Your Baptism Connects You to Jesus!

1st Sunday after the Epiphany, 1/14/24 Roamns 6:1-11 Your Baptism Connects You to Jesus! I. You died with him. II. You live with him. In today’s world, I hear so much, I read so much, I see so much, that, once I have heard, read, or seen it, I tend to ask myself, “Why? What difference does it make?” How about you? How much of what you hear, read, and see is valuable and useful? Is it less than 50%? 40%? 10%? One way of determining whether what you hear, read, or see is valuable or not is to ask yourself, “How will my life be affected from this point on if I had never heard, read, or seen that?” For some of us, that might be 50% of what we hear, read, and see each day. For others, it might be as high as 90%. So, it’s critical for us to learn what we need to pay attention to, because, if we don’t, we’ll get inundated. We’ll become like the old codger who can’t keep up with reading his daily newspapers. He just keeps piling them up, always reading the older news first. Before long, that’s all he gets accomplished—just reading old news. Meanwhile, he fails to read the news that his heart pacemaker is deadly defective and under immediate recall. What was your immediate reaction to the news that today we’re celebrating the Baptism of our Lord? Just another bit of information you’ll need to determine whether or not it’s valuable to your life? While his baptism isn’t one of the major Christian festivals such as Easter and Christmas, it’s a noted day on the calendar of the Christian Church. But why? Isn’t this just another one of the many accounts of a day in the ministry of our Lord, just like countless others? Well, not if you recall that this is the event foretold in the Old Testament, marking Jesus as the One anointed with the Holy Spirit to be the world’s Savior from sin. And not if you recall the significance of the fact that he was baptized in the Jordan River just prior to that. On this Sunday, Christians are often encouraged to recall their own baptisms. But why? Among millions of Christians, baptism only marks an event in which they dedicated themselves to God, in which they submitted their lives to him. But, by the grace of God, we know that Baptism is not what we do for God, but what he does for us. It’s a means of grace—God’s powerful instrument to bring us the salvation Jesus won for us. Baptism is what God does for us. On this day, we have the blessed opportunity to celebrate it. And Paul’s words to us in Romans 6 help us do exactly that. Paul repeatedly reminds you that your baptism connects you to Jesus. And it does so in a way that is practical today, tomorrow, and every day of your life. Your baptism connects you to Jesus! Let’s see in what ways on the basis of God’s word this morning. Part I. “You’re dead to me.” Have you ever spoken those words to someone? Ever had them to spoken to you? If so, those are pain-filled words. They don’t express a wish for death, they state the fact of death. They state, “You’re still alive, but to me you are dead.” In other words, nothing you are or say affects me anymore. I will not be concerned about you at all. It’s as if you don’t exist. In effect, Paul tells sin in Romans 6, “You’re dead me.” Now, why would he say that? Because in the previous verses he has explained how we are forgiven of all sin. In fact, as abundant as sin is (it’s everywhere, all the time), God’s grace is more abundant. But that might lead a Christian to state, “If that’s true, then I can sin all I want. It doesn’t matter. It’s forgiven.” To that, Paul replies, “Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means!” The Greek words he used are stronger than that. They state, “May it never be!” Or, perhaps, “Absolutely not!” Just because Jesus died to suffer the punishment for every sin of every person doesn’t give us a license to sin. We’re not free to sin all we want. In fact, it would be contrary to who we are in Christ. Paul says it like this, “We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death.” Buried with Jesus?! Isn’t Paul stretching things a bit here? Not at all. Follow me a minute. How many sins did Jesus die for? And, therefore, how many sins were buried with him? All of them, right? Every single sin of every sinner in the history of the world. My sins and your sins, too. That’s one of the things that our baptisms in the name of the triune God did for us. It buried our sins with Jesus. It’s like burying trash. It’s gone. Out of sight. And you don’t dig it up to live with it again. But there’s more—powerfully more for your daily life. Paul also wrote, “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—because anyone who has died has been set free from sin.” Do you understand what Paul is saying? Let me help you. Now he’s not talking about the daily sins we commit; he’s talking about our sinful nature, original sin, the Old Adam. It’s the sinful condition we were born in, that we inherited from our parents. And it’s not just a slight birth mark; it’s mortal, it’s deadly, it’s damning. And it afflicts us every day of our lives. You see, we’re not just tempted to sin by outside influences such as Satan and our evil world. We’re tempted from the inside. Our sinful nature wants to sin, it pleads with us to sin, because that’s what will feel good and make us happy. So, if that’s the deadly, evil power within us, what hope do we have to overcome it? Your baptism! Through your baptism the Holy Spirit brought you to faith in Jesus. In doing so, he created a new person who loves Jesus and wants to do the will of God. It hates sin. The power of sin in you is dead. Your baptism connects you to Jesus. You died with him. Paul told us in no uncertain terms that we died with Christ, meaning our sins died with him, and our old self was crucified with him. Dead is dead, isn’t it? Dead means sin is gone, doesn’t it? Then why do we have so much trouble with sin in our daily lives? And if you think you don’t have trouble each day with sin in you need a spiritual reality check. But that means sin is still there. Every one of my failures to be the child of God I want to be—the child my God made me to be—is damning proof that I still deal with sin. Every time guilt crushes my heart and nearly drives me crazy is damning proof that I still deal with sin. Spiritually speaking, too many of my days on this earth seem to be marks in the “loss” column of my life, not in the “win” column. What’s the deal? Every one of those is daily evidence of the fact that I still need Jesus to be my Savior from sin. I haven’t reached perfection, not by a long shot. So where can I find relief? Where can you? Look to your baptism! Your baptism in the name of the triune God connects you to Jesus. It means you died with him. Your sins are gone. Each day they are washed away. And the guilt is gone, too. And in that forgiveness and the power of Jesus lies the strength to overcome your sinful nature with its constant pleas to appease it by sinning: “Go ahead. Feel vengeful, hateful, prideful, arrogant, spiteful, lustful. It’ll feel good.” Your connection to Jesus in your baptism crushes that sinful nature. You died with Jesus! What a glorious death! Part II. As committed Christians, we know that death isn’t the end. By faith we live. So, it’s no surprise to us when Paul speaks to us about dying and then about living. So, listen to his words once again, “Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” At first, it might sound as if Paul is referring to the great Christian teaching of the resurrection of the dead on the Last Day. And, indeed, that’s one of the tremendous blessings of our connection to Jesus. But that’s not what Paul is talking about here. He’s talking about rising and living now. Today. Even before we’ve physically died. He’s talking about living for Christ each minute of the day. He’s talking about living like a Christian each minute of the day, empowered by Jesus through your baptism. When you’re being mistreated and taken advantage of, when the rest of the world is engaged in “me-first” living, when there is no good earthly reason for you to be kind to someone, when someone has given you ample reason to think the worst of them, how can possibly find the strength to act and respond in a way that pleases Jesus, to do what a child of God would do? In your baptism! Your baptism connected you to the power of the risen Lord Jesus. “What would Jesus do?” isn’t only then a question on a rubber bracelet around your wrist; it’s a way of life—a life Jesus called you to and empower you to live at your baptism. And that’s real freedom. Real freedom is not the opportunity to do whatever you want to do. Too often that’s the rallying cry of your sinful nature. No, real freedom is the opportunity and the power to do what is good, right, loving, and pleasing in the eyes of Jesus. It’s the power to be like Jesus. Your baptism connects you to Jesus. You not only died with him, but you also live with him. So, we’re two weeks into the new year. I imagine that you, like most of us, made some resolutions or at least determined you were going to make some changes in 2024. You know…new year, new you. How’s that going? I hope you’re enjoying success. But how long with it last? How long will it be before you realize that little has changed? How long will it be before you realize the same sins of 2023 have followed you into 2024? Already? Same here. So, recall the power that your Savior shares with you in your baptism! You died with him. Your sins are dead. You now live with him in the power of his forgiveness and resurrection. Today. All year. All your life. Eternally! You live with Jesus! Enjoy it! Amen.