Knowledge by Ritual Series 2/2 BaptismIntroduction:  Most of the time, the beach is a really fun place to be. On a sunny day most of us love to be on a beach, we would love to enjoy the water or maybe lay under the warmth of the light. Most of the time the beach is great. But not every time. When I was sixteen my youth pastor took a group of us on a mission trip to Mexico. We had to wear these awful yellow shirts, which I promptly ruined at the first opportunity. That trip was the first time I ever got to preach, to share the word. It was the first time I really understood how big God’s love is. I wish ever teen could have that experience. On the last day of the trip, after spending the week digging trenches and caring for orphans, we got to have an afternoon off. It was awesome! We got to go to this little market and buy a fee souvenir. And then… unfortunately… we were off to the beach. Now understand, this beach was really nice. Everyone enjoyed the sun and hanging out together. At first it was really a great time. That was, until one of the girls went out into the water.For those of you who haven’t been to the ocean, real beaches have something called a rip current. A rip current is a strong, narrow jet of water that moves away from the beach and into the ocean as a how the waves interact with each other.Basically it’s a small park of the beach, impossible to find, which will very quickly drag you out to the ocean. This girl from our missions team managed to find that spot. What started as a fun afternoon turned into a terrifying situtation as this girl, who was not a good swimmer quickly got dragged farther and farther form shore. Our youth pastor rushed into the water, swam out and dragged her back all the way back against the current. I’m pretty sure he was running on pure adrenaline. We realized that day how dangerous waters can be. This week we are going to finish our talk on rituals by looking at baptism. Next week we will be having baptisms at this church for the first time in over 10 years. I can think of no better time then now to look at this important ritual. Section 1:Water is Wet?For those of you who weren’t here last week, we need to a quick recap. We’ve been talking about how the only way for people to Know something is through rituals. Rituals are simply normal every day practices that are strategically deployed.  So teaching your child the difference between colours using a game, that is a ritual. Sitting down every day at the same time to practice guitar? that’s a ritual too. Rituals point to towards something bigger, something we’d miss otherwise. You need to actually do a ritual to know what it’s trying to teach you. I can’t make someone a master guitar player unless they sit down with me to practice. So baptism is one of the few rituals that all church’s still practice. Well Christian’s disagree about baptism means we all agree that it’s extremely important. Baptism is really just a ritualized bath that points to something greater. But to understand why baptism is important we do need to look at what the symbols mean. Like I said last week, understand the symbology of a ritual is good, but acting it out is better. That’s still true. Here though, we have a problem because our view of water has changed a lot from the Israelites. For us water is just wet. It’s fun to play in. It’s good for drinking. But for the Israelites this wasn’t the case. In fact, the ancient Israelites saw water as being extremely dangerous. It’s an idea that rooting the very beginning of the Bible. Water was a destructive force. “The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.“ To the Israelites, water was seen as being “without form and void”. For them great bodies of water like the sea was seen as being inhospitable to humans. Storms destroyed ships, salt water was undrinkable and