The Blessings of Baptism

Grace Fellowship Church

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This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. To access other sermons or to learn more about us, please visit our website at graceedmonton .ca.

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I want to start our time off today with a bit of a historical illustration that matches the theme of our text and of our topic.

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It was on March 7th, 1526, so we celebrated Reformation Day a few weeks ago, right?

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In 1517, Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the castle church door in Wittenberg, Germany.

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This was 19 years afterwards, or almost 19 years. A council of Reformed Christian leaders met together in Zurich, Switzerland to address a disturbing trend that was happening in their area.

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It was a trend that was so serious, in fact, that these leaders ruled that anyone who participated in this growing movement would be ruled, would be sentenced, convicted as an enemy of the church and of the state.

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More than that, the effects of this movement were so damaging in the mind of this council that they declared that anyone who participated in said movement would be swiftly executed.

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Now, when we think of execution, we think of a whole host of things, but they wanted the punishment to fit the crime.

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And so those who were found guilty of participating in this movement were to be executed by drowning.

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And it wasn't long after this new law was implemented that it met with its first victim.

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Just a short year, short of a year from the time that it was implemented, the first person convicted of this crime was to be executed.

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And on the middle of a Sunday afternoon at three o 'clock, a 28 -year -old man named

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Felix Mons was loaded into a boat. They paddled out into the middle of the river

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Limat, and with a growing crowd of onlookers at the edge of the river, they tied his hands behind his feet, they put a pole between his legs, and they dipped him in the water until he had drowned.

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His last words as he went into the water were these. They were words of humble conviction.

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He said, Into thy hands, O God, I commend my spirit. And I'm not sure if you're ahead of me, you're picking up some of the foreshadowing, but it begs the question, why?

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Why was this man put to death in such a public and in such a cruel way?

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You see, in the eyes of these Swiss reformers who put this man to death, Mons was not a man of humble conviction, but he was an arrogant man, an unrepentant man, a heretic of the most dangerous form.

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And this was his crime, that Felix Mons believed and taught that baptism was an ordinance that was meant exclusively for believers in Jesus Christ.

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He denied the validity of paedo -baptism, what was commonly practiced then, the baptism of infants, and insisted that baptism was only legitimate when it was performed as an act of obedience by those who had consciously placed their faith in the

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Lord Jesus. And Mons was not alone. In the years that followed, other people of similar conviction were either drowned or burned at the stake by either the

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Roman Catholics or the Protestants. And while the Catholics and the reformers increasingly, as the

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Reformation went along, had fewer and fewer things to agree on, one thing they could agree on was the common enemy that they called the

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Anabaptists, or literally, it's a pejorative term that means one who is baptized again.

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The hatred of these credo -baptists, these men and women who were baptized as believers, was real and is well -documented.

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The emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, Ferdinand I, said in the 16th century, he said, the best antidote of Anabaptism, of those who are baptized again as adults, because they didn't recognize their first baptism, he said, the best antidote is the third baptism, referring to baptism by drowning.

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So for believers in the early church, and then again after the Reformation, this ordinance of baptism, what we call baptism, really mattered.

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Baptism was not treated with the indifference that we often see it treated with today, but it was a matter of earnest conviction.

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It held a place of inestimable significance in the lives of believers and in the lives of the church.

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It was so precious, in fact, this concept of baptism, that it became a matter even worth dying for.

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This element of Christian worship that we call baptism was that important.

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But I fear, and maybe you're picking up here where I'm going, I fear that in much of our predominant

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Christian culture, this conviction has been largely lost, largely because people, for one, do not understand this ordinance, what this ordinance means at its most fundamental level, and because people do not rightly esteem the worth of this ordinance in the worship of God.

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And as a result of that, God has denied our full praise. And I would submit to you, the

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God's people are robbed of the full blessing of this ordinance. A few of our men are going through our

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Institute program, they have, I trust, Wayne Grudem's systematic theology on their desk, along with some of their other reading, and he says in that systematic, he says, the amazing truths of baptism ought to be an occasion for giving great glory and praise to God.

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If churches would but teach these truths more clearly, baptisms would be an occasion of much more blessing in the church.

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And so this afternoon, with the relatively shorter time that we have, with the full agenda that we have going, it's still going to be my aim of elevating our glory and praise to God and increasing the blessings of this church, even this afternoon, by preaching and teaching on developing our theology of Christian baptism.

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So relying on the example of God's word and the teaching of God's word, this is what

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I want you to leave that back door with. I want you to understand the importance of baptism, the untold importance of baptism as an element of God -honoring,

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God -fearing worship. And my desire is that this ordinance, this act of baptism would be so deeply precious to us that it too would become a matter of our earnest conviction, that it would be a matter that calls for our songs of loudest praise lifted up to God.

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So that when we see our brother Brandon go into the water, we have a true sense of what this means and our hearts are lifted to praise the living

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God for his salvific work. And I want us to see baptism even as such a precious thing that we too might even be considerate a matter worth dying for.

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And so this afternoon I'm going to be swift through the text of scripture. Normally we teach expositionally.

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What that means is we pick one passage, we dive in, and we take that apart, we explain and apply it.

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Because we have texts all over the New Testament today, I'm going to take us on a bit of a wild goose chase at some different texts we're going to consider.

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But what I want to do is highlight four blessings of believer's baptism.

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Four things that we can praise God for when we see the baptism that is to happen later this afternoon and all the baptisms that,

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Lord willing, we celebrate in the future. And so if you do have Acts chapter 16 open on your lap, we're going to start there and then we're going to move around from there.

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But Acts chapter 16 is where we will begin. And the first blessing that I want to highlight is this.

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Baptism is a sign of our justification. A sign of our justification.

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Now let me be perfectly clear with you from the get -go that in no way does baptism bring about justification.

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In no way is it effectual in our salvation. Meaning we are not saved by being baptized.

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There are many who believe that. I am not going to say that today. But rather baptism, what it is, it is a visible, a physical demonstration of a spiritual reality in the life of a

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Christian. And while God has designed us, or for us, to walk by faith and not by sight as we await the final fulfillment of our salvation in Christ, nevertheless, it is a great blessing.

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I want us to see that He has ordained a physical means, something that we can see, something that even as we go into the waters, we can touch, that proclaims to us and to others our new standing in Christ.

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And this, my friends, is baptism. Now a moment ago, our brother read Acts chapter 16.

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I am not going to recount all of that story again. But I want to highlight a couple of things here.

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Here we see this picture of Paul and Silas in Philippi in Acts 16.

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They have been arrested. What was their crime? Freeing a demon -possessed slave girl.

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And now they are in jail. The hour is midnight. And they are singing praises to God, praying to the living

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God. And we read about that earthquake that happened. And the jail cell doors opened.

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We saw the suicidal jailer who planned to take his own life. Why would he try to take his own life?

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Because he knew that if you were a Roman jailer and you lost your prisoners, that your

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Roman authorities, your superiors, if their lives were unaccounted for, they would take your life.

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And so he thought, I'll take it before they can. And we saw, in what we were reading,

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Paul and Silas' unimaginable kindness toward this man. This is a story that is, in some respects, there are dark edges to it.

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And yet I still love telling this story to young people. I think I've shared this before, that at family worship, when we read

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Acts 16, it's a regular one. As we share the gospel with our own children, I will grab the table by both edges, and I will simulate the earthquake, shake the table until the house bangs from wall to wall.

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It's a dramatic scene. A story where there are two faithful men in a dark place, a hopelessly lost man, and then this glorious, unimaginable saving power of the gospel.

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And in verse 27, Acts 16, 27, I want us to read a little bit here, and then we're going to take heed to a couple of verses.

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Acts 16, 27. When the jailer woke and saw that the prison doors were opened, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, supposing that the prisoner had escaped.

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But Paul cried with a loud voice, Do not harm yourselves, for we are all here.

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And the jailer called for lights and rushed in, and trembling with fear, he fell down before Paul and Silas.

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Then he brought them out and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? Take heed to these words, my friends.

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And they said, Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved in your household.

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And they spoke the word of the Lord to him and all who were in his house. And he took them that same hour of the night and washed their wounds, and he was baptized at once, he and all his family.

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Of all of the accounts, of all the conversions in all of the Bible, I'm sure that some of us read those and there are some that are more memorable than others,

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I must confess, this is my favorite. This is my favorite because it is explicit in its demonstration of the free offer of the gospel.

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That when the jailer cried out in desperation, What must I do to be saved?

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This is when we do family worship and the table has been sufficiently shook and I have the kids' attention and I tell that part of the story.

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When the jailer asked, What must I do to be saved? There is no more important question in all the world than that question.

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If you were to go today to the Roman Catholic Church, maybe to read from their archives in the year 2000,

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Pope John Paul II stood before a crowd of 30 ,000 people and this question was posed to him,

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What must we do to be saved? He said, The gospel teaches us that those who live in accordance with the

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Beatitudes will enter God's kingdom. Kids, is that true? That those who live according to the

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Beatitudes, they will be saved? Thankfully not. This represents a disastrous confusion of the gospel and the law.

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Now had that jailer been standing before two Mormon missionaries who were at his front door and he said, What must

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I do to be saved? Maybe they would open their Book of Mormon to 2 Nephi 25 -23 and they would say,

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It is by grace we are saved after all that we can do. Is that gospel? Again, it's a law of works, it is wrong.

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But what did Paul and Silas tell this hopelessly lost man? They look at him and they say,

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Believe. Believe. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.

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This is the sum and the substance of man's response to the gospel. Jesus Christ died to pay the penalty for our sin.

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He offers us now His immutable righteousness. He offers now to make us right with the living

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God. To bring us forgiveness, cleansing from our sin. A new life in Christ.

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And how? Not by doing. Not by working. Not by attending church.

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Not by reading our Bibles even. Not even by praying. But by looking to Jesus Christ by faith and faith alone.

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And how few there are who know this truth. My son Noah came home a couple of weeks ago and was distressed.

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He attends a Christian school and some of the children there were getting baptized. It was a

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Friday afternoon and they were all talking about their baptism that was happening on the coming Sunday. And normally we're very excited about baptisms.

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We're not normally distressed about baptisms for the record. But Noah came home distressed and I asked him what's going on.

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He said, Well all these people in my class are getting baptized and I asked them, Do you know that Jesus Christ died for your sins?

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And he began to catechize them. Way to go boy. Catechize his classmates asking them questions about what it means to be right with God.

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And he said, Almost no one knew that Jesus died for their sins. Almost no one knew what it means to be baptized.

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He was shocked that there were so few people that could even articulate in a vague and general sense what it means to believe in Jesus Christ.

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To place your hope in the gospel. And brothers and sisters, this is the first thing that we must understand.

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To take hold of the gospel. When we see our brother Brandon in a moment's time go down into the water.

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We're seeing a picture of his profession of faith and of what Christ has done in his life.

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And so in Acts 16, we're told then that this jailer, he knew what to do. That he believed.

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He believed and his family believed. And in the New Testament, we see this over and over and over again.

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That when a person receives a full and free justification by faith in Jesus Christ, on its heels, we almost always find the account of that person's baptism shortly thereafter.

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I was going to take us through there, but it's going to take far too long. But we see this pattern littered through Acts. The book of Acts.

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In fact, justification and subsequently baptism are so closely related that they're often confused by those who are unable to distinguish between the two.

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But we must recognize the distinction. Baptism does not affect salvation, but rather it images the invisible reality of that person's cleansing and the forgiveness of their sins.

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In Acts chapter 2 in verse 38, on the day of Pentecost, as Peter was preaching to the, who knows how many thousands of Jews, and 3 ,000 came to repentance.

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He said this, repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of your sins.

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And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. In Acts 22, when Paul was recounting his own conversion in verse 16, he was told this, and now why do you wait?

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Rise and be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on his name. And so what baptism does, it goes so far as to image both the positive and the negative aspects of Christ's penal substitutionary atonement.

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First it demonstrates our deliverance from God's wrath. In 1

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Peter 3 .18, it says, For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God.

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That is a key penal substitutionary atonement passage. But it continues,

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But being put to death in the flesh, he made alive in the spirit, which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey when

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God's patience waited in the days of Noah. While the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is eight persons, were brought safely through water.

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So the ark went safely through water. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

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Now what does all of this mean? In a nutshell it means this, that just as Noah, if you can picture this,

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Noah and his family entered the ark, and in that ark they were delivered through the waters of God's judgment, safely, safe in that ark, which itself is a picture of Christ.

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When we see a man or woman pass safely through the waters of baptism, behind me, we are seeing a picture of him or her passing through God's judgment, kept safe and secure, and coming out on the other side unscathed.

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And why? Because Jesus Christ took that wrath already, and he will not punish, or God will not punish us a second time for those of us who are in Christ.

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And so when our brother Brandon goes into the water, it is as if to say, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

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It is gone. Jesus Christ took it all. And on a positive sense, baptism demonstrates then our cleansing and the imputation,

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God declaring us righteous in Jesus Christ. In Galatians 3 .27

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it says, For as many as you were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.

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Put on like a garment, the righteousness of Christ. Like the righteous, the impeccably white robes of Jesus.

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And when we are seen by God in Christ, we are declared righteous. This is the heart of the gospel that we see in baptism.

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The Puritan Thomas Watson said, God does not justify us because we are worthy, but justifying us, he makes us worthy.

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And this is what it means then in the act of baptism. The gospel is made visible.

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Christ dying for our sins. Christ raised to newness of life. And when we baptize, we emphatically declare, come see what it means to be justified.

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To be made right with God. Now, blessing number two. We see here a sign of regeneration.

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A sign of regeneration. What does that mean? I'll explain it in a moment, but I'll have us turn to Romans chapter six.

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I'm just using a key text for each of these points. That way we're not going too astray.

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It is a sign of our regeneration. Romans six and verse one. What shall we say to it then?

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Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means. How can we who died to sin still live in it?

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Verse three. Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?

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We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the

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Father, we too might walk in newness of life. Not only does baptism image our justification before a holy

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God. Being right with God. But it also demonstrates the powerful working of regeneration in our hearts through Jesus Christ.

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When we heard the good news of Jesus Christ, that he lived a perfect life, that he died on the cross for our forgiveness, and that he has conquered death, that he has been raised now to life.

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Not only then did God graciously open our eyes to behold these truths, to understand them, to respond to them with repentance and with faith.

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But in that moment, when every man or woman places their faith in Christ, he makes you a new man, a new woman.

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He changes you from the inside out. Recently had a conversation with a young man who's come here a few times who said to me last week, we're

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Christians now. And he said, it is amazing. God is changing me from the inside.

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It's not even moral reform. But that God is moving in my heart and I have new desires and I want to please him.

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He said, I even like to get stuck in traffic. When someone cuts me off, it gives me the opportunity to love that person and to pray for them.

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Why? Because God has given that man a new heart. It's called regeneration.

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In Titus 3 .5, we're told, he saved us. Oh, God saved us.

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Not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy by the washing of regeneration and the renewal of the

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Holy Spirit. There's a story I like to tell all the folks that go through our baptism class, a story about a man,

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I believe it was the 1700s, it might have been the 1800s, who experienced this gift of regeneration.

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He became a new creature in Christ. And some of you are familiar with this story, no doubt. But what happened was this.

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This man was the town drunk. He was the most debaucherous and vile man in the town.

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And one day, he heard the gospel and God opened his heart to understand it.

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He repented of his sin and he believed in Jesus. He said, I am a sinner. I need to be saved.

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Christ is my savior. And what was amazing was that, as I just mentioned, from the inside out,

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God began to transform that man. And he realized, I need to tell the whole town that I'm not that old drunkard that has been sitting on the curb these last 20 years.

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And so he went to the town undertaker. Remember, this is before cars. And he said,

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I would like to rent a horse -drawn hearse and a coffin. And so they loaded the coffin onto the back of the hearse.

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Kids, you can picture this in your mind, how strange this might be. And he rode through the town.

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And on the back of that hearse, sitting on the coffin, he declared to all the people, as they saw, that's the town drunk.

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What has become of him? He said, that old man, he is dead. Pointing at the coffin.

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He said, Christ has made me a new man. I'm alive in Christ. I'm a new creature.

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That old man is dead. And I am altogether new. Now, I love that story.

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Because it does picture, especially the zeal of a new believer. Only a new Christian would rent a hearse and ride on the back of it.

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But if I were there talking to that man, what I might say to him is this, dear brother, that is bold.

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That's a great expression of the fact that you are a new creature in Christ. There's only one problem.

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God has appointed an ordinance to demonstrate what it is that you're trying to demonstrate.

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And that is called baptism. That when a man goes down into the water, when a woman goes down into the water, they are in union with Christ.

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And the old man has died. And the new man has been raised to newness of life.

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And so for those of you who, I think Brandon's family, for those of you who knew Brandon five years ago and now know him today,

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Brandon is a new man. Not because he has reformed himself, but because God has put his spirit in his heart.

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He has made him a new creature. And when he goes down into the waters of baptism, we are going to see that demonstrated.

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That Brandon has been crucified with Christ. He has been raised up, as it says in Galatians 2 .20,

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and it's no longer Brandon who lives, but Christ who lives in him. And the life he now lives in the flesh.

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He lives by faith in the Son of God who loved him and gave himself for him.

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When we see baptism, we see justification, made right with God, cleansed from our sin.

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We see regeneration, made altogether new. Not just refurbished, but a new heart, a new man.

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And number three, we see a sign of our assimilation. And you can see probably from the points that I was doing some wordsmithing here.

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Maybe I could be a bit more clear, but it's this. That baptism demonstrates our assimilation into the new covenant people of God.

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In the same way, if you wear a wedding ring and you won't find this in the Bible, I know that.

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This is cultural. But in the same way that this wedding ring demonstrates that I'm in a covenant relationship with my wife.

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I wear it. I wear it in public. I wear it at work. I wear it everywhere so people can see that I'm a married man.

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I've made a covenant with my wife. In the same way, baptism is a physical sign, a visible sign of our entering into the new covenant with God, a new covenant of grace with Him and entering into the new covenant people of God, a new community, new relationships.

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And I'll have us turn to 1 Corinthians 12 to show you this. 1

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Corinthians chapter 12 and verse 12 says, in verse 12,

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For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many are one body, so it is for Christ.

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For in one spirit we were all baptized. Baptized into what?

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Baptized into one body. Jews are Greeks, slaves are free, and all were made to drink of one spirit.

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Here this passage is dealing with what it means to belong to the church, the body of Christ, the bride of the living

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Christ. And we see here that when one is baptized, not only does it demonstrate, declare your justification and your new birth in Christ, that this man, this woman has been born again, but it demonstrates too that you are now members of the household of the living

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God. In Ephesians 4 it says, There is one body and one spirit, just as you were called to one hope that belongs to your call.

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Notice all the ones here. One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and in all.

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When a man or woman comes in our church, when you are baptized into our church, you become a member of this local church.

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We've had people inquire and say, I would like to be baptized, I'm just not sure that I would like to be a member.

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And we would say, it is a good desire that you want to be baptized. Go find a church that you love, that preaches the gospel, that's a solid church, go get baptized in that church and be a member of that church.

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But when you come and you are baptized here, not only do we rejoice that you have been baptized, but we rejoice that you are a member of this church, of this local church, and we are accountable to you, and you are accountable to us.

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It is a new covenant community that is altogether different from what the world offers. That is perhaps one of the main faults of the modern visible church in North America, is that it's seeking to win the world by being like the world.

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When the biblical church is this, that we are so radically different from the world, that we then become attractive to the world.

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It's not a privilege to be taken lightly, to belong to a local church. I'm preaching this to all of the members here, to all of the people here who maybe don't belong to a church, and especially to the men and women who are going to become members today.

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It is a privilege. It is a joy.

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It is a responsibility. You often hear me quote from Martin Lloyd -Jones.

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We call him the doctor. He was a medical doctor who became a preacher in England in the mid -1900s.

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And one of the things about Martin Lloyd -Jones is he had a towering pulpit ministry. And what

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I mean by that is, when I picture Martin Lloyd -Jones, picture him in your head right now, if you know who I'm talking about.

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If you don't, that's fine. In my mind, he is wearing a black robe, standing behind a pulpit.

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And he probably doesn't have a smile, I don't think. That's okay, I'll smile for him. But he is known for his towering pulpit ministry that he called preaching logic on fire, and that's what he delivered.

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But one of the things that he is less known for, but I think in our own minds, he should be known for is this, his love for the local church.

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He saw it as one of his aims to contend against what he called the minimization of church life for the

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Christian. And a couple of his quotes, one of them he says this, we must re -grasp the idea of church membership being the biggest honor which can come man's way in this world.

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That in this world, on this side of heaven, one of the very best things that you can do is belong to a local church.

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He says, the greatest privilege that a Christian can experience in this life is to be a member of a local evangelical church.

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And when men and women in this church and in other faithful churches are baptized, they're not baptized back into the world.

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But when our brother Brandon comes out of that water, he will have been baptized into one body, the church of the living

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God, the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. He will have been baptized into a place of, in the words of the doctor, a place of dignity and privilege and responsibility to belong to Christ's church.

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And then my fourth blessing that I want to highlight is this, that baptism is a sign of our glorification.

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Oh, in Christ we are justified by faith. We are made right with God by faith.

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We are made a new man, a new woman, by his spirit. We come into the

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Christian community, the people of God, the church, and then it is a sign, not of our present glorification, but of our future glorification.

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Now, if you don't know what I'm talking about, that might sound really weird. Are you saying that being baptized then glorifies me?

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No, I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is this, that there is going to come a day, we read about it in Romans chapter 8, of the golden chain of redemption, of those whom

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God calls, those whom he justifies, he sanctifies, those whom he sanctifies, he will glorify.

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And what that means is that on the last day, on the day of Christ, when either Christ returns or we go to him, whichever comes first, that in that day,

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Scripture says, we will see him and we will be like him. In Romans chapter 6, if I can get us back there, we're going to finish off in Romans 6 in verse 4.

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It says that we were buried, therefore, with him by baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the

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Father, we too might walk in newness of life. If we have been united with Christ in a death like his, hear this, if we have been united with Christ in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.

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And if we can bunny hop to verse 8. Now, if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.

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We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will no longer die again. Death no longer has dominion over him.

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Christ said to his disciples, he said, if you believe in me, you will never die.

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Do you believe it? That all of us, if Christ should tarry, if Christ should delay, all of us will fall asleep in the

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Lord. It will be like drifting off to sleep. For some of us, it will be very sudden.

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For some of us, it will be long and drawn out. But in light of eternity, it will be momentary and light affliction producing in us an eternal weight of glory because, just like when you go down for a nap and your eyes open again, when we breathe our last breath and our heart stops and our physical body dies, we will open our eyes and there behold the living and true

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God. Baptism is a sign of that moment, of that glorification.

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In John 14, two and three, in my house are many rooms. If it were not so, would

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I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? That is what Christ is doing right now.

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And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and I will take you to myself and where I am, sorry, that where I am, you may be also.

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That when our brother, this afternoon, goes into that water and comes out, it is a picture of his newness of life now, of his spiritual resurrection, as it were, in this moment, but of his future resurrection and an eternity spent with God.

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As we were doing the baptism discussion with Brandon and I had the benefit of our brother

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Kevin sitting there as well and I just thought about what it means to be a dad and to know that if there is one thing

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I want for my children, if there is one thing that every parent in this room wants for their children, at the bare minimum, it is this.

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I tell my kids this. I want to see you in heaven and I want to have fellowship with you for all of eternity.

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I want you and I want mom and I want all of us and I want us around the very throne of God, worshiping

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Him, giving Him all of our praise, loving Him, spending time with Him, trusting still in Christ.

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I rejoice, I trust that our brother

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Kevin and his wife Lena, that they can have that confidence. Brandon comes out of the water, that he is a new man and one day he will be glorified.

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He will be right with the living God. Every sin will be cast aside. All death, all decay, only life, only in the presence of God.

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In the 1600s, there was a Puritan man named Philip Henry. If you've ever read

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John Henry's books, sorry, Matthew Henry's commentaries, too many

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Henry's, you'll know that Matthew Henry has written some of the greatest commentaries of that era.

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There aren't very many commentaries that are that old, Calvin's and a few others, but Matthew Henry's have endured the test of time.

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And his father, Philip Henry, he sought to marry a young woman, and her name was Catherine Matthews.

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And with respect to their social classes, it was very lopsided, almost written out of a

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Roman tragedy or Greek tragedy or something like that, that Catherine Matthews was the daughter of a wealthy

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English nobleman, a woman of high class, of high society.

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And Philip Henry, on the other hand, was from a very ordinary background. He was a living picture, if you know what

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I'm talking about, from 1 Corinthians 1 .26, he was a living picture of that man. Not many of you were wise according to worldly standards.

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Not many of you were powerful. Not many of you were of noble birth. He was a nobody on the map of somebodies.

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And when Catherine took an interest in Philip Henry and she began to share of her courtship with her friends and her family, this was met by great objection.

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And not because he wasn't a good man, but because of his social class. The question that they continuously put to him is this.

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They said, we know he's a gentleman. We know he's a learned scholar. We know even that he's a great preacher.

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But we don't know where he came from. That name

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Henry means nothing here. And one day after Catherine Henry, or Catherine Matthews listened to these objections raised, she came up with a compelling response that silenced them for good.

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She said, true, we do not know where he came from. But I know where he is going.

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I know where he is going, and I should like to be with him. I should like to go with him.

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That Philip Henry came from obscurity. But that didn't matter.

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Because where was Philip Henry going? He was going to Emmanuel's land. He was going to a place, a city whose builder and founder was

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God. He was going to a place where death and decay and disorder is but a distant memory.

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A place where the citizens of that land live forever in the face of God.

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She knew where he was going, and she intended to go with him.

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And in the same way, we can say, we take great care to discern the testimonies of the men and women who care to be baptized here.

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Having heard our brother's testimony, and all that he has shared, as he comes out of that water, I trust that by God's sustaining grace, we can say, this man, we know where he is going.

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To be with God forever. As a man or woman comes out of the waters of baptism, they are going to an eternity with God.

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And baptism shouts this reality from the rooftop.

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In a world where you might be a nobody, where 99 .9

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% of this planet will never know that you even existed. If you are in Christ, you are known by God, and you will live forever in his presence.

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And baptism proclaims this. And so, why do we celebrate baptism?

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For all of these reasons that I just mentioned, and more. And so, the question

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I pose to you, did Felix Mons make a fatal miscalculation when he said,

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I will die for this ordinance that we call baptism?

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Was that a fatal miscalculation? I would submit that if he could, he would die a thousand deaths to preserve the importance of biblical baptism.

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And brothers and sisters, if we rightly esteem it, we would too. With that, let's go to the