Immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him. We see the Spirit hovering over the face of the waters. We hear God speak. But this time God's word is the word made flesh. The one who was with God and is God has come to us. And in his holy baptism, the Trinity, all three persons of God, are revealed. Our Lord Jesus taught of baptism that baptism is to be born from above. To be born of water and the Spirit. We see the water and the Spirit at the dawn of creation. And so when our Lord speaks of the water and Spirit, he is inviting us to a new creation. That is what it means to be baptized. To belong as firstfruits to the new creation that God is working even now. Your covenant with the devil is broken. The way to paradise is open to you. This is why the holy scriptures instruct us not to sin. Because our covenant with the devil is broken. We desire to serve him no longer. But, the scriptures say, if we do sin, we have an advocate with the Father. The one who says, if you have eaten the fruit of the devil, restore yourself by drinking from this cup that is mine. This is why the devil doesn't want you to see that baptism is not only a washing away of your sins, but your true re-entry into paradise. And the tree of life is no longer removed from you. And I don't mean any of this in a kind of metaphorical way. The tree of life is precisely the tree of the cross. And the fruit that hangs from that tree is the body and blood of our Lord. And so by here partaking of the body and the blood of the Lord, you are partaking of the fruit of the tree of the cross. This tree of death that God has transformed into the tree of life. So that the one who overcame us by our eating is now overcome by our eating. All poison of sin and death are overcome by the tree of life that baptism grants us access to. On the last day, people will marvel that all of this was in our midst, hidden in plain sight. But it was accessible only to those who believe. And it is revealed only to those to whom the Holy Spirit has revealed it. So baptism is a new creation. Peter, the first and most prominent of the 12 disciples, compares baptism to the flood. He says baptism, which corresponds to the flood, now saves you. He means that just as the waters bore up and saved Noah and seven others. So now the waters of baptism bear up the Holy Christian Church and save you. He continues that this salvation is not a removal of dirt from the body, but an appeal to God for a good conscience. What is meant by appeal to God for a good conscience? In the first place, we have to say that few today understand the absolute importance of a good conscience. A bad conscience has led countless to suicide and despair, to drinking and gambling and every other kind of self-medication. A bad conscience is the root for many creating their own religions and today their own spiritualities, which are in fact just religions of one. In short, a bad conscience drives men mad with sin, mad with every attempt at self-righteousness and covering over that sin. And finally, mad with the despair of death and damnation. Only God can give a person a clean conscience. And that's true both because the conscience is God's instrument and servant, but also because his voice is the only voice that is greater than man's conscience. As St. John puts it, even if your own heart condemns you, there is one who is greater than your heart. So God bestows the only medicine there is which can heal a bad conscience and set it right. Baptism is an appeal to God for a good conscience because it appeals to what God himself has done for us. In a word, baptism so covers us that we say to God, I am yours. Save me. Let my heart, my soul, my conscience rest in this dear Lord that you have given me this new birth, that you have washed me and cleansed me. All my help and all my hope are outside of me and in you. And in this, the conscience can finally find rest and peace. That Christ, who was crucified for us, has removed all of our sins, and it is precisely in baptism that we are united both to his death and also to his resurrection so that we may stand before God without fear. So in baptism, you have an appeal to God for a clean conscience and God granting this to you. You have the appeal of a clean conscience, even in the midst of a wicked and perverse generation, so that you can stand in clean conscience against the world, which is, of course, at enmity with God. And so our friendship is with him and our enmity is with the world. In First Corinthians, Paul writes of baptism, comparing it to the Red Sea crossing. Just as the people passed through the Red Sea, they had a baptism in Moses through the cloud and the sea, paralleling our baptism into Jesus with the cloud of the Holy Spirit over the waters of holy baptism. Paul goes on to say that not only did the Old Testament people have this baptism, but they also had a spiritual food, the manna from heaven. And a spiritual drink, the water that flowed from the side of the rock that followed them. Paul's or Paul's point is not only that we would see continuity with ourselves and the Old Testament people, and not only that we would see how the New Testament is superior to those previous gifts. But also his words come with a severe warning. Because we remember that as those people pass through the waters of baptism into Moses, as they ate the manna and drank the water from the rock, even so they wanted to go back to Egypt. And that is very much parallel to us having all these gifts of God and yet being tempted to apostatize, to return to the devil. That's what it means to go back to Egypt. And when they realized they could not go back to Egypt, to the devil, they decided that they would like to take the devil along with them. And so they made the golden calf. And so, too, we must be weary of these very things. The baptismal life must be a constant renunciation of the devil and all his works and all his ways. And a constant confession of Christ. We see this in the events immediately following our Lord's own baptism, that the Holy Spirit, after he was baptized, drove Christ into the wilderness to contend with Satan. And so also we follow this one who is our master. Thus, the baptismal life is also one of spiritual warfare. Confession of the one true and triune God. Renunciation of the devil. Putting on the full armor of God and learning to wield the sword of the spirit, the word of God, which is a sword wielded not with the hand, but with the lips. So, too, this baptismal life is one of the spiritual warrior, the spiritual athlete who trains strictly, as the scriptures say, who runs boxes and wrestles in the spiritual arena in order to win a crown that is imperishable. This is why lackadaisical Christianity, hobby Christianity, convenience Christianity, all forms of apathetic Christianity are described by our Lord himself as lukewarm and so displeasing to him that he promises to spit or vomit it out. And I can't help but see that that is what has happened in the West, in the church in America, regardless of denomination. So many are no longer Christian. And what looks like and is apostasy is God revealing the apostasy that has already occurred in the heart. So what looks like people leaving Christianity is, in fact, God spitting them out. Even more than the responsibilities of marriage or parenthood or career path or any other calling of life, baptism itself calls us to a deeper identity, to action, to duty, to renunciation of the devil and the world and all their lies and to bold confession of Christ, his church and all that is true. So then we see that baptism is foreshadowed not only in creation, not only in the flood and the salvation of Noah, not only in the Red Sea, but in numerous other Old Testament texts, including that of today, where the ark is brought through the waters of the River Jordan on dry ground. And it is that very place where God sends John the Baptist to baptize as if to indicate to all the people that he is creating a new Israel. So our Lord Jesus himself goes to the baptismal waters. John's baptism was a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. But Jesus needed no repentance and he needed no forgiveness. So John would have prevented him saying, Lord, you don't need to be baptized by me. I need to be baptized by you. Then the Lord said, let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness. Everything that the Old Testament promised was coming to fulfillment in Christ. All of the righteousness of God, by which he has mercy on man, was coming to fulfillment in Christ. And so Christ entered those waters and God indeed laid on him the iniquity of us all. As he plunged into those waters, we see a kind of type and foreshadowing of his own descent into death and hell. And as he came up from those waters, we see a foreshadowing of his glorious resurrection and ascension. The Holy Spirit descends upon him, not as a dove, but like a dove, not in the bodily form of a dove, but in something that visually imaged a dove. And then God speaks, this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. And so the father speaks of the son and the spirit descends upon the son and the son is anointed with the spirit. And here becomes the Christ of which all the Old Testament scriptures pointed. Christ then invites us into this very baptism that is truly his. That's why he instructs after his death and resurrection that his disciples would also make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the father and of the son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them everything that he has commanded. This continues to be our mission today. And this continues to be our goal and great desire that we would call others whom God has placed into our lives, into these waters of holy baptism. And if they have already been placed into those waters of holy baptism, to call them back into the baptized life. As we enter into these waters, we enter into the waters with our Lord Jesus. And there, just as our sins were laid on him, so his righteousness is laid upon us. And the miracle of baptism is that since we are joined with Christ Jesus, what happened to him happens to us. The Holy Spirit descends upon us and fills our hearts. And the father himself says to each one of us in Christ Jesus, you are my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. In the name of the father and of the son and of the Holy Spirit.