Baptism

Good morning. I'm excited to be with you guys this morning. Before we get started, there's just some craziness happening in our world, right? And so I'd just like to start with a little word of prayer, if you join me. God, we come to you this morning thankful that we are free to gather, free that, free to be here, God, without persecution.

God, we're glad that you are God over all things and over all nations, whether recognized or not. And God, we pray that you would be with our country. We pray that you would be with the Middle East. God, we pray for peace. God, we pray that leaders would look to you as the sovereign God, we pray that leaders would look to you for wisdom, God, that that would drive their decisions.

God, we pray for your church across the globe that we would rise up and that we would help be the hands and feet for you, God, that we would love people well and that we would see your glory, God, even in the hardest times. Thank you for allowing us to be your people. And God, thank you for being a rock in times of craziness and in times of peace. And God, we give all time to you and it's in Jesus name we pray. Amen.

Amen. Awesome. Well, if you've been with us or if you've been tuning in with us through this series, you know we are in the for the one series. We've been in it since January 25th and we've been talking about the one and how we define that is simply that someone who is far from God but close to us is a one and realizing that we are all ones at one point. There are all of us that have a pre Jesus moment and so we realize that we are lost and God loves lost things.

Craig Howey, our discipleship minister, shared with us an acronym to begin this whole series way back on January 25th. If you didn't see it, I encourage you to go watch it. On Livestream, he shared with us this acronym and in it we see all that God has done to save us, all that he is and his great love for us. And throughout this series we've also mentioned the New Testament pattern of how we respond biblically to the good news that is the gospel of Jesus with faith, repentance, confession, repentance and baptism. You know, I love church.

I grew up, I grew up in church. Even in my teenage years when I was questioning, wondering and had a whole lot of attitude, I was still made to go to church. But I think we need to be honest, right? Sometimes Christians can be weird. Right, right.

If you've ever. If you've been in church your whole life, I really need you to listen in, because I don't think we think about this. Some of the things Jesus has asked us to do are just odd to some of us, you know? And as we seek to be a place that shares God's heart for the lost, I think we need to put ourselves in their shoes a little bit more. You see, most of our friends, they can understand the singing, right?

If they go to a concert, they go to a sporting event. If they have a birthday party, singing is usually part of that. I think even most can understand the preaching. Because of our school system and because of YouTube influencers, we're used to people talking to us. We're used to hearing a monologue, but closing our eyes and talking to God like we just did, we call that prayer.

That can be a little different for those who don't know God. We try to explain communion every week that we just observed very clearly because we know that for some of our guests, it's totally foreign to them.

But maybe more than all of that is what we're going to talk about this morning, and that is baptism. If you really think about it, it's a little odd. We have this hot tub over here, and we willingly get in it. We willingly let someone else put us under the water, and we come up and we're happy about it. There might be tears, there might be shouts of joy.

Many times there's applause. It could be a little different for those who don't understand what it is. And I love what Kyle Idleman uses as an illustration for baptism. He says it's kind of like baking a cake. You're like baking a cake.

What's this got to do? Okay, hang with me. I'm not a baker, so. But I can look at the ingredients, and I can see sugar. I like sugar.

I can see flour. Okay, that makes sense. Milk. I like milk. I like cocoa.

If you're doing a chocolate cake, I like those ingredients. But then you get to the ingredient list where it says, add eggs. And for me, a non baker, I'm like, add eggs. Why in the world would I add eggs to a cake? Cake is dessert.

Eggs are breakfast. Scrambled, preferably.

So let's say I bake my cake. Let's say that I leave the eggs out because I don't think they belong. And I bake my cake, and I pull it out and what happens? It falls apart. Right.

Why? Well, because I've learned through this that eggs are A bonding agent. They hold the other ingredients together, and they might seem out of place in the ingredient list, but they have to be there. And that's kind of like baptism, faith, confession, repentance kind of makes sense. But baptism kind of seems the odd man out.

So this morning, I hope we can have a clearer picture of what baptism is and how we can walk our ones through this response to the Gospel. You see, my professor at Cincinnati Bible College, Jack Cottrell, said to us, every doctrine, including baptism, is based on Scripture first, not on experience or opinion. So we're gonna look at the Bible, and we're gonna see what God has to say about baptism first. And we're gonna see that Scripture tells us what it means, what it represents, what it requests, what it declares, what it requires. 92 times in the New Testament, the word baptism shows up in one form or another.

So it must be pretty important, and I think very early. We see in the New Testament in Matthew 3 that Jesus himself was baptized. We're told that Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist in the Jordan River. And John was commanded by God to. To go and baptize people for the forgiveness of their sins as a forerunner to Jesus.

And Jesus asked John to be baptized. And John was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, you're the Son of God. I know who you are. Why would I baptize you? And Jesus pretty much demanded that John baptize him to fulfill all righteousness.

It was, if you're a Star wars fan, this is the way kind of moment. And then Jesus commands his disciples to baptize. Not only was he baptized, but he commands his disciples to do it. In Matthew 28, it says, Then Jesus came to them and said, and all. All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you, and surely I am with you always to the very end of the age. We see in that. What we call the Great Commission from Jesus. We see four, go make disciples, baptize and teach.

Which would make us ask, why isn't faith, repentance, or confession part of the Great Commission?

I think it's probably because baptism is the only thing that those of us carrying out the Great Commission can do. We can't make someone else believe. We can't make someone else repent. We can't make someone else confess. But we can't help with the baptism because nobody baptizes Themselves, Right?

And then Jesus says the second part of making disciples is to teach them to obey everything he's commanded. These are the good works of obedient Christian living. Many think baptism belongs in that group, but Jesus in the Great Commission clearly set it apart from that. Jesus specifically says to sinners to be baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And that tells us a lot.

You may not catch that, but the phrase in the name of in the Greek culture, and the time that this was written was a technical business term. It was used to indicate the entry of a sum of money or account, transferring ownership to someone else in the name of. And so, as Jesus uses it here, he actually is meaning that baptism is an ownership transaction. We are no longer going to own our lives. We are going to transfer in the name of Jesus.

We're gonna put our lives in him. If you're a Kirk Franklin fan, he came out with God's property, right? That's what we are. We're God's property. And guess what?

The disciples obeyed Jesus. After Jesus ascended into heaven, we see Peter preaching the Gospel to the multitudes in Jerusalem, helping them understand who Jesus was, their part in his death, and their need to accept him as their savior. In Acts 2:37, Luke records, When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the apostles, brothers, what shall we do? And Peter replied, repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. And this audience would have known what repentance is.

It was the main message of the Old Testament prophets. And they would also probably be familiar with John the Baptist's form of baptism for the forgiveness of sins. However, this baptism Peter's talking about is something new. You see, some in that audience had no doubt been baptized by John. But Peter said, each of you must now receive Christian baptism.

John's baptism wasn't enough. And what did Peter say would be the result of this new baptism? Well, the first stayed the same. It is forgiveness of sins. But the second is the gift of the Holy Spirit which will now live inside us.

And as the people believed the message about Jesus, they expressed their faith in repentance and in baptism. And what does Peter tell them Next? In verse 39, he says, this promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off, for all whom the Lord our God will call. You see, this promise wasn't just for them. It's for all of us this side of the cross.

Peter continues to preach and what happens is amazing. In Acts 2:41, they were told that those who accepted this message were baptized, and about 3,000 were added to their number. That day, 3,000 people believed, confessed, repented, and were baptized into Jesus. And for the first 1500 years, Christianity was nearly unanimous that water baptism was the norm. But in the 1500s, a Swiss theologian completely reworked the doctrine of baptism because he believed that baptism was a work.

And thus he thought it cannot be part of salvation because we are not saved by works. But the argument falls apart because faith, confession, repentance could all be considered works. If we look at it that way. And he's right, we are not saved by works, we are saved by grace.

But we must still respond to that grace to accept salvation. So we need to shift our thinking. Faith, repentance, confession, baptism are not works. There are responses to the Gospel. Works of obedience do come later.

But even those don't save us. They only bear witness to the new life that we have found in Christ and the commitment we have made to Him. You see, baptism is God's work, not ours. Only Christ in his life, death, burial and resurrection can save us. And it's all through his grace and sacrifice.

However, there are responses that we see in Scripture of how to accept this free gift. It's kind of like Christmas presents. I don't know about you, but I know for me, I was always told growing up, you better be good for goodness sake, right? You gotta have good behavior all year, so you get a Christmas present. You know what?

There were some years I was pretty terrible. You know what? I still got a Christmas present. Why? Because my parents loved me.

They chose to give me a gift. It wasn't based on my performance. It's because they loved giving me gifts. But what good would that gift be if I left it wrapped under the tree? It wouldn't be very useful at all.

I have to receive the gift. I have to open the gift. I have to take what's inside the gift and use it or play with it or whatever it is, right? You have to receive the gift, the free gift that was given to you. I didn't work to receive the gift.

I was just opening something. And that's much like salvation. Baptism is not a good work of a Christian. None of the responses are. It's part of becoming one.

And just listen to the results of baptism according to the New Testament and some of those 90 some odd scriptures that I mentioned earlier. We see baptism is salvation. We See, baptism is new birth. We see baptism is the forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit. We just read that it's the washing away of sins.

It's unity with Jesus and his death, burial and resurrection. It's justification and sanctification, which are big churchy words that just mean being made right with God, bridging that gap that our sin cause separation. It's addition to Christ's body, it's being clothed with Christ, it's cleansing, it's resurrection from the dead, it's regeneration and renewal. Those are all works of God in our lives, but they're all connected to baptism in every instance. And so what does it mean?

Well, baptism literally means immerse in Scripture. It is the Greek word baptizo, and it means to dunk or to cover with water. And it is often used in the passive tense, which again means the person getting baptized is not doing the work anyway. And as we've seen for most people since Peter's sermon, the normal way to accept Christ has been to go down into water. And that's the pattern we see in the New Testament.

But it means so much more than that. Let's start with, what does baptism represent? We're going to be in a long passage from Paul, from Romans 6, but stay with me because it's so powerful. What shall we say then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?

By no means. We are those who have died to sin. How can we live in it any longer? Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death. We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of God the Father, we too may live a new life.

For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection of like his. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin, because anyone who has died has been set free from sin. Now, if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with Him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again. Death no longer has mastery over him.

The death he died. He died to sin once for all. But the life he lives, he lives to God. In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Paul, in this passage, literally says that Baptism represents death.

You can't resurrect something that's not dead. We have to die to ourselves and we have to die to our sin before we can find new life in Jesus. Because in baptism you're declaring, my old life doesn't define me anymore. My past doesn't own me anymore. My sin doesn't control me anymore.

And some of you need to hear this today. You don't get baptized because you're perfect or even understand all the theology around it. You get baptized because you're done with living that old life and you want to start a new one with Jesus. Paul is saying that this is not just Jesus story. This is your story.

Baptism is more than a picture. Paul does not say that we repented into Christ. He does not say that we were buried with him through faith into death. Paul said baptism on purpose. When you go under the water, it is your death.

And when you rise up, it's your resurrection. And that's why we celebrate. When someone is baptized, it's full surrender to Jesus. They're not just adding Jesus to their life, they are starting an entirely new new life. It's literally going all in.

Because partial surrender is no surrender at all. In Galatians 3, we're told by Paul. So in Christ Jesus, you are all children of God through faith. For all of you who are baptized into Christ have clothed yourself with Christ. It's similar to when my favorite quarterback of all time, Peyton Manning, signed with a new team, has a lifelong cold stand.

It was a hard Day in 2012 when he signed with the Denver Broncos, maybe even harder to watch him four years later win another super bowl in another ugly orange jersey.

But baptism is a lot like switching teams. You put on a new jersey, you have a new coach, you have a new home. And because baptism is way more spiritual than football, you're declaring that you have a new Lord, a new master, your savior, Jesus Christ. And that's what it requests. Baptism requests to have our sins forgiven.

Acts 22 and now what are you waiting for? Get up, be baptized and wash your sins away. Calling on his name from Even before Jesus, baptism was taught as a way of asking God to forgive our sins. Jesus didn't do away with John's baptism. He added that it was also a request for the gift of the Holy spirit in Acts 2.

And in that we experience being united with Jesus and receive new life. What does it declare? Baptism declares that you are in Christ. As we saw in the Galatians passage, we are clothed with Christ. We see another Picture of this in First Peter.

I love this illustration that Peter uses. For Christ died for sins once for all the righteous, for the unrighteous to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body, but made alive in the spirit. After being made alive, he went and made proclamation to the imprisoned spirits, to those who were disobedient. Long ago, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, while the ark was being built in it, only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water.

And this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also. Not the removal of dirt from the body, but the pledge of a good conscience toward God. It saves you. Baptism saves, saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at God's right hand with all the angels, authorities and powers in submission to him. As another example of how we are saved through water, Peter uses Noah's ark.

We are baptized into Jesus, as Romans says, and just like Noah and his family, we're saved by going into the ark which we are now baptized into Jesus, a new ark. Noah didn't save himself, we don't save ourselves. And if you really think about it, the boat didn't save Noah either.

Baptism doesn't save us, God does.

God saved Noah and his family and, and the ark is a perfect symbol of Jesus. Instead of going into a big boat, we are being baptized into him. By being found in him, we are saved. God used the ark as another way to foreshadow the wiping out of our sins through baptism into the death and resurrection of Jesus. And again, Peter didn't say that we're saved by the physical water, but in terms of a spiritual cleansing.

The point of baptism isn't just cleansing our physical bodies. The water in our baptistery isn't holy, it's not imported from Jerusalem. It's just good old Indiana American water that you'll find in your homes. And Peter says baptism is a pledge of the good conscience. Baptism is your pledge to live with and for Jesus for the rest of your life.

And notice in Peter's words, that while Jesus suffered tremendously to pay for our sins, it isn't just his death that saves us. What makes Jesus different, what secures every promise that he made to us, is the fact that he came back from the grave.

And Peter connects baptism to that life giving, resurrection power. So what does it require? As we've talked about, I think it requires all the other responses to the Gospel faith, repentance and confession. In Acts and Romans and all over the New Testament, we see that all four of these things, faith, repentance, confession, and baptism, are all interconnected and they're brought out in different parts, and they're always together, and they're always a response of someone heard the good news of Jesus. They're all connected, and I think they all require each other.

But baptism specifically requires surrender. Baptism isn't just hell insurance. It isn't something we do because everybody else is doing it. It isn't about joining a church. It isn't the end of our spiritual journey.

In fact, as we look at scripture, it's oftentimes the beginning, the starting line of faith. Baptism is the response we see all throughout the New Testament for those who are going all in for Jesus. For me, it was January 18, 1988. We lived in Crawfordsville, Indiana.

We went to Wildern Heights Christian Church, and my youth minister, Mark Matthews, was the one who was able to baptize me. My parents wanted me to wait, so I waited till I was nine. And fun fact, my grandma, who was 71 years old at the time, decided to be immersed too. As I walked through my journey of trying to understand giving my life to Jesus. She had been following Jesus for a long time, but she'd never understood baptism.

Now, I didn't understand all the intricacies of baptism in 1988, but I knew that I was a sinner. I knew that I did not always honor and obey my parents. I definitely knew that I did not tell the truth, especially when the truth was going to get me in trouble, which was a lot.

But I did believe the good news of Jesus Christ from my parents and from those who shared it with me, that even though God is perfect and holy and cannot tolerate sin, he provided a way for those sins to be forgiven. I believe that there was a God who sent his son, Jesus to pay for my sin, dying on a cross. I believe that he was buried for three days and that he rose again, proving his power over death, the grave, and my sin. So I believed, I repented, I confessed him as Lord and was baptized. Now it's not been a linear path since 1988 of obedience for Matt Bean.

I didn't have all the answers then, and I certainly don't have all the answers now.

But baptism is a response of surrender to and faith in God and Jesus. It's a commitment, a pledge to him. There's nothing magical about the place. People have been baptized all over the world. There's nothing magical about the time we see in scripture that it seems to be an immediate response of the Gospel.

But even if you've been following Jesus for a long time, maybe you've never fully understood what it was or what it is. With this new information now, you know anytime's a good time to be baptized. What matters is what's taking place between you and Jesus. And as best I can see, there's three critical questions we have to answer yes to before we baptize. Get baptized.

Do you believe that Jesus is who he says he is? In John 14:6, he says, I am the Way, the Truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father and except through me. Do you believe that Jesus is God? That he lived a sinless life, that he died for your sins, that he rose from the dead, and that he alone can give you new and eternal life? Question 2 Do you admit that you're a sinner for whom Jesus died?

Romans 3:23 reminds us that all of us have sinned. All of us fall short of God's perfection. Do you admit that it was your sins and not just other people's that nailed Jesus to the cross?

If you answered yes, then let's go to the third question.

Are you ready to not just take Jesus as Savior, but to take him as your Lord? You know, accepting Jesus, forgiveness and grace is one thing. A lot of people would love to accept that. But submitting to His Lordship is something entirely different. Are you ready to put God in charge of everything?

I understand how baptism can seem odd, but in Scripture it's just treated as a normal response. God doesn't want us just to get wet. He wants us to die to ourselves, to fully surrender control of our lives to Him. He doesn't ask us for a moment in time, but a from now on kind of commitment. It's a declaration and commitment to a lifelong journey and surrender to Jesus.

It's not about having your act cleaned up. It's about admitting that you need a Savior. And repentance doesn't mean that I feel bad about what I did. It means I'm turning my back on my old way of living. Some of you feel stuck because you've believed in Jesus, but you've never surrendered to Him.

You've trusted Jesus, but you haven't given your life completely to Him. So if you've already been baptized, are you living in light of that commitment? Do you need to more fully surrender? Or maybe you need to consider baptism as an eventual next step for your one realizing they're probably gonna have a lot of questions about it, but helping them see that when we believe the Gospel and we fully surrender to Jesus. We no longer get to make the rules.

We merely commit to following Jesus wherever he asks, wherever he leads.

To those who haven't been baptized this morning, I want to gently ask, what's stopping you? Is it fear? Is it pride? Do you feel too dirty? To that I would say, man, if you weren't dirty, you wouldn't need a bath.

We're all dirty. Maybe you want to understand more. In acts, people didn't wait. They didn't wait till they felt worthy or till they understood it all. They believed and were ready to commit and were baptized.

And if Jesus is Lord, it's not optional. And maybe today the Spirit is simply whispering, it's time.

We have towels. We have all the stuff you'd need. We can do it today. We're ready if you want to make that decision. Last week, many of us wrote names of people that are close to us but far from God on the plastic balls you see up front here, the baskets.

And maybe you didn't have someone on your mind last week, or maybe you weren't here. We'd love to give you an opportunity to come to one of these two stations up front to do that. If you have someone that you'd like to introduce to Jesus, we'd love for you to come down, take a ball from the basket, write their first name on it, and put it in the clear container that's in front of the basket.

I don't know what your decisions may be, whether you've been baptized, whether you want to get baptized. Maybe you just want to come forward for prayer. I'd invite our next teams, next steps team to come on forward because we're going to have several songs here where you may have a decision to make that you want to talk to someone about. Maybe you have questions, maybe you want prayer. Our team would love to have that opportunity to meet with you this morning.

Maybe you do need to come forward and really pray over your one and make a physical mar that you're going to be praying for that one. I don't know what your next step is, but like I said, we're going to have about three or four, three songs for you to do that. Let's pray. God, thank you so much for your word. Thank you for all that you've taught us, God, thank you for loving us, for coming to rescue us, God, from ourselves and from our sin.

And God, we just pray that whatever next step you are leading us to, God, that we would just submit, that we would just follow, that we would trust you enough with our lives to give our lives to you, to fully surrender God, whatever that looks like. God, we are so thankful that you have saved us.

God, help us to respond to that good news. Help us to take our next step with you and with the spirit. God, we love you. We thank you for Jesus and all he's done and all who he is. And it's in his name we pray all these things.