We began to think yesterday on things unseen about the subject of baptism, in, I hope, a relatively

uncontroversial way.

Except perhaps for one thing.

Yesterday I was hinting that probably too many Christians think about baptism the wrong way around.

If you ask them what baptism means, the first thing they do is talk about themselves, rather than talk about Jesus Christ.

And I was trying to say that the central meaning of baptism is that it points us to the Lord

Jesus first, not to ourselves.

Like the gospel of which it's a sign, it's about Him first and foremost.

And that's true, as I was hinting, of all the biblical signs that we sometimes call sacraments. First and foremost, they are

reassurances to us of what the Lord has done. You probably seen that famous optical illusion

where there's either an old hag that you see or a beautiful young woman. And many people,

if they see the old hag in the picture,

seem to find it very difficult to find the beautiful woman.

And you'll forgive me for saying that sometimes I think it's a little bit like that with baptism.

Some of us look at it and see only ourselves and our faith decision.

And forgive me for putting it this way, but if we think baptism is about ourselves,

then, well, we're more like the old hag.

After all, we're sinners.

But baptism presupposes we're sinners, and that we need to be cleansed.

And that's why it points us not to ourselves

first, but to Christ. It points us as sinners to the promise of cleansing and renewal there

is in Jesus Christ. And that's why it gives us such daily reassurance. There's not so much a message

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