Isaiah 43:1-7; Acts 8:14-17; Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

Do you remember the events of the day of your baptism with water? I asked you this question twelve months ago, and at the same point in the sermon. That first sentence is the only one repeated from 2024 but I’d still like to know; do you remember the day of your baptism with water? Tell. I don’t remember mine because I was three months old at the time

Following John the Baptiser in Luke 3:16 (another of those great 3:16 verses) I’m going to ask a similar question, new for 2025. Do you remember the events of the day of your baptism with the Holy Spirit and fire? Tell. I do remember this one, at least in the Evangelical Charismatic sense of the Third Wave, when I was blessed with an anointing one evening at Adelaide’s Wayville Showgrounds in January 1986. The German-South African evangelist Reinhard Bonnke was preaching to a rally at the United Charismatic Convention “Jubilee ‘86”. Hosted by Tabor, and I remember standing on my dad’s chair while he held me to himself so that I could see over the crowd. I wasn’t “slain in the Spirit”, but I did feel a bit wobbly, even as I leaned into my dad’s embrace. I was thirteen years old at the time, and whilst there were no visible fires, visible doves, and no audible voices declaring blessing (except for Bonnke’s) there was tangible Spirit there that night, for me and for many others.

What then is baptism? This is one of the major questions of the Church and has been since the earliest days. How many baptisms are there? Can you be baptised more than once? Do you need a water baptism and a separate fire/Spirit baptism? Who can be baptised? Who cannot? What happens if you die without undergoing baptism? What makes a baptism a baptism, and what makes it just a wet prayer service? How wet do you need to get?

In our reading from Acts 8:14-17 today we find some of the earliest answers to some of those questions; but we need to say even today that Christianity as a whole has not agreed to one answer per question, or even what that answer might be. Pretty much “how many baptisms are there” is answered with “one”, since all Christians are baptised into Christ, and he is one LORD. The question of what constitutes this one baptism is trickier: for instance is someone who was poured upon as a baby really “baptised” at all, in which case they as an adult who later decides to be immersed fully underwater is really only baptised on that occasion because their baby thing didn’t really count in the first place? Even in this room there are people who will disagree with that as an idea, while others will say it is the only correct response. Nonetheless, what we read in Acts gives us pause to consider what God does when water and blessing come together in the sacrament of the Church for an individual Christian. Read Acts 8:14-17. Hmm. Really? I mean look again at Acts 8:16 where it says for as yet the Spirit had not come upon any of them; they had only been baptised in the name of the Lord Jesus. No doubt these Christians had got wet with prayer, no doubt they were all adults who had undergone full immersion under the hand of Philip, and yet they had none of them received Holy Spirit until a separate visit from Peter and John who did not use water but laid hands on them each. What does this mean? Have the Charismatics been right all along and you need a separate event of prayer to be filled with the Spirit? What does it mean to have been baptised only with water; whether it be a cupful over a baby’s head, or a full-on dunk in the tank by someone old enough to make his or her own confession of faith and hold his or her own breath underwater, but never blessed by an Elder with hands-on benediction? I know I’m okay because I went to the Tabor convention and got zapped after listening to Evangelist Bonnke 39 years ago, but how many of you are only half baptised?

Okay, so the answer is none of you. No-one is half-baptised, that’s not how baptism works. But have we each made use of the fulness of the gifts God has given us? Ask yourself, pause and reflect; is your discipleship typified by the Holy Spirit and fire?

In Isaiah 43:1 we read the words do not fear for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. Thinking about what we are thinking about today I want to encourage you by this, that you have nothing to fear in the area of how deeply redeemed you are. Baptism in the Holy Spirit with fire, whatever that means for you, “Speaking in Tongues” included (or not included, does not guarantee your redemption. You are saved by grace alone, not by your ability or your lack of ability to pray “could’ve bought a Honda, should’ve bought a Kia.” In the same way that you were not redeemed by water baptism, but by grace alone evident in your trust in the completed work of Christ’s victory over death at The Cross, God names you and calls you God’s own simply because you are God’s own and God knows you. When you pass through the waters I will be with you says the LORD; which has more to do with not being overwhelmed by rivers and being saved from drowning in a flood, than it says about God’s approval of water baptism; but it’s nice to know. Baptism is not supposed to be a scary experience; it is life changing but it should not be life threatening. And yet I wonder, I wonder whether as we read further into Isaiah 43:2 that when you walk through the fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you, we read with an element of fear. Of course the God who guarantees us safety against the rising tide can also save us from cremation in the approaching bushfires. But if baptism in water makes you a member of the Church, and you understand it as a rite of passage into belonging to the Body of Christ; and baptism in fire and the Holy Spirit makes you an emissary of the Kingdom, and you understand it as a rite of ordination into ministering in the power of Christ, maybe we do need reminding that you will never be destroyed by God when you are consumed by the Spirit and burning with the light of the world.

I ask you quite plainly: are you afraid of God, The Holy Spirit? Are you afraid that if God does set you alight and calls others to watch you burn, that you will feel embarrassment? Are you content to have been plunged into God’s renewing depths beneath the waters of baptism, and to have received the cleansing of your sins and the washing away of your guilty stain; but are reticent to allow God to breathe upon you as Christ breathed upon his followers (John 20:22) or to allow the Spirit to blow mightily upon you as the Spirit did upon those gathered in the upper room (Acts 2:2-4)?

When we submit to the water we are allowing God to have all of us, we die to self and we hold nothing back from the LORD to rule in our hearts as saviour and king. If you have been underwater, whether in a pool, a river, or underneath a pouring from hands or a clamshell then God has all of you.

But do you have all of God? Is the presence of God manifest in you in visible and audible ways, as it was at Mount Sinai before the Hebrews, at the River Jordan upon Christ himself, in the Upper Room upon the disciples and the streets of Jerusalem amongst the Jews of many lands, in Samaria amongst the Samaritans, in Joppa amongst the household of Cornelius the Gentile? If God felt the need to burn and declare in public for those situations why don’t we believe or want God to burn and declare amongst us?

This year 2025 will see a fresh revelation of God in the Grampians. I do not say this as some great prediction, or as a unique revelation from God, but I say it as a leader in God’s workplace who understands that the time for the Church to remain lukewarm toward the community beyond this house is ending. We have a mission as the People of God, the People of hope, the People of confidence in God the saviour, to proclaim the story of God and of the love and victory shouted from the manger, the cross, and the empty tomb. This is not a task that we can complete in our own strength or our own wisdom; it is not enough to rely on your personal skill with a musical instrument, or the tight prose of your well-rehearsed conversion story, or a well-composed sermon. We need the Spirit. I need you to need and have the Spirit if we are to be a priesthood of all believers on mission for the Kingdom and the salvation of the world.

Step forward, fear not, God is with us, Emmanuel. Are you ready for God to be with you? Now is the time, ask and be filled.

Amen.