LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1995, Page 81

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82 150TH ANNIVERSARY BIBLE STUDY

with Christ. For them, of course, Baptism is not that by
which they were brought to Christ but that by which they
were strengthened in Christ, desiring only. to do‘His will
and knowing that also in Baptism they have the assurance
of, "being children of God.

Ty had i in my ‘congregation ‘man in his 10s who had
served “his Lord faithfully ‘all ‘his: life—chairman of the
Board of Elders, had been on the Board of Trustees, Board
of. Education, used his summertime to paint around the
church free of charge, raised a pious family. He came to me
one day and said, “My parents are dead, and I have no
record ‘of my Baptism. Will you baptize me? I want to be
sure. And what a day of joy that was! What tears of joy
went down our cheeks that this Christian man, already one
of Jesus Christ's own, now also received this assurance that
he was God’s, and God was his.

"And-that leads us to the place of faith in Baptism. We
are reminded by our Savior: “He who believes and is bap-
tized is to be saved.” And that is crucial. That's why we do
not simply get a big water hose and go down the street, line
the children up on the curb and hose them down. ©

Luther says: “Just by allowing the water to be poured over
you, you do not receive Baptism in such a manner that it does
you any good. But it becomes beneficial to you if you accept it
as God’s command and ordinance, so that, baptized in the
name of God, you may receive in the water the promised sal-
vation. This the hand cannot do, nor the body, but the heart
must believe it. “Thus, ...” he says, “you see plainly that Bap-
tism is not a work which we do but is a treasure which God
gives and faith grasps” (LC IV 36-37). We do nothing in Bap-
tism, as though we're doing God a favor now by committing
ourselves to Him, but it is that which God does first, by virtue
of which we then commit our lives to Him.

Do you doubt that little children, even babies, can be-
lieve this? Do you doubt that He who created heaven and
earth, who said “Let there be” and there was, who “spoke
and it was done,” who took on flesh in the womb of the Vir-
gin Mary, who caused the crippled to walk, the deaf to hear,
.the blind to see, the dead to be raised, do you doubt that He
can place into the heart of the little child, even though it
may not be conscious of it, a true living faith and trust in
the merits of Jesus Christ our Savior?. Dr. Schmiel in his
devotion this morning mentioned mystery, and it reminded
me of a story of a pastor in a confirmation class who asked
one of his children one day to explain the doctrine of the
Trinity. The boy he questioned was just recovering from a
cold and had laryngitis, but he said, “The Trinity is three
distinct persons in one divine essence.” And the pastor, who
was getting a little older and was hard of hearing, said, “I
didn’t understand that.” And the boy said, “You're not sup-
posed to, it’s a mystery.”

Well, what a mystery, what a mystery we have in Holy
Baptism. What a glorious mystery that God can take this
little bag of flesh, born in sin from Father Adam, and trans-
form it into one alive through faith in Jesus Christ, alive to
live for Him.

How often should we do this? Only once! As Christ died
only once, so we are baptized only once into His one death,
and yet we daily return to Baptism. We return to it for com-
fort. We return to it for power. For Luther says, “What does

such baptizing with water signify? It signifies that the Old

Adam in us should by daily contrition and repentance be
drowned and die with all evil lusts, and again a new man
daily come forth and rise to serve God” because that Chris-
tian life is never complete. The good that we want to do we
so often don’t do. The evil that we don’t want to do, that we
so often do. “The flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit
against the flesh, and these are contrary the one to the
other so that you cannot do the things that you would.” It’s
like trying to keep 32 Ping-Pong balls under water at the
same time. You push this one down, oops, and then anger
comes up, and then lust comes up, and then greed comes
up, and then pride comes up, and we're trying to hold down
this sinful flesh, each and every day returning to our Bap-
tism. ,

There is one thing I like to include in my daily prayers,
twofold prayer really, about Baptism: “Lord, let every good
word and work flow forth today from the waters of my Bap-
tism, gush forth from my Baptism, and drown in those
same waters all that is evil.” For Luther says again in the
Large Catechism (LC IV 84), “Therefore let everybody re-
gard his Baptism as the daily garment which he is to wear
all the time. Every day he should be found in faith and
amid its fruits, every day he should be suppressing the old
man and growing up in the new.”

And now, in closing, I’d like to talk again about that
young woman I mentioned in the beginning. Why was she
crying in church? Those were tears of joy. And what did it
have to do with her Baptism? I wasn’t preaching on Bap-
tism, but I had mentioned Baptism and its importance in
the sermon. And she told me she had gotten in with the
wrong crowd and had been involved in all kinds of occult
practices, even devil worship with a coven of witches, and
she was trying hard to extricate herself from this web of
death. And one of our good pastors faithfully ministered to
her, day after day, week after week. “And,” she said, “after
six months the thing that finally brought me back was to
remember my Baptism, that God had put His stamp of
ownership upon me, that I do not belong to the devil, but
God in Baptism claimed me as His own.” A remembrance
of that deliverance, not only from spiritual death, but pos-
sibly from physical death (and in her state at that time,
eternal death), she had returned to her Baptism.

So Luther says, “When our sins or conscience oppress us,
we must retort, ‘But I am baptized! And if I am baptized, I
have the promise that I shall be saved and have eternal
life, both in soul and in body’” (LC IV 44). In an assembly |
this large, so many of us have burdens and cares on our
hearts, burdens and cares that have perhaps little to do
with the business of this convention. It may be past sins. It
may be present temptations. It may be future decisions. It
may be all kinds of problems that weigh us down. Let us be
buoyed up on the waters of our Baptism. In closing, let me
give you two sentences and then ask you, the second time,
to say those sentences with me. “I am baptized. God has
His stamp of ownership on me.” Put your hand on your-
breast and say with me, “I am baptized. God has His stamp
of ownership on me.” “Amen, amen, that is, yea, yea, it
shall be so.”

Sou! Deo GLORIA
Kar! L. Barth