Why Be Baptized? (Matthew 28:16-20)

Let's ask the assistance of the Holy Spirit before we open our Father's Word. Our Lord, we ask your blessing upon this time and not that we may just simply understand your Word, but that we may be prompted and encouraged to obey your Word in all that you have revealed.

We pray that you would open our hearts and our minds and that we would bring every thought and every tradition and everything that we desire into obedience to your Word. We pray that you would send your Holy Spirit to be our comforter, our encourager, and also to motivate our hearts that we may respond appropriately to the Word that you have given to us.

We ask your blessing on this time for that end in the name of Christ our Lord. Well, you can probably tell from the bulletin that we're taking a brief respite from Hebrews 11. We finished up the example of Moses, and this is a good time to take a little bit of a break and to turn our attention to the subject of baptism.

You probably noticed in the last year, 18 months as I have, that our congregation has grown substantially. There's new people here almost every week, and we've put out new chairs to accommodate some of that growth, and we have options.

We can add on to this room. We could build an entirely different facility that would be just a sanctuary. We could go to two services. We could use our overflow space, or I could preach on a subject that is likely to infuriate a good number of people in our congregation.

So here we go. The reason for doing this is very simple. In two weeks, we're having a baptism class, and in four weeks from this Sunday, we're going to be baptizing people up here in our stage, and it is a good opportunity to take some time on a Sunday morning to remind ourselves of what Scripture says concerning baptism, the mode of baptism, the meaning of baptism, as well as who it is that qualifies for baptism, and this is a unique body of believers.

Because we are reformed in our soteriology, but not in our eschatology, and because we are not charismatic, and because we are an expository church, we tend to attract people who enjoy exposition of Scripture and who fit into various theological camps and come from a variety of theological backgrounds.

Some of you have come out of charismatic circles, even extremely charismatic circles, Word of Faith, charismatic Pentecostal backgrounds, where you have heard the term baptism used in reference to the reception of certain spiritual gifts, particularly miraculous gifts like healing or tongues or interpretation of tongues.

Some of you here come from baptistic circles. You've been Fundamentalist Baptist or Independent Baptist or Fundamentalist Independent Baptist or Independent Fundamentalist Baptist, American Baptist, Southern Baptist, Missionary Baptist, Regular Baptist, Association of Regular Baptists, General Association of Regular Baptists,.

And even First Baptist,.

Where you are used to seeing almost anything that moves be rushed into the baptismal tank, even on the most spurious of confessions of faith. Some of you come from Roman Catholic backgrounds, where your idea of baptism is that it is essential for salvation, or at least is there to take some years off of your stay in purgatory, and that it is a means by which saving and regenerating grace is conveyed to you just through the ceremony itself.

Or maybe you come from Church of Christ backgrounds, where it is taught that baptism is necessary for salvation, and that without the ordinance of baptism, you cannot be saved, even if your faith in Christ is solid, but that it is at the moment of baptism that you are actually transferred from death into life.

Or maybe some of you come from a Reformed Church background, where you are used to seeing infants baptized, as well as adults who make a profession of faith in Christ. Some of you possibly come from churches where they don't practice baptism at all, either because nobody ever gets saved there, or nobody who has not been baptized comes to that church, or because they just believe that baptism is not for today, or that it was an ordinance given to the Jewish people, and it's not for Gentiles to observe.

So to even raise the subject of baptism is to raise, in your minds, probably 1 ,000 different questions and twice as many objections, and I hope to handle some of those today, in preaching on the subject of baptism and looking at what the Scripture says concerning the meaning of baptism, the mode of baptism, and who it is that should be baptized.

The Great Commission and the Authority of Christ

Will you please turn to Matthew chapter 28? Matthew chapter 28. This is a familiar passage, and one that I think probably in the normal course of preaching through, for instance, the Gospel of Matthew, I would probably spend five to six weeks going through this great commission.

I'm not gonna give it, obviously, that amount of time and attention here today. I'm using it basically as an opportunity to demonstrate the meaning of baptism from this passage and the mode of baptism from this passage.

Matthew chapter 28. It's the very end of Matthew's Gospel. Let's look at verse 16. We're gonna read verses 16 through 20. But the 11 disciples proceeded to Galilee, to the mountain which Jesus had designated.

When they saw him, they worshiped him, but some were doubtful, and Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you, and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

This is known as the great commission, the exact timing of this is a bit uncertain. It is certainly after the resurrection, since Matthew spent the first 15 verses of this chapter describing the resurrection and some of the immediate aftermath of that resurrection.

The event occurred in Galilee, as you can see from verse 16, at a mountain that Jesus had designated for the disciples to meet him there. And though Matthew doesn't give us any more details other than that the 11 disciples were there, it is very likely that this command, this commission was given to the 500 people that gathered together and saw him at one occasion.

That is the typical standard way of approaching the passage is that this is the resurrection appearance mentioned by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15, verse six. After that, he appeared to more than 500 brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep.

Now, the disciples are mentioned in verse 16. It doesn't say that there are others there, but the command is geared towards something that would be proclaimed, it's kind of in the spirit of something would be proclaimed to a larger number of people, and since it is a mountain that Jesus had designated, the idea seems to be that there was a meeting intended there between the risen Lord and people from the regions of Galilee that the disciples would bring to that mountain.

The Lord had designated this place, he was gonna meet with them. It is my feeling, my sentiment, that this is where the 500 met, and that this commission was given to those 500 disciples. You'll notice that verse 16 mentions that some were doubting, sorry, verse 17 mentions that when some saw him, when they saw him, they worshiped him, and some were doubtful.

Those ones who were doubtful would not be the 11 disciples who remained, and remember that Judas by this time has died and he has gone to his appointed place. Those who were doubtful would have been some amongst these 500s, who for them, this was the very first time that they had seen the risen Lord.

And if you follow the chronology of the resurrection appearances throughout the Gospels and Paul's in 1 Corinthians 15, you can kind of put them in an order that shows that there were a number of appearances in and around Jerusalem on that first resurrection Sunday, and then the week that followed, Galilee being probably six, five to seven days journey north back into the regions where most of the disciples came from.

That was their old stomping grounds. That would have taken a few days to get there. So this is probably an event that is a couple of weeks post-resurrection. It's on a designated mountain. The disciples are there with the 500 also that Paul mentions.

Some of those 500 doubted because this was the very first time that they saw the resurrection of Jesus. A number of them worshiped, verse 17. They saw him, they worshiped him. Some of them were doubtful.

They needed some time to put the pieces together. But the fact that the disciples, as well as other amongst that 500, worshiped the Lord Jesus Christ gives you some indication of how it is that they viewed him.

A lot of people say that you can't prove the deity of Christ outside the Gospel of John. No, you can, because here Jesus Christ is worshiped. And if he is not God in human flesh, the resurrected Christ is not God in human flesh, then this is one of the greatest acts of blasphemy and idolatry that you read in the New Testament.

And yet Jesus does not reprove them for worshiping him. He receives that worship because he is indeed worthy of it. He is the resurrected Christ. Remember the response of Thomas after he saw the risen Christ.

He said, my Lord and my God. He called Christ his Lord and he called Christ his God. You see the risen Christ, the most natural thing to do is to worship him. But before we get into the commission, I want you to notice this command that is in verse 18.

Jesus came up and spoke to them saying, all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. He has all authority. And you may not believe this right now, but I will tell you this. I think there's at least one sermon in that phrase.

All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth.

All authority.

He is God the Son. He is the God-man. By virtue of who he is and what he has done in satisfying the demands of the father's wrath and being resurrected from the dead as a demonstration of his deity and that his sacrifice to the father was sufficient to pay the price for sinners who will come to him in repentance and faith.

All authority has been given to him. That means that he has authority to rule and to reign. He has authority in heaven to rule in his church as he does right now. He is the head of the church. He has authority to take David's throne and establish a kingdom over the world as he will in the future and to rule in that kingdom.

He has authority to judge men and angels. He has authority to execute the will of the father in the father's perfect timing. He has the authority to call men and women into ministry. He has the authority to gift them for ministry.

And he has the authority to demand an account for how they have used their ministry. He has authority to rule men and women, kings and kingdoms, angels and demons, and personally, you and me. He has that authority, all authority.

He has authority to draw men to himself, to save them, to sanctify them, to secure them everlastingly. And he has authority to build his church, which he is doing each and every day. He has authority to demand our obedience, to demand our worship.

He is the Lord of the church. He is the God-man. There is no court over him. There is no higher authority. There is nobody else to appeal to. All judgment has been given to him. The headship over the church is given to him.

He's the absolute and sovereign king. And therefore, there is no excuse for our disobedience. None whatsoever. The New Testament describes Christians as slaves. Do loss, we're slaves. Sometimes it's unfortunately translated as servant or even bond servant, but it means slave.

One, let's talk about chattel slavery, one who has no rights, one whose only task is to obey unquestioningly and at all time. That is the word the Scripture uses to describe believers. He is the master.

His is to command. Ours is to obey. In fact, the demand of the gospel is a call to self-denial, a command to be a slave of Jesus Christ, to die to ourselves. The call of the gospel is not to add Jesus to an otherwise very fulfilling life so that you can get more enjoyment and fulfillment out of the activities that you are already involved in.

The demand of the gospel is to die for us to be able to say I've been crucified with Christ. It's no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

And that is not the confession or a description of a super saint. That's a description of you. That is true of you. You've been crucified with Christ. Therefore, the conclusion is I no longer live. He lives in me.

My job as his slave, one purchased by his blood, is to live in obedience to him. It is in light of that statement in verse 18 that the commands in verse 19 naturally flow out of that. Verse 19, go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you.

And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. That therefore, at the beginning of verse 19 is intended to tie it back to something else. And it's the statement at the end of verse 18, all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth.

And because that is true, you and I are to go. And this tells us that we are to, that there's a logical flow here. We are to go out and to preach the gospel. And he commands us to go out into all the nations and to all the nations and make disciples of all the nations.

That's the commission. Now to obey this does not mean that you have to be a missionary, that you have to go to foreign lands, that you have to give up, sell everything here and have a radical love and go out to some gutter in Calcutta and wash the wounds of the sick.

That's not the idea. The idea is that you ought to have as a disciple of Christ, preeminent in your mind, the responsibility that I must take this gospel that has saved me to all people everywhere. And we must be intent on publishing, producing, promoting, funding, and sending the gospel as widely and as abundantly as we possibly can into all the nations.

It doesn't mean you have to be a foreign missionary, but it does mean you have to have at the top of your mind a mission. That I am here for a purpose. My purpose is to make disciples. And having made disciples then, we are to baptize them.

Now whenever we take the gospel into the far-reached nations of the world, or if we take the gospel into our workplace, or into our family, into our home, to our neighborhood, wherever it is that we take the gospel and bring that message, in proclaiming the good news that the sovereign king of the universe has come to earth, take upon himself a human body, died in our place, and then rose again from the dead.

And now he has ascended to heaven where he sits at the Father's right hand and all authority in heaven and earth has been given to him. And all the judgment of all men has been committed into his hands, therefore you must repent and believe and come to him.

And if you will not, you will perish. That's the message that we're called to proclaim. When you go into all the nations you proclaim that, something's gonna happen. The Lord of the church is gonna use the faithful proclamation of that message to draw his people, his sheep to himself.

And they're going to become disciples, which means a follower of Christ. The next step then is that we baptize them. Go make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Before we get on baptism, I want you to look at the last step. We are to teach them to observe all that he has commanded us. And lo, he says, I am with you even to the end of the age. We are to teach them to obey the king, to observe what he has commanded.

We are proclaiming the good news of what the king has done. We are proclaiming the bad news of what is gonna happen to those who when the king returns, who are not in that king, and when people come to faith in him, we baptize them and then we teach them to be obedient to all that he has commanded, namely to go out and to make other disciples.

And then when those disciples are made, we baptize them and teach them to make other disciples. And they make other disciples and we baptize them and we teach those to make other disciples. And thus it reproduces itself and exponentially grows.

And listen, if Jesus Christ has no authority, then he doesn't deserve our obedience. That's very straightforward. If he has no authority, he doesn't deserve our obedience. But if he has authority, he deserves obedience to the degree of the authority that he has.

Does that make sense? If he has a little bit of authority, we give him a little bit of obedience in the things that he has authority over. But how much authority does he have?

All authority.

Therefore, all obedience is due unto him because he is the king. How long is this to go on? Look at Matthew 28. I'm with you always, even to the end of the age. There's no expiration date on this commission.

Well, there is an expiration date, right?

It's the end of the age.

I'll let you know when we're at the end of the age. Then we'll know when we can be done fulfilling and obeying this command. Now, what is baptism? Let's back up now to our third statement. Go, make disciples.

Go and make disciples and baptize them and then teach them. Those are our four statements. There are four verbs, actions. The third one is baptizing them. That's the one we're gonna focus on here this morning.

The word baptize in your New Testament, baptize and baptism is not a translation of a Greek word. It's not a translation. It's a transliteration of a Greek word. It's important that you understand the difference between a translation and a transliteration.

A translation is when we have one word in one language that we are going to translate into another word in another language and we take the meaning of this word and we come over to this language and we say, what is the nearest equivalent to the meaning of that word and let's make that word and translate it into that word.

So we have examples of this, our whole New Testament. Most of our New Testament is an example of that very thing. It's a translation from Greek into English. So for instance, when you come across the Greek word, it means peace, P-E-A-C-E, peace with men, peace with God, peace between us.

I have peace, peace in my heart. That's the notion, that's a translation of the word into an English equivalent, which is peace. A transliteration is not a translation. A transliteration is when I take a Greek word and I take the letters of that Greek word and I translate the letters of that Greek word and I create an English word out of the letters of that Greek word that just shows the similarity of the sounds of the pronunciation.

So the Greek word that is translated as baptized or baptism is baptizo. Baptizo, you can hear it, can't you? You say, we took the buh and we translated it into buh and we took the a and we translated that into a and we just took the letters of this word and we transliterated it into the letters of this other word.

So now we have a word that sounds the same and it has an English pronunciation, but when I read the word baptism, it doesn't tell me anything about what the word means. You say, what does the original Greek word baptism means?

Well, it means to baptize. That doesn't help me out at all, does it? No, so if we had just translated the word, we would instead translate it according to its meaning and an equivalent meaning for baptizo would be to dip, to plunge.

The best translation would be to immerse. That's what the word means. Not to dip, not to plunge, but to submerge something. It was used of sinking something below the surface of water, drenching it, overwhelming it.

It was generally used to describe something going under the surface of water and perishing like a ship suffering shipwreck or someone drowning in the water and perishing beneath it. We might say that Pharaoh's army was baptized in the Red Sea.

They were completely emerged and submerged beneath it, immersed in it under that judgment that came by way of the water. They were overwhelmed by it and drowned in it. Now you say, Jim, can that word ever mean poor?

No, it can never mean poor. You know why? Because it doesn't mean poor. It means immerse. There is a perfectly good word that every New Testament author could have used that could be translated poor, balo.

Very good Greek word, but no New Testament author uses the Greek word for poor to describe this. They use baptizo, which means to immerse. You say, Jim, can the word ever refer to sprinkling? Take some water and sprinkle it on somebody.

No, this word means immerse, to plunge beneath. There is a perfectly good Greek word that could have been used and often is in the New Testament translated as sprinkling, but that's not this word. This word means to immerse.

And if that Greek word had been translated instead of transliterated, it would have cleared up all kinds of confusion about what baptism is because we could just simply translate the word into English and read in Matthew 28, verse 19, go therefore make disciples of all nations, immersing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I command you, and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

It means to immerse. And if we had translated it, that's what we would read. So a good translation when you read the English word baptism is always to think in your mind, immersion, plunging beneath something, not sprinkling, not pouring, because the word doesn't mean that.

The word means immerse. So if you read baptism every time in the New Testament and you insert the word immerse there, you can't possibly go wrong. And in some contexts, like Romans 6, which we'll get to here in just a minute, the idea of immersion is the only idea that even fits in that context, and it helps explain what Paul's talking about when he says you have been baptized into the death of Christ.

It means immersed. Now what is a disciple immersed in? Our passage doesn't say this. Are we to be immersed in canola oil, motor oil, grape juice, or water? We have to go to some other New Testament passages where baptism is played out, or where baptism is practiced and see what it is that they immersed.

And it would be the case that if we went to other passages in the New Testament where people are baptized, if we understand it as immersion, then the language that is describing that baptism event would fit very well with the idea of immersion.

And that is exactly what we find. Mark chapter one, verse five. And all the country of Judea was going out to him, that's speaking of John the Baptist, and the people of Jerusalem, and they were being immersed by him in the Jordan River confessing their sins.

They were being immersed by him in the Jordan River. Now baptism is by pouring or sprinkling. You wouldn't need to be at the Jordan River, would you?

Where could you be?

By any water bottle in the land of Israel, you could be there. And you could pour or you could immerse there. But instead, John baptized in the Jordan, immersed in the Jordan River. Would it make sense to say that everybody went out to him at the Jordan River, and they went down into the Jordan River, and then John sprinkled them?

Or they went down into the Jordan River, and then John poured water on them? Would that make any sense? That wouldn't make any sense. But they went out to the Jordan River, and John immersed them, that makes sense.

We see it in the baptism of Jesus. Mark one, verses nine and 10. In those days, Jesus came from Nazareth and Galilee, and was immersed by John in the Jordan. Immediately coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens opening, and the spirit like a dove descending upon him.

The gospel of John describes John the Baptist's baptism this way, John three, verse 23. John also was immersing in Anon, near Salim, because there was much water there, and the people were coming, and they were being immersed.

He said, why don't you translate it as baptized? Because that's not a translation, that's a transliteration. I'm translating it for you, it means immersed. In all these examples, these places in Scripture where baptisms took place, the language fits immersion, not pouring and not sprinkling.

Another one, Acts chapter eight, verse 36. This is Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch. And as they went along the road, they came to some water, and the eunuch said, look, water, what prevents me from being immersed?

It never seemed to occur to either Philip or the Ethiopian eunuch that they could just take some of the eunuch's drinking water and perform a baptism in the chariot out in the middle of the desert. It wasn't until they came along to a body of water that the Ethiopian eunuch said, what prohibits me from being immersed?

That's the language. Text goes on to say, and he ordered the chariot to stop, and they both went down into the water, Philip as well as the eunuch, and he immersed him. When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away.

So what does baptism mean? The meaning of the word is immersed. Not sprinkling, not pouring, not dancing around somebody with incense. It means one thing. It means immersion. That's what the word means.

And if we've read Scripture in terms of what that word means, a lot of the misunderstanding about baptism would immediately dissipate. Second, what does baptism symbolize? Baptism by immersion symbolizes, well, hold on a second.

Baptism by immersion. Is that not the most redundant redundancy ever redundated? What did I just say? I just said immersion by immersion, didn't I? That's right. But immersion itself, we should say, symbolizes something profoundly glorious that takes place and is true of us in the spiritual realm.

Immersion pictures a spiritual reality, a reality that is used to, sorry, a reality that is described using the very same word, baptizo, or immersion, in Romans 6, verses three and four, which we read at the beginning of the service.

Or do you not know that all of us who have been immersed into Christ Jesus have been immersed into his death? Therefore, we have been buried with him through immersion into death so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.

You have been sprinkled into his death, you have been poured into his death, or you have been plunged beneath his death. It means plunged beneath. You have been immersed in him. You have been subsumed in him.

You're placed under him. You are placed in him. That is what is being described in that passage so that his death is your death, so that his resurrection is your resurrection, so that his perfect life is your perfect life, so that his being ascended to the right hand of the Father is you being seated in heavenly places with him, so that all that is true of him becomes true of you, so that everything that he did can be credited to your account.

The only way that that can happen is if you, by faith, are immersed into him, subsumed under him, so that he covers you, so that his death is yours. That is what's Paul describing in Colossians chapter two, verse 12, having been buried with him in immersion, in which you were also raised up with him through faith in the working of God who raised him from the dead.

You have been buried with him in immersion. First Corinthians 12, verse 13, for by one spirit we are all immersed into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and we have been made to drink of one spirit.

Galatians 3, 27, for all of you who were immersed into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. How are we immersed in him? The spirit of God, this is the work of the spirit of God in applying the work of the son, by the predestinating grace of the father, applying the work of the son to us, he takes us and he plunges us into Jesus Christ, so that we, in terms of God's wrath and judgment, and in terms of our accomplishments, we're dead.

We have ceased to exist. So then the father pours out the wrath on the son and raises the son from the dead and exalts him to his right hand, and guess who takes that journey with him? Because we're plunged into him.

You and I do. It is the work of the spirit to do that. We're plunged into him, submerged into him, so that his work becomes accredited to our account. So then, what is pictured in water baptism? First, our immersion into Jesus Christ, the fact that we are placed in him and submerged in him.

Second, because we have been submerged into him, we have been immersed into his death and to his resurrection. We're put under his death, we're put into and under his resurrection. Going under the water is a picture of us being buried with him, that's the language of Romans 6, and coming out of the water is a picture of us being resurrected and raised to newness of life, and again, that is the language of Romans 6.

But that's not all. Being submerged or immersed or plunged into, dipped under, whatever word you want to use, is also, that word, or immersion, pictures us being plunged, immersed, under the waters of judgment.

There's an element of judgment that is pictured in our immersion in Jesus Christ. We all die because of sin, death is the curse for sin, death is the penalty of sin, and every gravestone, every casket, every dead corpse is a reminder that we live in a sin-cursed and fallen world, and that because we have sinned, we all deserve death, and physical death is what we will all suffer through.

The grave is a symbol of that, and the imagery of water helps picture that judgment. The world perished in a worldwide flood, it all died except for eight men and women who were on board Noah's Ark. Pharaoh's army met a judgment in floodwaters as the waters consumed them in the Red Sea.

Even Jonah, being swallowed by the giant fish and going down into the heart of the sea, is likened to death, not only in the book of Jonah, but by the Lord Jesus himself, who used Jonah as a prophetic picture of his own death and resurrection.

And so going underneath the waters is akin to, or it is a symbol of going into and under and suffering through death on our behalf. Wayne Gruta makes this point in his theology text, quote, therefore, those who go down into the waters of baptism really are going down into the waters of judgment and death, a death that they deserve from God for their sins.

When they come back up out of the waters of baptism, it shows that they have come safely through God's judgment only because of the merits of Jesus Christ, with whom they are united in his death and resurrection.

And this is why Peter can say in 1 Peter 3, verse 21, that baptism corresponds to the saving of Noah and his family from the waters of judgment in the flood. There is a picture of judgment. When we take somebody and we plunge them beneath the waters, we are saying they are going under, in death, they are judged, and they are coming out of this, not because of their own merits, their own right standing, not because of their own works, but because somebody else has suffered this death, this burial, and has been raised on their behalf.

And this person, because they're immersed in Christ, we now immerse as a picture of their immersion. And we bring them up, as it were, out of judgment. And baptism is the opportunity for God's people, his disciples, to portray in the physical realm exactly what is true of them in the spiritual realm.

This brings us to the third question, then.

Who Should Be Baptized

Who should be baptized?

Our text answers that. Matthew, chapter 28, go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing everyone.

Does it say that?

Baptizing infants? Doesn't say that.

Who do we baptize?

Disciples.

We make disciples, we baptize disciples, we train disciples. To make disciples and baptize disciples and train disciples. To make disciples and baptize disciples and train disciples. That's what we are called to do.