July 3, 2025

Today's Reading: Catechism: The Sacrament of Holy Baptism - First

Daily Lectionary: Joshua 8:1-28; Acts 11:1-18

Baptism is not just plain water, but it is the water included in God’s command and combined with God’s word. (The Sacrament of Holy Baptism - First)

In the Name + of Jesus. Amen.

If you were to look at the baptismal font without context, what would you see? An eight-sided font, perhaps, with a bowl and some water. It is nothing special and is pretty mundane when you think about it. Yet on that Sunday morning, there at the font, it is as if we were there, right back in the beginning.

Because it’s there, in the beginning, where such mundane, chaotically ordered things were made into good, very good, living things and people. In the beginning, you have the waters and the Spirit hovering over the waters. You have the Father ordering and crafting creation, and you have the Son, the Word itself, giving depth and shape by those words.

At that font in the beginning, the Spirit hovers over the face of the waters, and that little one (or even a not-so-little one) approaches. It is there the pastor, the man who stands in Christ Jesus, the Word’s stead, proclaims words that have given life since the beginning. “I baptize you in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.” The water applied, the Words uttered, and the Father looked upon the one to whom His Word has been proclaimed and His Spirit has entered and says, “Very good.”

There at that font, the chaos of sin and death in that little one has died with the Word made flesh who died for all. You and I, that little one, and all who have come to that font young and old shall die and rise daily. Rising to new life by the Spirit, shaped by the living Word who was raised up by the order and glory of His Father.

There at the font, we see not just plain water but the Water included in God’s command and combined with God’s life-giving Word, just like in the beginning.

In the Name + of Jesus. Amen.

O hear and mark the message well, For God Himself has spoken. Let faith, not doubt, among us dwell And so receive this token. Our Lord here with His Word endows Pure water, freely flowing. God’s Holy Spirit here avows, Our kinship while bestowing The Baptism of His blessing. (LSB 406:2)

- Justin Chester is a seminary student at Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, IN.

Audio Reflections Speaker: Pastor Jonathan Lackey is the pastor at Grace Lutheran Church, Vine Grove, KY.

In Clarifying the Great Commission, Rev. Daniel Christian Voth identifies common omissions from our collective understanding of Jesus’ farewell discourse—omissions that turn Christ’s promises of forgiveness, life, and salvation into a legalistic command. Come and discover a richer understanding of The Great Commission.