Sermon Tone Analysis

Happy New Year family.

2006 arrived this morning with fanfare, parties, and new resolutions.

What I find exciting about a new year is that I get another opportunity to do better, be better, and live better.

We will cycle through the 364.25 days of 2006 based on our choices and passions.

And the greatest choice and passion that we can have is to be with God and Jesus forever.

Would you pray this little one sentence with me?

Say Father, “I want to be with you forever.”

Amen.

How did you feel about the sentiment of being with God now, till you grow old, and then stepping into God’s eternity forever to be with Him?

 

Just how passionate do you feel about being with God? How does it affect your words, your life, and your choices?

The reason I ask this is that the N.T. tells us if you are a child of God then something extraordinary has happen to you.

You are now with Jesus in the presence of God.

This is not imaginary, it is not a promise; it is a reality and an eternal fact.

This spiritual reality occurred when you were baptized into Jesus.

There are two verses I want to draw your attention too.

The first one is Romans 6:4 and it says, ‘/Therefore we have been *buried with him *by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might* walk in newness of life*/.

Part A of this eternal fact that you are with Jesus in the presence of God is that we have been buried with Jesus by baptism in the state of death to sin.

This is Paul’s conclusion from verse three where he clearly teaches that we are baptized into the cross at Calvary.

All the agony of Jesus dying to sin, to self, and to the fleshly nature is what our baptisms means.

We accept his pain, and his goodness, as we have placed on him all our sins and join him on the cross.

We are promising to leave our old nature in His tomb so that we can walk in a new kind of life.