Baptized Into The Life And Death Of Jesus

Old Testament scripture reading this morning is Isaiah 61 verses 8 through 11.

For I, the Lord, love justice. I hate robbery and wrong. I will faithfully give them their recompense and I will make an everlasting covenant with them.

Their offspring shall be known among the nations and their descendants in the midst of the peoples. All who see them shall acknowledge them, that they are an offspring the

Lord has blessed. I will greatly rejoice in the Lord. My soul shall exalt in my God, for he has clothed me in the garments of salvation.

He has covered me with the robe of righteousness. As a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.

For as the earth brings forth its sprouts and as a garden causes what is sown in it to sprout up, so the

Lord will cause righteousness and praise to sprout up before all the nations.

New Testament scripture reading this morning is found in Galatians chapter 3 verses 23 through 29.

Now before faith came we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed.

So then the law was our guardian until Christ came in order that we might be justified by faith.

But now that faith has come we are no longer under a guardian. For in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God through faith.

For as many of you for as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.

There is neither Jew nor Greek. There is no neither slave nor free. There is no male and female for all for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

And if you are Christ's then you are Abraham's offspring heirs according to promise.

Good morning. Open your Bibles to Romans chapter 6 please.

Romans chapter 6. Romans chapter 6 verse 1.

What shall we say then? Are we to continue to sin and sin that grace may abound? By no means.

How can we who died to sin still live in sin? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?

We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the father we too might walk in newness of life.

For if we have been united with him in a death like his we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.

We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.

For one who has died has been set free from sin. Hallelujah. Now if we have died with Christ we believe that we will also live with Christ.

We know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again. Death no longer has dominion over him.

For the death he died he died to sin once for all but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

So therefore let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body to make you obey its passions.

Don't present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness but rather present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life and your members to God as instruments for righteousness.

For sin will have no dominion over you since you are not under law but under blessed grace.

God in heaven how good it is that we no longer have to live like the world in our sin and decay but rather because of the work of Jesus Christ we can be baptized unto him baptized unto his death so that we can be baptized unto his life.

Lord may we as Christians never forfeit that life by living a life of sin. How can we who have been saved by grace through faith live in sin may it never be may it never be upon our lips may it never be our actions.

God in heaven let your grace abound more and more and cause us not only to be saved from our sin in the eternal state but also to be saved from living a life of sin.

Lord this is ours in Christ Jesus and so may we grab hold of life indeed and worship you in light of this situation.

I know Lord that there has to be people in here Lord who are either non -believers or they're living in some sort of sin as we speak.

God may this sermon may you be kind to these words and to those ears that they would turn from that and they would rather live a life of grace.

May this sermon encourage those who are doing well to continue forth in life. Lord please be with me as I proclaim your word and be with these people before me.

Let them listen well and let me speak well that is to glorify your name in Jesus name amen.

Well I figured it'd be good to preach a good sermon on well whether or not it's good or not we'll see but a sermon on baptism.

It's not it's something that we can't speak enough of and it's something that very easily we can forget the significance of like and that's something

I really like to hone in on things that we take for granted and to be reminded of it kind of adds fuel to the fire of our worship.

Baptism is a holy ordinance or you know Tim do you use sacrament? He goes okay some baptists are like afraid of the word sacrament so good for you

Tim. It's a sacrament something that made holy by Jesus Christ something that we do baptism is something that we do it's a holy separate ordinance given by the

Lord Jesus Christ. It's a command by him for us to do and when done in true faith that is when baptism is performed in true faith by the believer it is a profoundly significant event something very significant is happening.

It's something where a disciple has gone from being a disciple of the world to be a disciple of Jesus Christ and now he's showing this identity shift that has happened in his life.

You understand how significant that is that one can be born a disciple of the world and live like the world in sin but because of Jesus Christ now he's a disciple of the

Lord. So baptism represents this shift that has happened this major miraculous shift that has happened no longer to identify with this world that's fleeing and dying and it's a due to wrath but rather I identify with the

Lord Jesus Christ that is something major beloved baptism represents that spiritual truth.

Baptism also speaks volumes of the life of the new disciple what he plans or his commitment or well how to say this right his purpose that I now am no longer going to live like the world.

So it not only signifies this identity shift in his life but he says and now forth going forward

I shall live for the Lord Jesus Christ and no longer for my vain passions of sin. You see this is a something that I am going to live the rest of my life wholly entirely totally different.

See the reason why this is important to remind ourselves of this truth is because one disastrous effect of decaying

Christianity is it takes sacred things that we should be doing as the people of God and it steals the meaning away from it.

You understand what I'm saying? There is significance to all that we do as Christians. All that the scriptures tells us to do as Christians is deeply significant and decaying

Christianity sucks the life out of the significance of what we do. We see this all the time in decaying

Christianity. We see it happening in our own life if we're not very careful living a life of repentance.

You see what happens in a decaying Christianity is that it sucks, it voids, it brings out the power that Christ has attended for the things that we do for him.

What do I mean like prayer? You understand how awesome prayer is?

Do you understand that when you are praying you are praying to the eternal God who was and is and is to come and in our sins there's no way we could ever communicate with this holy triune

God but in his kindness through Jesus Christ he has made a way for you to speak to him.

How often can we pray to God as a duty as something that's boring? How often is we pray often in our corporate worship that is a good thing.

How often can we complain in our hearts my goodness we got to pray again and while these words are being lifted up to God and he accepts it in his kindness how often are we rather thinking of different things right?

Prayer is something commanded by God for us to do to for us to enjoy and it can be sucked of its significance whenever we are not reminding ourselves of the sacred duties of these things.

I've been asked a couple times what my hobbies are. I don't really have any I should work on that but one hobby

I do I guess I can say I have is I like to go to in my free time go on websites to different churches in the area and just listen to their service or their sermon.

I go to Catholics and and all sorts of just you know Baptist churches and everything it's just very fascinating.

I was listening to a Catholic church if I may call it that a synagogue of Satan might be a better terminology but that's for a different sermon but I was listening to a

Catholic service going on and it's amazing to see the prayers that go on during the service and there's many of them but how they are sucked of any kind of life and vitality.

Poor what do you call those altar boys but there are some girls too so I guess you call them altar girls they look so bored because they're not being taught the life that's in Jesus Christ that's behind those prayers.

It's easy to fall to pull the life out of these things what else do we do what else does

Christianity what else does Christ tell us to do as his people proclaiming the gospel right we are to proclaim the gospel we are to proclaim the gospel in corporate worship we are to proclaim the gospel in our homes we are to proclaim the gospel we are gospel proclaimers and this is a gospel that offends us as I've already said before this is a gospel of calling people to in and to grow in salvation and it is a hard process and so how easy is it for decaying

Christianity to forfeit the proclaiming of the gospel for stories and fun things that make us feel good what else do we do we do the

Lord's Supper how easy is it for it to just be simply bread and wine or as Baptist grape juice right how easy for it to be nothing but its symbols right and singing oh how good it is to sing to the

Lord isn't it a good thing to sing you know when you're in the shower you're in a great mood because you're in the shower you're always in a good mood in the shower and you just belt out you sing you sing joyously in the shower and you sound perfect because the amps amplifying all that kind of stuff is good in there right how good is it to sing to the

Lord for he has saved a sinner like me how easy for it to decay and turn into something that I got to mumble through right baptism the topic of discussion today is baptism how easy it is for baptism a sacred ordinance from Jesus Christ our

Lord and we drain it of its power in this decaying Christianity this this kind of decaying

Christianity that we are living in today baptism it very often just becomes no longer a sacred religious activity but rather becomes a societal thing during the reformation period really what baptism was was you were baptized as a baby and that was the way you became a citizen of your nation and so very much what it became is not so much a significant act that you are identifying with the

Lord Jesus Christ now no longer identifying with the world but now simply it becomes more societal

I'm a citizen of this nation in Baptist circles today it can be more or less a what do you call it a rite of spring or a a coming of age thing for children right it's just something that they have to do but they really don't understand the significance of what's happening or even worse and what's happening more and more today is baptism just isn't done and that's what happens whenever you forget you don't know the significance of what's going on you just simply don't do it that's what happens we're proclaiming and preaching right we'll just make it a 20 -minute block tell stories don't talk about the gospel we don't get the significance of it so don't do it and sadly and many times today baptism just simply is not done oh well

I'm getting that and this this is why we must always reform we must be reformed and always reforming we're always going to the scriptures we're always re -evaluating have

I forgotten the original truths of these matters do I understand what baptism is and do

I understand how it should change my life even today even if I got baptized 20 years ago do

I understand the significance of baptism and is it affecting my Christian life today and if it isn't if you saw nothing beautiful going on there beyond just the temporal and beloved remind yourselves of the scriptural truths of what baptism is this is important and this is what we shall do today you see in romans 6 we see it in scripture most of the time when we see baptism mentioned that it's it's in narrative form it's it's a narration in other words it's telling a story of baptism and we could get a lot of good theology from that no doubt nothing obviously wrong with that but here in romans 6 he brings up baptism and it's within this section of paul proclaiming the gospel from a to z what do