Baptism

In the coming weeks MPC will celebrate the sacrament of baptism 5 times. Early this year I told my Session that it was my stated goal to baptize more people than I bury this year. So far this year the congregation has not had a death, so these five baptisms will be a good head start.
I love baptism and I view it as pure gift of joy that the Lord has called me to be a minister and allowed me to officiate at the celebration of the sacrament. While I know I in myself am there to maintain decency and order (1 Cor 14:40) I do enjoy sharing that moment with the person being baptized.
In my short ministry I have had the opportunity to baptize 2 whole families at the same time (you cannot get much closer to Acts than that) and that opportunity is going to present itself again next week with a mother and her two children. The following week our congregation will witness the sign of God's faithfulness for a toddler and an infant. All of these baptisms are a sign of God's claim and seal of the person as Christ's own forever.
I love to remind people that Jesus' own baptism is a paradigm for our baptisms. As we emerge from the water, a visible sign of an invisible spiritual reality (thank you Augustine), God's Spirit is present with us and God claims us as his own child (see Matthew 3:16-27).
Is there a better way to bring God's people together than a baptism? As we welcome in new people to the Church, we are all reminded of God's unfailing love for us.

Why Gideon?

A few months ago at Little River Christian Camp (run by a nice couple) I sat planning out sermons through Resurrection Sunday. As providence would have it, the 1 Corinthians series ended on Transfiguration Sunday, meaning a new series would begin with Lent. I could not pass up the opportunity to do something special with those six weeks. But what could I choose?
I prayed and read, prayed and read, prayed and read and prayed. When I was done I felt fairly certain the book of Judges was the correct choice. I still have no idea why I felt that way and as I have been preparing sermons I still wonder how I feel so sure that it is the right decision (the Holy Spirit is like that sometimes I suppose). The trouble was the book of Judges was simply too large to treat adequately in six weeks. So I read and prayed, read and prayed, read and prayed. When I finished, it was clear that the Gideon cycle was the direction I was being led.
After bouncing my Lent plan off of one of my mentors, she asked a very important question, "Why Judges? Why Gideon?" As if she was not enough, my wife asked the same question. Now that I have launched into the series, I am sure more than a few in the congregation are wondering the same thing. The answer to the question is, honestly, I do not know except that it is the right thing for us here in Merrill right now.
Gideon, as a person in Scripture has always intrigued me (but so have several others like Moses, Ahab, Josiah, Peter and [of course] Jesus). Being intrigued with Gideon, however, is not enough basis for a sermon series. The question I have been struggling to answer is what does Gideon's story have to say to us in Merrill right now. Gideon is intriguing. He is perhaps the smoothest operator in all of Scripture (I mean, who else gets to test God not once, not twice, but three times and get away with it?). He reforms the worship of Israel and then leads Israel back into idolatry. He is absolutely the hero of Israel, but then oversteps the bounds of his call.
Gideon is not the reason for preaching through these chapters of Judges. Maybe I am just intrigued with the revelation of God in Judges. Many consider Judges a bloody and horrific book, but in it I see the God of righteousness and grace interacting with humanity, seeking to fulfill His providential purposes and provide for the fulfillment of His promises. Judges is the story of people who have every reason to give glory to God and worship God and God alone, but continue to turn away from God for reasons never fully explained. Maybe it was God's words through the prophet telling the Israelites, "But you have not given heed to my voice" (Judges 6:10b) that set me down this path.
In the end, I am not sure how to answer, "Why Gideon?" The only answer I can give is that the Holy Spirit led me to this text and in some way, in some form, Christ and Christ crucified is revealed in this as well.