol to what it really represents. That's what Peter's talking about. It's like baptism. The washing of Jesus is what saves you. The cleansing that comes from his blood for sinners. That's what saves you. We just read about this—about how he died once and for all for sinners.

But he's saying this to you, and this is the gold in this. Your story is a Noah's Ark story. Your story, your history, your background is a Noah's Ark story, and this is what he means by this. See, he's saying the waters in Noah's day were sent by God as a judgment upon sinners. The worldwide flood was because sin was so rampant and over all the place, and so the water comes and all who are in the water are dead. And yet some are saved through the water, right? Some, eight people get on board an ark. They climb on board and they're saved through the water. And those people, they saw the sign, but they had to respond to it. There's a summons: Get on board the boat. And those people responded in faith and climbed aboard the boat. And that's how they're saved.

In the same way, when Peter looks at baptism, he says, "Hey, look at the flood." He's like, baptism. In the same way, your people who are under the judgment of God and yet God saves again through—and I use that word twice here—through. Through baptism, through resurrection, through the flood, through the water, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Jesus's death and resurrection on the cross. This is what escape you are. And just like we could put it this way: Jesus is our ark. We gotta get on board the Jesus boat, right? We hear a summons. Repent and believe, and you gotta get on, and that is what saves you.

This is the symbol that he holds out to us over and over and over again. So this is why I want you to say, "Hey, look at your life. You should look at your life. Every time you read the Noah's Ark books with your little kids, this is my story, right? Like, it's not about animals getting on a boat. It's about me getting on a boat. It's about me being saved from judgment, from water through Jesus. And I've heard the summons and I get on." That's what baptism symbolizes. It's such a rich metaphor for us.

And he goes on and shows us something more. It's not just a picture. It also has power. This is why we use the word seal. You'll hear this in our Lord's Supper liturgy. You hear it in baptism liturgy, and it doesn't mean the gray animal from the zoo. We're not talking about that kind of seal that you see in a cage at the zoo. We're talking about seal like what happens on a document. An embossed seal, a notary's seal is something that is stamped on something that says the state authenticates and says, "This is true. This is true."

Now, how does this work for us? Well, see, what we read here is Peter says, "It's not just a symbol. Baptism is also an appeal to God for a good conscience. It's an appeal to God for a good conscience." When we baptize a baby in our church, when we baptize an adult convert in our church, we're saying the same thing.

It's like a seal stamped on that life saying, we're appealing to God. Again, is baptism what we do or what God does? We put the water on, but it's an appeal to God for a good conscience. Saying, God, only you can cleanse this person. Only you can make this person good. This person's heart is turned away from you, and this is an appeal to God for a good conscience.

So we talk about baptism as sign and seal. It says, look, you can look at that symbol. You can look at that sign and you can read off of it just like the notary seal—bonafide. And if you are a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, your baptism, whether you remember that day, whether your mama put that on you and your daddy put that on you, whether you're in a church that didn't even preach the gospel—that's me. I grew up in a church that didn't preach the gospel, and yet that water was on my life in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And guess what? It took. That's a seal on my life, and it tells me, look, if you are in Him, not only is He bonafide, you are bonafide. You are in Him.

This tells us something that's really countercultural. Baptism is a complex symbol. We think we get it. You have little kids who know about cars and they may collect little cars, but do they know how that engine works? No, it's complex. Baptism is like that. It's so simple a child can get it. It's so complex that most of us don't even understand how all the engine works. Baptism is this powerful and this beautiful, but it shows us: look, you can't make anything that Peter's talking about something that you did. You can't make it about your promises to live a great life for Him, your merit, and why God should save you in any way. It's not about your pledge for Him. It's about His promise for you. That's all this keeps showing us over and over again.

Now, here's why this is such a big deal for Peter. Why would you say, next time you're suffering, I actually want you to think, you know what's getting me through this? My baptism. Here's where I want you to go with this: baptism preaches to you every day that you have passed through the waters of judgment. That you are in Him. That He is your ark. And that the worst suffering has been averted in your life. Whatever you're going through right now, it's not the wrath of God. It's the loving discipline of a Father for His children. God is not angry with you. You haven't done enough to get it washed away from Him. You're not sinking into the depths. You're on the boat. You're in Him. You are safe.

Baptism as a Birthmark

Anybody got a birthmark? You know, some of y'all have birthmarks that only Mama knows where it is. Nobody needs to see that, right? Your mama can identify you. Something bad happened to you, your mama could identify you by the birthmark. She knows where that is. Nobody else needs to know about that.

But here's the thing. The Bible describes coming to Jesus as a new birth. We could describe baptism this way: baptism is a new birthmark. It's your new birthmark. It's put on you by your Father, and He knows where it is. He can identify you by it. You are part of His family. He knows you and knows who you are.

Let me use that a different way. If you watch a lot of gangster movies, those nineteen-tens and nineteen-twenties films with the Tommy guns and all that, you know the phrase—a marked man. A marked man means the gangsters are going to come get you, right? We could say the same way that if you are a baptized person, you are marked by God. You are marked forever. You have this mark on you not for your destruction but for your life. Your life is forever His. You are hidden with Christ in God. All that you are belongs to Him. You are forever a marked man or a marked woman.

So here's what I want you to do. I want you to start getting up in the morning, looking at yourself in the mirror, and saying, I'm baptized. I am baptized. And all that that represents—there's a sign that preaches to you about who Jesus is. There's a seal on your life that says bonafide if you're in Him. And it calls to you. It preaches to you.

You remember the Brian Widner story I told you about earlier—the guy who came out of the neo-Nazi movement and came to Christ? There's a particular detail that I passed over on purpose in telling his story. While he was in the skinhead movement, the gang that he was a part of had a practice of putting all the symbols of hatred on their body through tattoos.

He's covered in swastikas and emblems of hate and anger. In fact, his knuckles both said "hate" right here. So when he came to Christ, got married, came to Christ, trying to start a new life, they have a baby. What kept Brian from getting a job were those tattoos. I mean, nobody wants that guy behind a register, right? Nobody's coming back here for fried chicken if he's working there, right?

His great need for surgery, his great need for money was that his outward affect proclaimed hatred and nobody wanted to hire him. So when the Southern Poverty Law Center gave him money, they gave him $35.00 for the removal of 25 tattoos. This is a picture of Brian today. He went through surgery upon surgery.

Why This Matters

Now, why do I show this to you? Because this is you. This is me. Natural enemies of God. Our enmity and our status of hating him and what he stands for, pushing him away. That's how we naturally are, and God comes and cleanses us. God comes and wipes away this mark. He puts it on us—the mark of our cleansing—and it doesn't come at a price that you pay.

Just like with Brian, someone else must pay, and Jesus pays the ultimate price for you and me. And here's the other thing: I'm sure that removal of all these tattoos was very painful for him, and yet we have in the gospel that Jesus not only paid the price but took the pain for you and me so that we can forever say, we can look upon ourselves, get up in the morning just like Brian does.

You know, he gets up every day and looks in the mirror and says, "Cleansed." This is who you are, brothers and sisters.

I am baptized. I am baptized. I am baptized. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.