August 1, 2021 Sermon - A Baptism
I speak to you joyfully in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Baptism is a sign, a symbol, and an important marker of the life of a follower of Jesus. It is a sign of a person’s inclusion in the Body of Christ, the church, which is the hands and feet of the risen Saviour.
Baptism is a rich symbol of following Jesus down to the depths, the grave, and rising from the grave to new life in Jesus, rising to resurrection life in Christ our Saviour.
Now this transformation, this conversion does not occur at baptism. It occurs when we place our faith and trust in Jesus Christ and when we accept Jesus Christ personally as our Lord and Saviour.
That’s when we are born anew, born again in the language of Jesus, the language of Scripture.
A seismic shift occurs in our life when this happens, and the pathway, the future, the trajectory of a person’s life is altered when they accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour.
And a mark of belonging to Jesus is that we live our lives with Him as our Lord and our Saviour. He is our King and we are His people. Amen?
And as His people we love Him. We focus our lives on Him. Jesus said: “If you love me, you will obey what I command”. So we seek to obey Him in all things as an expression of that love.
And what was the commandment that Jesus gave to His disciples after He rose from the dead and ascended to the right hand of the Father?
He said to “Go into all the world and make disciples, baptising them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit”. Mt 28:16-20. Since that was first spoken by Jesus, His Church has done just that.
The entire Christian life is about following Jesus. It’s about living in a love relationship with Him. We love Him, but we do so because He first loved us, and as the Scripture says,
“This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins”. 1 John 4:9-10
The Scriptures read earlier by Doug and Pastor Jan speak of baptism. And here the Apostle Paul speaks to those who have already been baptised, and for those here today about to be baptised, and perhaps for us who are here in support of them as well.
6 What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? 2 By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?
First Paul speaks of the change that comes into the life of a believer that relates to honouring God as opposed to offending God. The Bible calls anything that offends God “sin”.
One big difference when you look at the before and after in the life of a Christ-follower is that the ‘before’ picture includes a lot of what I’ll call ‘selfies’.
Usually ‘selfie’ refers to awkward self-portraits that people take. You’ve likely seen some of those online. Let me slightly redefine that word, “selfie”, that has crept into our language.
In the before picture, prior to one becoming a follower of Jesus, there are other kinds of ‘selfies’: Self-will – “I’m going to do things my way. I’m going to define goodness myself. I’m going to say what is right and what is wrong. “I’m going to sin when and how I want, and I’m not even going to call it sin. I’m going to call it me being me”.
Another kind of ‘selfie; is selfishness. I’m going to live life on my terms, with myself as the centre of my universe. I will live for number 1, me. My energies and my decisions will focus on what is best for me, first and foremost.
In the after picture, when one has become a Christ-follower, there is a distinct shift in the exercise of our wills. We are learning to put the will of another, the will of God, ahead of our own will.
We are learning God’s will and God’s ways - those things that matter to God, like justice, goodness, faithfulness and the spreading of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Those things, which are God’s concerns, are coming to matter more and more to us; and the things that offend God, well we daily make the decision to turn from those things.
We are learning together to live life on God’s terms, and we find in doing that we discover our own freedom.
We find, as we say yes to God, yes to the gift of salvation offered through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and yes to receiving Jesus as our Lord and Saviour,
we find what we’ve been looking for all along. God becomes the centre of our universe, and our strength and best thinking goes into what pleases Him.
3 Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. 5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his.
Paul continues his reflection. He speaks here of ways in which the Christ-follower, the Christian, identifies with Jesus Christ, even in the act of being baptised.
The act of being submerged in water, which is what our baptismal candidates will do shortly, is a symbolic reenactment of Jesus’ own death, but here it is the dying to self. We are ‘baptised into his death’.
But this happens so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead, we too follow Christ in resurrection, so that we may live a new life. A life where the path or trajectory of our life has been drastically altered for the better by the choice to follow Jesus.
Of course that’s a choice we make as a response to the call of God in our lives. It’s a choice we make because God has revealed the truth to us and opened our eyes to the gospel, to the fact of Jesus’ life and death by crucifixion, and to His resurrection.
God reveals. God opens our eyes, and perhaps the greatest miracle of all is that He enables us to believe, in a wonderfully gracious act of the Holy Spirit.
6 For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin— 7 because anyone who has died has been set free from sin.
Jesus is Lord to the glory of God the father. That’s a fact. And Jesus wants our lives to line up with that reality. That means that, as Paul says, we should no longer be slaves to sin. We should no longer serve sin. Quite the opposite.
Instead of serving sin, we are called to serve the living God with everything in us; our whole lives are to be a testimony to the One who has set us free from sin.
8 Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9 For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. 10 The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. 11 In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
One last note...the liberty that Jesus won for you and for me by giving His life for us on the cross has an ultimate point. It is not liberty for liberty’s sake.
It is not freedom for freedom’s sake. And we’re certainly not set free by Jesus in order to, in some other way, just live narrowly for ourselves.
The freedom that Christ won for you and for me was so that you and I can be alive to God in Jesus Christ.
We can live with our eyes open to His love and goodness, to His majesty, to His massive heart for humanity, for justice.
We live as ambassadors for Christ, those called to be agents of reconciliation, serving God with our whole hearts. We no longer live alive to sin and dead to God. Jesus has flipped the scales.
He enables us, He empowers us by the Holy Spirit to live free. Unencumbered by guilt and the yoke of slavery to those things that offend God, and that choke the life and liberty out of us.
Rather, Jesus makes us alive to God. Awake with gratitude to His good gifts, aware of His presence and of the leading of His Holy Spirit.
Jesus enables us to be aroused from our slumber. Paul says in Ephesians 5:14 This is why it is said: "Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you."
So, baptismal candidates, you have chosen today to follow Jesus in the waters of baptism. You have chosen to make a public profession of your faith in Christ.
You’ve chosen to today be publicly identified with Jesus and with His Church, which is the body of Christ on earth.
You’ve already made the decision to follow Jesus for your whole lives, living in the joy of His Lordship, and the freedom of the fact that He is your Saviour.
I commend you for your decision today, and for what you will shortly do. May God richly bless you and fill you to overflowing with His grace and with the presence of His Holy Spirit.
