January 10, 2021 – Baptism of our Lord Text: Genesis 1:1-5
Dear Friends in Christ,
Currently we have 5 to 6 of our members who are gone. Left the area. Headed south. Mainly to find warmth but they all are somewhere near water. Last winter Toni and I took a trip and we just drove until we found significant climate change. We eventually stopped 100 feet from the Gulf of Mexico – water. What do we do to relax – hot bath, hot shower, or even better sit in a whirlpool. Toni and I have stayed at a place with a pool in the room. Wow! Even your sound machines and little gadgets that are supposed to calm your nerves revolve around water – ocean waves, a rolling brook, water bubbling and falling down some rocks. We find comfort in water.
It didn’t take long for God to put this in place on earth – we’ve got water by the 2nd verse of Genesis. He was “hovering over the face of the waters.” Maybe this calmed God as He was creating the world. He knew that water was important from the beginning.
It seems that week after week our world gets more chaotic. Sickness and vaccines and special elections and fighting. Throw in a cloud of fog that enveloped us, homes without electricity, tree branches ready to snap and fall wherever, and the general malaise of winter. We’ve got to keep fighting our perspective or we are all going to go crazy. We are on the brink. Please, help us Lord.
“BREAKING THE CHAOS”
Water is you and me. It transports, it dissolves, and replenishes nutrients and organic material while carrying away waste. We have a brain – 70% water. Lungs – 90% water. Blood – 83% water. We drink water and need water. The dying person in film always asks for a drink.
God knew all this before He started his craftsmanship of world and man. 2 Peter 3:5 says, “the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God.” The Holy Spirit used water to make things as they are. Scientifically we know this…there is no life apart from the element of water. The heavens and the earth came into being, exist now, and are preserved only because God has so commanded and ordered all things. The heavens and the earth are preserved through the Word of God alone. The only One who can break the chaos is God because He controls what He has made.
Don’t let your mind play tricks with your thoughts. God continues to work in the midst of His creation. His ways are not your ways. What is the opposite of chaos? Order. We call it the Order of Creation. God had a plan and He saw that it came to be. In our text “God saw that the light was good.” He never said darkness was good. He doesn’t promote sin or people who want to change what He created. He doesn’t want to see you and I living in darkness. He sent Christ to be the “light of the world.” He had a plan for the chaos.
In our Gospel lesson John baptizes Jesus. The same Spirit that was at creation descended on him like a dove. Then a voice from heaven: “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.” We sin. Jesus didn’t. Yet, He is baptized with a baptism for sinners. Jesus takes our sin upon Himself. Heaven is torn open. The Savior breaks the chaos.
Jesus had to deal with chaos, didn’t He? The smarter-than-thou crowd always questioning His words. Chaos in the streets of his hometown. Confidants turning their back on Him. Friends and family of Jesus dying. Politicians who didn’t just want to make His life miserable but who wanted Him dead. Sickness and disease and is He the Messiah? Crowds that always surrounded Him and few moments to be alone. And in some of those alone times where did He find Himself – on or near the water. He created it. He enjoyed it. When it got too rough – He calmed it with just His Word.
He gives that same peace to you and I. God’s Word and water when first sprinkled or dumped or dunked into brought us from the chaos of our sinful nature to the peace of forgiveness. It took us from the scariness of death to the beauty and promise of eternal life. Paul writes in our Epistle, “We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” (Rom. 6:4) This is an everyday pledge that we carry in our DNA. This water and Word never left your body.
Let all of this calm you down. Let in flow in you and around you, as the chaos is broken. God created the heavens and the earth. Not man. Not some happy accident. The Creator spoke the Word and it was done. The void was filled. He does the same for you. His Word…His water…all speak to a void you may have. Order in the midst of chaos. He’s here. He has to be because all of this belongs to Him.
Amen.