“The Baptism We Receive” Basics of the Christian Faith Series, July ‘17

1.       Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Heavenly Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. The message from God's Word today is focusing on what our Lord says about Baptism, “The Baptism We Receive,” dear brothers and sisters in Christ.

2.       It’s said that one day Martin Luther met a depressed parishioner.  “What’s wrong with you man?” Luther asked, “Don’t you realize you’ve been baptized?”  What would happen to you if I asked you the same question as your pastor?  Would you smile, frown, blast out in anger, or rethink your attitude toward your life or toward God?  We may or may not want our pastor to use a technique like Luther’s the next time we feel frustrated or sad, but the question Luther asked makes one thing clear:  He expected that Holy Baptism would make a difference in the lives of God’s children.

3.       Do we have this concept of Baptism as a source of power for our lives?  If someone were to ask you, “What difference does your Baptism make to you today?”  How would you answer?  By reciting a formula you memorized during confirmation but never put to any use in your life?  Or would you testify what God has done for you in the last 24 hours through your Baptism?  I guess that many of us have lost sight of how much God demonstrates His love for us in our Baptism.

4.       Let’s begin by looking at what Baptism is and what it does.  Occasionally medical journals and documentaries report detailed accounts of someone who had a near death experience.  The patient’s heart stopped beating, but the medical team applies an electric shock and after a couple times a blip appears on the monitor to show that the heartbeat has started again.  As dramatic as such a rescue is; we see something far greater take place each time we watch an infant being baptized.  The baby is literally turned from death eternal death to eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord.  The Holy Spirit has done His work.  But, some people think of Baptism as only a symbolic ritual.  But, the Scriptures paint a different picture of the Sacrament.  In Baptism, God washes away our sins.  He makes us His own children. He declares us His heirs.  Heirs of God and coheirs of our Lord Jesus. 

5.       1 Peter 3:21-22 says, “Baptism…now saves you also--not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a good conscience toward God.  It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at God’s right hand--with angels, authorities and powers in submission to Him.”  Jesus who has all the power in the universe.  Jesus who died and is alive again.  Jesus who lives and reigns with our Heavenly Father.  This same Jesus has spoken His powerful Word in your Baptism and has marked you as His own.  As Martin Luther puts it in the Small Catechism, “Baptism works forgiveness of sins, rescues from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe this, as the words and promises of God declare.”

6.       It’s important for you to see God acting on your behalf in your Baptism, not you acting to please Him by being baptized.  Baptism isn’t an act of obedience that you or your parents performed.  If it were, all you would have now is an old certificate months or years later.  Instead, baptism is God’s official act of adoption.  God’s chosen you to become His own son and daughter.  At one time you were a spiritual orphan.  But, now you’ve received what the Bible calls in Galatians 4:5, Romans 8, and Eph. 1, “the adoption of sons.”  As the Heavenly Father’s rightful heirs through this washing of regeneration we’re now destined to live and reign with Christ to all eternity! 

7.       The picture here is something like the new life an orphan receives when it’s adopted.  Homeless, alone, and helpless, the infant who has done nothing to deserve it, suddenly has the attention of the adoptive couple.  They choose to make that child a part of their family.  Such a couple spend a great deal of effort, time, and money to meet the legal requirements in order to adopt that child.  Then comes the formal adoption proceedings.  If all goes well, the judge will declare the infant to be the legal child of the adoptive parents.  Now the child has a new name, a new identity and family, a new future and home, a brand new life!  In the same way, God has claimed us in our Baptism.  We have a new Father, a new family in the Church, a new name called Christian, a new identity as a child of God, a new future of heaven as your home.  We’ve received a whole new life. 

8.       As we think about who should be baptized, let’s extend this adoption metaphor a bit further.  Suppose that instead of an infant, the adoptee is a 10-15 year child.  Before a social service agency would agree to an adoption in such a case, the young person would meet the adoptive parents and would get to know them.  The adoptive parents would lavish love on the young person.  There would then come a time when that acceptance and love would melt the child’s heart that he would think of his parents as mom and dad.  At that point, the parents would take the legal initiative--for its theirs, not the child’s.  They’d fill out the documents, pay the fees, sit through the interviews, face the judge, all with one end in mind--adopting the young person.  At one point in the interview the adopted child would be asked whether or not he or she wanted to be adopted.  Few courts would let children be adopted against their will.  The young person would assure the judge with words like, “I’ve come to know these people.  They love me.  They’ve taken me in and made me part of their family.  I want to live with them forever.”  Once the gavel fell, the young person would have a new name, a new father and mother, a new home, identity and family.

9.       This shows what happens in the Baptism of older children and adults.  They hear the Gospel.  They learn of their Heavenly Father’s love.  The Holy Spirit convinces them of their sin and calls them to faith in Jesus as their Savior from sin.  Won over by the Father’s love and anxious to have the status He promises them as His children, they present themselves for Baptism.  In Baptism older children and adults receive the same blessings God promises to infants--a new name, identity, a new destiny, a new Father, a new home and family, and a brand new life!  Can a young person in this situation tell you about his or her adoption?  Of course.  It may even be hard to avoid hearing the story dozens of times!  The infant, on the other hand, can’t explain to anyone what it means to be adopted.  Does the infant’s inability to discuss the meaning of their adoption change the fact that they are now adopted into God’s family?  No.  The infant belongs to his adoptive parents despite his inability to tell anyone what has happened.  Praise God that our adoption doesn’t depend on our ability to speak of it, but solely on God’s promise to us in our Savior Jesus!

10.   A person who lives each day in God’s baptismal grace can trust that God’s promises made in Baptism, belong to him or her.  Our relationship with God, established by Him because of what our Lord Jesus did for us on the cross, doesn’t depend on our feelings or actions from day to day.  We belong to Christ whether we feel like it or not.  We belong to Christ whether we act like it or not.  Our Baptism is God’s official declaration of that fact.  But, the idea “once baptized, always saved” is misleading if the one who speaks it does so from an unrepentant heart, a heart that rejects God’s promise of grace in Baptism.  The Bible says in 2 Tim. 3:14, “But as for you, continue in the truths that you were taught…” And, Col. 1:23 says, “You must, of course, continue faithful on a firm and sure foundation, and must not allow yourselves to be shaken from the hope you gained when you heard the Gospel.”  Those who reject the power of the Holy Spirit and refuse to live out the new life God has given them in their Baptism in effect throw God’s gift of grace back to Him.  They live a life as St. Peter says in 2 Peter 2:1, “denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction.”

11.   The warning about walking away from the Baptism God has established with us and the question of why someone who understood the Christian faith would want to be baptized leads us in the same direction toward looking at the benefits Baptism gives to us daily.  It takes us back to the view of Baptism that we heard from Martin Luther at the beginning of the sermon, “What’s the matter with you man? Don’t you realize you’ve been baptized?”  The Holy Spirit is always active in your heart through His Word spoken at your Baptism.  Baptism’s power isn’t limited to the day or week when the Sacrament was performed.  Baptism has power here and now.  Paul says in Romans 6, “We who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death…that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” 

12.   As we remember our Baptism and our new life as God’s children, we also remember that in Baptism we’ve taken up sides against the forces of evil--sin, Satan, hell and death.  Listen to what Luther writes about this in commenting on infant Baptism, “Remember that it’s no joke to take sides against the devil and not only to drive him away from the little child, but to burden the child with such a mighty and lifelong enemy.  Remember too, that it’s very necessary to aid the poor child with all your heart and strong faith, earnestly to intercede for him that God, in accordance with this prayer, wouldn’t only free him from the power of the devil, but also strengthen him, so that he may nobly resist the devil in life and death…And all sponsors and the others present should repeat with the pastor the words of his prayer in their hearts to God.. carrying the little child’s need before God most earnestly, setting themselves against the devil with all their strength on behalf of the child, and showing that they realize this is no joke as far as the devil is concerned (Luther’s Works 53:102-103).

13.   Whether we’re children or adults, we set ourselves against the kingdom of darkness each time we affirm our baptism.  Luther wrote in the Small Catechism, “Baptizing with water signifies that our sins should be drowned by daily sorrow and repentance and be put to death, and that the new man should come forth daily and rise up, cleansed and righteous, to live forever in God’s presence.” (Small Catechism IV, 12).  Therefore Luther says, “Let everyone regard his Baptism as the daily garment which he is to wear all the time” (Large Catechism IV, 83). 

14.  Did you get dressed, spiritually speaking, before you left the house today?  Did you remember who you are and whose you are by God’s grace in Christ through your Baptism?  It’s not too late to do that now.  And if you’ve already done it today, doing so now will bring strength to your heart and comfort to your mind again because it’s God’s promise in Jesus for you for the forgiveness of your sins and eternal life!  Amen.