Download Ash Wednesday – February 25, 2009

Pentecost 1 (Holy Trinity) – May 30, 2010
Pastor Brauer
We Baptize Children in the Name of the Triune God
Matthew 28:16-20
“Gracyn Adele Mei Traub, I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”
From China to our makeshift baptismal font at Spirit of Life. How ‘bout that?
Today on the Christian church calendar it’s the Sunday of the Holy Trinity. We worship one God in three persons and three
persons in one God – Father and Son and Holy Spirit. All three persons are to be worshiped as one God and one God
worshiped as three persons. 1 + 1 + 1 = 1. 3 = 1. Triune. The Trinity. This is the highest mystery. We can’t reason it out
so it makes logical sense to us. But we believe it because the Scriptures teach it. And it’s not just some abstract, brainy
dilemma with no connection to the practical affairs of everyday life. Oh, no, not at all. Our consolation, our life, our salvation
depends on this truth of the Christian faith.
“I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Gracyn’s baptism today provides a great
opportunity to speak of the Trinity, to speak of baptism, and to speak especially of baptism for children. Why do we baptize?
And especially today, why do we baptize children? Because we do. We do so boldly and confidently. We baptize children in
the name of the Triune God.
It was the risen Lord Jesus Christ, shortly before he became the ascended Lord Jesus Christ, who commissioned Christians
to baptize. On one occasion in between his resurrection from the dead on Easter Sunday morning and his ascension into
heaven, sometime within those 40 days, Jesus met the eleven disciples (the Twelve minus Judas Iscariot, who betrayed
Jesus and then ended his own life in regret and remorse). Jesus had arranged ahead of time to meet them at a certain
mountain up north in Galilee. That’s where he approached them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been
given to me.” You know, next to the Trinity (1+1+1=1, 3=1), the highest mystery is who Jesus Christ is. A human being, who
was born and grew and taught and suffered and died and was raised again. Also God, who put himself into a virgin’s womb
and came into this world to save his people from their sins. God and a human being in one person. 1 + 1 = 1. 2 = 1. Jesus
Christ is Immanuel – which means, “God with us.” It’s this Lord Jesus Christ who said then on that Galilean mountain and
still maintains to this day, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.”
With complete authority over all people and all things everywhere at his fingertips (with complete authority over all matters of
life and death, all matters of birth and adoption, all matters of government and documentation), Jesus sends his believers out
into their world to make more disciples. Go and make disciples of all nations. God wants all to be saved and to come to a
knowledge of the truth. There is one God and one go-between between God and people, the man Christ Jesus, who gave
himself as a ransom for all people. Every ethnic group on the globe matters to Jesus. He wants people from every ethnic
background to know and believe that he is their one and only Savior from their sins against the one true God. He is their one
and only Savior from death and the reality of eternal punishment in hell. The Christian faith is not a western European thing.
It’s not an eastern Asian thing. The true Christian faith is not looked into any one culture. The book of Revelation pictures a
great multitude no one can count, from every nation, tribe, people, and language, standing before the throne of God and in
front of the Lamb. They wear white robes and hold palm branches in their hands as they cry out, “Salvation belongs to our
God and to the Lamb!” This is the end that Jesus had in mind on that Galilean mountain. And it will be so. To accomplish it,
Jesus wants to involve his Christian people in the work. He commands his people to do it and promises his blessing on the
task. [You, all of you] go and make disciples of all nations.
As Jesus commands it, making disciples is connected with two activities – baptizing and teaching. Jesus wants people to be
baptized. He wants water applied to people in a specific way. Not as a way to clean off dirt or for some type of ritual
purification. He wants water applied along with a reference to the one true God. “Baptize them in the name” – just one name,
because there is just one God. But that one God is also three distinct persons. “Baptize them in the name of the Father and
of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Along with baptizing, be teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. The
Scriptures are able to make people wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. The Scriptures God gave are also useful
for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be completely equipped for
every good work while serving the Savior in this life on earth.
While all this goes on until the end of time, until the final day of judgment, while new disciples of Jesus are made as
Christians baptize others and teach others in their own home, down the street, across the land and over the surface of the
whole globe, Jesus is there. Listen to his wonderful promise: And surely I am with you always to the very end of the age.
I don’t see any specific reference to infants and children in these verses. Of course, as far as that goes, neither do I see any
specific reference to teens, young adults, middle-agers, boomers, or seasoned citizens either. There are no restrictions.
Make disciples of all nations. Baptize them. Teach them. So why do we baptize infants and children? That’s a good
question to ask today. It’s a good question to answer. Because we do. We do so boldly and confidently. We baptize
children in the name of the Triune God.
It starts with a need. And right up front, perhaps it should be said that “need” is almost two weak of a word when it comes to
baptism. I mean, children need diapers and they need clothes and they need a car seat and they need a lot of things.
Sometimes they even need a pacifier or they need a blankie. Gracyn, nearly two years into her life, does need surgery to
repair a cleft palate. Infants and children have needs. This infant or that child may even have needs specific to him or
particular for her. But there is one need that sits there head and shoulders above all the rest.
Infants and children need forgiveness. Every newborn needs a Savior from sin. Not later in life. But now. This is a need
that even some of the most respected Christian leaders in our land still fail to grasp and to admit. Doctor James Dobson,
respected as he is in his advice on raising sons and daughters – and I’ve read parts of his books and heard him talk on the
radio and TV, and he does have a lot of good things to say about how to raise children in this culture of ours – Doctor James
Dobson will not admit that small children need forgiveness of sins and need a Savior right now. In a book called “The New
Strong-Willed Child,” Doctor Dobson says that children are born in sin and inherit a disobedient nature from Adam, that they
are naturally inclined toward sinful behaviors. But when asked if parents should consider their babies guilty “before they
have done anything wrong,” (the question is flawed by the way), Doctor Dobson answers, “Of course not. Children are not
responsible for their sins until they reach an age of accountability.” And according to Dobson, when speaking of an age of
accountability, “that time frame is known only to God.” In other words, as Dobson sees it, children have a sinful tendency,
but they don’t have genuine sin on them right now and they have no guilt on them until they can supposedly start to
consciously choose right from wrong. So goes the argument.
But infants and children need Jesus Christ now, not later. I’m going to ask a hard question, and I don’t intend to be flippant
about it. If children have no guilt on them before their God, then why do some children die? The wages of sin is death. It’s
not just a medical accident that takes their life. They are not dying for someone else’s sins. God is not being unjust in calling
them back to dust. Dust they are, and because they are children of Adam, to dust they return. Human beings are sinful from
conception and birth. Flesh gives birth to flesh. And the flesh, the sinful nature that dwells in every person, is minded
against God and hostile to him and his ways. Children too are subject to death as the just consequence for being guilty of
sin. It’s not a pleasant doctrine to preach. It does not bring joy to this day to speak of sin and guilt and death. But the
baptism of a child is not child’s play. It’s not a game of goo-goo-ga-ga. It’s forgiveness of sins. It’s life. It’s salvation.
There is a Savior for children. His name is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Jesus Christ was unique among all children born
of women. He was born without any sin or any guilt. An angel announced his birth at Bethlehem: “Unto you…a Savior is
born; he is Christ the Lord.” He had a fierce love for children. Some of his strongest threats and warnings were issued to
anyone who would even think of leading a child into sin or being a part of a child’s eternal demise. Jesus welcomed the
children. Remember the account from the Gospels? “People were also bringing babies to Jesus to have him touch them.
when the disciples saw this, they rebuked them. But Jesus called the children to him and said, “Let the little children come to
me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.” The kingdom of God is for them, too. The
kingdom of God where there is redemption and forgiveness of sins through the blood of Jesus.
So we baptize children. Jesus says that, to enter God’s kingdom, a person must be born of water and the Spirit. Jesus
commands us to baptize all nations. Jesus’ apostle Peter told the crowd at Pentecost, “Repent and be baptized, every one
of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is
for you and your children.” The same apostle Peter later wrote that “baptism saves you.” Jesus’ apostle Paul, who was
converted and baptized as an adult, reminded Titus that “God saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but
because of his mercy [and because of his kindness, his love, his grace]…he saved us through the washing of rebirth and
renewal by the Holy Spirit.” The same apostle Paul clearly teaches that through baptism sins are washed away.
We baptize children in the name of the triune God. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. When
we speak of a child’s beginning at baptism, maybe it helps to think ahead to the end. Should I bury you someday, or another
pastor in our fellowship bury you, at the gravesite we will take out our little red book, we will make the sign of the cross over
your casket, and we will speak these words: “May God the Father, who created this body; May God the Son, who by his
blood redeemed this body together with the soul; May God the Holy Spirit, who by Holy Baptism sanctified this body to be his
temple; keep these remains to the day of the resurrection of all flesh.”
We baptize children in the name of this God. We raise our children to know better this God who has already saved them
from sin and death through their baptism, saved them by grace and worked faith within them through the gift that is baptism.
We instruct children that have been baptized. If adults have not been baptized, we instruct them and then baptize them. We
instruct baptized souls. We baptize instructed souls. The two go hand-in-hand. Believing what God’s Word says about
children and sin and death, believing that Jesus died and rose for children, believing what God’s Word says about the
blessings of baptism, we baptize children in the name of the triune God. Obeying our Lord’s command and especially
trusting his promise, we bring our child to be baptized.
Even if first we had to go clear over to China to get her. Amen.