Genesis 1:1-5 Romans 6:1-11 Mark
1:4-11
Grace, Mercy and
Peace to you from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. Our text today comes from the Gospel lesson
just read, especially these words “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well
pleased.” Thus far our text.
Dear friends in
Christ. We have all seen a new sponge,
sitting idly by the sink, waiting to be used.
It looks pristine. It is clean
and soft. It isn’t missing any pieces,
and it is relatively germ free. But you
know that as soon as you stick it in the dirty dishwater, that clean sponge
will soak up all the grease and grime and germs of the dishes you are
washing. A clean white sponge becomes a
nasty brown and crusty sponge. It takes
the dirt of the water up into itself. It
no longer is clean, but it is stained with the goop of the other things in the
water.
Friends, that is
what happens in our Gospel lesson today.
Jesus Christ, the spotless, sinless Son of God gets down into the dirty
water of the Jordan River, and is baptized.
The baby who was born pure and holy, the Savior who has no sin of his
own soaks up all the yucky disgusting things that are in the baptismal waters
in the Jordan River.
You see, for
Jesus, the baptismal waters were not clean.
They were full of filth, filth that you and I had put in the
waters. For we, just like Jesus in our
text today were baptized. We too, just
like Jesus were washed in the waters of baptism. For you and for me, those waters washed away
all our bad things. It washed away our
sin.
For our sin stains
each and every one of us. Scripture says
our sin is as scarlet. Isaiah says, “For
your hands are defiled with blood and your fingers with iniquity; your lips
have spoken lies; your tongue mutters wickedness.” You are guilty. You are dirty with sin. It corrupts all your nature. Your sin is so great that it is like you have
been wallowing in the mire, covered in mud.
This sin doesn’t
just cover your outside, it penetrates deep into the very recesses of your
soul. It has become a very part of your
nature. You cannot help but sin, as
Scripture says, you are a slave to sin.
“Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to
sin” Jesus says. Because of your sin,
when God looks at you, he sees your filth, even the hidden filth. When God looks at you, he sees all the wrong
you have done and received. He knows
your guilt. It stains your very
being.
But you have been
baptized. You have been washed by
God. All that disgustingness of your sin
was washed, inside and out, here in a few drops of water and the Word. There you are washed, made whiter than
snow. There you no longer are guilty,
but instead forgiven. In baptism all the
sin of your body of your soul, that which you know and that which you don’t
know is taken away from you. In baptism
you are clean.
We all know what
happens when you wash the dirt off of something in a tub. The water becomes dirty. The water takes up the filth that is washed
away and stains the water. That, friends
is the water that Jesus climbs into today.
Water filled with your sin. Water
filled with your guilt. Water that is
dirty. And Jesus, the spotless lamb of
God, just like a sponge, soaks up your sin and guilt. As Jesus goes down into the water He is
clean, and as He comes out he is filthy with your sin.
In fact, you can
say, that after Jesus soaks up your sin, he is the biggest sinner ever, the
greatest sinner in the whole world. For
he has all the sin of you his people.
And as he comes out of the water, God says, “This is my Son, with whom I
am well pleased.” God is pleased,
because you are saved. God is pleased
because Jesus has taken your sin and given you His righteousness. Because you have traded places. Where once he was clean and you were dirty,
now he is dirty and you are clean.
Jesus takes your
sin, and he bears it through this world.
He carries it boldly and humbly onward through his life, setting his
eyes on his ultimate goal. Destroying
that sin. Killing that sin. Eliminating it from you forever, preventing
you from taking it back to yourself.
Jesus, who has soaked up your sin, goes to the cross of his own free
will, to suffer and die for all your sin.
For it is his
blood, the blood that pours out of his hands, his feet, and his side. The blood which comes from his wounds that
truly cleans away your sin that he carries.
In his death you are given life.
In his death you are rescued, because in his death your sin gets killed
forever. Your filth is destroyed, run
down the drain if you will. And you are
left clean forever before God.
Dear friends in
Christ, you have been baptized, just as Jesus is in our text today. And so when God looks at you, he no longer
sees your filth and sin, but he sees his Son Jesus and his righteousness. And so he looks to you and says, “You are my
child, and with you I am well pleased.”
For you are cleaned in Jesus. You
are rescued in his death. You are set
free forever. Amen.
