TEXT: I Peter 3:18-22

SUBJECT: Heidi’s Baptism

If you read the New Testament, you’ll find that baptism is often compared to other things. In Romans 6, Paul likens it to a burial and a resurrection. In Colossians 2, he draws a parallel between baptism and circumcision. Luke and John the Baptist say it is something like a bath that washes the soul.

In these examples, the point of comparison is fairly obvious. With a little thought, you can figure out how baptism is like a bath, like a burial, like a resurrection, and like the sacred rite of circumcision.

But what’s not so easy to grasp is the comparison Peter draws between baptism and…the flood! The flood was an act of Divine Judgment; it washed away the world of ungodly men. Baptism, on the other hand, is a sign of God’s grace: it says the one being baptized is in the Lord’s family, that her sins are forgiven, and that her place in heaven is sure. Peter knows all this, of course, and yet he still finds some comparison between the waters of judgment and the waters of grace.

Where’s the point of contact? How is baptism like the flood?

Baptism does for us what the flood did not Noah and his family. And what’s that? It separates us from the world of the ungodly.

Noah grew up and lived a long time in a world full of violence, among a people whose every thought was only evil continually. The sin of that world was not an innocent, mistaken thing, but a willful rebellion against God and the knowledge of His will. The Lord’s Spirit strove with these people; Noah preached to them for decades. And yet they remained in their sin till the waters crashed down on them. After six weeks of daily rain, the old world was no more; Noah and his family were now separated from it and newly devoted to their Savior.

The flood did outwardly and unmistakably what the Lord’s grace had done long before. A hundred years before the judgment fell on the world, Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. He and his family were privately separated from the world already. The flood made the separation public.

This is what baptism does for the believer. The invisible working of grace gives the sinner life and produces repentance, faith, and the other fruits of the Spirit. At this time, the Christian is secretly separated from the rest of the world and made the Lord’s own.

But the Great Secret is not meant to be kept secret; it’s for telling! This is what baptism does—it tells everyone what God has done in the soul. The soul that used to be like everyone else’s—so full of sin and selfishness has been separated from the others—and now devoted to Christ and His people

This is the comparison between baptism and the flood: they publicly separate the people of God from the world. That’s what we have come to share in today: the formal separation of a young woman who used to belong to the world of the ungodly, but has now found grace in the eyes of the Lord.

Just as Noah and his family offered animal sacrifices after getting out of the ark, we ought to celebrate the grace of God today by offering Him the sacrifice of thanksgiving!