Sermon Notes / Transcript

Mark 12:1-12 — They Understood

Speaker: Daniel Coughlin
Date: 23 August 2026

Scripture Reading

Our sermon today is from the book of Mark. this is in the New Testament, in the Gospels, very beginning of the New Testament. Over halfway through your Bible if you have one or want to open up your Bible. Open with me to Mark chapter 12. Or you can follow along on the screen.

This is God's word and it is eternally true. And he began to speak to them in parables. A man planted a vineyard and put a wall around it, and dug a vat under the wine press, and built a tower, and rented it out to vine growers and went on a journey.

At the harvest time he sent a slave to the vine growers in order to receive some of the produce of the vineyard from the vine growers. They took him and beat him and sent him away empty handed. Again he sent them another slave, and they wounded him in the head and treated him shamefully, and he sent another, and that one they killed.

And so with many others, beating some and killing others, he had one more to send a beloved son. He sent him last of all to them, saying, They will respect my son. But those vine growers said to one another, This is the heir. Come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.

They took him and killed him and threw him out of the vineyard. What will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come out of the vineyard. I'm sorry, he will come and destroy the vine growers and will give the vineyard to others.

Have you not even read this Scripture? The stone which the builders rejected, this became the chief cornerstone. This came about from the Lord, and it is marvelous in our eyes.

And they were seeking to seize him, and yet they feared the people, for they understood that he spoke the parable against them, and so they left him and went away.

This is the Word of the Lord.

Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, may the words of my mouth and the thoughts of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Introduction: Remember Where We Are

Well, I want us to remember where we are in the Gospel of Mark, because this is not a text that just fell down in one separate chunk, right?

This happened as part of a progression of a narrative, of a progression of events. And this is we're not to the culmination of it yet, but we're we're moving in that direction. If you remember back at the beginning of chapter 11, Jesus had just come to Jerusalem, right?

This is Palm Sunday. You've probably all had a Palm Sunday service or celebration at some place or another, right? With waving palm branches and shouting, Hosanna, Hosanna, right? The crowd as Jesus came, the crowd welcomed Jesus in as king, as someone coming to take his kingdom here on earth.

Jesus, though, goes to the temple and inspects it and finds it wanting and curses the fig tree, comes to the temple the next day, and what does he do? Tosses over the money changers' tables, right? Makes himself a whip of cords and drives out the people who were profaning his sanctuary.

The place that was supposed to be a place of prayer for all the nations, they had turned into a money changer's table and were selling sheep for the for the sacrifice. Right? and so there's a couple ways to respond when someone throws tables over, right? You can either see what they're doing or you can you can challenge them right and so the the chief priests and the scribes and the elders they come up against jesus and they say, who gave you the right to do this?

Who told you that you could come into our temple and throw these tables over? Who gave you the right to come clean this place up? Right, they weren't attacking what he did. They were attacking something something foundational.

Who we have this authority. This is our this is our temple, this is our place of worship. Who gave you the right to come and tell us what we should do with it? And Jesus answers them with a question.

He doesn't he doesn't directly answer them. He says, I'll answer your question if you answer mine. You tell me what John, whether John the Baptist, whether his baptism was of man or was of God. And what do the chief priests and the and the Pharisees and the scribes do, the elders.

They look around and they're like, We're gonna lose this battle because all these people over here, they all really like John. They were all real like John was a a a big deal to them. Jesus, remember, they just sang his praises as he walked in. It's like, well, maybe the direct challenge here isn't going to work.

We're going to have to go an indirect route. And so what do they do? Do they answer? They don't answer. And so Jesus says, Neither will I answer you. And then he goes right into this parable, right?

So it's important that you know the context because the scribes and the chief priests and the elders just attacked Jesus' authority. Right? Who gave you permission to try and clean up our temple? Okay, this is important. The parable parables in general are stories with points.

Right? A parable isn't just a story. It isn't just like you know what an analogy is. An analogy is something that like there's point-to-point coordination between the the the thing itself and and the the story being told. A parable is a little different than that.

A parable usually has one point to it. Now this one is a parable with some analogy into it.

The point is this though. Jesus is the beloved Son, sent by the Father.

He's doing more than just identifying who he is, though. He's exposing a pattern that runs through all of the history of Israel. God graciously provides for his people. God patiently and persistently calls them to him, asking for fruit of their of their life.

You know, I've set you up here. you then return to me glory. You return to me praise. But sinful man seeks to keep God's gifts without his authority, right? They want to do their own thing.

They want all the benefits and none of the costs. They want all the benefits but none of the responsibilities.

The Father sending the Son is both the ultimate act of grace and the ultimate call to repentance. The word ultimate is a great word because it means the highest, it also means the last.

Right? This is the call for repentance. Because next comes the judgment.

The Father Provides and Patiently Pursues

Before Jesus exposes the wickedness of the tenants, though, he first draws attention to the generosity of the owner. See how the man who planted the garden shows us the father.

The vineyard in Scripture is typically God's chosen people, his kingdom. The man is God the Father. And then the the chief priests and the scribes and the elders, they're the the tenants. They're the the vineyard owners.

It's important to kind of have this concept in mind, otherwise the parable loses its focus.

The chief priests and the scribes and the elders would have understood specifically God setting them up in this vineyard as Israel's deliverance from Egypt and the provision of the promised land. Right? What do the spies find when they get to the promised land?

When they go spy out the promised land, what do they bring back? They bring back a giant cluster of of grapes. What do you use in a vineyard? Grapes, right? So the connection here it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out, right?

This is the vineyard. This is the promised land. God drives out Israel's enemies before them, provides them this lush land filled with with olives and grapes and everything they could need.

Look at how Jesus describes the work that God did.

He:

• planted the vineyard;
• defended it with a wall and a tower; and
• provided for it a vat and a wine press. this is what if you were searching on you know Craigslist, if that still exists these days, this would be called a turnkey operation, right? It's like it's all here ready for you to go.

You just need to come in here and do the work. It's ready for business. And so he selects these vineyard workers and he places them in this prepared vineyard. This is a completely outfitted vineyard.

Now, the rent it out part is key though, right? Because does he transfer full ownership to these vineyard workers? Is he like, okay, you're gonna buy it from me, I'm going to sell it to you. It's going to be yours.

No, he doesn't, right? It these they're tenants. They're tenant farmers. God planted the vineyard, not the tenants. Who built the wall?

God built the wall, not the tenants. Who built the tower? God built the tower, not the tenants, right? Are you seeing the pattern here?

Everything that they came to enjoy came from God. Their job was to work it. Their job was to work it and give a portion of it back to God. Right? That was the arrangement.

The problem, interestingly, isn't incompetence. It's not that the vineyard went to weeds. The problem isn't that that they just failed to show up to do their job. The problem shows up when the messenger comes, the slave comes, and says, okay, now you have to share a portion of the produce to the owner.

That's when the problem happens. At some point, it seems that the vineyard owners forgot that they were stewards on behalf of God. They were stewards on behalf of the owner, that they were just the tenants, they weren't the owner, that they had a duty to do the work, but they didn't get all of the profits from the work that they did.

They had to share a portion of it back.

Now, think about it. So the first slave arrives, and he says, you know, hey guys, you have to give the produce. And the tenants kick them out.

What could the owner have done at that point? What would you do? Let's say let's say you're a landowner and and you enter a crop share with a farmer. and at the end of the year he had a good harvest and he says, I've decided not to pay you this year.

What's your instinct? Yeah. You give them the boot, right? You know, you call the police, maybe. Is that what God is that what this owner does? And it's hard not to keep switching back between God and the owner.

But is that what the owner does here? What does the owner do? He sends someone else, and someone else, and someone else. This is the patient and persistent love of God.

The owner doesn't stop at the first rebellious rebuke from the farmers. He initiates again. He sends another servant and another and another and many others.

I'm hammering this point because it's common for us to view the God of the Old Testament as a judgmental harsh God, one that none of us would want any dealings with.

And that's false. It's false. Just as a as as to get going, that's false. But that's also completely contrary to how Jesus views God's treatment of Israel through the Old Testament. Is it a harsh, exacting, ungracious, unmerciful God of the Old Testament? No, absolutely not. Here's Jesus explaining the patient persistence of the love of the Father that we should see through the whole Old Testament.

Israel rejected the prophets time and time again. And God kept sending them messengers to bring them back, to call them back, to call them to repentance. Even after his servants are repeatedly rejected, he acts again.

This isn't merely ownership.

This isn't merely, you know, a landowner owning land. This is fatherly responsibility. This is the kind of persistent patient love that fathers must show in our households. This kind of sacrificial initiative, this seeking out and laying aside of those of yourself for the benefit of those under your care, despite rejection and protestations.

Okay?

Men, listen, you must love and care for your wife and your children for their good, regardless of how they react to you. They might be, you may have married a prickly woman that doesn't excuse you from loving her that doesn't excuse you from initiating intentionally thoughtfully looking out, finding ways to care for her.

You can't build a house, build a marriage, and build up children without this kind of patient, persistent, self-sacrificial love because honestly, those in your care are often going to act just like the tenant farmers do, right? Ungrateful, unwilling to show gratitude for your hard work. It doesn't excuse you from loving.

It doesn't excuse you from initiating love.

Not just receiving it, not just reciprocating it, right? You know what the word reciprocate means? If you reciprocate love, you give back what you receive.

Right? And so if your wife loves you, you love her back. Is that what we see with the father here? Is it reciprocating love? Is it responsive love?

It's initiating love. God's the one that starts it. He's the one that sends the messengers, sends messenger after messenger after messenger.

The Tenants Reject the Owner’s Authority

These vineyard workers, they reject God's message though.

Now, we're gonna have to do some work here because what we're translating is the church leaders of the Old Testament, right?

The temple leaders, the the priests, the chief priests, the Pharisees, the scribes, but not in like one little picture of time. We're talking about, you know, God's chosen people through all of history. So who are God's chosen people today? It's the church. Right? It's those who profess faith.

This has always been who God's people are. But there's always this visible and invisible mix of how you know who God's people are. Because not all Israel is Israel, just like not everyone who signs the church membership rolls is in the church.

But we should look at the vineyard workers and we should we should associate ourselves with them. We should see ourselves in them. That's the only way we take this warning seriously for what it is. Because we see the hardness of heart in rebellious mankind through these vineyard workers.

We see those who want to keep the benefit of the Heavenly Father without his authority. and this is this is our temptation if we're not careful. If we don't if, we reject God's warning.

So why do they attack the servants? They could have ignored them.

They could have just sent them away empty-handed, but they go a step above, right? They wound the servants. They beat them, they wound them in the head, they kill them.

I think it's because every servant is a reminder that the vineyard belongs to someone else.

Right? It's that reminder, that persistent reminder that what you're claiming as your own isn't really your own. And who do we hate more than the messenger of a bad message. I mean, besides the owner himself. And yet God persists in sending messengers, sending prophets, each time God doing this initiatory work.

You can imagine the vineyard workers thinking something along the lines of, well, we did all the hard work here. Why does he entitled to any of that? Right? And I'm not, I don't want to get into economic theories here, so we're not going to. Only suffice it to say that we like to think very highly of ourselves.

We look at our lives and we see how we're gifted, what kind of things we're good at, And we forget that the word gifted in there means that we received it from someone else. Right?

We are gifted to live in a land with religious liberties. We are gifted to have grown up in northeast Kansas, which is a relatively speaking, a fairly affluent area.

We are gifted that there's not much starvation going on. It's hard to find someone who's literally starving to death around here. We have so many gifts, and if I called them privileges, you'd probably prickle. But we do. We live under the privilege of our forefathers, men and women who've sacrificed themselves, so that we can have a better standard of living, so that we can have more freedoms and more liberties.

And then we take it for granted and, we think: you know, we've we've got this figured out. we don't need to worry about all that stuff.

In a way, we're just like the vineyard workers, right? they got dropped into a place where there were towers and walls and and wine presses and vats, and it was all ready to go.

And they're like, Alright, aren't we glad we have all this? Good job, guys. we really we really did a lot of work to to put ourselves into this great position that we're in, that we're now a productive wine press.

They took something God gave them and, they treated it like their own possession, and so they forgot to be grateful.

They looked to themselves. They were self-centered and self-ish. And what happened with the nation of Israel is easy to happen here in America in the 21st century with our modern evangelical churches, right? It's easy to look back and think, oh, we've come this far, we we don't need to look with gratitude on the history.

We don't need to look with gratitude on the past.

The Old Testament is filled with warnings, accounts of Israel forgetting their dependence on God. What would happen is God would send one of his prophets to wake him up to say, Hey, what are you doing? You're going after you're marrying foreign women who worship false idols?

Stop that. You're giving your affection, your love to other gods other than me. Hey, you're killing your babies to enrich yourself. Stop that. What you I've not asked for that. Don't do that. And so he sends prophet after prophet with these messages of stop.

You are worshiping the wrong gods. you've gone to self-centeredness, selfishness, you've forgotten who I am.

Do you think that was a popular message? Is that how you build a megachurch these days? is is with you know hard preaching, calling, alerting people to their sins, showing them their sinfulness.

Is that is that how you know does that draw people in? It didn't work like that in the Old Testament. Anyone familiar with the scriptures of the Old Testament knows how the prophets were treated. They were not celebrity pastors, in case you're not and if I'm ruining a surprise for you, they they were not.

Elijah was hunted by King Ahab and Queen Jezebel, and he watched many of his fellow prophets be hunted and killed. Jeremiah was thrown into a muddy cistern to starve, beaten and placed into the stocks. He faced constant death threats and rejection. Zechariah, the son of Barakiah, was murdered between the temple altar and the sanctuary, like they didn't even let him get out of the church before they struck him down.

This is what the masses did. This is what the church did to the prophets.

This is the hardness of man's heart. Instead of responding with gratitude, we respond with possessiveness.

The chosen blessed people of God are supposed to be the willing bride, right? Receiving with joy the affections of the groom, but instead of a willingness to properly receive and respond to God's initiating actions, she's looking in every other direction for where her next meal is gonna come from.

The chosen blessed people of God are to be grateful tenants, happy to do the work that God gave them, happy to return a portion of their revenue back to the God who settled the way for them, who provided you know the strength, the land, the towers, the defense.

All of it, all of the gifts, grateful for their share, not greedily demanding it all.

The Father Sends His Beloved Son

And still God's patience had not yet met its climax. Because like a good husband, like a good father, like a good owner, God continues to patiently and persistently initiate his love towards his people.

Jesus says that the vineyard workers, though they beat and killed the prophets, now here is the Son. Right? God's patience should astonish us his mercy, his grace. That though one servant was beaten, another killed, more rejected, he sends another and another, and ultimately he sends his son carrying the full authority of the Father.

What a chance to repent. Jesus confronts them in their wicked scheme with his with his identity as the Son, being sent from God the Father another initiatory act of love, one more opportunity to submit to love, one more chance to do what was their good and reasonable service.

And what's crazy, what should shock us and appall us is verse 12. Because it's easy to think that it's a parable and it was confusing and they didn't get it. But they did. They understood. Look at verse 12. They were seeking to seize him, Jesus, and yet they feared the people, for they understood that he spoke the parable against them.

Now sometimes Scripture is hard. Hard to understand. I hear we don't know exactly who the they is. It was at least the scribes and the elders and and the Pharisees, right? At least they, but the crowd as well?

Its seem like the crowd may well have known too that Jesus was poking the scribes and the elders and the Pharisees.

The tenants in Jesus' parable knew too. Right? This is the heir, come, let us kill him. The rebellion is deliberate.

It's right there. They understood what was going on.

The tragedy is understanding without repentance, right? At that point, they harden their hearts. Jesus lays it out.

Your father's killed the prophets. And here I am, the son, calling you to the same thing. Turn to me, receive my love, accept it, see your wickedness, see your sinfulness, see your rebellion. And they refused. They preferred their position of authority over Jesus' authority, over God's authority.

They refused to turn from their self Self-protective ways because they feared the crowd. They feared man and not God. They feared the crowd was turning against them. And what happens to their authority if the crowd turns against them?

Boom, right? They're eliminated, nothing left.

The leaders, the builders, they follow in the footsteps of their fathers who had rejected, beaten, and killed the prophets. To maintain their positions, there's only one thing they have left to do. It's to kill the Son.

Jesus lays it out for them in his parable.

The Warning to Us

Now we can read this and think, whoa, those guys were wicked. But that's not valuable to us. The way that this Scripture is valuable to us is if we read this text as a warning.

A warning to not neglect God's invitation to repent and follow Jesus. Do not count the Lord's patience as neglect. He is not slow on his promises of judgment. Every call to repentance is a mercy from God.

Every call to turn from our ways, our secret plans of wickedness, of sin, of rebellion, of rejecting God's authority. Listen, because God's mercy, it has a limit. God's patience has a limit.

Listen to this from 2 Chronicles 36.

The Lord, the God of their fathers, sent word to them again and again by his messengers, because he had compassion on his people and on his dwelling place. But they continually mocked the messengers of God, despised his words, and scoffed at his prophets, until the wrath of the Lord arose against his people, until there was no remedy.

Now listen, you look at the history of the church. Where did the church first flourish? Was the Middle East, North Africa? What's that region like now?

Is that a safe place to be a Christian? It is not.

Look at the trajectory of Europe. Europe, where the Protestant Reformation took hold, where the Holy Roman Empire was often led by by religious Christian authorities. You see the trajectory that Europe's on?

Look at the United States. A nation built established on religious freedoms. What's our trajectory? We can look at this from a national perspective, and we can see our ingratitude. We can see our ingratitude as a nation, and it should convict us.

It should bring us to a national repentance.

But even more importantly, the warning should come to us individually. You, you You have received the blessings of God. You have received every breath in your lungs, every beat of your heart, every sustaining meal that you've received is a blessing from God for which you owe Him praise.

It is your good and reasonable service to praise the Lord. The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. That is why you were created. You are aware of your falling short of the glory of God, and there is still time to repent.

There is still time to turn away from the selfishness, the self-centeredness, the wickedness. This is a day of grace. This is a glorious opportunity to love the Lord your God, to turn to him and to know him.

And in particular, men, I mentioned this a little bit earlier, you have the duty to show the initiating love of the father to your wife and to your children, to patiently and persistently initiate love towards them.

Men of God cannot be passive. We must see this as we look at who God reveals Himself to be here, To see their needs, to give yourself sacrificially to care for them.

And women, you have the responsibility to show the joyful, receptive, submissive response to that love.

Unlike the tenant farmers who were selfish and seeking security from any other avenue, every other avenue, you are to delight in the imperfect love you receive from your husband. This is one of the ways that you get to uniquely exemplify the church as the bride of Christ. Right?

There's ways in which men and women are unique in the ways that we get to reflect God and reflect His plan of salvation.

Children. We have lots of children today, and I'm delighted for that. When we finish up, I'm gonna call you up because our baptismal is low.

I'd like you guys all to come kind of stand sit around here and you'll have a much better view. Not yet, in a little bit. But listen, kiddos, you've grown up in the church with a Christian family, you've received the blessing of hearing God's word. You've received the blessing, get this, of discipline, of being punished for having violated God's commands.

That is a blessing for which you should be grateful. And I know that's hard to wrap your brain around, right? When the cell phone gets taken away from you, when when your bottom gets spanked, when you get sent to your room, when you get denied privileges, like you think those things are hard and bad, and I'm here to tell you those things are a blessing from God, and you should be grateful for that.

Hard to do, huh? Okay.

You have a duty to respond to this training. You have a duty to be grateful for being disciplined. That is your good and reasonable response to being brought up in Christian community with biblical teaching.

So, did I miss anyone? I got men and women and children. Some of you may have gotten double double dipped. Listen, this is serious.

There is a day appointed unto man to die And then the judgment. And if there's anything that we can let the last year of local untimely deaths remind us of, it's that we are not guaranteed tomorrow. And so the only reasonable response is to give God what he's owed.

Give him the glory and honor that is due him. That's your responsibility. Repent from your sins, repent from your selfishness, and turn to the Lord.

And if you have questions on how to do that, talk to me, talk to Dylan, talk to Randy. We can help.

Let's pray.

Closing Prayer

Heavenly Father, this is a call to repentance. This is a call to turn away from our selfishness and our self-centeredness. And it doesn't matter if we are a church leader, it doesn't matter if we're an elder. It does matter. The standards are higher.

The judgment is greater. Help us, Father. Give us hearts to see, give us ears to hear, eyes to see. Give us your spirit that we might see our wicked rebellion and we might turn to you, so that we might have help to deal with it. Help to deal with our sinful selfishness.

Give us faith to see that there's a better way. Faith to see that walking in your ways is better than walking in our own ways. Faith to see that we can confess our sins without being destroyed. Help us in this, Father.

Give us faith. Prepare us for the baptisms that we have ahead. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Preparation for Baptism

All right. Would those who are going to be baptized, please prepare yourselves as we sing. We're going to sing two songs to give them a minute to get ready and and then we'll we'll be going here.

Watch this now. We're gonna sing Jesus Cast a look on me it would Would be in your bulletin. Sorry, we might have run out of bulletins, but hopefully we have enough that and I don't know this song, so somebody's gonna have to help me. I don't know if it's gonna be up here or not, maybe not.

Hymn: “Jesus, Cast a Look on Me”

Jesus cast a look on me Me, give me sweet simplicity, make me poor, and keep me low Seeking only thee to know all that feeds my busy pride cast it evermore aside, bid my will to thine submit, lay me humbly at thy feet, make me like a little child O of my strength and wisdom's voice.

Seeing only in thy light, walking only in thy leaning on thy loving breast, where a weary soul can rest, feeling well the peace of God from his past in this posture, let me live And Hosanna's daily give at this temper let me die And Hosanna's ever cross.

Hymn: “Be Thou My Vision”

Okay, the next one is Be Thou My Vision also in your bulletin, I believe it's also page three seventy-four of your hymnal.

Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart, not be all else to me save that thou art thou my best thought by day or by night waking or sleeping thy presence, my life be thou my vision and thou my true word I ever with thee and thou with me, Lord, thou my great father, I thy true son thou in me dwelling, and I with thee one Be thou my battle shield sword for the fight, Be thou my dignity, thou my delight thou my soul shelter raise Thou me heavenward, O Power of my power Riches I heed not, nor man's empty praise thou my inheritance now and always thou and thou only first in my heart, I king of heaven, my treasure, thou art High King of heaven, my victory won may I reach heaven's joys, O bright heaven's Sun heart of my own heart whatever befall still be my vision, O Ruler of all Thank you, you may be seated.

Baptism

All right, kiddos, you want to come up? And everyone else can't. Well, yeah, we let's be patient. All right. First I want to tell you a little bit about baptism.

The Institution and Meaning of Baptism

Jesus commands the church to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe all that Jesus commanded. He said in Matthew 28. And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth.

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you, and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. To repent and be baptized is a divine command.

Baptism is a sacrament. That means that the washing with water is visible, right? There's actually can you guys testify? There's water here. They're actually gonna get wet.

Right? It's an external sign of an invisible reality. The invisible reality is our union with Christ, being washed from our sins and newness with of life in Christ. But baptism isn't merely a sign, it is also a seal. Not a seal meaning all those who are baptized are saved.

Rather, it is a seal in that we see God's grace in the faithful submission of a believer to be baptized. Baptism is also a means of grace by which the person being baptized and all who observed it are improved. You should remember that you too were washed and cleansed with Christ in newness of life.

So to those who are going to be baptized, we have them lined up against the wall there. Like we're gonna execute them. You are loved by the Lord. And we, your fellow disciples, love you.

God has been gracious to you. Don't doubt any longer. Trust the Lord who began this work of faith in your life will continue it. He will be faithful to complete the work that He began in you.

Baptismal Questions

Come in repentance of your sins and confess your faith by answering the following questions. You ready? You're going to answer yes, or I do.

1. Do you believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ his only Son, our Lord, and in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life.

2. Do you acknowledge yourself to be a sinner who has turned to Christ in repentance, trusting in God's mercy alone for your salvation?

3. Do you receive the Bible as the very Word of God, without error, teaching the only way of salvation?

4. Do you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as the Son of God, the Savior of sinners, and do you receive and rest upon him alone for salvation as he is offered in the gospel?

5. And do you promise in humble reliance upon the grace of the Holy Spirit that you will live in a way that honors Christ at home, in church, and in the world?

6. And lastly, do you promise to support the worship and work of the church, to submit to its biblical discipline, and to strive for its purity, unity, and peace.

Congregational Vow

Alright, and then this is for the congregation. Do you welcome these disciples and promise by your fellowship to strengthen their ties with the household of God? If so, say we do. All right.

Exhortation on Baptism

The Lord Jesus Christ instituted baptism as a covenant sign and seal for his church.

He uses it not only for the solemn admission of people who are baptized into the visible church, but also to show his death and burial and resurrection. That's what that's we baptize by immersion into the water. The Lord uses baptism to portray to us that we and our children are conceived and born in sin and we need to be cleansed.

He uses it to witness and to seal to us the remission of sins, and I'm worried one of you is going to fall in the water. So hold off on dipping your hands. Baptism with water signifies and seals cleansing from sin by the blood and spirit of Christ, together with our death unto sin and our resurrection unto newness of life, by virtue of the death and resurrection of Christ, because these gifts of salvation are the gracious provision of the triune God, who is pleased to claim us as his very own.

In baptism, the Lord puts his name on us and claims us as his own and summons us to assume the obligations of being in a covenant relationship with him. He calls us to believe in Jesus Christ as our Savior, to renounce the devil, the world, and the flesh, and to walk humbly with God in newness of life.

Let's pray.

Prayer Before Baptism

Heavenly Father, God of all grace, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord, commanded this holy sacrament, washing with water to signify and seal heavenly realities. We ask that you set apart this water from a common use to the sacred use that you have appointed in baptism. We pray that your mercy would be sealed upon those baptized, and that they would be united with Christ in his death and resurrection, and that they would die to their sins and live in newness of life and righteousness.

We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Yeah, if you want to stand up, welcome. I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. We're going to take a step forward.

Ready? Turn around face that way. All right. Nathan Dollinghouse, I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. You're not as tall, I'm not gonna have to worry about smacking your head on the top of this. I think it's over.

Michaela Rosenberger, I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. All right, Simone. Thank you very much for the first time. And Simone, I know your middle name, so I'm gonna use that too. Alright, ready? Simone Jubilee Codwin, I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

All right.

Reception and Charge

Are you all here? Based on your confession of faith, I admit you to the sacrament of the Lord's Supper and the fellowship of Christ Church. Now you must diligently continue in the faith. This isn't a one-time thing, we talked about that already.

In all humility, rely on the means of grace that God has provided, especially His Word and the sacraments and prayer. Do not neglect to gather with the saints so that you would not be deceived by sin's deception. And rest in Jesus' faithfulness. Rest in his goodness, knowing that he promised that if you confess Christ before men, he will confess you before the Father.

To the church here, remember that you too were once newly grafted into Christ's church. You are responsible to love and strengthen your new brothers and sisters here. Be patient and gentle, but don't neglect opportunities to help them grow.

Let's pray.

Prayer After Baptism

Father, we thank you that you have set your seal upon those baptized and all your children who have been received as members of your church.

Children of God, we are branches that you have newly grafted into Christ. Make us grow and produce fruit in the Holy Spirit for your glory and honor. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.