2.22.2010

Wash up, first

When I invite us to the table, I typically give three requirements for you to come. I’m going to explain each of those in the next few weeks. First, I say, “All those baptized into the Triune God.”

Before you eat, you have to wash up. When God saves us, He washes us, making us His heirs, Titus says (3:5 - "according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit"). The washing is the baptism; the heirs sit at this table. In baptism we are marked as God’s covenant people. At the Table, the Lord feeds His covenant people. This same requirement existed in the OT – (Ex 12:48 - "And when a stranger dwells with you and wants to keep the Passover to the Lord, let all his males be circumcised, and then let him come near and keep it"). To partake of Passover you had to be circumcised. Likewise, to partake of this NT Passover you must be baptized. This is not meant to keep you from the Lord’s table, but to bring you to Him in the right way. If you are not baptized, but have come to Christ, then we invite you to be baptised, and then to come to this Table.

You do not have to remember your baptism for it to count. I don’t remember mine. But you need to have been baptized into the Trinitarian God, according to Matt 18:28.

We are the people God has washed and set apart for His Son, by His Spirit. Let us partake remembering His Son’s sacrifice, His Spirit’s baptizing us into His Body. Let us discern that body into which we are baptized. There is one body, one Spirit, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all.

8/23/09

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