Listen to the sermon with the player below, or, download the audio.
+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Today we are halfway into the second week of Advent, a season of repentant preparation for Jesus’s comings to us, not only the celebration of His past coming in humility and the anticipation of His future coming in glory, but also the realization of His coming to us now, through His Means of Grace. You may recall that His “Means of Grace” are His “Word and Sacraments”, with “Sacraments” understood as God’s Word combined at His command with things that we can feel, see, and taste and by which we receive blessings such as the forgiveness of sins. In our special series on the Lord’s coming to us now through His Means of Grace, last Wednesday’s sermon focused on “The Read and Preached Word”, and tonight’s sermon focuses on “The Sacrament of Holy Baptism”.
That God gives grace and salvation through a ritual washing such as Holy Baptism should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the Old Testament “water for impurity” that we heard about in tonight’s First Reading (Numbers 19:1-22). Whether or not the ashes of a red heifer, cedarwood, hyssop, and scarlet yarn mixed with fresh water formed a weak lye solution, like those solutions used in making soap, God commanded that such a solution be sprinkled with a “hairy” hyssop branch in order to ritually cleanse the various people and things that had become unclean. The “water for impurity” at a minimum foreshadows, if not prophetically points forward to, the greater cleansing power of Holy Baptism, linked to the blood not of a red heifer but to the blood of the Son of God Himself in human flesh (Hebrews 9:13).
So, the Old Testament people of Israel would have, or at least “should” have, known of the ritual washing of the “water for impurity” for the ritually unclean, and the Jewish people of Jesus’s also knew of a baptism for non-Jews fully-converting to Judaism. But, one of the major things that was new in John the Baptizer’s preaching and practicing the baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins that we heard about in Sunday’s Gospel Reading (Luke 3:1-14) and Jesus’s concurrent similar practice (John 3:22; 4:1-2) was the call for all people to repent and be baptized, a call that is also extended even unto us.
We may not be ritually unclean as defined in the First Reading and so in need of the “water for impurity”, nor are we non-Jews fully-converting to Judaism and so in need of a proselyte baptism, but we are by nature and unclean and so in need of the greater cleansing power of Holy Baptism. With the Divinely-inspired psalmist David, in tonight’s Additional Psalm (Psalm 51; antiphon v.7) we said that we were conceived sinful and born already in iniquity. In the Second Reading, the Divinely-inspired apostle Paul wrote to Titus how we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another (Titus 3:3-8).
Our sinful natures and our actual sins deserve death here and now and torment in hell for eternity, and, while waiting for that death and torment, our sinful natures and our actual sins leave us spiritually dead (Ephesians 2:1, 5) and so unable to do anything to save ourselves, including “decide” either to believe in Jesus or to be baptized as a sign of our commitment to Him, unless God first enables us to turn in sorrow from our sin, trust Him to forgive our sin, and want to stop sinning. When, enabled by God, we so repent—whether or not we repent in ashes like those ashes used in the “water for impurity”, and not only during the season of Advent but at any time—then God forgives us our sinful natures and all of our sin, whatever our sin might be.
God forgives us our sinful natures and all of our sin for the sake of His Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. Out of His great love for us, the Son of God was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary; Jesus suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. Jesus took our sins to the cross and died in our place there, as anticipated by the sacrifices of the red heifers and every other sacrifice His Father ever commanded and His Holy Spirit ever worked through to bless repentant believers. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were present with the water of the Jordan when Jesus, as it were, took our sins on Himself in His own Baptism (for example, Luke 3:21-22), and Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are present with the water of the Baptismal Font when our sins are washed off in our own Baptisms. There at the Baptismal Font we are united with both Jesus’s death and His resurrection (Romans 6:3-5). There at the Baptismal Font we are, as we heard in the Second Reading, saved not because of works done by us in righteousness but according to God’s own mercy, saved by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, Whom the Father poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, being justified by His grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.
That washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit is nothing other than Holy Baptism, the washing of water with the Word (Ephesians 5:26), the birth from above of water and the Spirit (John 3:3, 5), which rescues from death and the devil, works forgiveness of sins, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe, as the words and promises of God declare about Holy Baptism (Small Catechism IV:6). And, as we heard in the Third Reading (Matthew 28:18‑20), baptism is a means not only of making disciples of all nations—Jew and non-Jew, old and young, even infants—but baptism is a means also of the Lord Jesus Himself’s being present with us to the end of the age, not only with His Spirit but also according to both His Divine and human natures (Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration VIII:78; confer Matthew 18:20).
A Baptist friend of mine recently asked me what the day was that I would say I first knew for certain that I was saved, and I answered him with the day five days after my birth when I was baptized, if not already before, perhaps having heard the Word of God while in the womb. God objectively makes us His children in Holy Baptism, which is far more certain than one’s subjective response to an “altar call” or praying a so-called “believer’s prayer” that in some sense would already require faith. The read and preached Word leads us to the Sacrament of Holy Baptism, and also to our use of the other Sacraments and our receiving their benefits in faith. The Word and Sacraments are not interchangeable but are distinct, and they come in their proper order. In turn, God works through the Word and Sacraments to lead us to do good works. As we heard in the Second Reading, those who have believed in God are careful to devote themselves to good works, which good works include daily contrition and repentance that downs and kills our sinful nature and through which our redeemed nature daily emerges and arises to live before God in righteousness and purity forever (Small Catechism IV:12).
With such daily repentance and faith we are prepared not only to celebrate the Lord’s first and final comings in the flesh but also every coming in between, as He comes to us now, through His Means of Grace, such as “The Sacrament of Holy Baptism”. Our Baptisms are not only an event that we can point back to as when we first knew for certain that we were saved, but our Baptisms also have ongoing relevance for us, as we live in our Baptismal grace and are certain that God has, as we prayed for Him to do in the Additional Psalm, washed us thoroughly from our iniquity and cleansed us from our sin.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +