Water Gives You Life
John 3: 1-8
Lent Midweek 2
Grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ amen. Next to the air we breathe, water is the primary element in God’s creation. Without fresh water, your body cannot be sustained. Water comes in all shapes and sizes, depending on its use and temperature. When water is frozen, it is solid. We put ice in many beverages, and snow falls on the mountains. When water is above freezing, it is a liquid. We drink it, shower with it, bathe with it, and wash our clothes and dishes with it. Finally, when water is heated, it becomes a gas. Water is everywhere in our lives.
Water is also powerful and destructive. At creation, God separated the waters above from the waters below to make land before He made Adam and Eve. Then, God told Noah that He would flood the entire earth until the highest mountain was below the surface of the water. God destroyed all because of the wickedness of man, but He made a covenant of promise to save Noah and his family. After Moses and all the people of Israel crossed the Red Sea, God delivered a deadly blow to Egypt’s army. The walls of the Red Sea literally slammed shut, crushing, and drowning the entire Egyptian army.
Water is mentioned often in the Scriptures in large and small ways. Sometimes there is flooding, washing, watering, healing, refreshing, cleansing, and reshaping. Under Joshua, God led Israel into the Promised Land when He parted the Jordan River. Then, in the days of the kings, Elisha healed Naaman, a Syrian army commander, from leprosy by asking him to dip and wash in the Jordan River seven times. When Israel was thirsty, Moses made water flow from a hard rock. God always refreshes His people.
In the New Testament, Jesus, your Savor, launched His ministry in water at His Baptism by John the Baptist in the Jordan River. Just as Israel had crossed it long ago to enter the Promised Land, so Jesus enters the Jordan to begin His ministry as Savior of the world. Naaman was cleansed in the Jordan and saw his leprosy evaporate. It points you to Christ who washes all your sins away in the waters of your Baptism and gives you the promised land of heaven.
It is no accident that water is mentioned so many times in our Lord’s ministry. In His first miracle, Jesus turns water into wine to refresh wedding guests. Then, Jesus encourages Nicodemus to be born of water and the Spirit. Jesus also offers living water to the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well. Jesus, remembering how God gave the Israelites water in the wilderness, says to the crowd at the Feast of Tabernacles, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink” (John 7:37). Jesus also walked on water and washed the disciples’ feet. Finally, Jesus allows water and blood to pour forth from His side as He hangs on the cross.
Is all this water simply coincidental? Absolutely not. Water is woven throughout the Bible, pointing you to Jesus. This is what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10. “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…For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ”.
My dear fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, your heavenly Father reshapes and rewashes you every day with baptismal water, like a piece of moistened clay. He is conforming you into the image of His Son. Not every passage about water in the Bible is directly a Baptism, but what is true is that Lord came to you at your Baptism to bring you into His eternal family. Baptism is the water with the Word of God. It is a means of grace. All that Jesus won for you on the cross, forgiveness, life and salvation, was given to you at your Baptism. You were born again by the water and the Spirit.
Jesus is your vine who grafted you onto Himself. In Him, you live, move, and have your being. Just as your mother’s womb so beautifully protected you in water when God knitted you together, the Holy Spirit now protects you in the waters of Baptism. If you were to ask a potter how he makes a beautiful pottery vase, he would tell you it is the water that makes clay moldable before it is fired in the oven. Similarly, your potter, the heavenly Father, works in you by the Holy Spirit each day to reshape your life into the image of His Son, Jesus Christ. Your old Adam is drowned so that a new you is reshaped. Luther explains it well in the Catechism. “The Old Adam in us should by daily contrition and repentance be drowned and die with all sins and evil desires, and that a new man should daily emerge and arise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever” (Small Catechism, Baptism, Fourth Part). The Baptismal life is one of repentance and forgiveness. This is what Lent is all about, drowning an old you so that a new, joyful you arises. During Lent, the church is dark and full of purple, reminding us of Christ’s passion, death, and tomb. But we will not stay here. We will arise anew with Jesus this Easter.
What needs to be drowned in you today? Does it affect your marriage, family, or relationships? Are you more like moldable clay to be reshaped by water or like hard pottery needing to be crushed? Jesus Christ was crucified for you. Your sin was nailed to His cross, His blood shed for you, and He was buried with your sins too. Jesus Christ – your vine, your rock, your shepherd – died so that you live in sin no longer. Go now, washed anew today, forgiven of all your sins. Fix your eyes on Jesus and be refreshed by the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. Amen.
Based upon the sermon series from Promised Treasures – Concordia Publishing House 2023