Baptism - Why the Disputes (1st in Series)

Apologia Studios

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:00

If you look at your bulletin, you will see that, finally, the day has arrived.

00:08

After months of teasing and interruptions and other series -es -es, we finally get around to getting back to what we had been doing about a year ago.

00:23

And that is, I began a series on the subject of the ordinances of the church.

00:31

Many, even Baptists, have used the terminology, sacraments of the church.

00:36

The only reason that I don't default to that terminology is because of how much work

00:41

I have done over the years in dealing with Roman Catholicism, so you'll forgive me if I prefer the term ordinance.

00:47

But the reality is we spent, if I recall correctly, four or five

00:55

Sundays in that series looking at the Lord's Supper. And I think that's very important.

01:02

It's a much ignored subject. But when people ask us what kind of a church we are, and we talk about our confession, it is the

01:13

London Baptist Confession of Faith. And the reality is that once you hear that term

01:20

Baptist, that says something. I'm not sure these days exactly what that something is.

01:31

There are people today who identify as Baptists, and almost the only theological consistency between their practice and belief and mine is the size of our

01:48

Baptistry. There are many Baptists today who are not even

01:54

Trinitarian. They don't believe in the Resurrection. They don't believe in miracles. They don't believe that the Bible is the

01:59

Word of God. They don't believe in justification by faith. And so unfortunately when you tell someone you're a

02:08

Baptist, all you're telling them, in many instances today, is about one aspect of ecclesiology.

02:18

It says nothing about your church government, though frequently it has some aspect to that.

02:26

Certainly when someone identifies themselves as a Lutheran, there is a much narrower spectrum that would go within that realm, though again, any historical terminology today is getting wider and wider.

02:44

There are believing confessional Lutherans today, but there are also wild leftist liberal

02:51

Lutherans that in that situation, the believing conservative Lutheran has so much more in common with you and I than they have with their liberal, liberal counterparts that use the name

03:04

Lutheran. And so the problem that faces us is that term

03:11

Baptist is not overly descriptive of almost anything else that we believe.

03:18

And that's why we have a confession of faith, that's why we direct people to that, and why we want to make sure that we understand it and have a full -orb theological understanding of the faith.

03:29

But as you know, that term, when it is put together with the term

03:36

Reformed, becomes absolutely explosive. And I don't just mean on Twitter or on Facebook, though it certainly is there as well.

03:49

There are many who do not believe that you can put Reformed and Baptist together, it's an oxymoron, it's a contradiction, because in their minds there is a specific kind of covenant theology and a specific ecclesiology that must exist for anyone to be considered

04:12

Reformed. It's interesting to me that some of those who hold that position will actually consider people

04:18

Reformed who have much less of a living, active faith in the sovereignty of God and salvation than I do.

04:28

But from their perspective, this one issue is far more definitional than whether you truly believe in the sovereignty of God in all things.

04:37

If you believe in predestination, election, and you order your life in light of the sovereign decree of God, well, that's nice, but if you've got one of those things back there, you're not really

04:51

Reformed. There are many people that take that perspective, I understand that.

04:58

We, in this church, are just stinking weird, okay?

05:05

I'm just going to be straight up front with you. You're wearing a cowboy hat sitting in the front row, what do you want?

05:16

And boots, I see, at the same time. Those boots are ready for kicking right there, that's all I can say.

05:25

We're weird. We're weird because we don't fit into a lot of molds, there's no question about that.

05:33

But we're also weird because of our Catholicity. Now, before you start throwing the hymnals, let me define what it means.

05:44

We have a willingness, a broadness of spirit, to work with a number of different people with whom we would have non -definitional disagreements, non -definitional regards to the faith and the gospel.

06:02

And so we have people that we work with, people who come to ReformCon, people that we will say, hey, this guy, what he's saying is great, but he's a

06:17

Presbyterian. And we don't say that, but he's a Presbyterian, in the sense that we're going to pat him on the head, someday he'll get it.

06:28

That's not the idea. I will tell you right now, having lived in the

06:34

Reformed world for longer than many of you have lived in the natural world, that Reformed Baptists know more about the arguments of their conservative

06:54

Pado -Baptist brothers than almost any Pado -Baptist

06:59

I have ever met knows about our arguments. That has been my experience.

07:05

I have dear brothers who are Presbyterian pastors, but when we get to this one subject, it's just like I'm not listening.

07:16

I'm not listening. That's been my experience. The first debate I ever did on Pado -Baptism,

07:23

I sat right there, in this room, in this church. That was 25 years ago, yeah, a little over 25 years ago now, quarter of a century.

07:40

And I continue to desire to have deep and close relationships with men that I would also be willing to debate on this subject.

07:53

And many of them, thankfully, will have me stand in their pulpits and preach. And I am thankful for that.

08:00

I truly am. Some of you know that last March, before weirdness became the norm,

08:08

I was supposed to fly up to Moscow, Idaho, and I was going to have two debates with Doug Wilson, while also recording stuff for Canon Press.

08:21

And we were going to debate the textual issue, the Texas Receptus and things like that, and we were going to debate

08:28

Pado -Communion. And we were going to do that in front of the whole new

08:34

St. Andrew's body and things like that. And I still want to do it. It's just a long drive now. And we'll make that happen.

08:42

And yet, in a couple weeks, Doug and I will be recording another sweater vest dialogue on the subject of the

08:48

Incarnation. So we're weird. Because there's a lot of people who think, look, if you have disagreements on these things, you just simply have to shut the door and have nothing to do with these individuals.

09:01

And I am not downplaying the importance of baptism when I'm saying what I'm saying right now.

09:08

The Westminster Confession of Faith says we're in sin. And I think a fair reading of the

09:14

London Baptist Confession of Faith would say that's a mutual idea. We're not saying it's unimportant.

09:22

We obviously believe it's very important. But we don't believe it's definitional of the gospel.

09:28

And we do believe we should talk about it. And it shouldn't just be one of these, yeah, yeah,

09:34

I've heard all of your Baptist arguments. Yeah, yeah, I've heard all your paedo -baptist arguments. Some of you know that the debates

09:39

I've done, and by the way, may I point out that every debate I have done on paedo -baptism, I was the one that was challenged to do it.

09:46

I don't run around, you know, posting 95 theses on all the Presbyterian church doors, you know.

09:54

Debate me or you're a big chicken, you know. Some people think that's what I do. It's not.

10:01

But if you've watched those, especially the last two, where I actually knew what I was talking about, the last two went two different directions because the

10:11

Presbyterians that I was debating have fundamental disagreements with each other. And so there are still issues to be addressed.

10:22

And there are still new arguments that people bring up. And in this series, what we as members of this church need to understand is that because of our desire to bring the gospel to the world and to cooperate with people who recognize, they see what's happening in our culture.

10:44

And they recognize what abortion really is and how the world view is standing behind all of these things.

10:52

We especially, just simply out of respect for God's truth and love for those that we are going to be participating in these things with, we need to be very clear in our understanding of why we stand where we stand.

11:07

Now I understand that we have people in our midst who are going to disagree with what I say.

11:14

I just hope you will hear. I hope you will understand. I hope you will, no matter what your background is, that you will listen and understand why it is we come to conclusions that we come to.

11:28

Now, what is important here is how do we even begin a study like this?

11:37

We recognize there are differing views of baptism monks,

11:42

Protestants, just as of course, then you look at Roman Catholicism, you look at Eastern Orthodoxy. They're gonna have their different spins and takes

11:50

There were tons of differing views in the early church, including adult immersion on profession of faith, as we do it.

12:00

Emergency infant baptism, because we need to realize up until only recent days, infant mortality was sky high.

12:16

Maternal mortality was sky high. We live in a very blessed day.

12:22

There were times in Europe's history when a woman would have to have 10 live births to get one child through to maturity.

12:30

Think about that. We live in a very blessed day. So there developed something called emergency infant baptism.

12:39

There was a really interesting concept in the second and into the third century of adult delay of baptism until close to the point of death.

12:51

You've all heard of Emperor Constantine and the Council of Nicaea. Well, he delayed his baptism until close to the point of death.

12:59

There were differing reasons for that. We'll talk about that much later down the road. And then quickly baptism in the history of the church becomes not just a means of grace, but the means of regeneration.

13:14

And you end up with a fundamental view of baptismal regeneration that becomes traditional and hence you end up with a massively nominal church.

13:24

A nominal church is a church in name only. All sorts of people who have been baptized as children but they have no idea what the gospel is.

13:34

That is part of our history. Now most studies in most churches would start with our confession.

13:42

And then we'd go to the text of scripture and you'd substantiate the church's position therefrom.

13:47

That's fully understandable. I am not in any way criticizing that. But because of the uniqueness of our fellowship and the uniqueness of the connections that we have with dear brothers,

13:59

I think of my dear brother Chocolate Knox. Ah, Chocolate Knox.

14:06

We all listen to cross politic and he can't finish a program without saying something about getting your babies baptized.

14:16

And yet, he'll have to admit he has a little bit of a tick whenever I'm around him. Because he knows

14:22

I'd debate him on it any day. And I love him. And so I want to,

14:29

I want him to hear when I speak about my position, I want him to be able to understand what

14:35

I'm saying and understand that I say what I say out of conviction and out of even love for him.

14:42

And so it's fully understandable how people go but because of where we are, because of the

14:49

Chocolate Knoxes of the world, I want us to start off in this first study really considering if there's all these different viewpoints, doesn't that say something about the sufficiency of Scripture?

15:06

Because people will make that argument. Roman Catholics will make the argument. See, even you Protestants can't agree on baptism so obviously you need something more than Scripture, right?

15:15

They will make that argument. You have to hear that argument. You can't just dismiss it. How should we address something where there is such a historical division and indeed a historical confusion?

15:30

I have books in my library that are literally this thick just on the early history of this doctrine in the church.

15:38

But there are only 96 references in the New Testament. 15 of those are to John the

15:47

Baptizer. So we can sort of take them out. We don't take John's baptism out.

15:52

We will talk about that. It's very, very important. But you take those out and you don't have, it's not like this is some huge massive amount of Scriptural data that you have to be analyzing.

16:09

There's only so many verses that you're gonna be looking at. And what's interesting is many of the references in Paul's epistles, for example, assume an already understood theology of baptism.

16:27

And so where is much of the conversation gonna be focused? Acts. Because it's in Acts that we see baptism taking place in the early church.

16:37

We see who's being baptized. We see why they're being baptized. But they're examples.

16:43

Very rarely in those situations is there a sermon about baptism attached to baptism outside of maybe

16:51

Pentecost. And Pentecost is a unique situation. You've only got

16:57

Jews there. So you can see that what we need to do today is to step back and go, what's the best way to lay the proper foundation for an understanding of this subject while we confess the doctrine of Sola Scriptura?

17:20

And this will have implications for many other subjects as well, okay?

17:27

So what must we do? First, I have six items if you want to take notes.

17:34

You have that little neat page in your bulletin. Six items. Number one, we must define the term clearly.

17:42

We must define the term clearly. Because, and that's especially the case here.

17:48

Why? Well, if you know anything about the history of the term baptize and baptism, the verb and the noun forms, you know that they are not

18:01

English words, that these are actually transliterations out of the

18:06

Greek language. So what's a transliteration? It's when you take the word in the original language, in this case, in Greek, and you just make an

18:16

English version of it. So baptizo becomes baptize.

18:23

Well, that doesn't help you much, does it? Because that's not really telling you what it means. And so there is a great deal of dispute about what baptize means.

18:37

There's really no dispute among scholars out of the languages about what baptize means.

18:43

Because we can not only look at the Old Testament, especially the word bapto, but we can look at all sorts of contemporary documentation around the time of the

18:55

New Testament, and we know if you said baptize to a

19:01

Greek -speaking person of the first century, what that meant. There is a default meaning.

19:07

Now, that does not mean that you can not take that word which has a clear meaning, and by the way, yes, it means to immerse.

19:18

But you can take that meaning, and you can use it metaphorically. So you can be baptized into someone.

19:25

You can be baptized into a name, for example. That doesn't change the meaning of the word.

19:32

It just means in that particular instance, you are dealing with the reality of a metaphor.

19:40

But the meaning of the word is very, very clear. We have to start with the definition of the terms.

19:46

That's the first thing, and we'll be doing this. But I want to give you the six things we need to do. Define the term clearly, number one.

19:53

Number two, carefully recognize the distinctive nature of the

19:59

New Testament, starting with John the Baptist. What other prophet did what

20:07

John did? Who else did the incarnate

20:13

Son of God come to for himself to be baptized but John the

20:20

Baptist? John's very important, and what he was doing is very important, and we are told in John chapter four, as I recall, that Jesus himself, well, via his disciples, was baptizing more people than John was before the cross.

20:40

That's sort of important. We need to recognize that even from our own theology, our confession of faith, the

20:49

Westminster confession of faith, says that baptism is an ordinance commanded by Jesus Christ.

20:58

It has his authority behind it, and so we need to recognize the distinctive nature of the

21:07

New Covenant and the New Testament. Not, I'm not for a second saying that we should ignore

21:14

Colossians chapter two, that we should not look at Old Testament paradigms or anything else, of course not.

21:19

You can't do meaningful New Testament interpretation if you separate it from the Old. Everybody recognizes that.

21:26

We all should recognize that. But it is a distinctive action that the prophets of the

21:33

Old Covenant did not do. It needs to be recognized. We need to know where to look.

21:40

Number three, we need to analyze each example of baptism in the

21:45

New Testament, determining who does the baptizing, who is baptized, and upon what conditions.

21:55

That's not difficult to do. It might take some time, but that's not actually difficult to do.

22:01

There are only a certain number of instances where here a baptism takes place.

22:06

Now, there's all sorts of texts. I would argue that in Paul's epistles, when he addresses the church, he can assume that every single person in that congregation is baptized.

22:19

There's no such thing as an unbaptized Christian in his experience. It's just obedience to Christ's command.

22:25

So there's all sorts of baptisms that we have no description of, but there are specific instances, and the book of Acts provides them.

22:34

And we have a couple references where Paul says, you know, I'm thankful I didn't baptize any of you except the households

22:40

Crispus and Gaius, and we can talk about what households mean. Believe you me, we will spend some time on that.

22:47

Very, very important. But it's important to look at each example and put it in its context and ask ourselves the question, when we look at, for example, the day of Pentecost, is there anything unique or different about the day of Pentecost than the normative practice of the church?

23:09

Was there something unusual about that day? You know, like the Holy Spirit descending and speaking in tongues and tongues of fire and things like that.

23:17

Did anybody see any of that going on last Sunday? Well, it should have been.

23:23

Should it have been? How come we see things in Acts 2 we don't see in Acts chapter 26?

23:31

Isn't there a progression? Isn't there something going on even in the course of the book of Acts? And if that's true, in those areas might it be something that we need to keep track of as we think about the subject of baptism.

23:46

Specifically, we are going to see instances of people who've been baptized who don't receive the Holy Spirit until the laying on of hands.

23:53

We need to understand why that is and why that's not the normal practice elsewhere. Why was it in some instances and not in others?

24:01

We have to look at these things. Number four. We need to analyze each reference to the accomplished fact of baptism, meaning of baptism, primarily in Paul, once in Peter, in light of the apostolic practice established in Acts.

24:21

So in other words, when you see passing references on Paul's part where he is assuming that everyone he's talking to has been baptized, you don't start there, create a theology, and then try to force that onto what we see in Acts.

24:43

Acts is giving us the beginnings of the church, how the apostles worked through the relationship of Jew and Gentile, how they worked through the gospel going to the

24:53

Gentiles, which remember all the way through Acts chapter 15 there are Jews going, whoa, wait, this is all wrong.

25:01

And then you've got the Jerusalem Council and things like that. We have to see where we can derive an understanding of who's doing the baptizing, who's being baptized, what's the context of all of these things.

25:18

That has to determine what we then understand when we see passing references when

25:23

Paul will say something like you've been baptized into Christ. He's assuming you can talk to the whole church you've already experienced baptism.

25:31

Well, how did they experience baptism? Well, Acts will tell us. Acts will tell us. Number five.

25:38

We will need to consider the voices of the early church in light of their circumstances, the development of the canon, etc.

25:44

So we're not going to ignore the early church. Our Roman Catholic friends, our

25:50

Eastern Orthodox friends, and even some of our Presbyterian friends may faint when we do those sermons because, let's be honest, let's be honest, the vast majority of Baptists, not

26:06

Reformed Baptists, but the vast majority of Baptists, and those are the people that most of our

26:13

Presbyterian friends have talked to about the subject of baptism, not us, most

26:19

Baptists don't care what the early church believed. That's just a reality.

26:25

I was raised in a fundamentalist home and the reality is the early church and what the early church thought and taught was primarily viewed as being a bunch of Roman Catholics, and so they didn't get it.

26:38

I remember Jack Chick. You know the Jack Chick tracks? How many have ever seen a

26:44

Jack Chick track? Oh, only about 10 % of you. Oh, goodness. I got sent to the principal for passing out

26:49

Jack Chick tracks in fourth grade on the playground. I did. I've told you that before, so I walked into the principal's office and gave him one, too.

27:01

The great irony of all that is that eventually once I wrote the King James Only Controversy, Jack Chick decided

27:07

I was the Antichrist, so take that. You're all going, he did? Yes, he did, actually.

27:13

They're interesting people, but you look at Jack Chick's stuff and that was what

27:19

I was passing out. That was my mindset, and there wasn't any concern about having a consistency with the early church or stuff like that.

27:27

Instead, we had a, not always, but in some of the churches that I was in, we had this little thing called the

27:33

Trail of Blood. Anybody ever seen the Trail of Blood? Anybody? One? Of course you've seen it, Eric.

27:38

And I have one three -year -old in the back that has seen the Trail of Blood right there. Got one over here?

27:44

Okay, all right. That's the book that basically says that the real true Christians down through history have all been

27:50

Baptists like us, and they all dressed like us and had a southern twang and the whole nine yards. It's the idea that there is this remnant, this small remnant type thing, and it's historically really bad, but it's popular out there.

28:07

So when we say no, I want to know. I want to struggle with what

28:13

Tertullian said, and Tertullian, for example, gives us a real clear example of how transitional things were in the middle of the second century and how there are differing views of Baptism.

28:24

I think that's important to know. We are concerned about that because we believe

28:30

Christ has been building His church for 2 ,000 years, and He's going to continue building that church.

28:35

And so we need to consider those voices, and we need to I think you need to be aware of why there were people in the second century who would profess the name of Christ, but who would not be baptized until they figured they were about to die.

28:54

Not just so you can know why that's wrong, but so that someone can't come along and hit you with that and say, if you didn't know about that, how can you say that what you believe has any validity to it?

29:04

We need to know about our own history. Most of the time you can really defang the skeptics of the faith by just knowing our own history.

29:13

That's how they do it. And finally, number six, we need to conclude by looking at the confessions of faith of the

29:19

Reformation and the dispute on the subject amongst the Reformed. And so we will listen carefully to the arguments of our

29:28

Pato -Baptist brethren in light of what we've already seen, and we will do so from a covenantal understanding of how

29:39

God has dealt with his people. Now, there isn't just one understanding even amongst

29:45

Reformed Baptists of these things. I understand that. I understand that. But we will recognize what the arguments are so that hopefully we'll be able to give a meaningful response to those who asked questions of us.

30:01

So, let us begin. I mentioned to you before, make a note, 96 references in the

30:07

New Testament, 15 references to John the Baptizer, there are 15 references in Paul and Hebrews, and it is interesting that the

30:17

Hebrews' references are not actually to Christian Baptism primarily, which might tell you something there.

30:25

Most of the key texts are in Acts, and hence are descriptive rather than specifically prescriptive.

30:30

In other words, we don't have a book of baptisms. We don't have a instruction manual that we would like to have on exactly how this is to be done, etc.,

30:43

etc. But turn with me please to the Gospel of Matthew. We will be brief. I realize that saying that from this pulpit with Jeff's experience normally means, which means you've got about an hour to go.

30:55

That's not, sorry Jeff. I'm sure Jeff is watching over there somewhere. We will actually,

31:01

I will show you what brief means. It is an English word. It does have a meaning, and we will attempt to define it properly.

31:10

He's not here. There's absolutely nothing he can do about this. It's sort of fun. Of course, there is next week, but anyway.

31:20

Matthew chapter 3. Now in those days, John the Baptizer or Baptist, please recognize that has nothing to do with the domination in those days.

31:30

I've met people that thought it did, so I just want you to understand. Now in those days, John the

31:35

Baptizer came preaching in the wilderness of Judea saying, repent, the kingdom of heaven is at hand. For this is the one referred to by Isaiah the prophet saying, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, make ready the way of the

31:47

Lord, make his paths straight. In the way of the Lord there is the way of Jehovah, Yahweh. Now John himself had a garment of camel's hair and a leather belt about his waist and his food was locusts and wild honey.

32:00

Then Jerusalem was going out to him and all Judea and all the district around the Jordan and they were being baptized by him in the

32:06

Jordan River as they confessed their sins. But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, you brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?

32:17

Therefore bring forth fruit in keeping with repentance and do not suppose that you can say to yourselves, we have

32:23

Abraham for our father, for I say to you that God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.

32:29

And the ax is already laid at the root of the trees, every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

32:35

As for me, I baptize you with water for repentance. But he who is coming after me is mightier than I, and I am not fit to remove his sandal, he will baptize you with the

32:48

Holy Spirit and fire. And his winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will thoroughly clear his threshing floor, and he will gather his wheat into the barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.

32:59

So, first, what a unique man. We don't have in Matthew the

33:06

Lucan background of his special conception, angelic ministrations and everything else, but we know about it.

33:15

So he is in one way the last of the line of the prophets, but he's also unique in and of himself.

33:23

But we know that he is preaching a baptism of repentance for sin.

33:31

Repentance for sin. But he also recognizes that he himself is the forerunner.

33:39

He recognizes that he is making the way straight for one coming after him.

33:45

And he recognizes that the baptism that he will bring is of a different nature than his own, which may, in some sense, explain that brief confusion that he has.

34:00

Remember the story of John later on. He sends some of his disciples to Jesus, and he hears the things that Jesus is doing.

34:08

And remember, Jesus' disciples are baptizing people as well, and he asks, are you the one we're looking for?

34:16

Should we look for someone else? It doesn't mean that John had lost faith. A lot of people think, see, John's in prison, certainly easy to lose faith in prison, and things like that.

34:25

No, that's not what's going on. There was a great deal of speculation as to the nature of the

34:34

Messiah and what the Messiah would do during the intertestamental period.

34:40

The literature of that period tells us that there's all sorts of different understandings, and it would be easy to understand why that would be.

34:48

But when he hears what he's doing, and he hears about the preaching of the gospel, he sends disciples, and he wants confirmation of what he has been preaching all along.

35:03

And Jesus provides that confirmation to him. But he knows he is not fit to remove his sandals, and he knows that the baptism that he will baptize with is with the

35:16

Holy Spirit and fire, and verse 12 is clearly in the context of judgment.

35:24

In the context of judgment. There will be judgment that will be involved with this one who is coming.

35:32

So, with that as a background, we continue on. Then Jesus arrived from Galilee to Jordan, coming to John to be baptized by him.

35:41

Can you imagine this? There's clearly something spiritual going on here, because we don't know, because remember, they're cousins.

35:50

We don't know anything about their past or anything like that, but something exists to where John clearly knows this is the one coming after.

36:02

We know in the gospel of John, behold the Lamb of God. But John tried to prevent him, saying,

36:10

I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?

36:19

Now that's humility, that's spiritual insight. All of the gospels record this, and one of the reasons that they may have recorded this is we seem to have some indication that there continued to be disciples of John.

36:37

Remember in Acts, years later, in Ephesus, people have been baptized by John, and there was a need for these people to understand

36:48

John was the one that pointed to Jesus. If you want to fulfill the baptism of John, you need to be a follower of Jesus.

36:57

And so John tried to prevent him, saying, I have need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?

37:04

But Jesus answered, saying to him, permit it at this time, for in this way it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.

37:17

Now, there's not some big, long discussion, well, you know, if this is repentance, that means that Jesus is admitting he's a sinner, or any of these things, because John had said he's the

37:25

Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world, that's not the issue. Jesus is identifying with all those who have been obedient to John's baptism.

37:37

He is identifying with those for whom he will provide the means of salvation. And by doing so, he's demonstrating this is the forerunner, these are the fulfilled prophecies, and I am the one that these prophecies have been pointing to.

37:53

Permit it this time, for in this way it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness. Then, he permitted him.

38:00

And after being baptized, Jesus went up immediately from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened, and he saw the

38:06

Spirit of God descending as a dove, and coming upon him, and behold, a voice out of the heavens saying, this is my beloved

38:12

Son, in whom I am well pleased. Now there is the real reason, the full reason for why this baptism needs to take place.

38:21

There are few places where you have in the Gospel accounts such a clear testimony as to the identity of Jesus, Heaven's approbation on his work, and you have

38:33

Father, Son, and Spirit, who will be the key names at the end of Matthew as well.

38:39

This is sort of a bookend type thing. Remember Father, Son, and Spirit back in Matthew chapter 3? Well, now we're in Matthew chapter 28, and there they are again.

38:47

Same God, now we understand what's going on. But, we do need to note something in passing that is important to that first point of what we need to do.

39:01

And after being baptized, Jesus went up immediately apa to huditas, out of the water.

39:12

That doesn't work if what John the Baptist had just done was he was standing there with a bowl, and he went like this.

39:23

Okay? Now I know that the early church allowed for that, but that wasn't normative.

39:35

They allowed for it in emergency situations. They allowed for it when there wasn't enough water around to do it.

39:41

Have any of you been to the Jordan River? Just a couple of us. I was at the

39:47

Jordan River a couple of years ago, October 2018, I think. There wasn't much to it.

39:58

And I'll be honest with you, even if I had been offered the opportunity to go down into it,

40:05

I wouldn't have. I've seen cleaner water after a thunderstorm in the desert. I mean, you'd go down in that stuff in one of those nice white robes, and there were all these

40:15

Eastern Orthodox folks that were doing it. I did a study right on the banks of the Jordan River with our group, and he knew we were doing it.

40:25

I think I've told you before, we had a Jewish guide, brilliant guy. Oh my goodness, he was brilliant. From New York or Chicago or something like that, moved to Israel, and he's a guide there, and knows the

40:37

Bible, knows the New Testament. And so all of our studies we did for him.

40:44

So I was doing a whole study on prophecies about Jesus in the Old Testament for him on the banks of the

40:51

Jordan River, while there's all these Eastern Orthodox folks getting baptized down in the most filthy, muddy, green brown water you would ever want to see.

40:59

I mean, it's, wow, okay, but they all went down into the water.

41:05

There's no question about what's going on here. You literally have to close your eyes to the reality that given the meaning of the word to immerse something in something else, that here you have a description in Jesus' baptism that he went down into the water.

41:31

That's why John's there. If John's just sprinkling or effusing, he can do that anywhere.

41:38

He doesn't have to make people go all the way out to the Jordan. He can do that in the streets in Jerusalem.

41:44

Just carry a thing of water around and think, think, think, think, and you're good. But he didn't do that because that's not what baptism is.

41:55

Now, we aren't told exactly what this means as to how the baptism was done.

42:04

I mean, the easiest way to baptize is for one person to hold the other person and support their back and do what

42:16

I do whenever, and those of you who I've baptized, Cadence, Clementine down there, what did

42:24

I do beforehand? I said, now here's the key. To a non -flailing baptism. If you don't want to be one of those people whose feet end up in the air and everyone's rushing to get you out of the baptistry, this is what you do.

42:40

When you start going back, you bend your knees.

42:46

Trust the person that's doing it. Bend your knees. Put the weight on that back hand and that way he can just pull you right back up, and I've seen a 5 '5", 145 pound guy baptize this dude that has squatted.

43:07

I think his squat record was 814 pounds. He didn't weigh 814 pounds, but he squatted 814 pounds, and this fellow in his late 60s was able to, one person, baptize that big guy if you know how to do it.

43:27

Now we sort of figure that's just, do you know how it was done in many places in the early church?

43:33

Other way. Face first. Face first.

43:39

You know how it was done in other places in the early church? Three times. Baptizing in the name of the

43:46

Father. Whoosh. And the Son. Whoosh. And the Holy Spirit. Whoosh.

43:52

Or whoosh. Or maybe just whoosh. Who knows? The only thing we can know for certain is there was immersion.

44:02

Because you can immerse somebody in different ways. So the point is that Jesus comes up out of the water.

44:14

He was down in it. He comes out of it. And that's when the heavens are opened and John sees the

44:23

Spirit of God descending as a dove and coming upon him. And behold, a voice out of the heavens saying, This is my beloved

44:29

Son, in whom I am well pleased. And so there is a testimony that is given.

44:37

We know this is followed by the temptations and very, very important initial aspects of Jesus' entering into public ministry.

44:50

He's been on earth for decades. But now the ministry begins and from this point onward it is not on a map a straight line but in reality a straight line directly to the cross.

45:11

And Jesus knows it. Jesus knows it. And yes, this is,

45:17

I think, one of the key texts on the doctrine of the Trinity. There is a distinction between the

45:24

Spirit of God, the incarnate Son, and the Father speaking from heaven.

45:31

Our Mormon friends are confused when they look at a text like this and can't tell you how many times

45:38

I've heard it. Mormon missionaries will say to you, what? Was, you think, you think that Jesus was a ventriloquist?

45:47

He was throwing his voice because when they hear us say that God is one, they think we're modalists.

45:54

They think we're saying that the Father is the Son and the Son is the Spirit and the Spirit is the Father and this is all just a play -acting thing like you have in oneness

46:03

Pentecostalism. That's not what we believe. You have the persons distinguished from one another.

46:09

This is the key text in debating oneness Pentecostals. So it's very very important and it's associated with the baptism of John, his role as the forerunner and we can in looking at this incident at least emphasize the fact that in this instance just mark it down because we're going to have to make the argument later on.

46:36

Okay, in this instance clearly baptism is full immersion like that.

46:42

Okay? And I think everyone can understand that there might be instances where you can't immerse someone in baptism.

46:57

You might literally live in a place where you just can't put together that much water. There are places in the

47:04

Sinai Peninsula like that. There really are. And so the early church had exceptions but the point is here's

47:15

Jesus' baptism and it tells us that baptism is by immersion. And so you just put that down.

47:22

We'll make an argument later on that that should be normative for all of us if we can do it and in the vast majority of instances we can and that becomes one of the first incidents that we're going to be looking at when we look at the

47:38

Gospels not much there outside of this but the Gospels and then we look at Acts.

47:48

And is there any reason to believe that what they were doing in the early church was different than what we've seen here?

47:55

And so we want to be very careful in our arguments we want to be very concerned about looking at the text and not assuming things just because we already have the goal we want to get to in mind.

48:12

That's important whatever we're studying in any situation. Now believe it or not

48:19

I'm ready to wrap up. What? The reason is really simple.

48:30

To do this study properly is going to require of us a fair amount of patience because we're going to have to keep bringing back to mind the process of interpretation that I've laid out for you.

48:48

I'm aware of the fact that teaching on how to do meaningful exegesis of the text is not the kind of sermon to get everybody going man

48:59

I wish he'd preach more often. It's normally man I'm glad he doesn't preach all that often at all.

49:05

That's what that does. But the reality is our conviction is that when you exercise the discipline of doing meaningful and fair exegesis when you come to your conclusions you can stand before not just the people of God but before all people and say thus saith the

49:32

Lord. And what you will be saying will be completely different than all of those charlatans on certain channels between 20 and 22 which

49:49

I'll never mention but it's between 20 and 22 who sit there and say thus saith the

49:54

Lord and then they tell you what their bosom is feeling right now. I think one of the main reasons that you're in this church and not in many others is you're sick of that anyways.

50:06

You don't want that. And we're committed to not giving you that. When you do the proper work of exegesis you are honoring

50:18

God and the result truly is God speaking. That's why we come here.

50:25

That's why we do the work. And so when I laid out the process what

50:31

I'm laying out for you is this is how you address when you believe in Sola Scriptura this is how you address a theological issue.

50:42

And you do it fairly you do it in a proper fashion. It may not be the flashy way and I'll have to keep reminding us remember six sermons ago which was four months ago we said this.

50:59

Let's keep that in mind. In fact just in passing maybe you might want to keep your notes.

51:08

Maybe you might want to if you're making actual physical notes maybe you might want to not get rid of that set.

51:14

Keep them so you can have reference to them if you're doing it on a computer or on your phone or whatever that is.

51:20

Start a running series of notes so that you can refer back to and we can make sure that we're being consistent in the methodology that we are using to apply these things to scripture because there is there is a reason to be sad that while I am invited and love to stand behind the pulpit in dear

51:51

Presbyterian churches which I don't even know these days with everything that's going on that I'll even be able to get to many of them even in the

51:56

United States anymore but I've had that great privilege and I've preached the gospel and I have great fellowship but I could never be an elder there.

52:07

On either side I wouldn't think it appropriate and neither should they. We have a fundamental disagreement and it impacts how far we can go in fellowship and that should sadden us.

52:26

That should sadden us. I would like to be able to think that in this life we could come to a conclusion on all these things and maybe in God's time that could happen but the reality is we all have our traditions.

52:44

We all have our traditions and what is the greatest red flag, red light that says ah, you just touched someone's tradition.

52:55

You know what it is? In my experience, here's what it is. You can be working with somebody in the text of scripture and you're just right with each other all the way down.

53:07

You're using the same rules, the same standards and then all of a sudden their methodology of interpretation changes.

53:18

All of a sudden it changes and you're like, why? You just stepped on a tradition.

53:25

You just stepped on a tradition. We need to be sensitive to that. We have our own and if we truly believe in the soul of scripture, we will examine our own traditions in the light of the highest authority.

53:39

Don't sit there and say, well, yeah, I'm awful glad I don't have any traditions. What have

53:45

I said for years now? I'm sure Jeff has quoted it. The man who says he has no traditions is the man who is the most enslaved to his traditions.

54:00

You know when I came up with that line? Sitting in the studio at KPXQ in 2000 when

54:09

I was interviewing Dave Hunt who now knows how many traditions he had because he's in glory.

54:16

I'm sure he's saved and he's probably going, oh my. But Dave Hunt said to me, because he came from a brethren background.

54:26

If you know anything about the brethren, you don't have traditions. Nobody has traditions in the brethren.

54:34

And I said to him, he mangled John chapter 6. Just mangled it. I said,

54:41

Dave, that's your tradition speaking. He said to me, James, I have no traditions. That's why

54:49

I say to all of us, we have our traditions. It's good to know what they are so that we can subject them to the higher standard of the word of God.

54:58

But if you think you've got none, you've got the most of all. And you're not in a position to examine them.

55:06

We can't be in that situation. I do not want the conclusion of this series on baptism to be, here's our tradition.

55:13

And we just simply defended our tradition. I want us to be convicted and convinced by doing the study correctly.

55:23

So the next time, whenever that is, I don't know when that is, the next time that we look at this, then we have to do what?

55:32

Well, we need to start off with some of the lexicographical stuff. Oh, that sounds exciting.

55:39

But what I'll do is I'll provide you with lexical sources and with contemporaneous documents with the

55:48

New Testament, demonstrating what baptizo and baptismos, what this word group meant to anybody who would have heard it.

56:02

And then we can start making application as we start working our way through the text. There will be some sermons where we can cover two or three texts.

56:09

Wow! For us, that's fast. But there are others where I think, for example, the

56:17

Philippian jailer deserves his own sermon because that's just that important.

56:23

It's just that important. Okay? So I recognize some of this is almost more like a seminary classroom than a sermon.

56:34

Sometimes that's what we need. It's not all excitement.

56:41

But at the same time, if you think back on your baptism, I hope it means something to you when you can go, that was honoring to God.

56:54

That was honoring to His truth. I think there's something truly valuable in that.

56:59

Let's pray together. Our gracious Heavenly Father, we do thank

57:06

You for Your Word, and we thank You for the history of the church, and we thank You for our brothers and sisters with whom we have disagreements about this.

57:13

But Lord, we confess we believe that Your Word can answer these questions. And Father, we desire to be serious students of Your Word so that when we stand and say we believe this, that we can do so with true conviction.

57:32

Help us during this series. Help us to learn, to understand, to make application of these things to other areas as well.

57:40

Grow us in maturity because this is what we desire. We want to be more like Jesus.