Welcome to another week on Things Unseen. This week we're actually going to talk about

something we do see baptism. Now I can imagine a variety of responses to that statement. Everything

from oh no, I'm not sure I can bear to listen to yet another person lecturing me on my

views of baptism, to on the other hand, oh yes, I think I agree with Sinclair Ferguson on

baptism so he's going to nail the opposition. But the point of Things Unseen is not to air

controversial topics for these few minutes each weekday. I think it's worth saying actually

that if we think of baptism first and foremost as a controversy, rather than a gift from

the Lord Jesus, somehow we've got hold of the wrong end of the stick, and I hope you

agree. So what I want to say at the outset is this, baptism is a gift from the Lord Jesus to help

us all to live for His glory. And I hope I can avoid the usual controversy, son, baptism,

to help us get to the main thing. So if you find anything I say is controversial, it won't

have to do with either when baptism is administered or how much water is used. Yes, I know these

are views in which we have different opinions, but I want to reflect with you on something

more fundamental. And I want to do that because I suspect that whatever are views on these

issues and baptism, we're not actually particularly strong on appreciating why Christ gave it to

us, what it means, or the impact it's meant to have on our daily Christian living. Because

baptism isn't just something that happened once and is over and done with. If you read

the New Testament, you notice that its significance is meant to last through the whole course of our

Christian life. Well, the first question to ask is this, what is baptism? I mean, what kind

of event is it? And why do we do it? Here I suspect our tendency is to view baptism through

a kind of close-up lens and forget to think about it in terms of its place in the whole story

of the Bible. If we do, we'll forget that baptism is actually only one of a whole series

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