Baptism Renewal — Todd Atkinson

It's been a very, very close friendship from that time till this. And now to think here this summer, after all these years, I've been here three times this summer, had the privilege of staying with Sam and Maddie at their mansion in the woods.

And I just love it how some relationships are for a short time and some are for a long time and some are for a lifetime. And this is one that has just been growing more special by the years. There are a couple of things I'd like you to speak to Sam about.

We went shoe shopping, he was wearing a pair of shorts and I caught him looking in the mirror and it wasn't in his shoes, he was flexing his calf muscles. Just thought you should know that. He has created calf envy in me ever since.

Had nothing to do with shoes. I caught him, I said, you're not looking at your shoes, you're flexing your calf muscles. And so I thought you might wanna have a little word with him. And secondly, I was in his office doing some preparation and there's all kinds of things in his office.

I mean, all kinds of photos of Maddie and of the two of them kissing. How's he supposed to get any work done looking at photos like that? More books than you could read in a lifetime. He has weapons of mass destruction down there.

There is swords of every description and not a single photo of me. So just a few things to bring to public attention. I know, of course, many of you from the past, from revival conferences and from preaching at Cowichan Camp, and so I wouldn't blame you if it crossed your mind sometime, is this the same guy that was at Cowichan Camp?

And what's with the purple shirt? And he's been ordained into the historic office of bishop. Is this even the same guy that used to preach with such fire at Cowichan? So maybe a couple things. I think I am.

Pastoral Formation and a Love for the Church's Roots

And yet like the rest of you, Jesus has been a work in my heart, taking me from glory to glory. And so I think I'm the same. I hope I'm the new improved. But I'd say pastoring. I've been pastoring for 11 years, and that's been very good for me.

Because when you're itinerating, you can get away with all kinds of things. But for me to pastor for the long term is, I hope it's been good for our congregation. But it's been very, very good for me to gain Jesus Shepherd's heart.

Not just his evangelistic heart, not just his revivalist heart, but his shepherd's heart. And I think one other thing that has happened in me is when I was preaching in revival conferences, one of the things that people would say to me is that you're kind of a balanced revivalist.

Because you have a strong emphasis on the spirit, but you also have a strong emphasis on the word. And I have been both a lover of the spirit, but a lover of the word. And that created, I think, a sense of balance.

And in the last numbers of years, there's been a third emphasis added to that, and that is a love for the roots of the church. And I feel even more grounded and established now because a man with one emphasis is a man on a pogo stick.

A man on two emphases is a man on stilts. I feel like I'm on a tripod, not on a pogo, not on stilts. But I feel more established and grounded adding that third emphasis than I've ever been before. When I was preaching at revival conferences in Western Canada for many years, I was seen as an Elijah kind of figure.

And I think I understand what people were meaning by that. But I've also had to learn to exercise the wisdom of Elijah. And if there's one thing from Elijah's story that I pass on to you this morning is this, that he made one very important decision.

And that we all must make this decision. There was a juncture in his life where he was on Mount Carmel. You all know the story. And he called for fire. The fire of the Lord came. But if we're not careful, we want to camp on that same mountain.

And he didn't. He actually went on from there and then saw other manifestations of the Lord in terms of an earthquake and rain and all kinds of wonderful miraculous activities of God. But then he made an even wiser decision.

One day God tested his heart. God gave him an earthquake or there was an earthquake. But this time God made sure his presence wasn't in it. And then there was a storm and God wasn't in it. And fire and God wasn't in it.

And then a still small voice and God was in it. And so Elijah made sure that he didn't walk forward looking back over his shoulder. And as people of a charismatic tradition, we can be like that. The way that God moved in the past, we can just want to live on that spot.

Moving Beyond Past Revival Experiences

Live on Mount Carmel. And wouldn't we know it if God wasn't in it the same way he used to be? So I'm actually always looking. See, I watch the young people. You know, they're newer than I am. And so I'm watching and going.

You know, I remember when I was an itinerant preacher, I preached this message at a place and it would just be so full of fire. So afterwards I think, okay, what did I do that made that? And I got to tell that story.

And I got to make sure I growl in the right place. And spit in the right place. Pause for effect in the right place. So the next place I'd go and I'm going to see that happen again. And it took me years to think, why is it so full of fire at one place and so flat the next place?

So perplexing to me. The exact same message. Delivered in the exact same way. And that's why it was flat. It's because I misplaced my trust. My trust was placed in my methodology. It wasn't placed above.

It wasn't placed in him. And so that's a dilemma we'll always have to watch out for in the charismatic movement. It's just when we hold our mouth the right way, God came once. So isn't he going to do it again?

But could we tell? Could we even tell if he wasn't in it? And how easy would it be? How easy would it be for us to go, okay, here's the ways he has met us. What is he leading us into? What are the ways in which he wants to meet us?

Okay, so always remember, you know this from revival history. The greatest persecutors of the next move of God were the leaders in the last great move of God. So that was helpful to us when we were in the last move of God and we were being persecuted.

But we never saw ourselves as the ones that could resist the next one. And so very helpful for our hearts to remember. And so I am being led by God into new things and into old things made new again. The renewing of certain things.

And in time, maybe tonight, we'll talk more about such things. I'd like to take a reading from the book of Romans, Paul's letter to the church that is in Rome. I'd like to look at a passage that for 30 years now I have wrestled with.

Romans 6 and the Tension Between Sin and Grace

And for most of the years I lost that wrestling match. I could not crack this passage. How frustrating. So we're going to read just from Romans 6, just the first five verses. Paul writes these words. What shall we say then?

Are we to continue in sin? That grace may abound? If it's true that when I sin there's grace, then what would stop me from wanting to sin? If God would give grace. By no means should we continue in sin.

How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus, that we were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death.

In order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, that we too might walk in newness of life. I'm going to end our public reading there, but I do commend to you the rest of this chapter.

And I encourage you to spend some time there later today. When you first became a Christian, was it your experience that some sins fell away almost immediately? Almost effortlessly, without even working at it.

But that one or two of them didn't fall away quite as effortlessly. That one or two of them had staying power. And that there's a bit of a battle on your hands. And even that created questions like, how could some fall away?

I never even prayed about them. And others, how could you pray about them for years and wonder why they won't go away? I think I'm not the only person probably to have experienced this. And have you ever wondered what God's purpose could be in that?

Is it purely random? That somehow does God have some sense in all of this? And I wonder if it's because those ones that stay and seem to plague the soul. That it requires some seeking of us. The ones that went without me even praying required nothing of me.

No, I didn't even have an expression of faith. But there's some required some faith. They require some seeking, some wrestling. Oh, I love preaching on wrestling. Some heart searching. Sometimes some heart healing, don't they?

Some healing of the heart. Because it's those wounded places that give them their staying power. Sometimes it requires some understanding. I love one of the translations of 1 Thessalonians chapter 4 is that you may know how to be holy.

Some forms of holiness takes some knowledge, some know-how. So some learning, some gaining of some answers to some very important questions. And so for me, my seeking led me through the years again and again to a passage of scripture.

And it was this passage. And it's a little bit of a love-hate relationship with it. I loved it because I know it's got the answer to something I really want to know. But a bit of a hate relationship because it doesn't matter how many times I get back in that chapter.

I know the answer is there, but I could not understand the answer. It did not make any sense to me. Here's the answer. We died to sin. How can we live in it any longer? Do you not know? Apparently not.

Do you not know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? I just was left with this dumbfounded look. I wanted to know the answer. How do you not sin anymore? How do you come out from under the power of sin?

Do you not know that the secrets of it are locked up with your baptism? And I was like, no, I don't get that. Because how does something that happened to me in the past give me power over sin in my present?

How does something that I never even put a lot of thought into, now going to bring me freedom into something I put an awful lot of thought into? Something that's plaguing my soul. I could not see the connection at all.

All it did was raise more questions. Let me tell you why I think this was so for me. Because at the age of 15, I became a believer. My faith and trust in the person of Jesus. I wasn't baptized. Well, not at least to my knowledge.

My mother told me only in the last couple of years I was baptized as an infant. But I didn't undergo adult baptism. No one ever spoke to me about baptism or compelled me to be baptized. At the age of 17, I wanted to go on a short-term missions.

And I applied with a missions organization. They sent me back their literature. And there were questions. And one of the questions is, have you been baptized? No. They required it of me. Very responsible of that missions organization.

So I inquired to my church. I said, I want to go on a short-term mission. I need to be baptized. Will you baptize me? Sure. I was given probably about seven seconds of catechism, of instruction before I was baptized.

They asked me, do you know what this is about? I just know I got to do this to go on a short-term mission. And I got to check the box. Well, it's about Jesus' death and resurrection. When you go down, it's something to do with his death.

And you come up, it's something to do with his resurrection. I timed it. Seven seconds. Okay, I'm ready. What's there not to understand about this? So they baptized me. I could tick the box. But it was treated like a symbol.

Not as a sacrament. Notice the beautiful symbol on the front of this pulpit. What's the symbol there? Now, here's the difference. If you remove that symbol, my preaching will be no less fiery. And it will be no less truthful.

So a symbol is nice. It is not critical. That's the way my baptism was treated. You might want to do it if you want. It could be nice. But people weren't willing to send me into ministry without even being baptized.

So more than I could unpack in that one sentence, it was not treated like a sacrament. It was not treated as something of spiritual significance. It was treated as a symbol that you could take or leave.

Baptism in the Great Commission

And many years later, I was horrified to find out how out of sync that approach to baptism was with the preaching and the practice of the early apostles. That they're that far apart. Modern practice and ancient practice.

And that's horrifying to me because if in any way you believe that the church is called to have an apostolic nature, then you don't have an apostolic nature if you do something different than the early apostles would have did if they were there.

You have an un-apostolic nature or an anti-apostolic nature. And I found out for certain we did not follow their practice. And I believed that it had discipleship implications for me. My journey was started not in a more faltering way than it could have been.

Matthew 28 is the great commission. It's got to be one of the most celebrated passages of Scripture in all of evangelicalism. Go and make disciples of all nations. How do you do that? What's the next phrase say?

Baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. So baptism in the great commission is given the highest preeminence. And in my journey, it was treated like a subscript. When you get around to it, if you feel so inclined, it was not given the highest priority.

This is the great commission. It's not some obscure passage of Scripture that nobody's ever heard about. It's the one we quote all the time. And in that passage of Scripture, baptism is given the highest place.

And in my early days of Christianity, it was given almost no priority. Acts chapter 2 is the first recorded sermon in the book of Acts. So some of you are feeling a little comforted now. Just you think, well, I wonder if Todd lost any of his fire.

I guess he didn't. First recorded sermon in the book of Acts is in the second chapter. In fact, it's really the first sermon after the Holy Spirit falls. Today at Pentecost, after 10 days of tearing, the Holy Spirit falls with tongues of fire.

Crowds in Jerusalem are watching curiously, wondering what's happening. They've gathered under the upper room. Peter steps out onto the balcony and represents the apostolate, the rest of the apostolic number.

And he preaches to this crowd the gospel. There's so much to learn from this sermon. Good gospel preaching. And he preaches in such a way. The Bible says this crowd are cut to the heart. They are moved.

They traveled the journey in the length of one sermon. They went from thinking this is crazy and ridiculous to thinking you have my full attention. And Peter, whatever you tell me I need to do, I'll do.

Repentance and Baptism as the Apostolic Response

When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart. And they said to Peter and the other apostles, what shall we do? How do you respond to this message? What do you require of us? What do we need to do?

You know what his answer is? What would your answer be? If 3 ,000 people came to you. 3 ,000. What shall we do? What would your answer be? I'm not asking what is Acts 2 answer. I'm asking what is your answer?

They're not wrong. But they're one dimensional. Believe on Jesus. I guess you should ask Jesus into your heart. That's not a bad answer. It's not wrong. But it's not three dimensional. I guess we'd say something like that.

But this is what the apostles. This is his answer. What shall we do? What's the proper response to the gospel? Repent and be baptized. Every one of you, the faces. Not some of you. Not when you get around to it.

Not if you happen to think it's important. Repent, meaning there's some stuff to turn away from. And there's a person, the person of Jesus, that you should turn to. There's a turning from and there's a turning to.

There is some stuff to turn your back on. But there's a glorious one to turn your heart to. And you will show it by baptism. Repent and be baptized, every one of you, for the forgiveness of sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

That is a response to the gospel. So now when people want to know to me, Todd, I want to become a Christian. I want to know more. What do I want to do? Repent and be baptized, every one of you. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

That's an apostolic answer. Now, it may take you a week to explain to people what that means. But that has got to be the answer. If our answer is different from their answer, we're in a lot of trouble.

Don't you think? It's the things that... It says, and Peter, with all the apostles, said this. So if we're out of sync with the early apostolic church, that wouldn't trouble you? Wouldn't it a little?

Some of you are still thinking, should it trouble me? You know what a plumb line is? A plumb line is a string with a piece of lead. A heavy piece of lead at the bottom. So when you're building a house, there's only one thing to measure straightness with.

To see if a wall is straight, measure it against something that you know is straight. So you have a plumb line. Gravity will cause it to be a straight line. So you can measure it up against something.

Measure something that might be straight and might not be against something that you know is. That's what the early apostolic church is for us. It is a plumb line. And without it, we will never know when we're out of order.

We will never know when crookedness has come in. When we have departed from certain important things. And so we have to have something to measure ourselves up against constantly. So that when we know, we're like, oh, I'm getting a little off track here.

I need that like daily. Because we're prone by degrees to ending up in places we shouldn't be. I need it every day. So why? Why did the early apostles have that kind of priority? Why did they think that baptism was that important?

Union with Christ Through Baptism

I'm gonna give you just a little taste. Romans six, someone much better than me, Pastor Samuel and Pastor Randy, they'll unpack Romans six for you in some detail. But let me just give you a small nugget from Romans chapter six.

What is baptism about? Baptism is the place where you were given what's called union with Christ. Some people have called that mystical union. In the language of this passage, it says that baptism we are united with.

We become one with. We become one with Jesus at baptism. That's exactly what the passage reads. I'm not making it up. We are united with Jesus at baptism. So in some ways, when you go to buy a house and you find the one that your heart is fixed on, I love this house, but it's not a done deal till you sign on the dotted line.

Then it's sealed. Because it takes more than just the intentions of your heart to make that thing work. You can drive past that house as many as much as you want, but it does not become yours until there's a legal document and you sign it.

And at that point, the transaction is sealed. That's what baptism is to the Christian faith. At which we become united with Jesus. What does it mean to be one with him? To be united with him. In short, it means this.

When you are united with Jesus at baptism, everything that you have and are becomes his. And everything he has and is becomes yours. Sounds a little like marriage. No, marriage is meant to be a picture of baptism.

It's meant to be a picture of the church, Christ in the church. So everything at baptism, when you become one with Jesus, everything you are and everything you have actually becomes his. So what does that look like?

What do I have? What does he get? Well, it's an all-star lineup. My sin, my wife still teases me, when I married her, I didn't get a dowry, I got her debt. I got her student loan. Small price. Jesus got way more than my student loan.

Yeah, so when I got married, my wife's finances and I become one. So I did get her debt. No, I got the privilege of paying off her Bible school. When I become one with Jesus, some stuff that I had became his.

My sin, my shame. You might still be carrying it if you want to, but it's actually not yours any longer. It's actually his. Guilt, you may choose to hang on to it. I wouldn't recommend it. Pain actually legally became his.

Now, we're still learning to hand it over to him, but it's actually his, your pain. Failure, disappointment. Your past became his. I mean, literally his. Your present and your future. I mean, those of you that live in anxiety, you need to learn this lesson.

Your future actually isn't your own. And so you don't have to figure it out. You hear that? If it's his, he can figure it out. Your spirit, your soul, and your body, which is why baptism is such a physical thing.

It's why we practice by immersion because all of your body is touched. So there is no part of you untouched by water. There is no part of you that is undedicated and is not his after that. Your body is actually his.

What the Bible says, therefore, glory to God is your body. Your mind is his. Your will is his. Your emotions are his. Your private life, your professional life, your social life, your public life, all of them are his.

That's why there is no segmentation of our life. This part belongs to Jesus and this part doesn't. Your passions become his. Your possessions, they become his. Your aspirations, they become his. Everything you are and have passes over to him.

The Exchange of Sin for Christ's Purity and Presence

Now consider the other side for a man, just in case you think this is a rough deal. I feel like the poorest man on the face of the earth who met the richest man on the face of the earth and said, he said to me, why don't we become one?

Everything you have becomes mine. Everything I have becomes yours. I'm like, well, what do you get out of the deal? And you know what he said? You. You got my poverty. I get your riches, but really all you want is me.

And so, all that he has becomes yours. So you gain his purity. You gain his standing before the Father. So sometimes in Charismatic circles, there's probably nothing we like more than worship. But the more you understand this, you'll understand why you have certain rights, privileges, and responsibilities with the presence of God.

See, because right now, we love it when the door of heaven swings open. The more you understand about your baptism, you'll understand how to open that door. And that is you are given the same standing before the Father as Jesus the Son has.

Passes on to you, which is why we are called sons and daughters. Because we are given the exact same standing. John chapter 7. Jesus' high priestly prayer. He prays for us, Father, that you would love them even as you have loved me.

How much does he love Jesus? How much does he love you? He loves you as much as he loves Jesus. He loves you that much because he first loved Jesus. Because the standing that Jesus has, the place he has in the Father's heart, Jesus says, I'm going to die so that you will be given the exact same place.

I was preaching in India a year and a half ago. Felt like the Lord told me, just preach this. I know it would be a little foreign there. So I did. And when I got to this place, I tell you what, those people from northern India, they got this so quickly.

So I asked them, how much of the Holy Spirit did Jesus have? I said, that's how much you got. How much of the presence of the Father does the Son get? That's how much you get. And their faith, literally, they built.

Their faith built until, I said, why don't you just ask right now? If it's all yours, let's ask for it. I'll tell you what, a revival of God hit that place. So the people said it was like out of the history books.

I've seen a lot of revival. I've never seen anything like this. And afterwards, I stand back and marvel, and I was just like, in all my years of revivalism, if you had told me that the secrets to revival were in something like baptism, I would have thought you were crazy.

Here I had the key all along, and it was in my back pocket. And I was looking for some new fandangled key, some shiny and sexy looking key. We were all looking for the keys. Well, this is not language you're unfamiliar with.

Romans chapter six, it's saying, dummy, do you not know? Why? Do you not know that the secrets were in something right under your nose? Really, the Lord, I asked the people, how much of an open heaven does the sun live under?

And that's what, until the Holy Spirit was poured out with such power, it was, I absolutely marveled. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I remember one day, we had a baptism at church on Sunday, and I, it was the next Tuesday morning, I was in early for prayer, walking around the sanctuary, and I was actually feeling very tired, and not really myself, and getting nowhere in prayer.

And I remembered what we'd done on Sunday, and, you know, because I, I remember what baptism was about, and the great baptism we had, and thought, I wonder if it works when you're all by yourself on a Tuesday morning.

So I just said, Lord, here's, everything I have belongs to you. It's not really that nice today. I give you my anxiety. I'm feeling pretty dead. And I just went through the list. I said, it's yours. I give it to you.

And he took it. And I said, now everything you have belongs to me. I want as much of the Holy Spirit as you have. I want as much of the presence, I'll tell you what, three minutes praying like this, I had to go to a staff meeting.

I was so drunk in the Spirit. Literally, I staggered, I staggered into my meeting. This is not unfamiliar with our staff, but I, and I just thought, this, it really works. I love Paul's phrase, do you not know?

These people have been baptized years earlier and did not know the power of their baptism, and they did not know how to unlock it in their present. I'm comforted by that because I did not know most of these years.

Renewing Baptismal Vows

I've enjoyed through the years when couples have renewed their wedding vows. Isn't that a beautiful thing? Because in some ways, it kind of says it all. You don't have to get married again, but the renewing of wedding vows, the making new of something you did long ago makes perfect sense.

It's really beautiful because it's a picture of a marriage that's going from glory to glory. Nice, nice picture. You don't get married again, but you renew it. Do you know what the history, the history of the Christian church, this was a practice I didn't even know about.

For thousands of years, Christians have renewed their baptismal vows. I, I, when I was, some of you know my story, when I was in, in England, I, I, at, at university, the Lord led me into a ministry with some of the British royal family.

And it was just, some of you know the story and I won't bore you with the details, but it was very fun. And it landed me in Buckingham Palace and meeting the Queen and, but one of the younger members of the royal family became one of my best friends.

And he, at some point, I think I kind of came to faith, I think, through our friendship. But, but years later, he converted to Catholicism. And I went down to visit him when I lived in Scotland and spent some time with him.

And then he ended up actually moving to Italy and I met him and his, his wife there in, in Italy. And we were, we were around looking through some of the streets and churches and it was just the time I was learning some of these things about baptism.

We came into, to a church and he, he did something maybe I've seen before, but never noticed and certainly never took any stock in. But there was a, a bit of water had come. He came in and he crossed himself with the water.

And so I said to him, Nicholas, it's Lord, Lord Nicholas Windsor. This is his phone title. So I said to him, Nicholas, why do you do that? The imperfect truth seems a little bit like nonsense to me. So I said, but, but he's, I know I could ask without, he wouldn't be offended.

Why do you do that? And he said, because we're coming into God's presence and I, and I come in because of my baptism. So this is my, this is water and I'm reminding myself the reason I have access into God's presence is because of my baptism.

I said, that's what that's about? Suddenly it didn't seem any so crazy. And so I realized right there, I don't know how, I mean he's, he's, someone's having, he's had a good teacher. I'm sure lots of people do that and no one, didn't have good teachers and they don't know why it, they do it even.

In his case, he had a good teacher. But I thought, we don't have any equivalent. Most of our Christians have never even heard of good teaching on baptism, let alone renewing your baptismal vows, let alone having a weekly practice that every time you come into God's presence, the reason I come in here is because I am clothed in the purity that Christ gave me at baptism, therefore I am welcome to come into his presence.

That's not a bad idea. So if you don't like the way they do it, find another way. But don't have no way. So this morning, I'm going to introduce you into a very simple, one of the practices that's been very customary through hundreds and hundreds of years of the church.

We're going to renew our baptismal vows if you would choose to do that. So at baptism in the ancient church, if you ever get a chance to study it, I think you'd find it thrilling. Baptism was not something that was taken lightly.

It was something that was taken very seriously. They would work with people for sometimes months to prepare them for baptism. To build excitement and anticipation. Baptisms were very, very big events.

Particularly when you, I mean you, it's putting your head on the chopping block. At a time of great persecution, being baptized publicly was a way of showing who you were. And you were being welcomed into Christ, welcomed into his church.

They were huge events. So people never forgot them. And just like a marriage, you know, it's not just that maybe ten years later you renew your baptismal, your wedding vows. A good marriage, you know, you should find a way to do it every day.

So I actually, my way of doing it is I take my wedding ring off at the end of every day. Only so that the next morning I can put it on and I renew my marriage covenant every single day. Now you may have your own other way of doing that.

Now some of you think, oh he takes his wedding ring off. You may have your other way of doing it. Fine some way. That's just my way. I put it on and so when I put it on I tell myself this is not just a piece of jewelry.

This is a reminder that I am in covenant with my wife. And Lord, would you make me a good husband every single day. We are going to do that with baptism today. So at baptisms there was a confession of faith, particularly based on the Apostles Creed.

Always through baptisms there was a renunciation, a three-fold renunciation of the world, the flesh, and the devil. And there was a coming into union with the Lord Jesus Christ. But first of all I'd like you to take us some time to pray.

Maybe you could play me some music. Yeah. And so before we do this let's walk out something of our baptism this morning. I want you in your own way right now in prayer to say, Jesus, all that I am and all that I have belongs to you.

Prayer of Surrender and Baptismal Identity

If you're here this morning as a visitor and you're not yet a Christian this would be an ideal time for you to say, Jesus, I want for the first time to offer you all that I am and all that I have. I don't just give you my heart.