MAY 18, 2008  SERMON ARCHIVE

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! Amen.

In today's Gospel, Jesus ties His Baptism and teaching closely together, as if the two acts were (in some senses) inseparable. 'Go therefore and make disciples of all nations,' says the Lord, 'baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.' Then Jesus adds for you one of the most comforting and consoling promises in all of the Scriptures: 'Behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.'

Dear Christian friends,

You should think of God's miracle of Baptism as being somewhat like the amazing technology all around us today. Depending on your age and technical abilities, this analogy may be a bit different for each of you:

For the more elderly among you, your Baptism could be compared to learning how to use the DVD player or one of those new converter boxes that will allow your old television set to receive digital signal. When the DVD player or converter box is first installed, you get the basic idea how the machine works, but then you have to start using the thing.

By trial and error, experience and struggle, study and exploration, you get to know your DVD player or converter box all the more as time goes by. The device works well for you as soon as it is hooked up to your television-even when you do not fully understand what the device is all about. But then, the more you get to know your DVD player or converter box, the better use you make of it and the greater benefit you receive from it.

Your Baptism is a lot like your DVD player or converter box. That is to say, you immediately received great blessings and benefits from your heavenly Father as soon as you were baptized 'in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.'

All your sins were fully and completely washed away. The curse of death was removed from you. Christ wrapped Himself around you and now provides you with a strong armor and defense against the attacks of the devil. Just as your digital converter or DVD player immediately serves you as soon as it is installed, your Baptism likewise began providing great and miraculous things to you as soon as the water was placed on you.

But also like that DVD player, which becomes more beneficial to you as you use it over time, you likewise will benefit more and more from your Baptism by using it more and more. Through hardship and struggle, repentance and faith, study and exploration, God's miracle of your Baptism will continually increase in its benefits to you the more you use it.

The more often you are tempted and tested by evil desires, and the more often you say to yourself, 'I need not fall into this sin and give way to it, because I am baptized,' the more reliable you will find you Baptism to be. Your Baptism will become for you a trusty shield against your familiar temptations.

The more often you console your guilty conscience by making the sign of the cross and saying to yourself, 'I am a baptized child of God. He has fully forgiven me this sin and every other sin by washing me in Jesus' blood and righteousness,' the lighter your burden shall seem to be. Just as a boat or raft seems lighter when it is floating in the water, so will your burden of guilty memories and regrettable acts seem lighter when they are set afloat in Baptism.

The more often you study and search God's Word for the benefits of your Baptism, the more of your Baptism you will see therein. Soon the Scriptures will seem to drip with baptismal benefits. Maybe it is not so helpful for you somewhat younger Christians-you thirty- and forty- somethings, to compare your Baptism to a DVD player or digital converter box. You already are quite comfortable with that relatively simple technology and not at all challenged by it.

Very well then. Let's compare your Baptism to Word Perfect? or Excel? or some other computer program that you regularly use. You had to learn certain things about that program before you could use it at all. Now that you have the basics of the program down, you can use it well enough. However, there are still tons of things in that computer program that you have no idea about.

You can write a letter or run a simple report. But spend some time exploring the many unused menus and functions that have been built into your computer program. You will be amazed and delighted at all the powerful things you can do, once you learn more about your program's capabilities.

Your Baptism is a lot like that computer program you use. A lot of Christians are content just to get the basics of their Baptism figured out, and then not spend too much time learning more about it after that. Like a computer program that you can learn just enough about to be dangerous, but not fully utilize, many Christians will be content only to learn base-level lessons about Baptism in confirmation class, but never continue studying, learning and utilizing the many amazing and powerful benefits that Baptism provides.

Yet if you were to take a few moments now and again-perhaps once a week in Bible Study or Adult Sunday School-you would be amazed and delighted to learn the many other great joys your Baptism provides, once you further get to know your Baptism's capabilities for you.

Then we have the younger Christians among us-the video game crowd. Have you ever mastered and solved a video game by NOT playing it? Of course not. How do you get good at a video game? You spend a lot of time at it. You play it over and over again. You practice the parts of the game you do not understand as well until you are able to master it.

Once again, the same thing may be said of your Baptism. Each of you young people is at a different stage in learning about your own personal baptism 'in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.' Some of you are still learning the Bible stories in Sunday School. Some of you-such as those of you who were recently confirmed are learning more now in your regular young people¡¯s bible classes.

But notice, NONE of you have mastered and solved the game, so to speak. All of you still have many things to learn about your Baptism and its countless benefits (just as I still have many things to learn about my Baptism). You will never learn and master your Baptism by NOT spending time continuing to learn it. You will not grow in your Baptism unless you continue returning to it over and over again, in the same way that you would play a video game over and over again.

Each time you make the sign of the cross upon yourself, your Baptism will benefit you more; each time you rise in the morning, turning away from your sins and trusting in Jesus, your Baptism will benefit you more; each time you come to worship; each time you study the Word with your parents or with me, your Baptism will benefit you more.

Just as a tree grows larger and stronger and more able to stand up in the wind over time, so will your Baptism provide you with increasing strength and endurance as time passes and you 'grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ' (2 Peter 3:18).

Now that I have compared your Baptism to today's technology, how many of you are wondering if that was such a good thing for me to do? I am sure there are some. Well, I must say that there is at least one sense in which this is not a very good analogy. This analogy between technology and Baptism is not good because, in the case of today's technology, your children know much more about what is going on than you do. Stated another way, the older people know less about technology than the younger people know.

The opposite happens when it comes to Baptism. The plain truth is that the young Christians in our congregation who have been recently confirmed-and not just them, but countless other Christians in their age group-so many young Christians know and understand much less about their Baptisms than their parents knew and understood when their parents were here being confirmed many years ago.

Something is going on in the Church, something for which we are all responsible and something that is not good. That something is that we are no longer training our children in the Scriptures as thoroughly as we ourselves were once trained. We are no longer requiring our children to learn and understand their Sunday School lessons. We are no longer making worship a necessary staple in their weekly diet. We are no longer able to impress upon them, as deeply as we once did, the blessings and benefits of their Baptism.

Where Jesus says in today's Gospel, 'Make disciples of all nations, baptizing. and teaching,' the Baptisms continue, but the teaching has begun seriously to falter. This is a serious sin of which we are all guilty, and from which we all must repent and find ways to change.

In today's Gospel, Jesus ties His Baptism and His teaching closely together, as if the two acts were (in some senses) inseparable. 'Go therefore and make disciples of all nations,' says the Lord, 'baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.'

In the same way, the teaching will do you little good without the Baptism, and the Baptism will do you little good without the teaching, just as a horse will do you little good without a bridle, and a bridle will do you little good without the horse.

Rather than regarding your Baptisms as something you do and then forget, you must instead regard your Baptisms as being like today's technology. Begin to regard your Baptisms as something requiring your focused attention, so that you may learn all the more the benefits of forgiveness and life that Christ Jesus has given you here. Regard your Baptisms as requiring your regular use-like a video game or computer program-so that you grow more familiar and more accustomed to the good things that Baptism gives you on a daily basis.

What is the chief benefit your Baptism gives to you every day? Jesus tells you in today's Gospel: 'Behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.'

Your Lord Jesus Christ was crucified and dead, but death could not hold Him. More powerful than death is He, and rising up from the dead, He ascended into heaven to fill all things in heaven and on earth.

Having destroyed sin, death, and the devil for you, nothing can conquer or overwhelm Him-and through Baptism Jesus comes to be with you forever.

Through Baptism, Jesus washed away the guilt of your sins, and through His teaching, Jesus assures you that you are indeed forgiven.

Through Baptism, Jesus has set you free from the snares of the devil, and through His teaching, Jesus assures you that overwhelmed and destroyed by the devil.

Through Baptism, Jesus has guaranteed your resurrection from the dead, and through His teaching He offers you comforts and assurances even in the darkest hour of your greatest need.

Use your Baptism as you would that technology with which you are already so familiar.

Join your fellow saints here in continuing to examine and learn and grow into what it means to be the baptized of Christ.

And never fear dear friends: your Lord Jesus is with you always.

Christ Is Risen.

AMEN