I want to begin a series on baptism,
and we're going to have the first in that series today. You might
think, oh, boring, baptism. I hope that you don't think that
anymore. We've been singing about being
a sinner saved by grace and the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.
That's what baptism is about. What baptism teaches and what
it signifies is our only hope of salvation. So if you're a
sinner, if you have no strength against your sin and no way to
deliver yourself from the just wrath of God, and you can't do
anything for yourself to save yourself or to turn things around,
so that your only hope is that God would provide, in the Lord
Jesus Christ, a full salvation for you, and give it to you,
and make you know it, then this subject should be very endearing
to you, because it's about how God saves sinners, helpless,
helplessly guilty, helplessly and justly condemned, and helplessly
enslaved to their sins. And baptism is about that. And
so I want to look at this with you. Baptism, this lesson this
week will begin, the first part will be our union with the Lord
Jesus Christ. Our union with the Lord Jesus
Christ. Now that's something I knew nothing about when I first
believed. I did not know that. The term
union with Christ meant nothing to me then. I hadn't heard it.
In fact, I didn't hear it for years. When I was seven years
old, we were in a Baptist church, a free will. Baptist Church. It wasn't a free will Baptist
Church, it was a Southern Baptist Church. They believed you were
saved by your will, which is false. I want to make that clear,
it's not true. You were not saved by your will.
John 1, 12, and 13 says it's not by blood, it's not by the
will of man, it's not by the will of the flesh, but of God,
that we are born of God. So I don't know where people
get off telling you how to be born again. It's not of you,
it's of God. But the fact of the matter is,
is that when God does save us, he gives us faith in Christ. At seven years old, I didn't
understand that. And I was in a church that taught
that you needed to go forward in church, you needed to ask
Jesus into your heart, and so on. Things followed that. So
I was scared to death of going to hell, and I went down front
crying because I was embarrassed as a seven-year-old to go in
front of grown-up people. Got baptized and left there feeling
somewhat smug. And somewhat relieved, but really,
it didn't really solve the problem. My conscience was still filthy,
and I didn't know it until I heard again what you needed to do,
and I realized I hadn't reached the goal. What a terrible bondage. And God left me in that false
religion until I was about 17 years old. And then I heard,
by the grace of God, now here it is. that God justified me
because of what he thought of his son. That was revelatory. That was
news I had never heard before. Now, I'm not telling you my own
personal life so that you will do like me. I'm telling you these
things because the truth of the gospel is that we are sinners,
helpless in our sin, and the only way we can be delivered
if God finds another, one who is righteous and who fulfills
that righteousness for us. That's the gospel. And he fulfilled
it in shedding his blood, giving himself in life, out of love
for his people, in love to God, from his whole heart, soul, mind,
and strength. And he fulfilled not only the
law of God, but he fulfilled the eternal will of God, and
he earned for us an everlasting life, everlasting life by an
everlasting righteousness. Well, I didn't know these things
until I heard that God justified me because of what he provided
and received from his son. And hearing that, it changed
my outlook on life entirely. I'm not stretching the truth.
It changed everything, the way I looked at life, the way I looked
at people, the way I thought about things. The point here
is that union with Christ is the truth of how we are saved. And that's what I want to show
you from scripture so that you won't believe in just a doctrine
and words that men use, but you believe the very truth of God
that He has revealed and that your eternal soul and all that
you trust will be based on what God has said concerning His Son,
because that's the way that it is. We're either saved by God's
grace because of what Christ did, or we're lost and we deserve
everything that a sinner deserves from the hand of God. Now, I
don't know about you, but I'm very attracted to a salvation
that God works out without my contribution. And so I've entitled
this message, Union with Christ, My Only Hope. my only hope, and
that's what happens when we're baptized. What we do when we're
baptized, when we are immersed in water and come back up out
of the water, is we're signifying by that, that because of our
union with Christ, in His life In His living, in His death,
in His suffering and dying, in His burial and in His resurrection,
we lived, we suffered, we died, we were buried, we rose in Him
by virtue of our union with Christ. Now, I will remind you, first
of all, of how this works in Romans chapter 5, verses 12 through
21. It talks about Adam and sin,
how sin entered into the world. And then it talks about how righteousness
was established and eternal life comes by that righteousness.
In Romans 5, verses 12 through 21. You can read it later, but
let me refresh your memory. There's something in scripture
called imputation. It's a biblical word, it's in
the Bible. Imputation, it means God credits
to us or he charges us with, in the terms of credit, we think
of an obedience unto righteousness. In the term of charging us, we
think of a disobedience and sin. So God imputes to us what we
are guilty of or what he credits to us. When God set up Adam,
he imputed to us what Adam did in that one obedience he gave
Adam to fulfill, which was don't eat of the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil. He ate, he disobeyed God. And God imputed
that disobedience to us. Everyone born to Adam disobeyed
in his act. And because we disobeyed before
God, God said we were guilty. And he condemned us, that was
a sentence, in the day you eat you shall surely die, and we
therefore were sentenced under the condemnation of death. And
when we were born, each one of us, when we were conceived in
the womb of our mother, We were conceived in sin because we were
already guilty by that disobedience God charged us with in Adam. That's an imputation. That's
the first imputation. What's the basis of that imputation? We were in Adam. We were in Adam
because the entire human race was created in Adam. Even Eve
was taken out of his side and created from his rib. We were
in Adam. He was our father. And in God's sovereign will,
he set it up so that his obedience in that one command would be
our performance. One man acted for the entire
race. The first imputation is the disobedience of Adam to us. We did it. In God's law, we did
it. We sinned and we died. And that's
why people die in the world. Every time you go to a funeral,
that person is there because of sin. The wages of sin is death,
and we became guilty in Adam. And because we were guilty when
we were born, we received a sinful nature. David said in Psalm 51,
verse five, in sin did my mother conceive me. I was shapen in
iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. There you have it. Okay, that's the first imputation.
What's the second one? The second imputation occurs
when our sins were charged to the Lord Jesus Christ. That's
the second imputation. And the third imputation is where
Christ's obedience, not just that one obedience at the tree
of life, on the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but his entire
life and his sufferings and his death where he trusted God perfectly. as a representative man, and
he did it for all of his people. So our sins were charged to him,
that's why he had to bear them on the cross and die for them,
but his obedience in doing that is charged to us, is credited
to us, and that's the third imputation. First, Adam's disobedience, God
imputed it to us, we were guilty, we were condemned. We were under
the sentence of condemnation and we died. We received a sinful
nature. We're dead in sins by nature.
Everyone born into this world is dead in sins, spiritually
dead. We can't raise ourselves from the dead. We're helpless
in this. God imputed our sins to Christ,
He bore them, and He obeyed perfectly, and His obedience is credited. It's imputed to us by God. And
because we are made righteous by His obedience, God gives us
life from the dead. As we were conceived in sin in
Adam, when we are birthed by the Spirit of God, we're conceived
with a new nature, partakers of the divine nature. We're given
the Spirit of Christ to live in us. We are the children of
God. Okay? So I say all that to build up
to this, the basis of our guilt in Adam and the basis of our
righteousness and life in Christ rests on being first in Adam
and second in Christ. In Adam, all died. 1 Corinthians
15 verse 20. In Adam, all died. In Christ,
all shall be made alive. All in Christ are made alive.
Now, to be in Adam was a relationship God established. We didn't establish
it. And the same thing is with Christ.
To be in Christ, it's a relationship God establishes. It's by grace. OK? Now, I say that as an introduction
here. So union with Christ has to do
with our relationship to him God established. So God did this. And in baptism, we confess that
what he did in his life What he suffered, what he did by his
death in making propitiation for our sins and making atonement
to God is a life, a suffering, and a death, a burial, and a
resurrection that we did in our head, in our representative head,
okay? And this is our only hope as
sinners. Someone else had to come who understood what God
required and who was able to fulfill it and do it and did
fulfill it and do it. And God accepted him and he did
that according to the eternal will of God for his people. The
three imputations, Adam's disobedience to us, Christ, our sin to Christ,
and his obedience in suffering for our sins and removing them
in his obedience to God. An obedience that cost him his
life in blood. That's why we sing, nothing but
the blood of Jesus. The fountain for cleansing. All
right, so you might ask the question, well, where does the Bible even
hint at the fact that we are one with Christ in this way?
Because if it's true, I wanna know it. As a sinner, I'm very
attracted to this, aren't you? Well, there's many places. In
John chapter 17, Jesus said this. He said in verse 20, neither
pray I for these alone, not just these 11 disciples, but for them
also which shall believe on me through their word, that's the
gospel. In verse 21 of John 17 going
on, it says that they all may be one. as thou father art in
me and I in thee, that they also may be one in us, that the world
may believe that thou hast sent me. So all who believe Christ
are one. So we see there's a union between
them, right? And how do we understand this? How do we understand this union
with other believers? How can this be? Well, He says
in 1 Corinthians chapter 12, in 1 Corinthians chapter 12 and
verse 12, he says, for as the body, now he's talking about
our physical body, as the body is one, look at your body, you've
got arms and fingers, eyes and ears, it's all one body, right? As the body is one and has many
members, and all the members of that one body, being many,
are one body, so also is Christ. Okay, so we understand how our
body works. We understand it's just a body,
one body, and it's got all these parts called members. Then he
goes on in verse 13, 1 Corinthians 12, 13. He says, for by one spirit
are we all, listen to the word, baptized into one body, whether
we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free, and have
all been made to drink into one spirit. So something occurred
called baptism, and by this baptism we're put into this body. And
this body has many members, but it's one body. So that's what
it means in John 17, that they all may be one, we're one body.
And we're one body in Christ because we were baptized into
Christ, into one body, the body of Christ, and this was done
by the Spirit of God. So you can see here, when I read
these texts of scripture, that the Bible talks about a union
with the Lord Jesus Christ. Can you see that? And it says
in 1 Corinthians chapter six, And verse 17, he says this, he
that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit. Okay? If you're joined to the Lord,
you have the spirit of the Lord, and you're one spirit with the
Lord. You're in union with the Lord. And then he goes on. Because
of that, on that basis, flee fornication. Every sin that a
man does that's without the body, but he that commits fornication
sins against his own body. What? Know ye not that your body
is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you? So, God the
Holy Spirit is in us, the Spirit of Christ. which you have of
God, you are not your own, for you are bought with a price. We know that price to be the
Lord Jesus Christ, his precious life and death, his blood. Therefore,
because of this, because you're bought with a price, because
your body is God's, is Christ's, and he bought it with his own
blood, glorify God in your body and in your spirit, your body
and your spirit, which are God's. We're joined by the spirit of
God living in us. We're joined to the Lord. This
is his body. It's his spirit. And the apostle
Paul said it this way. I live, yet not I, Christ liveth
in me. We can't feel him. We can't see
him. There's no way we can know it
except God said that this is true. And we believe the Lord
Jesus Christ. That's the result of him dwelling
in us. Okay, so I refer to these texts
of Scripture to show you that this concept of union with Christ
is not foreign to Scripture. This is what Scripture teaches
us. We're joined to the Lord. We're one spirit with Him. Our
body, our spirit are His, and we were bought. for this to be
his, purchased with the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. We
were put into this body by the baptism, the act of baptism by
the Spirit of God. Now, you see those things from
scripture? Hopefully, that will be clear to you. Now, I also
want to say this. When we talk about baptism, we're
talking about something that happened, really, with the Lord
Jesus Christ himself, remember? John the Baptist was sent before
him and he was baptizing in the River Jordan and all were coming
to John to be baptized. And they were coming and they
were confessing their sins. And then they were being baptized
by John in the River Jordan. And baptism means immersion.
It just means being put underneath and fully immersed in water and
being brought back out, or immersed in anything, but in baptism it's
water because that's what, it's an immersion in water. It signifies
our death, burial, and resurrection with Christ. But, so John was
baptizing in Jordan and Jesus came. And he came to John. Now Jesus was without sin. He
didn't need to confess his sins. He didn't need to be baptized
for repentance. And that's what John was preaching.
You need to be baptized unto this repentance for the remission
of sins. They were coming to be baptized. And Jesus came,
and John said, I have need to be baptized of you, and you come
to me. And let me read to you what it
says in Matthew chapter 3, because this is the baptism of the Lord
Jesus Christ. He says in Matthew chapter 3,
in verse 13, then cometh Jesus from Galilee to Jordan to John
to be baptized of him. But John forbade him, saying,
I have need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to me?
And Jesus answering said to him, notice, Suffer it to be so now. In other words, allow this. For
thus it becometh us to fulfill all righteousness. And then he
suffered him. So he told John, essentially
he's saying, allow. Do this. Do this. Baptize me, John. That's what
he's saying here. To fulfill all righteousness. Thus it becometh us to fulfill
all righteousness. Then John baptized him. And Jesus,
when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water.
And, lo, the heavens were opened to him. And he saw the Spirit
of God descending like a dove and lighting upon him. And, lo,
a voice from heaven saying, this is my beloved Son in whom I am
well pleased. So what happened here? The Lord
Jesus Christ, the sinless Son of God in our nature, absolutely
without sin, was baptized in the filthy river of Jordan, where
all these sinners were being baptized. And he was baptized
by John, who was sent to prepare the way before him. Why was he
baptized? Why was Jesus baptized by John? Well, because he would be baptized
really under the wrath of God later. And his water baptism
signified what would soon happen to him when God would immerse
him under the flood of his wrath. In Matthew 20, he speaks of this,
Peter, I mean, not Peter, but James and John, the sons of Zebedee,
their mother came to Jesus and said, when you come into your
kingdom, I'd like to have my two boys, James and John, sit
on one, either side of you, one on your right, one on your left.
And Jesus replied, he said, are you able to drink of the cup? that I will drink up? And are
you able to be baptized with the baptism that I will be baptized
with?" So he was speaking about a baptism that was yet to come.
And that baptism happened when he went to the cross. We'll see
this in a minute. When God poured out his wrath
upon him in Psalm 88, he talks about his wrath, he talks about
it as one in a pit, in the grave, as the floods of water being
poured over him, all of his billows and waves in Jonah chapter 2,
and all these things are pointing to the Lord Jesus Christ and
his death. So in Matthew 3, Jesus is baptized to depict what he
would do spiritually, he would be immersed under the wrath of
God. He would drink the bitter cup
of God's wrath because he would bear our sins before God as his
own and answer for them and suffer the consequences of them. He
would be baptized that way. And his water baptism depicted
that. But it also depicted something
else. It was part of all that he did in his life to fulfill
righteousness. Because He would fulfill our
righteousness in His death. His death would be the fulfillment
of our righteousness, which was an obedience that cost Him everything. He offered Himself to God. He
sacrificed Himself for our sins. He's the sin offering. He was
made sin for us, He who knew no sin, that we might be made,
or we were credited with the righteousness of God in Him.
Okay? So his obedience in his suffering
for sinners was a baptism, and that was signified by what John
did in the river Jordan, and it was a fulfillment of all righteousness
when he did it. And he said to John, in this
verse here that I just read, Matthew 3 verse 15, Jesus answering
said, suffer to be so now for thus it becometh us to fulfill
all righteousness. John baptized him. But Jesus
is the one who would suffer and die. And so the little word us
signifies something very wonderful and very endearing. When we're
baptized, we're expressing as a sinner our hope in the truth
of the gospel that in Christ, when he lived and died and was
buried in rose, we lived and died and were buried in rose. And that's all of our hope as
a sinner. We're expressing by our baptism in water the emblem
of our union with Christ in His life, death, burial, and resurrection. When the Lord Jesus Christ was
baptized, what was He expressing? Not only His own life, death,
burial, and resurrection, but He was expressing His union with
us. Remember the three imputations?
Our sins were charged to Him, and He owns them. He owns them. Okay? So this union with Christ
is very significant. And that's what baptism is based
on. This is the foundation. God doesn't
just credit to us the righteousness of Christ or charge Christ with
our sins as if there was no relation before. And all of a sudden,
he just says, I don't know who these people are. I'm going to
charge their sins to Christ. And he doesn't know who they
are. He's going to fulfill all righteousness. And then one day,
they're going to say, I do. And suddenly, there will be linked
together, and it'll make it all work. That's not the way it works. No. Understand this about God. Everything God does in time,
He ordained to do before time. He doesn't learn and He doesn't
change. His mind never changes. He doesn't
learn new things. He doesn't forget anything. Everything
God does, He eternally has determined to do before time. So that what
happens at the end of time was predetermined before time. Who
is in heaven? All those God determined to be
there. And what about those in hell? All those God determined
to judge for their own sins are there. The ones that were left
not in Christ, but were left in themselves to give an answer
to God. By their own obedience and for their own sins. And they
stand there and they try to do that. Because they don't know,
they haven't been given the Spirit of God to lay hold on Christ
by faith. They don't say, the Lord Jesus
Christ is all of my hope. He has to be my answer. He's
the only way I can be accepted. They don't come to God that way.
Like Cain, they say, my punishment is greater than I can bear. And
they go out into eternity still trusting their own righteousness.
Or like the Pharisee. I thank thee I'm not like that
other man. Not like other men. He trusted
his own righteousness. Never once did all those men
who brought the adulterous woman to Christ ever plead to Christ
that their sins would be put away. Because that's the work
of the Spirit of God in us to drive us to the Lord Jesus Christ
and see our salvation in him. So everything God determined,
everything God does in time and at judgment was already determined. The method of His judgment, the
basis of it, and for us, He determined before. He chose us in Christ,
before the foundation of the world, and made us, or made Him
to be our covenant head, so that all that He would do would be
credited to us. The basis of it is God's work
before time. How could our sins be charged
to Christ? Because before time, He engaged
with the Father to be our surety to own them. And God said, okay,
you're the lamb slain before the foundation of the world.
Of course, we think of it in terms of a conversation and a
sequential thought pattern. But what happens in the mind
of God being eternal, we're not able to say physiologically what
that is. All we know is that it was in
God's mind from eternity. As long as God is God, He had
a Son. And as long as His Son was His
Son, He had chosen us in Him to save us by Him. And these things were determined
before time. So that the basis of Christ's work being credited
to us as our righteousness was determined before time began.
Okay? And that's the reason Jesus was
baptized with our sins under the wrath of God, because it
was determined before to be done. Now the first thing I want to
look at here is, and I won't take up too much of your time
today, because as I said, this is a series, look at John chapter
11. John, the book of John, the gospel,
chapter 11. In John chapter 11, Jesus said
these words in verse 25. He said, well, there was a buildup
to this, but I'm just gonna read them, and then we'll go back
and catch the context. In John 11, verse 25, Jesus said
to Martha, I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth
in me, notice, who are these? He that believeth in me, though
he were dead, yet shall he live. and whosoever liveth and believeth
in me shall never die. Believest thou this? Yes, I want to believe that,
Lord. I want to understand what it means so I can believe it
and I need grace to believe it, don't you? You put these words on a piece
of paper or on your wall and you read them and you say, I
want to understand, Lord, what does this mean? I am the resurrection
and the life. So you know the context here.
Mary and Martha were beside themselves with grief because Lazarus, their
beloved brother, had died. He had been dead four days when
Jesus spoke these words. And though Martha and Mary had
before this time sent word to Jesus that he had fallen sick,
Remember they said, he whom thou lovest is sick, so he loved Mary,
he loved Martha, he loved Lazarus. Yet Jesus waited to come when
he was sick, and he delayed until Lazarus had died. He waited until
Lazarus was actually dead in order that the Son of God might
be glorified. He says that in verse 12. Well, let's see, it was in verse
five, no, verse four. When Jesus heard that, he said,
this sickness is not to death, but for the glory of God, that
the Son of God might be glorified thereby. Now, as we're going
through this, just pick up this as a gleaning from the field
of the gospel here. When God brings trouble into
our life, when he allows temptations to weigh heavily upon us, and
even when we falter in sin, We wonder, why aren't we delivered?
Why am I not delivered from this? I hate this. I want to be delivered
from my sins. I want to know I have eternal
life. What is God saying here? It seems like that the salvation,
the deliverance doesn't come because when it does come, it
will be for the glory of God. Wait. We, through the spirit
of God, through faith, wait. Don't wait. And so she poured
out her heart, Martha did, and she said, Lord, if you had been
here, my brother had not died, in verse 21 of this chapter. That's what Martha said, because
it seemed like he took a long time to come. Now he's dead.
He's been dead four days, and he shows up. She feels like blaming
him. Lord, if you had been here, he
wouldn't have died. And Jesus said to her, in verse
23, thy brother shall live again. And that's when Martha said,
I know that he will rise again at the last day. because she
knew from scripture and she even knew by the words of the Lord
Jesus Christ that He Himself gives life to the dead. Remember
he said in John chapter five, verse 21, that please the father
that in the son, life should dwell and he should give it to
whomsoever he will. And in the same chapter, John
5, 24, he says, verily, verily, I say to you, whosoever heareth
my words and believeth on him that sent me has everlasting
life and shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from
death to life. So he knew, or Martha knew, that
the words of Christ spoken to us and believed concerning God's
gospel were the evidence, the work of God in us that produced
this evidence of faith of an everlasting life in our possession.
And we won't come into condemnation. He's the author of life. And
so she says, I know that he shall rise again. And she thought in
the last day, which is true, And so she knew from scripture
that God raises the dead and that Christ would be the one
who would do that. Job said, I know that my Redeemer liveth,
that he shall stand at the latter day on the earth, and though
after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I
see God. So she understood these things.
But Martha was thinking about the resurrection as an event,
future yet to come. She wasn't thinking of the resurrection
in terms of what Jesus said here. I am the resurrection and the
life. So first we must understand this,
that resurrection is life from the dead. Resurrection is life
out of death. And who can do that but God?
And since resurrection is life from the dead, and since Jesus
Christ is the resurrection and the life, and since the one who
is raised from the dead obviously contributes nothing because they're
dead, they don't contribute their will, they don't contribute their
work, they don't even contribute their thoughts, God does this,
because they're dead in body and in sin, then I, who am a
great sinner, have a great hope. Don't you? And my hope is only
in the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the resurrection and the life.
You see how essential these things are? He is the resurrection and
the life. How can I live? I have to be
joined to him. I have to be joined to him. God had to do this before time
began. And his obedience in death had
to be the righteousness, the basis on which God would give
me this life from the dead. So that when he lived, I lived. When he suffered, I suffered
for my sins in his vicarious sufferings. And when he rose
because he had fully finished the suffering God required for
my sins, then God justified him and me with him and raised him
from the dead. That's what we believe in this.
We know that that's all of our hope and all of our salvation.
And then we, therefore, take great hope in this. OK. So we're going to have to spend
some time developing these things. And I want to go through this
with you next week and a little bit further on. but I don't want
to wear you out on this today. I want you to take away this
claim that I'm going to make now, and we are going to develop
this in scripture over the coming weeks, that baptism, our water
baptism, what we do when we go under the water, and come up
out of the water is an emblem. It signifies something. It doesn't actually accomplish
anything. It's a preaching of the gospel.
I remember one time we were in Disneyland, I think, with the
kids. And I was in the pool at the hotel. And there was a lady
over there who was teaching these children. And she must have been
a Catholic, because she said, yeah, when we're baptized, that's
when our sins are washed away. I said, hmm. And then she said,
yeah, our old nature is something about that. I go, mm, she was
wrong. But that's what they believe.
Our water baptism doesn't do anything for us spiritually.
It's a confession. It's a preaching of the gospel,
just like when we take the Lord's Supper. But in this ordinance,
if you want to call it an ordinance, what we do when we're baptized
in water It signifies our union with Christ in His obedience
unto death, and His victory over sin and death, and our salvation
in what He did. So that because of our union
with Christ, a union God establishes, we can't make it happen. And
because of the work of Christ, what he did in his life and death,
in his resurrection, we were saved. Sinners saved entirely
by the work, the purpose of God and the work of Christ. And we
confess that in our baptism. That's what we're saying. And
so next week I want to go through the ways in which God joined
us to Christ. How did we come into union with
Christ? And what's the bond of that union?
And then I want to go into Romans chapter six also, and I want
to see what does it mean to be dead to sins? Because it says that we're dead
to sins, and alive to God. Because it says we are, and we're
to reckon this to be so. so that we can see this. And
it was because of coming to the understanding of these things
later in my life, much later than seven years old, that I
realized I'm so happy to be able to declare through the act of
baptism that my only hope as a sinner is a God-made union
between me and Christ, he willingly took me on. He became a partaker
of my flesh and blood. He took my sins, he took my obligations
to God and he fulfilled them and he answered for my sins and
washed them away. And he left the body of my sins
buried in the grave. And he rose, justified, and me
with him. He did all this. And in baptism,
that's what we confess. Why wouldn't I want to be baptized?
I want to tell the world that this is all my hope, what my
Savior did, and our being joined to him by the act of God's grace.
What a wonderful thing it is, and what a hope it is. Our union
with Christ, our only hope, is a center. Next week, we're gonna
go into the ways that God has made this union. Let's pray.
Lord, thank you for the truth of scripture. We pray, Lord,
that you would guide us by your spirit, not only to understand
it in our head, but to believe it, truly believe it and rejoice
and have peace. And our love for you would intensify
and grow and spring out of this truth of what the Lord Jesus
Christ has done for us, not only in his life and death, but from
eternity and to eternity, how he has given himself for our
sins and given himself to have us and to purify us to himself
and present us to himself without spot or wrinkle. What a savior. What a salvation. What a God
we worship and trust. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.