Lay down your sweet and weary head Night has fallen, you've come to journey's end From tent-toting patriarchs greeting promises from afar, to vagabonds and vagrants doomed to wander in a wasteland, God's people never sought final satisfaction in the journey. Traveling is tough going. We seek the promised land, the city with foundations, whose designer and builder is God, aiding you on towards the destination. Welcome to Journey's End. You've come to Journey's End. Good afternoon, welcome to Journey's End. Today we're going to talk about something that we've looked at the last couple of weeks, which is Noah's Flood, but we're going to do it from a little bit of a different perspective than we have been doing it in the past. We were just talking before the show about kind of an analogy to help you think about this. Think about watching a football game and the different camera angles that you'll see. in that football game, a wide view of the whole field or looking close on the quarterback or maybe overhead when they're kicking a field goal. That's kind of how we want you to think about the flood as we've been looking at last week from the perspective of God's judgment on the earth. The week before that, as we were looking at some of the people that God had destroyed, and today we want to look at it from a very different perspective, which is something that we would like you to consider, maybe for the first time ever. It's the perspective of baptism, Christian baptism. What might Christian baptism have to do with Noah's flood? Good afternoon. I'm Doug Van Dorn. I'm the pastor of the Reformed Baptist Church of Northern Colorado, located in Boulder. And with me is Tony Jackson. He's the pastor of Reformation Baptist Church down in South Denver. So Tony, today we're talking about Noah's Flood and we're going to think about it from the perspective of baptism. Can you give us some reasons why we might want to do something like that? last week we saw how the flood was used in scripture as really a big picture for judgment and we gave some illustrations from scripture last week one of which was we talked about how in the creation of the world itself that water was very important in fact in the very opening words of Genesis chapter 1 in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth the earth was without form and void And darkness was over the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Now that's an important verse as it opens the scripture because it tells us that the earth was created out of water as Peter tells us in 2 Peter chapter 3. and that God's Spirit was hovering over the face of the waters. Today we want to talk about the waters of judgment, or the flood, as being a big picture for the idea of baptism. And looking at baptism through this lens, we'll see that all through scripture there is this thread, there's this continuity, if you will, that shows us that baptism is not something completely new in the New Testament, isn't it, Doug? In fact, you wrote a whole book about this called The Waters of Creation. Yeah, I've probably given way too much thought to this, frankly, Tony, but I think it's an important idea. So you brought up Genesis 1-2 there. It talks about the Spirit of God hovering over the waters. That's the image of the Holy Spirit as a bird hovering, as the language is used there. Where else do we find the Spirit hovering over waters? Well, the most familiar place probably to people is at Jesus' baptism. You recall that he goes down into the water and he comes back up and the Spirit of God is like a dove that descends upon him. And you see pictures in pop art all the time of like this bird that's sitting on Jesus' shoulder or something like that. Well, that's the same picture of the Holy Spirit as He's hovering over the waters of creation. He's a bird in both instances. At least that's the image that we're given of Him. And in both of these instances, this is over water. So, I don't think that a lot of people really stop to think about the origins of baptism. And I think that that's the most important part of this. If you're to ask your normal person on the street, or in a pew, or in a chair, in an evangelical church, or maybe in churches across denominations and ask them, where do you think baptism comes from? I think most people would say, well, it comes from Jesus. Jesus was baptized. Or they might say, well, John the Baptist was baptized before him. And you might ask, well, where does he get that idea from? And people say, well, I'm not really sure. I guess it just sort of came up really out of nowhere, out of the blue. That's not what the scripture teaches us at all. So as we were thinking about the flood, there's a particular verse that comes to my mind that Peter uses with the flood and compares it to baptism. I think that's found in 1 Peter, isn't that right, Tony? What is that passage? 1 Peter 3 verses 18-22, For Christ also suffered once for sins, 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 formerly 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. And then Peter gives us a little commentary on baptism. 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. So Peter here talks about the flood and directly connects it to the idea of baptism. Yeah, he does it through this word in the ESV that you just read. The word corresponds to this. It's the word anti-type. That the flood and baptism are in some kind of a relationship. It's a typological relationship is what theologians call it. Where a type, if you think about a penny, and you think about Abraham Lincoln's image on the penny, and you say, well, is that Abraham Lincoln? Well, no, Abraham Lincoln was a man and he's dead in his grave, but the penny is a type. It's actually literally a type because it's stamped onto the coin and it's his image. It's the image of Abraham Lincoln. It's a type of Abraham Lincoln. In the same way, Peter is saying that baptism is the anti-type of the flood. So there's some kind of an organic relationship between the flood and baptism in that verse. Yeah, this is really fascinating because, as you said earlier, most of us probably did not have, just from reading the scriptures, did not have this association in our minds between Noah's flood and baptism. So, let's get a little deeper and talk about how the type works itself out in actual practice and in our thinking about baptism and how that can help us to get to journey's end. How that can help us to think about our Christian lives and the significance of our baptism, what it means for living our lives as followers of Christ, as those who desire to obey Christ and live according to his word. Let's talk about some of the correspondence between the flood itself. What's the purpose of the flood that we talked about last week and how that corresponds to baptism. So what is, you know, last week we covered this in some detail, but what is the purpose of the flood? Well the purpose of the flood is, it's kind of a two-fold purpose. There's a destruction purpose and there's a keeping alive purpose. So last week we looked at the destruction and the judgment theme and we read from Romans chapter 6 where it says that you've been buried with him in baptism. That's a theme of dying in the waters of the flood and which of course is what happened to all but eight people on the face of the earth, and not just people, but all flesh was destroyed in this great destruction of baptism. In other words, you have to die in God's judgment. There has to be punishment when God is angry with sin. But the second half of that is really the good news, and it's what Peter is picking up on there when he says that eight people in all were saved through the flood, you know, which corresponds to baptism. In other words, baptism is a picture of new life, of resurrection, or as I kind of started thinking about it when I was comparing these flood stories in the Old Testament as well as Jesus' baptism, it's a new creation. We just mentioned the Holy Spirit in Genesis 1-2. Well, what is that story telling us about? Creation, right? Well, Noah's flood, out of chaos, comes all of this order and the things that God ends up creating in that first week. You can look at Noah's flood as a new creation. In fact, a lot of the language is similar to what you find in the Genesis story. So, really the two purposes you're talking about or the two-fold sense of Noah's flood or the motif or the idea of flooding in the scripture is really that of judgment. And then if you look at the other side of the coin, it's cleansing and it's bringing life. So, that's really both sides of the flood, isn't it? Paul goes on to say, we were buried with him in baptism 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. It's the image of Noah making it through safely in the ark. He should have died. For all intents and purposes, he was a dead man. But God provided this ark wherein if he was inside of that ark, he could live through the water. And so it's a picture of our resurrection. It's a picture of the new creation. Paul calls Christians a new creation several times in his letters. So on the one hand, when we think about baptism, in fact, just this last week we sat down with a young man who was asking us about baptism. And we talked about this picture because if you think about baptism, especially immersion, we as Baptists, as we mentioned last week, do believe that Romans 6 very much paints a picture for us of immersion, no other form. It's really acceptable, and the reason for that is there's theological significance tied to it. You know, if possible, there needs to be immersion. Why? Because when someone goes down into the water, into the waters of baptism, and, you know, lots of people go down into the water, sadly, and they drown. Maybe they can't swim very well, or they get tired, or they hit their head or something, and they go down into the water, and they inhale the water into their lungs, and they perish. How is baptism a picture of death? Well, it's that we're going down into the water like we're going down into a grave. That's really the picture that Paul's painting there in Romans 6, isn't it? You might remember this scene in Monty Python's movie, I can't remember what the name of the movie is, but where they're talking, making fun of the witch, you know, and they find this witch and they reason that, you know, we should throw her in the water. And if she floats, then she's a witch and we have to kill her. But if she doesn't float and she drowns, then she's not a witch. But of course, she's already dead. Well, that was actually something that has been practiced throughout the ages, where people would do that exact same thing. Monty Python didn't make that up, but it shows the theme of judgment, and some of the ancient peoples actually called that baptism. Hey, this is Tony Jackson, the pastor of Reformation Baptist Church in the South Denver area. Now you know that Easter Sunday is coming up next week on April 8th. We'd like to extend a special invitation for you and your family to join us for worship as we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. We thank God that Christ died for us. and bore our sins in his body on the cross. But praise God, Christ did not stay in the grave. On the third day he rose victorious from the grave and ascended into heaven where he rules over his church from the right hand of God the Father. We invite you to come and worship this Christ with us. Reformation Baptist Church will be meeting on Easter at the Comfort Suites Inn at County Line Road in Quebec in Highlands Ranch. The Reformed Baptist Church of Northern Colorado in Boulder will be meeting at their regular place and time. You can learn more about our churches and get directions at our website coloradoreformation.com. That's coloradoreformation.com. We hope to see you and meet you and we look forward to worshiping the Lord together. Now let's get back to our show. So on the one hand we have this picture of baptism as judgment when Noah's flood was released and the waters came up out of the earth and came down out of the heavens and covered the whole earth with water. Just tremendous power of water and flooding. Have you ever seen a small flood? I grew up in Southern California where the rain would come all at once. and the streets would fill up with water sometimes, and it was unbelievable to see the power of the erosion of that water, of how much destruction it could bring in just a very short period of time. And all of that water came down and every life, human and animal, on the face of the earth, except those that were saved on the ark, perished under the waters of that judgment. But the beautiful thing is, as Peter points out, that As you mentioned earlier, eight people and all of those animals that they brought onto the ark were saved. Now it's not just the flood story or the creation story that are viewed as baptisms, even in the New Testament, isn't that right? In 1 Corinthians chapter 10, for example, Paul ties together the theme of baptism, as well as the theme of what we believe is the other sacrament, which is communion, or the Lord's Table. He says, I don't want you to be unaware, brothers, in 1 Corinthians 10, that our fathers were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea, and then he says, all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ." What a wonderful picture Paul paints there for us of the sacraments that we believe belong together, both baptism and the Lord's table. But he gives us here this picture of the exodus of those Israelites who were led out of Egypt by the power of God and by the blood of the Lamb. painted above the doorposts, you remember, and God delivered them from so-called gods, the so-called God of Pharaoh, and brought them under his power into the wilderness that they might worship him there. But the text says that they were baptized. That's the picture we get there, isn't it? Yes, so check this out. When I first discovered this, I was just almost you know, on the floor. And Moses is writing in Deuteronomy 32, and this is actually literally the very next verses after he starts talking about the sons of God that we were looking at a couple weeks ago. So this is 32.10. He found him in the desert land, in the howling waste and wilderness. So that's the same language used. The only time that the language is used of a howling waste The Hebrew is tohu and bohu. I love those two words. Nice rhyming words. They're found in Genesis 1, 2 where the spirit is hovering. So the original creation is viewed as a howling waste and they're found here. That's it. At any rate, he says that he found him in the desert land just like what you just picked up on. Israel goes out into the desert in the howling waste in the wilderness. He encircled him. He cared for him. He kept him as the apple of his eye like an eagle that stirs up its nest and flutters over its young. spreading out its wings, catching them, bearing them on its pinions. So the theme there is that he delivers him from the Pharaoh. And how does he deliver him? Through the Red Sea, through the baptism that's into Moses. So God saves his people through the flood, if you will. The waters are heaped up on both sides and they go through the flood on dry land and they're delivered from it. But Pharaoh's army comes in after them. And what happens to Pharaoh's army? Pharaoh's army is drowned in the sea. The horse and rider plunged into the sea. Yeah, so we can see how this idea of baptism goes both ways, doesn't it? Some are baptized as in Noah's flood. down into the water and in the Red Sea, in the Exodus, they're baptized into the water and they never come up. Right, in fact, that's a great point, Tony, that a lot of people don't really understand that all people on earth will be baptized at some point in time, just like happened in the Flood. It's just a matter of whether or not you're going to come out alive on the other side. Yeah, and that's exactly what we talked about last week in 2 Peter chapter 3. where Peter tied together the ideas of Noah's flood as the original judgment of the whole earth and the future judgment of the whole earth, which is baptism by fire. And that's the baptism you're referring to, isn't it? Absolutely. Jesus also refers to his death as a baptism. Now, this is really interesting. Another Old Testament correlation. He tells the disciples that I have another baptism to undergo. And they get all excited about it, you know, because he's already gone through the waters once. when John baptized him. And they kind of want to go with him through this baptism. He goes, no, no, no, you don't understand. You can't go through the baptism I'm going to go through. The baptism he's talking about is his death. And we can think about, well, how could his death be a baptism? Well, it's a theme of judgment. It's a metaphor of God's wrath in the waters rising up, like we read in the Psalms, like we read last week a little bit. But there's another interesting story that Jesus picks up on in another place where he's talking about his death and he's referring to something in the Old Testament and it's the story of Jonah. What happened to Jonah? Yeah, he was cast into the raging sea and was swallowed by a great fish and he was in the belly of that fish for three days and three nights before he was delivered out of the sea onto the shore. Right, so you can think about Noah's fish that swallowed him in very similar terms to what you think about Jonah's fish. It's very similar terms to what you think about Noah's Ark. That it brought him safely through the water, didn't it? And Jesus says that his death is the sign of Jonah. For as he was in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights, so the Son of Man will be in the belly of the earth. So next week we're going to talk about baptism as really more of a religious function or a religious right that Jesus had to fulfill, not only as the Messiah, but as a priest, a descendant of the covenant, which was given to the priests. But today we're talking about baptism as kind of a big picture. That's what we want you to understand. That baptism in Scripture is not just John the Baptist dunking people into the River Jordan. It's not just Jesus being baptized in the water. The baptism in Scripture is a theme that runs all the way through Scripture, and the reason we've brought up these other passages is that we want you to see that we're not just making this up, are we Doug? No, no, I mean we're just going to the text and seeing that the text itself calls these events baptisms. And if the text calls these events baptisms, then that ought to cause us to take a little time in our lives, our busy day, to think about what is the significance of baptism. So let's move on to that for a minute because we've already touched on it, that baptism is a picture of our judgment going down into death, but it's also a picture of something much greater, and that is our coming to life. with the Lord Jesus. Last week you said something very important, that Jesus is really the new Noah, if you will, but he's also those who died in the flood, that Jesus is both those who died in the flood, crucified on the cross, his father turned his face away, he was abandoned by his father, And he was plunged down into the very depths of hell itself in the floodwaters of his death. But he's also Noah. He was brought safely through the flood and made it to the other side. And that we need to understand baptism as we are united together with Christ. And that's exactly what Paul is talking about in Romans 6, isn't it? Yeah, and let me dovetail off of this just a little bit, see if I can do this in the two minutes that we have left. This comes back to 1 Peter 3 in the passage that you read a little while ago about baptism corresponding to the flood. If you notice, Peter sandwiches that between two things. 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 being made alive in the Spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey in the days of the flood. Then he talks about baptism, and then he says, through the baptism cleanses you and appealed a good conscience to the resurrection of Christ who's gone into heaven is at the right hand of God with angels authorities and powers having been subjected to him in other words think about the time that we can we talk about this a couple of weeks ago with the sons of God and how the sons of God had dominion over the earth they were rightly delegated to the people that's the way God did it and so they were under All humanity was under the subjection of these beings. Jesus goes and preaches to the spirits in prison. That's referring to demons. I think there's a very good case that you can make for that. He's preaching his authority over them. because he's being raised from the dead. And at the end of the story then, because he's been raised from the dead, he has authority over all of the angels, authorities, and powers. They have been subjected to him. And so, when a person trusts in Christ and their conscience has been cleansed, and the picture of baptism is placed upon them so that they understand that they have been raised with Christ through faith. They are no longer subjected to the powers and authorities in spiritual places. Christ Jesus is their King and He is their authority and nothing in the world can take away His love for them. We want to thank you for listening to the show and we look forward to being with you again next week. Journey's End is a production of the Reformed Baptist Churches serving the Front Range. Our show is dedicated to helping Christians think deeply about their faith and helping them understand that the destination is the purpose of the journey. At www.ColoradoReformation.com you will find an increasing number of helpful tools. We have local churches in the southern and northern metro areas to assist you in understanding both the journey and the journey's end. Our worship This leads to our people seeking to emulate our Savior through kindness and humility. We are rooted in the historic creeds of Christianity and our traditions arose out of the Protestant Reformation. We invite you to head to our website, www.ColoradoReformation.com, for more information. That's www.ColoradoReformation.com. We look forward to being with you again next week. Thanks for listening! That was a great show!