Congregation of the Lord, as you've gathered this morning, we're gonna talk about the washing that we have received through the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. And God did call us into his fellowship by his spirit working in us, working faith in us, to make us one with the Savior Jesus. That in that transformation, in that work of God, in that new creation, and making us new in Christ, God has truly cleansed us. And what He's cleansed us from is sin. He's washed us from filth. But as you do as well when you take your daily or weekly bath, I don't know how often you do that, You do it because you want to be clean, because you just need to get ready for bed, or tomorrow, or you're going on a date, right? That when we are washed from something, it's because we're washing for something. We've got to keep these together. We have been saved from sin and its consequences. We've been washed from sin that we might serve God, that we might be His children, that we have been washed from filth, that we might be washed for fellowship with God in His house. I think the Apostle Paul, though he doesn't mention baptism here, and as we'll see, it's implied there because baptism, as we've learned and we'll hit again as we see in this first question, baptism is really just the sign and seal of the gospel. And Paul talks about the gospel here in Ephesians 2, that I know you're very familiar with, where he talks about what we were. This is what God washed us from. This is what he's washed us for when he says, you were dead in trespasses and sins. You once walked in those. That was your life outside of Christ. You followed the course of this world. The world is still on its ungodly course, walking against God and flowing sadly to its destruction. following the prince of the power of the air, the evil one, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, there you go, that's what we were, sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. That's what we were, Paul says. And God found us, and that's why he opened up a fount. But what does he say we are now? A God being rich in mercy because of the great love which he loved us with. Even when we are dead in our trespasses, he made us alive together with Christ. By his grace, you've been saved. You've been raised with him, seated with him in heavenly places. In the coming age, you might show the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness towards you. Or by grace you've been saved through faith, right? This is not your own, this is a gift, right? That we might, notice he says, or his workmanship, create in Christ for good works. So what were we? Well, it's never pleasant to say the words, but we were children of the devil. Sons of disobedience. When Adam fell, we lost everything. God had promised us everything in his covenant of life with Adam, made a sure way for Adam and his progeny to live forever in God's blessedness. And Adam, sin. And we received that sin and that guilt and that loss of original uprightness out of which then flows our own sins of which we are guilty before God. And we had no inheritance. All we had was the curse of death. And God in his justice we fell under also the tyranny of the evil one. And that's what's such good news about the good news when Jesus says, I've bound him and I'm freeing his house, but it's only because Jesus has come and taken us out of that house. Blood bought us by his blood and redeemed us, called us then that we belong to him and are no longer this, because we've been washed. from being sons of disobedience to being children of God for good work. So I just want to, as we look at what the catechism is teaching, good things on baptism, I just don't want us to leave the big picture. The point is, you have been washed in Christ from that, from that old life and sin, for your new life, to serve God, to have fellowship with God, to serve the Lord Jesus Christ. You've been washed from being children of the devil and sons of disobedience to be children of God. This morning, these questions present us with three truths of the function of baptism. We've already seen that baptism, like all sacraments, are signs and seals, and so we're going to look at baptism and how it functions as a sign and seal, assuring us and showing us that we have a share in Christ's sacrifice, that His death on the cross personally benefits us, as we heard last week. All of God's gospel word and all of God's sacraments are focusing our faith, not on faith, but on the grounds of our salvation, the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. And so we want to see, how does baptism function? And then secondly, the significance of baptism. Baptism is a sign. But what is it pointing to? What is the significance of baptism? And then thirdly, the authenticity of it, that it is a true sign. Jesus instituted it not as an empty sign that's meaningless, but as a true sign. So that's what we're gonna look at this morning, and then I have some applications for us on living out the baptized life. So first, the function of baptism. That's question 69 when the catechism asks, well, how does it remind and assure you that Christ, when sacrificed on the cross, benefits you? And the first thing, it does that as well. Jesus instituted it. And we read the words of institution in question 71. Peter, in the first sermon preached, Pentecost, the first Christian sermon, also preached baptism in the name of Jesus, right? He said, repent, be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, the forgiveness of your sins. Now, the Greek here isn't into the name as it is in Matthew, being baptized into the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but in meaning and the risen Lord's power and authority by His command, if you believe this good news that I just preached to you, if you will truly do what I've said, repent, because you crucified Him, but I've just told you God's raised Him and made Him Lord in Christ, so if you will turn from crucifying Jesus to confessing Jesus, from persecuting Jesus, as Paul said, to living to please Jesus in his own conversion, then be baptized in his name by his express command. And as you see, it ties to that forgiveness of sin and receipt of the Holy Spirit. Later on in Peter's first letter, he, dealing with the significance of baptism, talks about how baptism saves. And we want to know, how does baptism save? How does it function? Well, Jesus, he ends to do this outward washing, but he promised, right, as surely as water washes away the dirt from your body, Jesus is saying, so surely my blood and my spirit wash away your soul's impurity. Now, in 1 Peter 3, 21, Peter writes this. Baptism, which corresponds to this, and what's it corresponding to? Noah and how through water they were, as Peter says, safely brought through water. Baptism corresponds to this. It now saves you, not as removal of dirt from the body. So Jesus instituted a washing that removes dirt from our body, right? Whether you're sprinkled, whether you had water poured on your head, whether you were fully dipped, the ideal there is you were washed. We use water to wash dirt from our bodies. Peter talks about that's not how baptism saves. Baptism saves as a sign and seal of the gospel. He goes on to tell us, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience. And where does this come from? Through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Remember, we learned last week, right? The resurrection teaches us we're no longer in our sins. If Jesus had not risen from the dead, then he had not atoned for our sins. He himself was a real sinner and he's just suffering the penalty like you and I did. But because he died and three days later, as God said he would, we can know for certain he bore the punishment of our sins. And we're no longer in our sins on the basis of the gospel. We can appeal to God for a good conscience. Wash my sins away, right? Notice what he's saying. We're appealing not on the basis of your repentance. You're not appealing on the basis of your faith. You're appealing on the basis of the gospel, of what Jesus Christ accomplished. And baptism is a sign and seal of that gospel. That's how it saves, is what Peter's saying. Not the water washing. But what that baptism points to, Jesus' baptism on the cross, His suffering in our place, the judgment falling on Him in which we know He bore, because now He's alive, in proof for our justification. We are acquitted and no longer under condemnation. We can appeal to God then for forgiveness of our sins. We can appeal to God to cleanse us. Take away the guilt. Have a good conscience that we might draw near to God because, you know, as we sung, and as Paul learned, our sins are against God. We've provoked Him to His face. We've persecuted Him if you've ever persecuted the church. If you've ever laughed at a Christian, you've laughed at Christ. If you've ever mocked a Christian, you've mocked Christ. He's one with His people. If you've ever sinned, you've sinned against God, your Lord, your Creator, and you've said no to Him. You know, if we have a hard time as children drawing near to parents when we sin, or siblings, or spouses, or brothers and sisters in the Lord, imagine the difficulty it would be for us to draw near to God. if he did not give us the gospel, but even then a nice sign and seal of it, right? That he has, for Jesus' sake, washed us clean. And we can appeal to that good conscience and leave it all behind. So that's how baptism functions. It functions by way of a simile, right? Just as water washes, outwardly our bodies, so the blood and spirit of Jesus wash inwardly our souls. Our confession uses this language, at least since St. Augustine's day in the 5th century when he died in 430, the church has been referring to sacraments as outward signs of an inward and spiritual reality. I think that's a fine way to think about it. If I could daringly add to it, I would say that also promises an outward transformation too. Because Paul says if we have been united in Jesus's death, so we are inwardly clean, we're also going to be united in his resurrection and be outwardly transformed too. But an inward, or excuse me, an outward sign depicting and showing an inward and spiritual reality that as we are truly one with Jesus, we are truly washed by his blood. How many of you doubt the power of a shower, right, to cleanse you? It cleanses you. Without a doubt, water cleanses you. And let me just make a comment here. There's a reason Jesus picked water, not mud, to depict his work on the cross, right? He didn't just arbitrarily pick something. This is what we call the sacramental union, or what's the relationship between the sign and this thing signifying? a simile, there's a real relationship between them. Just as water washes, Jesus wants to know his blood and spirit truly wash us. So that's how baptism functions. As a simile, as a likeness of what is done outwardly to you in a baptism, this is what God by his grace has done inwardly to you in cleansing you by the blood of Jesus and the spirit of Jesus. Well then, what's the significance then? What does the blood cleanse us from? And what does the spirit cleanse us from? Well, the blood cleanses us from really the guilt of our sins. Through the blood of Jesus shed, we have forgiveness. It's his blood that takes away the guilt. You know the saying, you got blood on your hands, it means you're guilty, right? If you were to try to take someone's life in a physical way, you're going to get blood on their hands. Children, maybe you haven't done this, but the typical hand in the cookie jar What leaves, what stays on your hand? You know, chocolate and crumbs or who's ever, you know, used the markers you're not supposed to use and you get your hands all colored up and you do this to them or you don't want to show. Why? Because you got blood on your hands. Can't hide from the guilt. Jesus's blood is essentially, he takes our blood, he takes that guilt and it gets put on him, right? We lay our hands, you know, God had his Old Testament people, when they sinned, come before his priest, depicting Jesus, bringing a sacrifice, depicting Jesus, and they had to physically lay their hands on that. They had to pass their guilt onto that sin bearer for them. Jesus takes that guilt from us and he bores it. And again, as we learned last week, blood doesn't wash just as a material thing. Blood means substitutionary atonement. It means a penal sacrifice. Jesus taking our place in dying, that sacrifice takes our guilt and we're forgiven. God promised that in Zechariah 13.1. in the house of David, fallen into sin, they're in exile, those inhabitants in Jerusalem, and if you've read through the prophets in sin, you understand again, God had chosen his people, raised them up above every other nation in the world, gave him his own holy law and his commandments, lived amongst them, and here's how God speaks about their sin, they prostituted themselves, They committed adultery spiritually with me. They did it blazingly and openly and over and over again. They took their own children and murdered them and sacrificed to gods in ways that never even ever come in my mind. And yet they had the truth of who God was. That's the kind of sinful defilement that God's people had fallen into and which God then says, well, guess what? I'm opening up a fount. And the fount I'm opening up can and will cleanse all of that. If you're with us in the evening, we're going through Hebrews. We haven't gotten here yet, but we will get here. And it strikes me using this language, getting here, that's the language he uses in chapter 12. We've come somewhere as believers. God brought his people out of Egypt to Sinai, wonderful, married him, made a covenant. His Lord took up an offering to dwell amongst them in the tabernacle. But we haven't come there as believers in Christ. We've come to Mount Zion, the city, we've come to heavenly Jerusalem. You know, God talks about in Zechariah, he's going to cleanse the house of David, the inhabitants of Jerusalem. Well, where have we come? We've come to heavenly Jerusalem. You know, God has cleansed literally the... You know, when Peter preached the gospel that day, he was preaching to inhabitants of Jerusalem, who had just murdered God's Son, and God had promised, I'll forgive you of that and wash you clean. I'll pour the Spirit of my love upon you and take you as my child. They experienced it, but we're talking about Jews and Gentiles, because we have come to heavenly Jerusalem. Where have we come to? We've come to Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant, and notice, to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. You know, Abel's blood cries out for vengeance, and Jesus' blood cries out for pardon. and peace. And so as citizens of God's heavenly kingdom, as members of the body of Christ, we've been washed clean. God has opened a fount for us and cleansed our sins away. Our guilt has been washed away by the blood of Jesus. Revelation 1.5 talks about Jesus who loved us and washed us from our sins by his blood. 1 Peter 1, 2, and recreating that Exodus 24 Old Covenant ceremony. likens us as those who have been chosen by God according to his foreknowledge of churches, that we might be sanctified in the Spirit, not the letter, but in the Spirit, that we've been chosen for the sprinkling of Jesus' blood, we've been chosen to obey Jesus. If you remember Exodus 24, right? God gave Moses the commandments to tell the people. All the people said, we'll do that, we'll obey you. And then he sprinkled them with the blood, and he's saying, Jesus is that New Testament fulfillment. As we are in the New Covenant, as believers in Christ, we have been elect by God not only to obey the Lord Jesus, which we do, but also to be forgiven by Him, to be sprinkled by His own blood as the priest and sacrifice of the New Covenant. And now we enjoy that sanctification in the Holy Spirit. And that's what we're going to The next thing, because the next thing it means to be baptized is to be washed by Christ's Spirit. And that means that we've been renewed, a new birth, regeneration. That word just means born again. We have been sanctified, we have been set apart as a holy people. I like to think of it this way, that blood deals with our guilt, Guilt means you did the crime and you're liable to the punishment. So we're forgiven through the blood, but sin is not only do we incur guilt by sin, but we're polluted by it. It's a power that we're under, but when you do shed someone's blood, your hand's stained with it. When you do stick your hand in the cookie jar and eat it, your mouth and hands are covered with the chocolate. Not only does God deal with the guilt of that, He also wipes away the chocolate. He wipes away the blood. But more than what he does, though, just outwardly, he wipes away what's in the heart while you would want to disobey your parent to stick your hand in there in the first place. He cleanses whatever's in your heart that you would slay another man for whatever sinful reason, because there's no good reason. But you did it for some reason. So the cleansing isn't just in this outward way. He's renewing our hearts, changing us so we won't be those kind of people. The sin that pollutes our thoughts, the way we think. You know, coming out of sin, you think badly and poorly. You desire wrongly. The Bible's words are, your desires are perverted. God gives us desire. He expects us to desire. It is inhuman to not have desires. You and I can't live without desires. The problem is what we desire, and how we desire, and the order we desire things in. That's the issue. And we need to have those renewed. Our hearts need to be cleansed. Our desires need to be properly ordered. Some just need to go away. And that's the work that Jesus' Spirit is doing in our hearts, as he's made us new. So in principle, It's being worked out as you wrestle all your life against sin, but you're forgiven. You're not wrestling under condemnation. You're wrestling in the light of God's favor as a child of God, but you will wrestle with it all your life. But in your heart of hearts and principle, you're already perfectly sanctified. I just mean what I mean by that is your heart truly loves God now, as Paul says. I desire and delight in God's will. My problem is my flesh is still weak, and I fail at it, and I don't do what I want to do. But I want to do it. I want to serve God. You've been truly renewed already in every part, just as you fell in every part. You have been renewed in every part. It's just being worked out now as a principle. And you're not even seeing if that wasn't true, then what happens if you got regenerated, but then died before you could spend a lot of years getting sanctified? Don't look at this life as just, you know, you've got to, you know, I've got 80 years to get perfect before heaven. Can I just take that burden from you? I trust Pastor Alan Tomlinson. He's retired. He ministered for 43 years. I served him for a year in New Hampshire. He said, I used to think sanctification looked like this. It looks more like this, and it just kind of does this. When we die, it is going to go like that, okay? You're already in principle new. And you already love God with a new heart, but you are going to suffer frustration and failures. It is going to be miserable to you, but don't think that you just got to eke it out to get ready for heaven. You're already enjoying the heavenly life in Christ now. You're already made new in him. Sanctification is tough work. It is sweaty work. It is at times difficult, but it's also meant to be a joy. Those are children of God. And it's wonderful, as it says here, to put sin to death. Shouldn't we want to put to death the thing that wants to put God to death? Isn't that the greatest way to show that we're for God now? When we want to just put His enemy to death? Sin. Because make no mistake, sin wants God dead. It doesn't want God to be gone. It wants God to be other than he can, who is somehow going to approve sin. He will never approve sin. He will never sanction sin. He will never just allow your sin and that kind of sin to say, go ahead and sin. Sin wants God to be other than he is, which means he wants him to die so that sin can have what it wants. Sin. It was a wonderful thing then. because God loves even that sinful creatures and loved us in that sin as we read in Ephesians. And now we get the joy of putting to death what wants to put him to death, our sins. What a picture then that we have truly died in Christ and truly been raised to new life. In that new life as we begin, we continue to live holy lives I just want to encourage you about that word holiness, because sometimes it can seem austere, right? Very distant, very cold. And to be holy is to sort of be aloof. To holy is to be kind of nasty, cold. But holiness in the Bible, Paul talks about, he just often equates it with love. You should really equate holiness with love. And holiness is a warm thing. It's a burning, consuming passion for God. It delights in Him. It consumes those sinful desires and burns them up. We continue to grow in love then as God's people in that gentleness and goodness and graciousness that the Lord is. And we live, you know, blameless lives. Blameless. because God doesn't find fault with what we do in Christ, but also blameless because we turned our hands from doing the things that God can blame us for. We've not done that perfectly. But at least you could plead with God as Paul could, I wanted to do it perfectly. And at times you still do it. If you are truly in Christ, there are sins you've just stopped doing, I hope. Good, you're doing what God wants. He's not going to blame you for doing what he wants. Doing what he wants has not merited his favor. Doing what he wants doesn't save you. It's because he saved you. But we begin to truly live lives that God doesn't find fault with, because they're what he wants us to do, because his Spirit has renewed us and is in us to live that kind of way. I'm speaking to you just quite personally here. I think sometimes, depending on how we set up, justification by faith and law gospel, we can set up in ways we think God's against us. He is 100% for us in Christ. He came as our Savior. He sent his own Son for us. He loves us unconditionally. He wants us to walk in the freedom and power of the Spirit. He wants us, when we sin, to go to Him. He wants to teach us. He wants to love us. He wants to treat us. He wants to make us new. He is a good God. He is for us. And life in the Spirit is just what He always intended us to live. It's just inhuman to not have His Spirit in us. This is what He wants for us as His children. So that's the significance of baptism. You've been forgiven by God's grace. You're not guilty. God will not treat you as your sins deserve, as we sung in Psalm 103. You don't have the lingering consequences that God is going to cast you into hell, punish you eternally for what you've done. But also, you have been renewed, and you have a new heart, and you have been set apart in Christ Jesus, sanctified to be a member of his body, to live in fellowship with God, which means dying to sin and living a holy and blameless life. Thirdly, the authenticity of baptism. Question 71 wants to ask, where does Christ promise that we're washed with his blood and spirit? Surely as we're washed with water and baptized, right? Because we can talk about all these wonderful things about baptism as a sign and seal, and what its meaning and significance is, but in some sense, if it's not an authentic sign and seal, because the one who gave it meant it to be that, then it's kind of meaningless, right? Well, Jesus is the one who has promised that we as members of his body, right? Regenerate, called people, united to him. He's the one who's promised. And as surely as He has commanded our baptism to wash our bodies, so surely our spirit's been washed by His blood and by His Spirit. In the words of Institution, Jesus says, Go, therefore, make disciples of all nations. Now, remember, these nations are serving pagan gods. They're unclean, they're undefiled. You could read Romans 1, where Paul talks about the kind of life they have fallen into. degrading of their lives as they turn from God, that's who Paul's going to. That's the nations that Jesus says, make them now disciples. baptizing them into the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In baptism, God has put his name on us. He's claimed us for his fellowship. We belong to him. And by his grace, we've turned to the Lord Jesus Christ and confessed him as Lord and received his gospel. So in the baptism that Jesus gives us, he promises us as we go through that baptism, we truly have been washed. or fellowship into the name of God. And Mark, the ending of Mark and the institution there, whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, whoever does not believe will be condemned. You can believe and not have time to be baptized and be saved. You can believe and be baptized and be saved. You can't be baptized and not believe and be saved. But Jesus wants you to believe and be baptized. And my studies, you know, since God's wanted to call me to be a teacher in his house, and I've had to learn to teach on these things, and my study on the sacraments through the history is, there's a middle path. Some of the church wants to make sacraments more than they are, you know, magical, that convey grace on their own. So we gotta be careful of that. But the other side just downplays them and doesn't think they're very significant at all. They are signs and seals of God's covenant with us. They come by command of Jesus to do it, and so we do it. If there's time to do it, do it. We should believe and be baptized, and Jesus puts that promise to it. You will be saved, because his death saves us from the wrath to come. The gospel saves us, and baptism is a sign and a seal of that gospel. So we can say baptism saves. Again, if we understand it, it saves as a sign and seal of what it points to. Jesus saving us by his sacrifice on the cross. Oh, and then the second place where we see Jesus promising this is in the descriptions that Scripture gives the baptism. And we'll spend more time on that on the beginning questions next week. But notice what Scripture calls baptism, a washing of regeneration. Why is it linking washing baptism with regeneration, right? We'll talk more about that link next time. Not because being baptized automatically regenerates you, but because baptism, as we saw, points to the Spirit regenerating us, as Jesus has poured that Spirit out upon us. And you know, Paul, we read it there in Acts 22, Paul was told to go wash his sins away. Why? Because he had been forgiven for Christ's sake, And now he's told to go wash that away in baptism, not because the water washes away his sins, but because Jesus wants to tie to us. I have surely washed you by my blood as I now command you to be washed in the waters of baptism. Baptism is an authentic sign and seal by the Lord Jesus Christ. It truly depicts and shows what Jesus has promised to do for us in the gospel. Okay. So we learned how baptism functions as a sign and seal, a simile, like as water washes, the blood and spirit of Jesus wash. We've seen what it signifies, Jesus cleansing us, forgiving us by his blood, renewing us, sanctifying us by his spirit. We've seen that's authentic. Well, how do we then make light of this baptism as we are in Christ? First of all, your baptism should exhort you every day to good works. You can follow along if you want, but in Titus, Paul wrote a letter to Titus, because Titus was going to be in charge of a church now, and Paul wanted Titus to know, what should you teach the people? Now listen to Titus, beginning in verse 1 in chapter 3. Remind them, the people, to be submissive to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good work, to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, and to show perfect courtesy toward all people. Why? We ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another. But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, the gospel of Jesus, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration. renewing of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ, our Savior, so being justified by His grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. This saying is trustworthy, and I want you to insist on these things so that those who have believed in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works." So there you have it. Let's remind the mother of baptism. Remind them they've been washed by Jesus. They've been justified to be heirs of eternal life. Because brothers, we have no hope of anything if we're not justified. We're condemned. Death. But because we've been justified, God has set before us eternal life. And we receive it and we hope for it. But, he says, you've also had the Spirit poured out upon you, so insist, congregation, I insist with you, let your baptism exhort you daily to good works. Remember what you were, rejoice that you are no longer that by God's grace, you've been washed from that, and now give yourselves to good works. Baptism also should admonish us when we fall into sin. So baptism should be a daily exhortation to us to good works. There's a whole question later in this catechism on what those are. But they're works done out of faith, according to God's law, and for His glory. But we will spend a whole later time talking about good works. But this is what we read in 1 Corinthians 6. Paul had to remind them, do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? And he says to them, don't be deceived. So let me say to you, congregation, if somebody is presenting to you a Christianity that allows you to live wickedly, they are deceiving you. And if you go along with it, you're deceiving yourself. There is no version of Christianity that allows us to continue as sexually immoral, as idolaters, as adulterers, as homosexuals, as thieves, as greedy, as drunkards, as revilers, as swindlers. Why? You once were that, but you've been washed, Paul says. What does he mean by that? You've been justified. You've been sanctified. Justification isn't just an I-N word that means something fancy. It's a reality for you in Christ. You're forgiven. You have Jesus' record. You're an heir of eternal life. Sanctification isn't just an I-N word that's fancy. It's a reality for you in the body of Christ. You've been given the Spirit of God. You cannot continue in that way of life. You only belie your baptism. You only belie your profession of faith in Christ. So if you have fallen into that sin by God, and you've come out of it, praise God for that. But baptism should have monitored. These people needed to be reminded. And maybe there's somebody in your life that you need to remind. Or if you see somebody like that, you need to say, you've been washed. You've been justified. You've been sanctified. Don't be deceived. Don't think you can continue that way and inherit the kingdom of God. So baptism is an admonishment to us. When we fall into sin, it's an admonishment we can use to others when we see them fall into sin. And lastly, though, baptism is a great comfort to us. It's a comfort to us that our sinful past is behind us, that it is no longer determinative for our lives. Paul was told to rise and wash away his sins. Paul was a persecutor of Jesus Christ. Paul approved the murder of Stephen. Paul stood there, cheered it on, and his heart of hearts would have cast a stone, too, if he wasn't given the task to watch their cloaks. so they can more easily kill Jesus' witness. And many other things the Apostle Paul can tell you ruled his life. But he was called to serve the Lord Jesus Christ. God has chosen you, Paul, to know his will, the gospel of his Son. God has chosen you, Paul, to be his witness and preach what you've seen and what you've heard. Now go wash your sins away, because you're not that man anymore. It's a great comfort to us, as God has called us to his service, and he's washed us from our past. Now, I personally love the first John, because first John also deals with the ongoing washing that we have. You know, he reminds us, I'm writing that you won't sin, because some people are telling you, again, there's a Christianity that allows for sin. There's not. There's the grace of God who pardons our sin. Reminding us we have an advocate. If we do sin, don't think everything's lost, because you do have an advocate, Jesus. You do have a sacrifice, Jesus. But then he tells us there in chapter five, if you see someone sinning, a sin that's not unto death, if you see someone who's not apostatizing from the faith, but has stumbled into sin, pray for him and I'll give them life. You know, Christians do fall into sin. They've been baptized maybe 20 years ago. and they've fallen into sin. Well, praise God when he, like David, like Peter, gives you that grace of repentance and brings you back as he says, when we walk in the light, we have fellowship with God and the blood of Jesus cleanses us. Baptism is a comfort that our sinful past, even the sinful past of just a weak time in our life. If God has restored you and brought you back to himself, praise God that is behind you. Go forward. Baptism is a comfort to us as God's people. The congregation, by God's grace, you've been washed from your sins for his service. You need to live as forgiven sinners. You need to live as renewed children of God. You need to trust God. You need to love God. You need to go out and proclaim God. because you've been washed from filth of fellowship. Praise God.