Baptism: A Biblical Perspective - August 4, 2024

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For those of you that were here, you remember that we finished the section on the
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Beatitudes that we have been looking at for the past several weeks. So while we're really just getting into the
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Sermon on the Mount, the fact that we have finished this section gives us something of a natural break.
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And I wanted to take this opportunity to spend the next two weeks talking about something a little bit different.
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So we're not going to be talking about anything specifically in Matthew today, but I wanted to dive into a topic that I think is important.
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It's one of those doctrinal things. It's something that every church does, but every church does a little different.
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So it's important that we talk about it, and it's important that we understand what it is that will be taught at this church about this issue.
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And this is particularly exciting too. So just to get a feel for how enthusiastic people are going to be about this, when
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I brought up in the board meeting recently that I was going to do a short two -week sermon series on this topic, one of the board members was so excited that he said,
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I'm not going to come for that at all. Something about PTSD from the discussions involved in coming up with the statement of faith about this when the church was disaffiliating.
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And what we're going to talk about today and next week is a scriptural or a biblical look at the topic of baptism.
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I heard somebody say, mm. And I don't think that it's an exaggeration to say that whatever your specific beliefs about baptism are, there's probably a church or there's a denomination that can accommodate you.
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But just like every other topic that we consider, what we want to do to the best of our fallible ability is to look closely at what the
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Bible has to say about baptism. We want to look at how scripture represents baptism and what we can take from that.
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And there are some very specific places where the Bible speaks explicitly about baptism.
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For example, baptism is clearly a command for all believers. We're all to be baptized if we're followers of Christ.
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It's not optional. It's not a private matter between you and Jesus. And we'll see that in just a little bit.
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But I want to make sure that we're careful not to go too far with what we infer from scripture.
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There's always going to be some things that are open to interpretation. And there are things that we have to make decisions on that aren't explicitly spelled out word for word in scripture.
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But that's where we have to be so careful about taking the full counsel of God's word into consideration when we do that.
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Or we risk very publicly putting words into God's mouth, which is absolutely something that we're not permitted to do.
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So just as a kind of a rough sketch of where we're headed today, we'll take the bulk of our time looking at some key passages that are related to baptism.
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And then, depending on time, we might start looking at what that means for us. But that's probably going to get into next week at this point.
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But again, this topic is important. So John MacArthur had this quote, and I think it's true, but he says that we have a really big problem in the church today.
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And that problem is that we have millions of unbelievers in the pews who have been baptized.
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And we have millions of believers in the pews who have not been baptized or who have not been baptized legitimately.
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And there's a few reasons for this. And I think we'll talk about that some more next week. But one of the biggest reasons for this issue is just ignorance.
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And by ignorance, I mean that people haven't been taught or haven't been taught properly on the proper nature of baptism.
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And I hope that what we talk about this week goes a long way towards clearing that up. Because I know that in this church, we have a wide variety of people.
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We have a wide variety of backgrounds. We have former Catholics. We have people that have come from other denominations, you know, the
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Anglican Episcopal tradition, the Baptist tradition, and obviously the Methodist tradition. And each and every one of those denominations has their own concept and their own interpretation of the who, what, when, where, why, and how of baptism.
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And before we get too far into this, I also want to say that it is possible to hold slightly different views on some of the particulars of baptism and still truly be co -laborers for the gospel of Christ.
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Now, you can't take this too far. There are going to be things that are non -negotiable, but there are areas where other denominations are aligned on so many other things, but there are slight differences in how they view baptism.
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And we don't call them heretics for that. We just say they're wrong. And that's different.
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But one of the first things that would be considered a non -negotiable that we have to talk about and begin with is the understanding that baptism does not save you.
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Baptism is not the source of your salvation. It's not the cause of your salvation.
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It's evidence of your salvation, but it didn't cause it. And it's not,
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I'm going to say it's not a requirement for your salvation, but you have to hear me carefully there because it doesn't mean it's not a requirement overall.
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But being evidence and being a cause is a very important distinction to make.
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And we get there the same way we get to a lot of other places that we might question or that we might think are odd or that we might say are just completely wrong.
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And that is, there are passages that if you read them a certain way, they can lead you to believe that baptism is necessary for salvation or that baptism is the cause of salvation.
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So I'm going to give you a few of those this morning. One of the first ones that people point to is John 3, 5.
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John 3, 5 says, truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.
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Another one is Acts 2, 38. Repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the
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Holy Spirit. And then there's a half verse, 1 Peter 3, 21.
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If you only read this far, seems pretty clear. It says, corresponding to that, baptism now saves you.
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But on this topic of whether baptism saves you or can save you or is necessary for you to be saved,
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I would suggest that we have to consider a few points. Again, because as I've talked about many times in the past, when we look at these verses, we see something that seems clear, but then we see something that contradicts other verses.
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So when we see something that contradicts or seems to contradict, because as I've said, given the inerrancy of scripture, it cannot contradict itself.
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It means the error is coming from us somewhere in our interpretation. We have to consider a few things.
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And first and foremost, possibly, is that salvation is a work of the
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Holy Spirit. And it's a work of the Holy Spirit that can't be controlled by people. We can't make the
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Holy Spirit do anything. John 3 says, the wind blows where it wishes and you hear it sound, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going.
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So is everyone who is born of the Holy Spirit. So not only that, but it would contradict the sovereignty of God for me to tell you or for anyone to tell you that I can baptize an individual, any random individual, and that they would be saved.
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Because if I was doing that, then that would be obligating the Holy Spirit to perform an action based on me, based on my judgment.
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If I just wanted to randomly go out and pick one of you today and baptize you. And further, if we actually look at the background of John 3, 5,
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Jesus here is talking to Nicodemus and he's referring actually not to our understanding of Christian baptism, but he's referring to a prophecy of cleansing of the
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Holy Spirit. Now this comes out of Ezekiel, Ezekiel chapter 36 verses 25 through 27.
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And those verses say this, then I will sprinkle clean water on you and you will be clean.
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I will cleanse you from all your uncleanness and from all your idols. Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you.
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And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and you will be careful to do my judgments.
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And Jesus here is speaking to Nicodemus in words and in scripture that he would very clearly have understood when he's talking about the new birth.
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So Jesus was not saying to Nicodemus that baptism would save you and that that was the way that you would enter into the kingdom of heaven.
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If we look at Acts 2 .38 that we just read, that's another one that seems to state that baptism is required to receive the gift of the
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Holy Spirit. But if we were to say that, then how do we square that with the idea that there are lots of people who have been baptized, who are clearly not regenerate?
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And we can't know anybody's heart, but we can certainly know their life. We can see the way they act.
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We can see the way they behave. We can see the way they treat other people. We can see a lot of those different things.
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And simply because they're baptized, that doesn't mean that they have received the Holy Spirit. A perfect example of this is
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Simon the Magician in Acts 8. He was the one who, if you recall, said, hey, I see what you guys are doing.
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I want to buy the power of the Holy Spirit. He had been baptized. Now, we don't actually know what happened with Simon after this.
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But simply the fact that he was trying to purchase this power so he could add it to his act tells us that there may at least possibly be some question of his salvation or his receiving the
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Holy Spirit. And in Acts 10, verses 44 through 48, which
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I'm not going to read, but you can read those, what we see are people who have received the
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Holy Spirit before they had been baptized. And if we look at that verse, 1
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Peter 3 .21, I should have marked that one off. The only thing that you have to do is read the entire verse.
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1 Peter 3 .21 says, corresponding to that, baptism now saves you, not the removal of dirt from the flesh, but an appeal of a good conscience to God through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
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So it's not saying that baptism saves you. It's saying that Jesus saves you. The Holy Spirit transforming you saves you.
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And we have to go deeper here as well and see that salvation in Scripture, when we read about salvation, it's associated with repentance and faith primarily.
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And it's associated in a number of places with repentance and faith, with baptism not even being mentioned.
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Now, there are plenty of places where they put all those things together. Repent and be baptized. But one thing we never see ever is any reference to salvation linked only to baptism.
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And the examples of where we see salvation linked to repentance and faith are numerous. And I won't read all these, but I'll just give you some verses.
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And this is not all. Luke 13, 3, 2 Corinthians 7, 10, Revelation 2, 5,
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John 3, 16, 1 John 1, 9, Romans 2, 4, Titus 3, 5.
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And again, there's plenty more. In another interesting verse, this food for thought is this.
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This is something that the apostle Paul writes. Again, if we're looking at this through the lens of baptism saves you or baptism is required for salvation.
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Paul writes, for Christ did not send me to baptize, but to proclaim the gospel, not in wisdom of words, so that is the cross of Christ will not be made empty.
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So what we see is the focus on the gospel, but specifically repenting and believing the gospel for salvation.
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And while baptism is often mentioned alongside those ideas, it never shows up alone where salvation is concerned.
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And if salvation were possible simply through baptism, then it would be the result of a work and that would invalidate a lot of verses.
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I mentioned Titus 3, 5 just a second ago. That verse says this. He saved us not by works, which we did in righteousness, but according to his mercy through the washing of regeneration and renewing by the
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Holy Spirit. And that verse right there tells us a lot, but it also gives us a little preview of the symbolic aspects of baptism, which we'll talk about later.
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But if we look at another verse on this topic, Ephesians 2 verses 8 through 9, it says this.
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For by grace you have been saved by faith and this not of yourselves. It is a gift of God, not of works, so that no one may boast.
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So we see that salvation is a gift of the Holy Spirit. It's a gift of the grace of God, the grace and mercy of God, not of our works, not of anything that we've done and not simply as a result of baptism.
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And that's something that I spent a little bit more time than I intended on. I didn't really want to go too deep into why baptism wouldn't save you, but I did want to make sure that this was something we could at least see that there were verses to back up and that we could understand this concept.
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So what I want to do now is shift our focus to what Scripture does plainly say about baptism and what we can take from Scripture to help our understanding of this topic.
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So a lot of you who were here remember that early on in our look at the Gospel of Matthew, we actually did spend,
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I think I spent a whole sermon, you know, essentially talking about principles related to baptism when we were in Matthew chapter three.
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And I, I did that because what, what we were looking at was what
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I believe is the first reference in the New Testament to baptism, to anybody being baptized. And that's the baptism of Jesus by John the
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Baptist. So if we look at Matthew chapter three, verses 13 through 17, this is what we see.
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Then Jesus arrived from Galilee at the Jordan, coming to John to be baptized by him.
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But John tried to prevent him saying, I have need to be baptized by you and do you come to me? But Jesus answered and said to him, permit it at this time, for in this way it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.
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Then he permitted him. And after being baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water and behold, the heavens were open and he saw the spirit of God descending like a dove and coming upon him.
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And behold, there was a voice out of the heavens saying, this is my beloved son in whom
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I'm well pleased. So this is our first look at baptism in the
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New Testament. And we see actually several other important concepts here in this baptism account.
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Now, John MacArthur, again, he puts it this way, which I think this is very helpful. He says, Jesus's baptism not only was a symbol of his identity with sinners, but was also a symbol of his death and resurrection and therefore a prefigurement of Christian baptism.
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And I hope it's obvious that some of the symbolism that we tie in the baptism doesn't apply to Jesus.
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It doesn't apply to our savior who was perfect, who was sinless. But on a similar note,
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Andreas Kastenberger says this, while the Messiah does not share with others baptized by John the need for repentance and the forgiveness of sins, he voluntarily subjects himself to this right as part of his identification with humanity and of his role as the savior of humankind.
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So once again, we have to be clear that Jesus was not in need of salvation.
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That was not the reason that Jesus got baptized. Jesus was not in need to repent of any sins.
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That's not why he was baptized. We can say that he was baptized in order to give us the model that we carry through today, to this day in the
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Christian church, 2 ,000 some years later. So we have that. But it's important to note a couple of additional things that we see.
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In the last couple of verses, for example, what we notice is the Trinitarian nature of baptism.
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We see that Jesus, the son, was baptized. And when he was baptized, the
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Holy Spirit descended like a dove. We see when Jesus was baptized that God the
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Father spoke and said, this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. So again, the whole
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Trinity was involved in baptism. And this is why we baptize in the name of the
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Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. So we see the Trinitarian nature of this sacrament or this ordinance.
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And the second thing this does is it gives us the opportunity to talk about one of our favorite topics related to baptism.
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And that is the mode of baptism or how baptism is to be properly done.
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And when we talked about this last time, we'll just give another brief review here. We talked about how we got the word baptism.
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So it came from the Greek word baptizo. But instead of translating it, they decided to transliterate it.
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So they took baptizo and made an English word that sounds like it, baptism.
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But the actual Greek definition of that is to immerse something.
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It's to immerse something in water. So if it had been translated instead of transliterated, that might have solved a lot of the problems that we have, but it wasn't.
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So here we are. But I also shared with you the story of how that Greek word baptizo was also used in a non -biblical example, a non -biblical ancient
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Greek recipe for making pickles, which required the cucumber to be baptizo in the water.
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Which means immersed in the water. And it's important when we use
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Jesus's biblical model of baptism as well, that we see that he was immersed in the water. He was dunked.
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And again, that comes into play when we talk about what I believe to be the proper mode of baptism, and that's to be fully immersed, fully submerged in the water and not to be sprinkled with water.
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In fact, there's a Greek word that means sprinkled. It's very similar.
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It's rontizo, baptizo, rontizo. Now, if baptism involves sprinkling instead of immersion, and they use that word instead, we might talk about being rontized today instead of being baptized today.
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But we didn't, and they didn't use that word. And add to this that the verse says that Jesus came up out of the water.
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We also see that John was baptizing in the Jordan River. And in the gospel of John, we read this in chapter 3, verse 23.
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And John was baptizing in Enon, near Selim, because there was much water there.
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So, John wasn't just sitting by a well or by a puddle or just by a basin of water flicking it at people.
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He went out in the wilderness, out in the middle of nowhere, to a river where there was much water, to a place where he could fully immerse the people that he was baptizing in that water.
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Now, we also have the issue of baptism's symbolic meaning.
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The 1689 Second London Baptist Confession of Faith says this. Baptism is an ordinance of the
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New Testament ordained by Jesus Christ to be unto the party baptized, a sign of his fellowship with him, that is
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Jesus, in his death and resurrection of his being engrafted into him.
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And this is based on scriptures like Romans 635, or I'm sorry,
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Romans 635, Romans 6, 3 through 5. Or do you not know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?
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Therefore, we were buried with him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the
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Father, so we too might walk in the newness of life. For if we have become united with him in the likeness of his death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of his resurrection.
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So that's one example of a specific person, specifically being baptized in scripture.
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So let's skip ahead to the book of Acts for another example of an individual being baptized.
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So we read this a couple of weeks ago, but now we are in Acts chapter 8, and we're going to look at verses 34 through 39.
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And if you recall, part of this was in the passage that we looked at just a minute ago. So this is about the
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Ethiopian eunuch, and we're going to kind of pick it up in the middle of the story after Philip had come upon this eunuch who was reading scripture and who needed assistance in interpreting it.
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Verse 34, And the eunuch answered Philip and said, I ask you earnestly, of whom does the prophet say this, of himself or of someone else?
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Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning from this scripture, he proclaimed the good news about Jesus to him.
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And as they went along the road, they came to some water. And the eunuch said, Look, water, what prevents me from being baptized?
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And Philip said, If you believe with all your heart, you may. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the
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Son of God. And he ordered the chariot to stop. And they both went down into the water, Philip as well as the eunuch, and he baptized him.
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And when they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away, and the eunuch no longer saw him, but went on his way rejoicing.
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So once again, from this passage, we see the idea of going down into the water.
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What they're likely talking about was a lake or a river or something large enough, a large enough body of water that both of them could get in it and that the
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Ethiopian could be completely immersed. But we see something else important in this passage, and it's in verse 37.
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But I do want to say this about verse 37. We have to be completely transparent, and we have to be completely, you know, or as thorough as we can when we look at this.
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And if you notice in the Bibles that we have, the Legacy Standard Bible, that verse 37 is in brackets.
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And the reason that verse 37 is in brackets is because the earliest manuscripts don't have it.
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So there is a case that can be made for omitting that verse. But just so we know a little bit of the history on this, there was an early
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Christian scholar named Erasmus, and he was the one who actually wound up putting that verse back in to his translation of the
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Book of Acts. And the reason he did this was because he found it in the margin notes of a translation that he was looking at,
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I think from the 14th century. And the reason he put it back was because it was in the margin of that translation.
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And he was of the opinion, again, he was of the opinion, I'll say, that it had just been left out of the manuscript due to the carelessness of the scribe who was writing it.
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So we can take that for whatever it is. Our translators have chosen to put it in, but just to note that the very earliest translations don't have it.
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But what we see is important still. Philip baptized the
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Ethiopian after he made a profession of faith.
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He baptized the Ethiopian after he had been taught the meaning of Scripture, but specifically the meaning of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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And in this case, that teaching that Philip gave him was sufficient for the Holy Spirit to save that Ethiopian.
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From Scripture that we see, he understood what the gospel meant, how it applied to his life, and said that he believed in Jesus.
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And it was immediately following that that he was baptized. So what we note here is that baptism is only for those
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Christians who have been saved. But not only who have been saved, they're the ones that can also make what church leaders can determine to the best of their abilities is a credible profession of faith.
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It means that at the very least, you need to be able to explain the gospel.
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You need to be able to explain how the gospel has affected your life. If you were to ask somebody why they wanted to be baptized, and they just say,
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I want to be baptized because I love Jesus. That's not a profession of faith that's demonstrating and understanding of the true message of the gospel.
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And it's not a profession of faith that's demonstrating an understanding of the work of the
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Holy Spirit or the work of Jesus in one's life. And what that does is it rules out as valid baptism, the baptism of infants or babies, or even some young people.
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Now, I've already said that baptism is not required for salvation. It's not a factor in an individual's salvation.
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So if that's the case, does that then mean that baptism is just some optional add -on?
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I mean, if you don't have to do it to be saved, why would you feel it necessary?
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So is it optional? And I've already said that it's not. In fact, baptism is a command of scripture.
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So I want to look at a couple of verses here on this topic to help us understand why this is.
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Why baptism, as I said, is not an individual choice.
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It's not a matter of your personal faith, your private faith. But what it actually is, is a matter of obedience to Christ.
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And one of the most prominent verses and the most often cited verses for this is the
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Great Commission in Matthew 28, verses 19 and 20. I'm going to read this even though I bet we all know it just about by heart.
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Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations. Actually, let me back up to verse 18, because this is important too.
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And Jesus came up and spoke to them saying, all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth.
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So it's important that Jesus said this, right? He's not just making this up. That's how we know this is a command of Jesus.
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And this is what he has told us we have to do. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the
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Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to keep all that I commanded you. And behold,
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I am with you always, even to the end of the age. So obviously the focus of this command is to go out and make disciples.
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But baptism is specifically mentioned there, right alongside teaching all that he has commanded and teaching them to keep all that he has commanded.
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Louis Burkhoff says that Jesus instituted Christian baptism and made it binding for all following generations.
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And I'm starting to dive into what we wanna talk about next week. But the idea of making disciples and making baptism a part of that, this is gonna speak to why baptism is an ordinance of the local church.
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And that it's improper, frankly, to baptize people in certain other settings, like a youth camp or any other sort of thing like that, because then the discipleship and the teaching doesn't continue the way it does in the church.
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So now we've seen from the Great Commission that Christ himself has decreed that baptism is a necessary part of the discipling process.
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And we see this continued in the ministry of the apostles. We see this going forward.
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So in that passage that we already looked at in Acts chapter two, we see how the disciples are continuing this teaching.
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Acts 2, 37 through 38, if you recall, says, now when they heard this, which is the gospel, they were pierced to the heart and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, men, brothers, what should we do?
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And Peter said to them, repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the
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Holy Spirit. So from the earliest days of the Christian church, and Acts is the start of the
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Christian church, as we said, baptism was an expectation. It was just part of the process.
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Another example of baptism is a clear command also happens in Acts. If we go later to Acts chapter 22, verse 16, what we find is
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Paul giving his testimony in front of the Jews who were prosecuting him in Jerusalem. And as part of his testimony, when he was talking about what happened when he stayed with Ananias, he says this, chapter 22, verse 16,
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Ananias says, now, why do you delay? Rise up and be baptized and wash away your sins calling on his name.
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And once again, this is an example of baptism that has come after Paul's salvation.
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This has come after his experience with Jesus on the road to Damascus. And one more brief example we wanna provide, it also comes from Acts.
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In fact, it follows directly from chapter two, verses 37 and 38. If we jump ahead to verse 41, we see this.
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So then those who had received his word were baptized. And that day, there were added about 3 ,000 souls.
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So obviously, we're talking about Pentecost now. And after they had received the word, they were baptized and added to the church.
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And this is important because this is how they were not only identified as Christians, but this is how they were received into the membership of what was their local church, which is a principle that remains with us to this day because it's difficult for me to separate the act of baptism with what would be not only required of a
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Christian, but also required of someone to join and be a member of the local church.
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So we spent a little time talking about several verses about baptism.
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We touched on some of the potential ramifications of the verses that we looked at.
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But then we have to ask, where do we go from this point? And for better or for worse, what
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I think we're gonna do is we're gonna divide this week and next week. So today, we're really just gonna look at the verses.
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We're gonna look at the doctrine. We're gonna look at what scripture says, what we can take from that. But next week, we're gonna move into application.
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We're gonna take what we've learned and we're gonna apply it. We're gonna figure out how we bring this into our church, how to bring it into our lives and into our faith and into our walk with Christ.
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But even with all that said, I think we can still go just a little bit further today because we can still answer questions which
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I don't necessarily think we've answered, like what is baptism? What does it mean? What is its purpose?
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Questions like that. And I think we wanna start with something that's pretty basic.
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If we're talking about baptism, we have to talk about what it means to be a
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Christian. And you could argue that it means a lot of things to be a
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Christian. But to keep this tied into baptism, I wanna share a short definition from a book
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I read recently where the author said this. The author Bobby Jameson said, to be a
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Christian is to be a public witness to Christ. So that sums up a lot of the things that we do.
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That sums up discipleship and evangelism. That sums up the way you live your Christian life, the way you live your life according to what the
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Beatitudes have taught. And remember, a verse that we looked at last week,
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Matthew 10, 32 through 33. Therefore, everyone who confesses me before men,
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I will also confess him before my Father who is in heaven. But whoever denies me before men,
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I will also deny him before my Father who is in heaven. But this definition, this verse, what does it mean in relation to baptism?
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Well, I would tell you this. We're looking at right now three things that baptism is.
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And the first one is baptism is your public profession of faith in Christ.
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Bobby Jameson also says that baptism is where faith goes public. Because again, salvation is an internal thing.
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Salvation is a change in your heart. And while I would say that you really can't keep that in, you can't prevent people from seeing that you've been saved because your life should evidence it.
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Baptism is where you raise your hand and you say, I am a Christian, Jesus has saved me,
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I repent from my sins and all those other things that go along with that. I mean, remember the verse about Pentecost.
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3 ,000 people were added to the church, but the way they were identified and the way they were added was that they were baptized.
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So that's first. Baptism is your proclamation before your fellow brothers and sisters in Christ that you're a
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Christian, that you are a follower of Jesus. So on that hand, it's an identification with a group of people.
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But it does something else, obviously. The opposite of that that it does is that it marks you as set apart from the world.
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This is you standing up in front of everybody also who is not a Christian and saying that you're committing to following Jesus, that you're committing to all the things that go along with that, that your life is now gonna look different from what those people look like because you're a
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Christian. It's a profession of your repentance from your past sins, which is gonna separate you from some people that you might have been really close with before.
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And it's a repudiation. It's a rejection of the life that you used to live before the
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Holy Spirit transformed you. And not to give you too much of a sneak peek, but sometimes that's part of the reason why people don't wanna get baptized.
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They don't wanna cut those ties quite so quickly and quite so obviously because it means they're gonna have to act a certain way.
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But back to the topic at hand. So number one, baptism is your public profession of faith in Christ.
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Now, the second thing that baptism is is a symbolic identification with Christ himself.
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Now, I mentioned the idea of symbolism earlier, and baptism is also symbolically identifying with Christ's death, burial, and resurrection.
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Paul writes about this. We read this, but I'm gonna read it again. Romans 6, verses three through four this time.
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He says, or do you not know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?
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Therefore, we were buried with him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the
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Father, so too might we walk in the newness of life. We see this concept in Colossians 2 .12.
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Having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with him through faith in the working of God who has raised him from the dead.
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More from Paul, Galatians 3 .27. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.
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And the very act of baptism, the physical act that we perform and that we witness shows us this, it mimics this, starting with the death.
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The death is reminiscent of Christ's death, but it's your death to sin. It's your death to the old life that you had before you became a
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Christian, before you experienced salvation through the Holy Spirit. When you're dunked under water, you're mimicking
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Jesus' death and his burial. That's his burial specifically.
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And when you come back up, you see the resurrection of the new life in Christ.
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This is Christ's resurrection, and this is your resurrection. You didn't physically die, but you died to who you were, and you died to what your life was before you were saved.
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And speaking of that, number three, it's symbolic of your new life in Christ, because baptism also symbolizes the cleansing of your soul by the
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Holy Spirit. And we saw this already. I've been revisiting some of these verses, but 1
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Peter 3 .21, corresponding to that, baptism now saves you, not the removal of dirt from the flesh, but an appeal of a good conscience to God through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
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Because once again, it's not that baptism itself accomplishes this, that baptism doesn't save you.
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Water doesn't magically wash your sin away on its own.
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It symbolizes the work that has already been done in you, that has already been done in your heart by the
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Holy Spirit and by Jesus' work on the cross. So just to recap, based on what we've seen in Scripture, these are the things that we're saying about baptism.
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It's an ordinance given by Jesus Christ to the church. The other one is the
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Lord's Supper, which we'll celebrate next week. And despite the fact that baptism does not save you and is technically not a part of your salvation, all true
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Christians still get baptized, all of them.
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And why? Because Jesus commands it. To be a professing
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Christian who is unwilling to be baptized calls into question the legitimacy of your faith.
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It calls into question the legitimacy of your profession of faith. If you are not willing to obey the command of Scripture because you're acting out of disobedience to Jesus.
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But that shouldn't be an issue because as believers, we should be happy to get baptized. Because if we've been truly changed by Christ, we want everyone to know it.
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We want them to know it for our sake, but we want them to know it even more for their sake because we want them to share in what it is that we have.
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And your public profession of faith in Jesus is something that you should be proud of.
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It's not something that you should want to hide. It's not something that you should want to downplay. It should be the most significant part of who you are.
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It should take precedence over any other identity that you have, whether it's as an athlete or as some kind of job that you hold or anything else along those lines.
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None of those things are anywhere near equal in importance to your faith in Christ.
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And then finally, as we said, it symbolically identifies you with Jesus's death, burial and resurrection and with your new life with Christ and the
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Holy Spirit. And there is a lot more to cover and like I said, next week what we'll do is we'll get more practical.
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And my goal next week will be to take what we've looked at and to give us even more principles, more practical application and hopefully answer questions that you have about baptism.
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So I didn't really get into a lot of that stuff this week and I'll do my best to get there next
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Sunday. And I waffled back and forth over and over and I didn't write it down as to whether I should do this or not.
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But if you do have a question about baptism, send it to me. Maybe I'll get to it, maybe I won't. But if you have a question about baptism, let me know.
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Email me or text me or whatever and we'll see if we can get that in there. Now, as we close here,
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I wanna hit on one other thing really quickly and that is this.
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How many times can you be baptized? Can a person be rebaptized?
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I'm gonna say this. Salvation only happens one time.
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Your conversion to a Christian, that transformation from the
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Holy Spirit that we talk about so often happens only one time.
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When you are given the gift of salvation, you cannot lose it. You cannot give it back.
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Because if you do, it means you never really had it. If people talk about losing salvation, they talk about people acting a certain way.
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Oh, that person said they were a Christian and they got baptized, but now they're doing whatever this sinful, terrible thing is.
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Well, they were never a Christian to begin with. I know that's kind of a bold statement to make, but I base that on stuff like this scripture, 1
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John 2, 19. They went out from us, but they were not really of us. For if they were of us, they would have remained with us, but they went out so that it would be manifested that they all are not of us.
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Therefore, if salvation, if true salvation is a one -time event, then you can only have one legitimate baptism.
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But how do you know if your baptism was legitimate? Well, you're gonna have to come back next week to find out.
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So we'll talk about that then. I invite you to pray with me. Heavenly Father, as always, we thank you for your word.
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We thank you for what you have to teach us because when it comes to scripture, we know there's nothing more important for us to know.
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There's nothing more important for us to understand. And if we call ourselves Christians, if we want to claim
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Christ in our lives, then we know that we have to abide by your word. We have to do what it is that you tell us to do.
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We have to live the way that you tell us to live, God. So we pray today that your word would help us toward that obedience, that we would read the scriptures, that we would understand what they say, and they would guide our decisions.
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They would guide our lives and they would guide our behavior in alignment with you.
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God, I pray that if there are people that have questions as to whether or not they're truly a
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Christian, if they have done the right things, if they followed you properly, Lord, we pray that the
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Holy Spirit would continue to illuminate your word, continue to illuminate their minds and clear up these questions.
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As we spend time in our private devotions, we pray that the Holy Spirit would make your words clear and that it would make clear the things that we need to do in our lives to follow you properly.
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God, we thank you for baptism and what it symbolizes, because it means that we are not only sharing in the life of Jesus, but we're taking part in all of the things that come as a result of that.
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So Lord, we thank you for giving us these things. We thank you for saving us. We thank you for what
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Jesus has done on the cross. Lord, we love you and we lift all these things up in your son's holy and precious name,