From Death to Life

Transcript

JR 17
April 9, 2023
From Death to Life
Romans 6:4
Jesse Randolph


Well once again a Happy Easter and Happy Resurrection Day to each and every one of you. Today is a joyous morning, it is a blessed morning, it is a special morning as we, a community of believers, celebrate the resurrection of our Lord, the Lord, the Lord Jesus Christ. The fact of Christ's resurrection has been woven into each of those beautiful songs we were each privileged to sing and hear sung, it was reflected in the portion of Scripture that I read for you this morning from Luke 24. All of it points to the glorious reality that Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, the Messiah, the eternal Son of God, the Prince of Peace, the Spotless Lamb, the Hope of the World rose from the grave. He rose from the grave after suffering unthinkably violent and agonizing methods of torture on a Roman cross. And then He died. And then He spent three days in a crudely carved out tomb. That tomb is now empty, the tomb is still empty. We say Christ is risen, praise the Lord.

Well, earlier this week I had lunch with a couple of different pastors, on different occasions, and of course when pastors get together for lunch the week before Easter you guessed the question we ask each other—What are you preaching this Sunday? The reality is there are a number of directions that a pastor can go in preparing and delivering an Easter message. He can go the route of laying out all the evidences of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, going more the apologetics route as he refutes all the theories that have been offered in opposition to the Bible's clear teachings of what really happened to Christ following His crucifixion. He can walk through the narrative of one of the gospel accounts, like Matthew 28 or Luke 24, which I read earlier, or John 20 or Mark 16. He can do a character study of various individuals involved in the resurrection, looking at the event from their unique point of view or vantage point, you know from the perspective of Mary the mother of Jesus or Mary Magdalene or Jesus' brothers or His disciples or the angel at the tomb or the Roman guards. He can do a study through 1 Corinthians 15 and look into what Paul says about the centrality of the resurrection to the Christian faith and the futility of our hope if the resurrection of Christ didn't actually happen and the future hope that His physical resurrection points to our having one day a bodily resurrection. The list of potential options for Easter messages is limitless.

We're going to go in a bit of a different direction here this morning and if the Lord wills we'll do one of those other studies on a future Easter Sunday, but this Easter I'd like to start our time together by asking everyone a basic question. I'm not looking for a verbal answer necessarily or a hand in the air as I ask this question. But the question is this: Have you been baptized? Baptized, you say. Yes, baptized. Have you been baptized? Well, what does that have to do with the resurrection, you might ask. What does that have to do with Easter Sunday? Well, I would submit to you that that question and the answer to that question has everything to do with the resurrection and everything to do with Easter Sunday.

Turn with me in your Bibles, please, if you have one with you this morning to Romans 6:4. The verse will also be on the screen behind me, in front of you. Romans 6:4, “Therefore, we have been buried with Him through baptism into death so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father so that we, too, might walk in newness of life.” Now here at Indian Hills we preach line upon line and verse upon verse through entire books of the Bible. Right now, on Sunday mornings we are in the book of James, in the next couple of months we'll be turning to the book of Colossians. If you don't have a church home or you are looking for a church home I'd invite you to join us for that. The point is, though, there aren't many times where here at this church we'll do a one-off message like this on a Sunday morning. Not many times where we will zero in on a singular verse like we're going to be doing here today. So before we parachute into this single verse and connect it to the message of Easter, I think it would be good to run through a quick survey of what the Apostle Paul has already been saying in the book of Romans up to this point in Romans 6:4. See, Romans 6:4 wasn't just dropped out of the sky, it wasn't meant to be read in isolation. Rather, it has a context, and we would be wise to explore some of that context.

The book of Romans is considered by many to be Paul's crowning work in light of the depths to which he goes in laying out these key points of Christian theology and also key aspects of Christian life and Christian practice. In Romans 1 Paul has identified the Gospel of grace as the central theme of this letter. In Romans 1:16 he says, “For I am not ashamed of the Gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.” Keeping on in Romans 1 Paul states that the wrath of God is dangling over the heads, like a sword of Damocles, over those who reject their inherent knowledge of God as they suppress the truths they know about God in their state of unrighteousness, burying their heads in the sand and ignoring the existence of the God they know to be there as they stubbornly burden themselves more and more under the avalanche of the weight of sin. Sin which makes them feel free, sin which makes them feel happy, sin which makes them feel like they are just being their true self, but sin which ultimately never satisfies whatever carnal craving they are chasing. Also, in Romans 1 Paul has highlighted this progressive downward slide into godlessness that he witnessed in his day and which we see in our day as well, a slide which includes a failure to acknowledge God or give thanks to God, a slide which results in foolish hearts becoming darkened in their futile speculations. Proclaiming to be wise, Paul says, they became fools. A slide which includes the worship of anything other than God, including nature and government and politics and philosophy and tradition and pleasure and the god of our day, self. Finally, he highlights this slide which leads to a society being completely given over by God to their basest carnal desires, which is exactly where we are today—in the God-gave-them-over phase of history.

In Romans 2, now, Paul describes how the Jewish people of his day, though they had been given the Law, the old Mosaic Law, were equally, along with the Gentiles, under the judgment of God because as Paul says in Romans 3:10, “There is none righteous, not even one.” We have all sinned, Jew and Gentile alike, and “fall short of the glory of God,” as he says in Romans 3:23. To those who might quibble with His premise and try to work their way toward God through the keeping of the Law, Paul makes it very clear that their efforts will never succeed. He says in Romans 3:28, “A man is justified by faith apart from the works of the Law.” That's the key—faith. An otherwise guilty sinner is justified, meaning they are declared to be in a right standing before God and ultimately, they are saved by that God, not through the Law, not through their deeds, not through their performance of good works, not through being better than most of society, but rather through faith. In Romans 4 Paul goes back to the Old Testament and explains how Abraham the father of the nations, an Israelite, a Hebrew was not justified by his works, was not justified by being an A+ Old Testament saint, but rather he was justified on account of his faith. That's what he says in Romans 4:3, quoting from the book of Genesis where he says, “For what does Scripture say? Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness.”

Then we have Romans 5:1 which explains that justification brings salvation, and it brings peace with God. “Therefore, having been justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” When a person is justified, which again happens by faith, they go from being an enemy of God to being a child of God, they go from being a child of darkness to being a son of light, they go from being a slave of sin to being a slave of Christ and a slave to righteousness. But hear me, there are no works involved in justification. There is no self-effort or human will involved in becoming a Christian. Rather one is justified, a person is saved, and they are once and forever saved because they put their faith not in self, but instead they put their faith in the once and forever sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross. That's it. That's the wonder and the simplicity and the beauty of the Gospel. If I could put it into one sentence, a person is saved by believing in Jesus Christ. They believe that He has died, they believe that He was buried, and they believe, as we celebrate this Easter morning, that He was raised.

With that we come back to our text. Again, it's on the screens behind me. If Romans 5 is all about justification, how a person gets saved, Romans 6 is all about sanctification, which describes that progressive process by which one who has been justified, who has already been saved grows in holiness and godliness and Christ-likeness as he or she with the help and the conviction and the guidance of the Holy Spirit is conformed into a greater and greater degree into the likeness of Jesus Christ. If we were to do a study this morning all through Romans 6, we would see here that Paul is challenging believers, those who have already been justified, those who have already been saved, to live these upright and godly lives in Christ Jesus, to grow in sanctification.

In fact, let's get a little context by looking at Romans 6, the first three verses here sort of back into our verse. Romans 6:1, he says, “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? May it never be. How shall we who died to sin still live in it? Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death.” In just these few verses we see two words repeated and there are seven contrasts against each other, and they certainly stand out. Those words are death and life. Now to the unbelieving world those words, death and life, represent the polar extremes of their 75-or-so-year existence on this spinning ball of dirt that we call earth. They will live and then they will die. For the Christian, though, those two words represent the very core of our identity. We die and now we live.

The message this morning is titled “From Death to Life” and there are three main points, three main takeaways I want to draw out from this text here and they track what Paul is saying here in Romans 6:4. Point #1 is that Christians Have Been Buried with Christ; point #2 is that Christians Have Been Raised with Christ; and point #3 is that Christians Now Live for Christ. We'll start with the first point that we as believers have been buried with Christ. Look at the first few words here of verse 4. He says, “Therefore, we have been buried with Him through baptism into His death.” Paul here again is writing to believers, to Christians, and he is saying here that if we are followers of Jesus Christ, if we have repented of our sins and put our faith in Christ we have been buried. Well, you only bury what kind of person? A dead person, one who is no longer living. That is exactly what Paul is saying here. The one who has trusted in Jesus Christ for salvation, the one who has surrendered his or her life to Jesus Christ has died. They have been buried with Him, they are dead and buried. The old man has died and now he is six feet under, never to be seen or heard from again. Now what type of death is Paul referring to here? Does he have a physical death in mind? When he says we have been buried with Him, is he talking about physical burial? No. Paul here does not have in mind tombstones and headstones and grave markings. Look at what he says next. “We have been buried with Him through baptism into death.” You remember the question I asked at the beginning? Have you been baptized? What Paul here says is why I asked that question. We, meaning Christians, have been buried with Him through baptism into His death. Now the Him that is mentioned here is very clearly a reference to Jesus Christ. We know that from Romans 6:3, right before this where it says, “Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death?”

So, in what sense are Christians baptized into Christ Jesus? In what sense are Christians baptized into His death? Well, when I use that word baptism what is the first thing that comes to mind? I have an idea about what some of you might be thinking. You are thinking about a clear substance, a substance that is necessary for human survival. It can appear in liquid or frozen or steam forms. It shows up on the periodic table of elements, if you put them all together, as H2O. You're thinking about water. That's what we think about when we hear the word baptism in our day. Our mind naturally goes in the direction of an event involving water, whether it is submerging or immersing somebody in water or sprinkling them with water in certain traditions. But is that what Paul has in mind here? Is he teaching that we are buried with Him, meaning with Christ, when we are baptized into water? Is he in a sense teaching here that we have to be baptized into water in order to have a right relationship with God? Is this how one becomes a Christian? Is this how one becomes a child of God? By getting wet? Absolutely not. This passage has nothing to do with water. H2O wasn't on Paul's mind when he wrote these words. The word for baptism here comes from a Greek word baptizo and you can hear the connection between the old Greek word, baptizo, and our English word baptism. A core definition of that Greek word baptizo during Paul's time was to place into. Like picture a white cloth being immersed, plunged, dunked into a vat of red dye so that what comes out is totally different. To be placed into is one of the main definitions of baptizo. Another definition of this term baptizo is to publicly identify with, as in to publicly identify with the person or the thing that you are being baptized or placed into.

Let me give you a few examples from Scripture. In 1 Corinthians 10:1-2 Paul, referring to the Israelites, says, “Our fathers were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea.” That there is referring to the Israelites of Moses' day identifying with their leader, Moses. Or in 1 Corinthians 12:13 Paul says, “For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free.” That's referring to believers identifying, being placed into the church. Galatians 3:27 says, “All of you were baptized into Christ.” We just saw in Romans 6:3 that Paul speaks of being baptized into Christ Jesus, and here in verse 4 he says, “You have been buried with Him through baptism into death.” Again, this is a statement of identification. To be baptized into Christ, to be baptized into His death means to be identified with Christ's death and burial, and ultimately as we are going to see identified with His resurrection.

Now I don't want us to miss the richness and the beauty of what is being described by Paul here when he says, “We have been buried with Him through baptism into death.” At the cross Jesus died a real and physical death for our sins. The placement of His body in the tomb, the closing of the tomb, the sealing of the tomb, the guarding of the tomb, these are all biblically recorded and historically verifiable events which testify to the reality that the Lord actually died. He didn't merely go unconscious or fall asleep or swoon or faint. No, He actually died upon the cross. Track with me on this now. As Christians we have not only been legally declared righteous and justified and saved on account of our faith in Christ, but we have also been brought into an intimate and living union with Christ. We are identified with Him, we are united with Him, we are joined with Him, we are fused with Him, and what that means is that the moment we trusted in Christ, the moment we experienced that washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit that Titus 3 talks about, we died with Him. As John MacArthur puts it, we attended our own funeral. As He died so we died, and Colossians 3:3 says it, “For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” We died with Christ so that we are dead to our old way of life. Galatians 2:20 says it absolutely clearly. “I have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me.” Or 2 Corinthians 5:17 says, “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature. The old has passed away, behold the new has come.” The old us, the adulterer, the drunkard, the liar, the thief, the cheat, the homosexual, the sexually immoral person, the one described in Titus 3:3 who is foolish and disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending our life in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another is now not only in the rearview but is under the four wheels of the car. He is dead. When the Lord died for sin, we died to sin. Though we still do sin, sin no longer has control over us like it once did. It no longer reigns over us. We no longer live under the tyranny of sin. We no longer live under the cruel mastery of sin. We no longer live under the harsh yoke of sin. Just as Christ in accordance with the Scriptures died and was buried, we as Christians who have been united with Christ, like our Lord, also died. We were buried with Him through baptism into death.

Now so far, we have only covered burial and death and what it means to be baptized or identified with the Lord's death. If we ended the message there, we would be still stuck on the events of Good Friday, the crucifixion of our Lord, the death of Christ, the rolling of the stone shut to seal the tomb. But we know the story doesn't end there, does it. No. That's why we are here this morning, we are celebrating, commemorating the fact that the Lord was raised, that He was resurrected, that He is risen. He was dead but He came to life. We think of the words of the angel to Mary Magdalene in Matthew 28:5-6 where he says, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus who has been crucified. He is not here, for He has risen just as He said.” Or we think of the account in the gospel of Luke of those same events, what I read in our Scripture reading this morning. Luke 24:2-3, “And when they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, they entered and did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.” The tomb was empty. There was no body there. There were linen wrappings and a facecloth there according to the gospel of John, but the crucified Lord of glory had risen from the dead. Bringing it back to our text, Romans 6:4, when Jesus rose from the dead physically, we rose from the dead spiritually.

That brings us to our second idea this morning, the Christian has not only been buried with Christ, he has been raised with Christ. Look at the middle portion of the verse here. It says, “so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father.” Paul here is continuing with his thought about believers having been buried with Him through baptism into death. As he does so he transitions, you could say, from Good Friday to Easter Sunday as he now centers on the reality of the resurrection. Now note here that Paul isn't leaving any room as to whether he believes the resurrection of Christ actually occurred. It's not, “if Christ was raised from the dead,” or “assuming Christ was raised from the dead.” No. What does he say? “As Christ was raised from the dead.” To the Apostle Paul this is settled fact, this is undeniable reality that Christ was raised from the dead. He was physically and bodily and provably raised from the dead. He submitted Himself, the Lord did, to the will of the Father. He bore our sins upon the cross. He became sin for us. He suffered the penalty for our sin in His body. He endured the wrath of God in our place, and He paid the ultimate price for our sins through His death. Following His crucifixion He lay there in the tomb, dead, with burial cloths wrapped around His head and burial linens wrapped around His body. But then just as He had physically died, He was physically raised. He physically rose. Jesus arose in a physical body, and He lived in that body among His disciples for forty days where they had the opportunity to see Him and hear Him and touch Him and feel the imprint where the nails had gone in and watch Him eat fish. He was physically raised. There is no doubt, there is no debating that the Lord actually died; and there is no doubt and there is no debating that He was truly and physically raised from the dead.

I love how Charles Spurgeon links the death of Christ to the resurrection. Listen to these words. He says, “His death wears no dishonor on its brow, for His rising again has set a diadem thereon. We celebrate Gethsemane and Calvary, and find no bitterness in all their grief, because death is swallowed up in the victory of resurrection. The whole earthly life of Jesus with its poverty, its slander, its sorrow, its scourging, its spitting, its crucifixion, is raised above all trace of dishonor by His glorious resurrection.” Amen to that. That event, the glorious resurrection of Jesus Christ, is central not only to world history, not only to our worship here on Easter Sunday, but to every aspect of our lives as Christians. For instance, the resurrection of Jesus Christ highlights for us the nature and the character of God as being a God who is abundant in patience and mercy and grace and goodness and love. The resurrection of Christ certifies for us the statements that the Lord made Himself concerning His deity and His future resurrection, confirming the fact that He is who He claimed to be—the very Son of God. The resurrection of Christ means that the penalty of sin and death which we looked at on Good Friday which had otherwise been hanging over each one of our heads has now been dealt with. Not only that, but the resurrection of Christ also means that we ourselves will one day be physically raised as we receive new resurrection bodies. 1 Corinthians 15:42 says we will one day be “sown in a perishable body and raised in an imperishable body.

But again, what Paul is highlighting for us in our text today, Romans 6:4, is our union with Christ. He is highlighting the fact that just as we as believers are united with Christ in His death and in His burial, so, too, are we unified and in union with Him in His resurrection. Just as He rose physically from the grave, just as He was physically resurrected, we, too, have undergone a spiritual resurrection. When God resurrected Him, He also resurrected us. We haven't been rehabilitated, we haven't been resuscitated, we haven't been fixed-up versions of the old person. No, we have been resurrected, entirely new people, entirely new creations. It has all been done, verse 4 says, “through the glory of the Father,” meaning through the power of the Father in this context, the omnipotence of the Father. It was God the Father who raised Jesus from the dead, breaking the shackles of sin and death and bringing Him back to life. Colossians 2:12 confirms it, saying that we were “raised up with Him,” meaning Christ, “through faith in the working of God who raised Him from the dead.”

Well that now brings us to the final part of verse 4 here where Paul says we've not only been buried with Christ through baptism, and not only raised with Christ as He was raised through the glory of the Father, but he gives a purpose clause here at the end of verse 4 where he says, “so we, too, might walk in newness of life.” Our first point was we have been buried with Christ, our second point was we have been raised with Christ, the last point is we are now living for Christ. Having been buried with Him through baptism into death and having been spiritually resurrected in keeping with our Lord's physical resurrection, we now walk in newness of life. It's not that our old life has been altered to be better than it once was. Again, we haven't been rehabilitated, we're not the ultimate fixer-upper, we haven't been polished or spit-shined on the outside while the inside is so crumbling and decaying. Quite the contrary. We have been transformed, we've been given a totally new life, we have been spiritually resurrected unto true life. This new life that we have been given, this resurrected life, empowers us to walk in the newness of life. That word walk refers to our daily manner of life, our daily spiritual conduct as we put one foot before the other, spiritually speaking. That is speaking again of the Holy Spirit's continuing work of growth and sanctification in the lives of believers, which again is Paul's focus here in the entirety of Romans 6.

In fact if you have your Bibles, let's read a few more verses past verse 4 here where we see that this idea of walking in newness is all throughout this chapter, look at Romans 6:5. He says, “For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection; knowing this that our old self was crucified with Him in order that our body of sin might be done away with so that we would no longer be slaves to sin. For he who has died is freed from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we should also live with Him, knowing that Christ having been raised from the dead is never to die again. Death no longer is master over Him, for the death that He died, He died to sin once for all. But the life that He lives He lives to God. Even so,” verse 11, “consider yourselves to be dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” When a person comes to true saving faith in Jesus Christ, when they say that they believe in His death and resurrection, when they claim the promise of Romans 10:9, “If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved,” such a person will not, in fact they cannot, live like they once did. No, when we are baptized into Christ's death and into His resurrection, we are raised to walk in newness of life. We are new creatures. We have, as Paul says in Ephesians 4:24, “put on the new self.” The resurrected Christ is not only the Savior of our souls, but He is also the Lord of our lives and the new life that we now live, if we claim to be a follower of Christ, will be seen daily, visibly in our walk. We are walking on a new walk, we're walking on a new path, we're led by a different master. No longer drug along by our sin but rather a Master whose yoke is easy and whose burden is light—Jesus Christ. Guided by His Spirit, hungry for His Word, conversing with Him in prayer, seeking fellowship with His people, the church. Convicted by and grieving over the sin that still remains and resolving to follow Him faithfully in each and every area of our lives.

The words to Charles Wesley's hymn, And Can it Be, come to mind here. He says, “Long my imprisoned spirit lay fast bound in sin and nature's night.” That's the old man. “Thine eye diffused the quickening ray; I woke, the dungeon flamed with light. My chains fell off, my heart was free.” That's where most professed Christians end the hymn, by the way. But look at what he says. “I rose, went forth and followed Thee.” That's walking in the newness of life—rising, going forth and following Him.

Now I recognize that even in our day a lot of people still call themselves Christians, especially in our part of the country. The scary thing, though, is that while a lot of people will gladly don the label of Christian by wearing the cross necklace or getting the Bible verse tattoo or posting an occasional spiritual thought on social media or using Christian-speak like God bless or praise the Lord or even today, He is risen, they very clearly are not walking in newness of life. Instead, they are totally given over to sin. What if that describes you here this morning? What if you are living the same way you used to live before you made a profession of faith in Christ? What if, if you get really honest with yourself, you would say I am not walking in newness of life? Well, if that describes you, you really have to do what 2 Corinthians 13 talks about which is to do some self-examination because you cannot with that sort of testimony confidently state that you are a new creature. You cannot confidently state that you are a Christian. As Paul says in Romans 6:2, we saw it earlier, “How shall we who died to sin still live in it?” Or even more pointedly John in 1 John 3:9 says, “No one who is born of God practices sin.” In other words, just as a person cannot be dead and alive at the same time, it's one or the other, a person cannot have been made alive in Christ and still have patterns and lifestyles and habits that very much still show that they are dead in their sin. They can't just sort of slap on a coat of Christian varnish on a spiritually decaying corpse and call it good.

Does that mean believers never sin? Of course not. 1 John 1:8 says, “If we say we have no sin we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.” 1 John 1:10 says, “If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His Word is not in us.” Of course, Christians do sin. But the question is really one of identity, meaning if the piercing searchlight of heaven were to scan your soul right now, unearthing and exposing every thought, every deed, every practice you find yourself engaged in on a consistent and regular basis, would that light reveal a person whose fundamental identity is their relationship with Jesus Christ? Is that what is most valuable to you? Or instead, would that light reveal a person whose fundamental identity is their sin, whatever that sin is? No one can serve two masters, the Lord Himself said that. So, the question is who is your master? What is your master? Though perhaps you've made a verbal profession of faith in Jesus Christ, are you truly walking in newness of life?

I'll end this morning's message the way I started it by asking the same question I began with at the start of the sermon. Have you been baptized? I'm not asking whether you've been submerged into water, I'm not asking if you've been sprinkled with water. What I am asking is if you have been placed into Christ, if you have been identified with Christ, identified with His death, identified with His burial, identified with His resurrection. If you have, praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. You have reason of reasons to celebrate and rejoice this Easter morning. Your sins have been washed away and paid for. You have been forgiven on account of the great love that you have been shown by God through your risen Savior, Jesus Christ. You have reason to celebrate that not only this day, but every day. Resurrection is something you can revel in daily as you praise your Savior all the day long. But if you haven't been baptized, meaning you haven't been placed into Christ, don't leave this place this morning without seeking forgiveness for your sin from God through the cross of Jesus Christ. Don't leave without acknowledging that you are a sinner, just as I am a sinner, but unlike me and all the Christians in the room here this morning your identity is not in Christ. Your identity is in your sin and that's why you find yourself drowning; and that's why you find yourself always having that gnawing sense of dissatisfaction. That's why you always find yourself feeling purposeless and rudderless and hopeless. That's why you find yourself feeling like you cannot achieve victory over your sin, whatever that sin is. It's because you have yet to be washed and purified and cleansed by the precious blood of Jesus Christ.

So, this Easter I pray that you will come to Christ, that you will eliminate the excuses, that you'll overcome whatever fears you might have of what others might say or think, that you'll seek shelter from the wrath of God that is found only in the shadow of the cross of Christ. That you'll be buried with Him as the old passes away, and that you'll be raised with Him as the new you comes to life.

We're going to end our time this morning celebrating, witnessing the baptisms, the water baptisms of four individuals in just a minute. In just a minute we're going to have Greg Thomas and Duane Leach come up, we're going to have four individuals—James and Jacob and Christine and Chase—come up and share their testimonies as they are baptized into water. Now note, and I hope this has come through clearly, each of these individuals has already been baptized. They've been baptized in the ultimate sense. They have been buried with Christ, they've been placed into Christ, they've been raised with Christ. They are now new creatures in Christ. Now in the waters of baptism they are going to publicly testify before each one of us the work the Lord has done in each of their lives, drawing them to Himself and granting them new spiritual life.

Let's pray for what we are about to witness. Father, thank you so much for this privilege that we have to gather today and reflect and remember the resurrection of our Lord, the Lord, the Lord Jesus Christ. Thank you for in Your sovereign plan providing a way that sinners like us could be restored to You as we are buried with our Lord in baptism and placed into Him, identifying with Him and also raised with Him, spiritually speaking. I praise You for the salvation You have brought in this room, for every individual here who has already given their life to the Lord Jesus Christ, identified with Him, been buried and raised and are now walking in newness of life. I praise You for the four individuals who are about to testify publicly to the work You have done sovereignly in their hearts. Thank You, Lord, for the cross of Jesus Christ. Thank You for the grace of Jesus Christ. May His great name and His great work on the cross be heralded through what we are about to witness. We give You thanks and praise for this day. In Jesus' name, amen.