Selah's Baptsim

Selah's Baptism
Uploaded by bradleyden

I posted Brynn's Baptism video as well, but I put it up under the original date, so you have to look back in the archives, or click here to see it.

Someone asked for the text of what I said, I took the main gist of it from a post I made a while back on my theology blog. Anyway, here is what I said:

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Baptism is symbolic of many things,

1. entrance to the Church,
2. ingrafting into Christ,
3. remission & cleansing of sins,
4. it is symbolic of regeneration,
5. our Death and Burial with Christ,
6. it is called a sign and seal of Holy Spirit and His righteousness, and
7. an appeal to God for good conscience.
   

Ellie and I believe that all of this symbolism is present here in the baptism of our daughter. Yet, it is hard to keep all of it in the forefront of our minds and do justice to each individual part. And so Ellie and I have decided to focus on the symbolism of death and burial with Christ in this event.

I've searched my mind for a way to give you all a glimpse of what is going through our minds in regard to this symbol; and so, in order to share our hearts with you, I'd like to tell you a short story.

John Paton was a missionary to the New Hebrides, a group of islands which now form the nation of Vanuatu in the South Pacific. In 1858, as he was in route to his mission station, he thought of how, not twenty years earlier, the earliest missionaries to the region were martyred by those they were attempting to save. He wrote the following;

John Williams and his young Missionary companion Harris, under the auspices of the London Missionary Society, landed on Erromanga on the 30th of November, 1839. Alas! Within a few minutes of their touching land, both were clubbed to death ; and the savages proceeded to cook and feast upon their bodies.

Let me pause the quote here to highlight the next sentence, one that shows how Christ and Christ's kingdom were foremost in this missionary's mind. He goes on:

Thus were the New Hebrides baptized with the blood of Martyrs ; and Christ thereby told the whole Christian world that He claimed these Islands as His own. His cross must yet be lifted up, where the blood of His saints has been poured forth in His name!

Paton knew that the blood of martyrs is Christ’s blood to the nations! When he thought about that blood he did not primarily think of it as tragic. And as he was looking forward to his own suffering among that same group of islands, he did not primarily think of the cost it would exact on his own person. Those thoughts were secondary to the surpassing joy of how God would use that blood and that suffering for the good of His own kingdom. Paton knew that Christ's Kingdom advances in glory by the suffering of the brotherhood of saints, of which Christ is our head and our example.

If you go back in Paton's story to his childhood you will find parents that dedicated him, as an infant, unto this cause. They gave little baby John as a sacrifice to the heathen lands even before he was born. And they raised him up, in the admonition of the Word, unto being such a sacrifice as he eventually became.

If you have followed this story so far, you will understand that though this is a joyful ceremony for Ellie and I, it is also a hard ceremony. Later, when Ellie and I are tempted to care more about little Selah's health, prosperity, and the cares of this world; more than in her status as a living, and perhaps a soon to be dying sacrifice, unto Christ's Kingdom; we want to look back on this day to remind ourselves that Selah does not belong to us but to another. She is the child of a Father much kinder and gentler than I, one that wants her prosperity even more than I do. And yet He is a wiser father who knows better than I, that it is for her good and His glory that she should be poured out like a drink offering for the sake of the elect.