The Unshakable Kingdom (Hebrews 12:28) | Worship Service | Baptism

Exodus 15: The Song of Moses at the Red Sea

Welcome you to Kootenai Church, we're glad that you all are here today. Would you please stand as we begin our service this morning, with a call to worship from the book of Exodus. Chapter 15, it says, then Moses and the sons of Israel sang the song to Yahweh and said, I will sing to Yahweh for he is highly exalted.

The horse and its rider he has hurled into the sea. Yah is my strength and song and he has become my salvation. This is my God and I will praise him, my father's God and I will extol him. Who is like you among the gods, oh Yahweh?

Who is like you, majestic in holiness, fearsome in praises, working wonders? You stretched out your right hand, the earth swallowed them. In your loving kindness, you have guided the people whom you have redeemed.

In your strength, you have led them to your holy habitation. So this morning, let's praise our God and sing together. Come Christians, join to sing. Let's end this first set this morning and sing together, it is well.

Well, welcome to our special baptism service today. We have seven people being baptized. Then I would just remind you that after our service today, we're going to be moving the chairs and setting up tables for a potluck dinner, which is to follow.

So of course, you're welcome to stick around for that. So the easiest way to do that is when we are done with the closing song, when we are dismissed for the day, then to have some of the people who have done this before to stick around and stack the chairs into stacks and move some of them off to the side and we'll set up tables.

It is much easier to do that if we don't have to work around kids darting back and forth, and everybody else milling around and visiting. So as soon as we're done and you're dismissed, please, if you're not involved in setting up the sanctuary, go out into the foyer in the classrooms and outside or wander around upstairs and take a look at that, anything that you need to do in order to get out of this room, so we can set up as quickly as possible afterwards.

Then it'll probably take about 20 -25 minutes, and then we'll be back in here for a meal, and we'll let you know when to come back in. Turn your Bibles, please, to the Book of Romans to Chapter 6. Book of Romans to Chapter 6.

Baptism and Newness of Life in Romans 6

We're going to read together the first 14 verses of Chapter 6. Romans Chapter 6, beginning of verse 1. What shall we say then? Would you continue in sin so that grace may increase? May it never be. How shall we who died to sin still live in it?

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

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, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin.

For he who has died is freed from sin. Now, if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again. Death no longer is master over him.

For the death that he died, he died to sin once for all, but the life that he lives, he lives to God. Even so, consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you may obey its lusts, and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.

For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law, but under grace. You stand with me as we pray. Let's bow our heads. Our Father, we give you thanks for the great redemption that is in Christ Jesus, which you have forever and fully accomplished on behalf of all who believe and trust upon your Son.

We thank you for the mercy of salvation and how it is so vividly portrayed in the ordinance of baptism that we have been crucified with Christ, we have been buried with him, and we are raised again to newness of life.

And, of course, our identification with Christ and our involvement in his work by faith means that we have been and are forever set free to live unto righteousness by your strength and by your power. And so we pray that our service here together today, that our time, our worship, our reflection upon these great promises may serve to remind us again of not only what we have been given in Christ, but the future, the hope that we have with you, and the power that we have in the present to live victorious and God-honoring lives in this world for the glory of Christ, our King.

In his name we pray. Amen.

Psalm 46 and the Refuge of God

Okay, let's sing together. You made us your own. We were ruler, killed, preached out, with song in us, by his blood, oh, how... In Psalm 46, verses 1 to 7, it reads,. God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.

Therefore, we will not fear, though the earth should change and though the mountains shake into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains quake at its lofty pride. There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy dwelling places of the Most High.

God is in the midst of her, she will not be shaken. God will help her when morning dawns. The nations roar, the kingdoms shake. He gives his voice, the earth melts. Yahweh of hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our stronghold.

We're going to sing a new psalm this morning out of Psalm 46. Be still, be still, my soul. Should mountains melt into the roaring oceans, the earth give way, for heaven's lights are cold. Almighty God, you are my strong defense.

Be still, be still, my soul. When all I see are, when I'm in doubt. Oh, Lord, you promised to be still, my soul. It's easy, just judge their deeds.

Pentecost, Repentance, and Baptism in Acts 2

Will you please turn in your Bibles to the book of Acts, the book of Acts, chapter 2. In a few moments, we're going to have some folks up here who have expressed a desire to follow the Lord in believers' baptism, and before being immersed in the water, they are going to give their testimony of faith in Christ.

That is the basis upon which we baptize people, a credible profession of faith in Jesus Christ. And before we do that, I want to focus our hearts and our minds upon this passage of Scripture in Acts chapter 2, beginning at verse 37.

This is going to show us by example the significance as well as the purpose of baptism. This is going to be a familiar passage to many of you. The event that is described here at Day of Pentecost, the birth of the church, is going to be well-known to many of you.

3 ,000 people got saved that day. So before we dive into the passage, let's ask the Lord's blessing upon our study. Our Father, we would ask that your grace would be extended to us through the course of our study and our reflection, our meditation upon your Word.

We pray that your Spirit would teach us and instruct us and help us to see clearly and plainly the meaning and intention of the text so that we may honor you through our obedience to it and our appreciation of what you have given to us in the ordinance of baptism.

We ask your blessing upon this time and upon our study and upon our worship here together in Christ's name, amen. Acts 2, beginning at verse 37, we're going to read through the end of verse 47. Now, when they had heard this, they were pierced to the heart and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, brethren, what shall we do?

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 Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God will call to himself.

With many other words, he solemnly testified and kept on exhorting them, saying, be saved from this perverse generation. So then those who had received his word were baptized and that day there were added about 3000 souls.

They were continually devoting themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone kept feeling a sense of awe and many wonders and signs were taking place through the apostles.

And those who had believed were together and had all things in common. And they began selling their property and possessions and were sharing them with all as anyone might have need. Day by day, continuing with one mind in the temple and breaking bread from house to house, they were taking their meals together with gladness and sincerity of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people.

And the Lord was adding to their number day by day those who were being saved. This is obviously a larger passage than I would normally take here on a Sunday morning. And while I might dive into more of the details in this passage, if we were going through this in a series from the book of Acts, today we're just going to observe some things, four of them particularly, about these people who are being baptized on the day of Pentecost.

We are going to note their conviction, their contrition, their confession, and then their consecration. Their conviction, their contrition, their confession, and then their consecration. Now, normally you would hear a good outline like that and you would think, he's not going to waste all of those on one Sunday.

He's going to stretch that out and that would be four sermons. And it should be four sermons. But as much as it hurts my heart today, I'm going to go through all of these in our time here together, just kind of briefly noticing these four things about these folks who were baptized on the day of Pentecost.

This is the day that the church was born. And these four things that we observe about the candidates for baptism on that day, tell us something about the function of baptism and the meaning of baptism in the early church.

So let's note, first of all, their conviction in verse 37. Now, when they heard this, they were pierced to the heart and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, brethren, what shall we do? Now, the very first question that presents us in the text, presents itself to us in the text, is this question, why were they pierced to the heart?

Now, we are, when we begin at verse 37, we're sort of parachuting into the middle of this story and this series of events in Acts chapter two, they were pierced to the heart. The reason for that is explained in the context when we see what else is going on.

Now, we obviously have to kind of jump in at verse 37. We're going to look at the response of the crowd, what happened that day, the baptism itself, what happened after the baptism. But in order to do that, we need to allude back to the rest of the context for that day.

This was the day of Pentecost, and the story begins back at the beginning of chapter two. This was 50 days after the Passover or slash resurrection of Christ. It is 10 days after Christ's ascension, and the disciples according to his command and his promise were waiting in the city of Jerusalem until the promise of the Holy Spirit was given.

Then the Spirit is poured out and the disciples who were there, the believers began to speak in tongues that is not ecstatic babble that was not understood to anybody around them, but it was intelligent languages that they had never learned before.

So they began to preach the gospel in the language of the people who had gathered in Jerusalem for the day of Pentecost in their own tongue, their own language, their own dialect, so that the people who were there could understand the gospel.

And some of them mocked them and said, well, you're just, you're drunk. And Peter then of course responds and said, no, we're not drunk, it's nine o 'clock in the morning. What you're seeing here is not the results of being filled with alcohol.

What you're seeing here is the results of us being filled with the Holy Spirit. They had a gift and an ability that the Spirit had given them to proclaim a message of repentance and judgment to the Jews who were standing there so that having heard that gospel, they would respond to it.

Peter and the apostles were simply doing what Jesus had commanded them to do back in Matthew 28, when he said, all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

Now, without all of the details of everything that Peter gives them in his response to them, beginning back in verse 18 and earlier, without getting into all the details of that, it is worth noting that the apostle Peter quoted and explained three different Old Testament passages.

First, he quotes from Joel 2, verses 28 to 32. You see that in verses 20 and 21. Joel 28 to 32, to show that the coming of the Holy Spirit was something promised and predicted in the Old Testament. So what they were seeing that day was something that God had already promised to them through the prophet Joel, and Peter simply reminding them of that promise.

What you're seeing here is not wine, it is the result of the Spirit being poured out. And because the Spirit is being poured out, this is the birth of the church, and He is now indwelling His people, you're seeing a glimpse of the ultimate pouring out of the Spirit during this coming millennial kingdom.

What you're seeing here is the initial fulfillment of that promise from Joel. Then he began, you'll notice in verse 21, that he concludes his little explanation of Joel 2 there with that phrase from Joel, and it shall be that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

There is that promise there. And I think Peter intentionally quotes that because he wants to point the people to their need to be saved. To be saved from what? Their own guilt. And so then the next thing that Peter does is he indicts them for their rejection and their crucifixion of the Messiah.

Look at verse 22. Men of Israel, listen to these words. Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through him in your midst. Just as you yourselves know, this man delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put him to death.

But God raised him up again, putting an end to the agony of death since it was impossible for him to be held in its power. And then Peter in verses 25 through 28 quotes from a second Old Testament passage, Psalm 16, to show that the resurrection of the Messiah was also predicted and foreshadowed in the Old Testament.

So the resurrection which they had heard about because the garden tomb is only a short walk from where Peter is preaching this sermon. And of course, everybody in Jerusalem knew that the body was gone, that the tomb was empty, that the Roman soldiers were circulating this rumor that the body had been stolen by the disciples.

So the fact that the body is missing and nobody can produce that is the news of the day. And so now Peter is indicting them for their own murder of the Messiah. Then he points to the Old Testament and says the resurrection of that Messiah was predicted in the Old Testament, Psalm 16.

And then he quotes from a third passage from the Old Testament, Psalm 110, to explain that the ascension of the Messiah, something that had happened 10 days prior was also predicted in the Old Testament.

His death, him being handed over by you, two criminals, and you put him to death, that was predetermined by God, foreshadowed in the Old Testament, spoken of in the Old Testament, Isaiah 53. His resurrection, Psalm 16, his ascension to glory where he sits at the Father's right hand and waits for that day when his enemies will be made a footstool for his feet, and then he will come back and he will judge them and punish them in judgment and victory.

That, of course, was predicted in the Old Testament as well, Psalm 110. So Peter is preaching from three separate Old Testament texts to show that they had killed their Messiah according to the predetermined plan and purpose of God, that God had raised him from the dead and brought him, ascended him to the Father's right hand where he sits until he will fulfill all of the promises that he has made to the nation of Israel and to the Jewish nation.

So even though Peter is saying the crucifixion of your Messiah was predetermined and foreknown by God, he says to this crowd gathered there, you bear the blame for it. You crucified him. You put him to death at the hands of wicked men.

He is indicting them for their murder of the Messiah, and they were convicted over that, confronted with their sin. They felt the weight of their guilt and their transgressions and their sin before God, understanding now that the one whom they had crucified had been raised from the dead and was ascended to the Father's right hand and that he is coming again in judgment.

The people now are made to see and understand their own guilt, their own moral culpability, and the judgment that is to come upon them for their sin of rejecting their Messiah and crucifying him. Peter did not stand up and promise them their best life now, health and wealth and prosperity or better living or anything else like that.

Instead, he got up there and he presented the most unpopular message possible. You're guilty of killing your Christ, and he's coming again. And guess who is in his crosshairs? You, if you will not repent and trust him.

That was the message. Now notice their contrition, verse 37. Now when they'd heard this, they were pierced to the heart, said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, and here's their contrition. Brethren, what shall we do?

They are moved to action. They understand their guilt. They see it. Holy God, I am a guilty sinner. And now they are seeking a remedy for that condition. They want to be made right or to make something right.

They're not suppressing their conviction and their guilt, just ignoring it and moving on and saying, well, I'll deal with this at some other time. I'll find a way of dealing with my guilt. I'll find a way of clearing my conscience.

I'll make it right in some other way. I'll go do something to pay off my moral crimes. They have been convicted over their sin, and now they're expressing their contrition and their willingness, their readiness to be made right or to make right what it is that they have done.

They want a solution for their guilt problem. And listen, every believer who has trusted in Jesus Christ has come to this point in the equation. At some point, if you are a believer in Christ, at some point, you have come to understand your own moral culpability before a holy God, that you have transgressed his law, that you have told lies, and scripture says, thou shalt not lie.

And so therefore, you're guilty of breaking that commandment that you have lusted in your heart, that you have dishonored your parents, that you have stolen things, that you have taken the name of God in vain, that you have not worshiped and served God and God alone every moment of your life for your entire life.

And therefore, you have heaped up a weight of guilt before a holy God who sits enthroned in heaven and will have his way with sinners on the last day. You have come to that place. You have come to understand, I am guilty.

I deserve justice. I need mercy and grace. I deserve justice, but I need mercy and grace. And if I don't get mercy and grace, and instead, I get justice, I will be undone. I will perish everlastingly.

I need God to extend grace to me and mercy to me, and I need to have all of my sins taken out of the way, my guilt removed, my transgressions forgiven. I need to be made righteous and right, and I need to be made clean from my sin so that when I can stand in the courtroom of God's justice, I will not hear guilty sinner condemned, depart from me, you worker of iniquity, into the eternal fires, prepared for the devil and his angels.

I don't wanna hear that. And I will hear that if I am not made right in a right standing with God. So how does that take place? Well, Peter's already explained to them, by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified the Messiah.

He died as a sacrifice for sin. And then in fulfillment to Scripture, according to Psalm 16, he rose again, victorious over death, so that now death has been taken out of the way, and he has been exalted to the right hand of the Father, and that is the place from which he will grant faith and repentance to any and all who believe upon him.

So if you wanna be made right with that God and have that sin debt taken away, you must have a payment for your sin. You can either stand in God's presence and bear the full weight of his wrath against you for your every transgression, or you can trust in one who stood in your place and bore that wrath in your place and rose again, offering a full and favorable sacrifice to the Father on behalf of any and all who will trust in him.

And so now, of course, the only question is, what must I do to be saved? That's what the men are asking. What must we do? I wonder if there's a little bit of remorse also in their question. You've crucified the Messiah, he rose again, and he has ascended to the Father's right hand.

And every Jew there would have been thinking to himself, then what shall we do? Like, we've already gone too far. We can't undo that and bring him back and embrace him and accept him. Well, Peter offers to them a solution, something to do that would, in essence, be embracing him and turning from their sin.

Repentance, Faith, and the Meaning of Baptism

This is their confession, verse 38 through 41. Peter said to them, repent and each one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

For the promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God will call to himself. And with many other words, he solemnly testified and kept on exhorting them saying, be saved from this perverse generation.

So then those who had received his word were baptized and that day there were added about 3 ,000 souls. Now, there are, if you're familiar with this passage, there are two interpretive issues that we have to address and I would love to be able to give an entire sermon to each one of these two interpretive issues, but I'm just gonna give you a brief explanation of what the issues are and then I think what scripture teaches concerning them.

The first is that verse 39 seems to suggest that infants should be baptized. This promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off and as many as the Lord our God will call to himself.

Why does Peter mention children in there in connection with the promise? The second question that needs to be explained is Peter seems to suggest that baptism is necessary for salvation. Repent and be baptized in order that you may receive the forgiveness of sins.

So of course that raises the question, can one receive the forgiveness of sins without baptism? It seems to suggest that Peter is commanding and ordaining not only that infants be baptized, that children be baptized, but also that baptism is necessary for one to receive the forgiveness of sins.

I'll deal quickly with each one of those. And listen, if you're here normally, then you know how much I wanna stop and just camp on each one of these because there's no way of doing justice to this in just the few minutes that I have.

But if I didn't say anything about it, then people here who believe in infant baptism would say, see, the coward didn't say anything about it. And so he just wants to skip over that because he's too afraid to deal with the passage.

And people who think that you need to be baptized to be saved would say, see, the coward just skipped over that because he doesn't wanna deal with the passage that teaches that you need to be baptized to be saved.

So I'm not a coward, I'm gonna deal with it, but not as deeply as we might hope. First, let's talk about infant baptism. Let's ask three questions of our text, and here are the three questions. Number one, what is the promise that is spoken of?

He says in verse 39, for the promise is for you and for your children, and for all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God will call to himself. What is the promise that is being spoken of? Now, pedobaptists, infant baptizers, infant baptism, pedobaptism is not a heresy, not a heresy.

I think it can lead to a heresy if you think that in the waters of baptism, the infant is saved and eternally secure. That I think is baptismal regeneration. That can be a heretical position, but infant baptism itself is not a heresy.

So the pedobaptist would say that the promise is the same promise that was given to Abraham and to his descendants back in Genesis 17, when the ordinance of circumcision was given to Abraham, he said, this sign is for you and for your children, meaning that Abraham and all of his children were to be circumcised.

And so the pedobaptist would say, here he's referring to a now a new covenant promise that is baptism, which has replaced circumcision. And therefore, since we circumcise babies in the Old Testament, we should circumcise, sorry, baptize babies in the New Testament that the baptism now has replaced this because that's the promise that is intended here.

And I would just simply say to that, that that is nowhere in the context, Peter is not at all dealing with the subject of the relationship between the new covenant and the old covenant or the continuation of the promise to Abraham.

That is not in Peter's view here. It's not what he's describing. In answer to the question, what is the promise being spoken of here? The promise being spoken of is the Holy Spirit. Now, all the way through this context, Peter has been talking about the Holy Spirit.

Remember that was the issue that was raised at the very beginning, you're drunk. Peter says, no, it's the Holy Spirit poured out on us in fulfillment of Joel chapter two. So in Acts chapter two, verse 17, look at it.

He says, I will pour forth my spirit on all mankind. And by quoting the book of Joel, Peter is saying this is what was promised by the father back by the prophets. Acts chapter two, verse 33, having received from the father, what?

The promise of the Holy Spirit. Acts two, verse 38, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. In Luke chapter 24, Luke also written by Luke who wrote Acts in Luke 24, Jesus said, and behold, I am sending forth the promise of my father upon you, but you're to stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.

Jesus there calls the Holy Spirit the promise of my father. In Acts chapter one, gathering them together, he commanded them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for what the father had promised. So now when Peter says this promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off and any whom the Lord God will call to himself, what promise is he talking about?

An ordinance that is given specifically to one's children or infants? Or is the promise the Holy Spirit whom Luke has already called the promise many times in the context. The promise is the Holy Spirit himself.

Now second, who are the recipients of this promise? Look at Acts two, verse 39 again. If the promise is for you and for your children, for all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God will call to himself.

So Peter is saying, these are the people who received this promise, the Holy Spirit. They are for you, that is my immediate hearers on this day, for your descendants who come after you, for any who are far off, that's how many people?

That's basically everybody. But Peter doesn't mean not only everybody here and everybody's children, but everybody who might not be here and as far off forever. But Peter specifically restricts the promise specifically to as many as the Lord our God will call to himself.

So who are the recipients of baptism? Those whom the Lord our God calls to himself. How do I know if the Lord our God has called somebody to himself? The fact that they are born in a Christian home or the fact that they turn from their sin, believe savingly upon Jesus Christ, trust in him and confess their faith in him.

That's how I know that one, at least that is a pretty solid indication that that is one who has called upon the Lord God. In other words, the electing, repenting and work of faith is the evidence that God has called somebody to himself.

Those are the ones who were baptized. That's the ones to whom the promise is made. So the promise is not given to all children without exception any more than it was given to all of Peter's hearers without exception or to all who are far off without exception.

It was for any in any of those groups whom the Lord God would call to himself. Third question, who was baptized that day? Look at verse 41. So then those who received the word were baptized. And that day there were added about 3000 souls.

Who do we baptize? Those who receive the word. Not those who received the word and their children, but those who receive the word. The one who has heard the word, understood the word, responded to the word, the one in whom the word has created faith and granted repentance and been brought to salvation.

Those are the candidates for baptism. So only believers were baptized in the New Testament. That is the New Testament pattern and the New Testament teaching. Second, is baptism necessary for salvation?

Matt Wehmeyer in his book, A Biblical Critique of Infant Baptism, which is worth its weight in gold, says this. This verse, and I commend the book to you because he deals with this issue of whether baptism is necessary for salvation.

He deals with the issues that are raised in verse 39. Here's what he writes. Quote, this verse is difficult to interpret because it seems to indicate that water baptism is a prerequisite for the forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Since the Bible clearly teaches that man is saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, how can Peter imply that baptism is a condition for salvation? Close quote. We affirm that man is saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

So how is it that Peter can say, you need to repent and be baptized in order to have the forgiveness of sins? How do we resolve this? There are three ways, typically, three possible answers to this dilemma.

The first is to say that the phrase, for the forgiveness of sins, in verse 39, is it verse 39 or verse 38? Verse 38. The first is to say that the phrase, for the forgiveness of sins, can be translated because of the forgiveness of sins.

In other words, you repent and then be baptized because your sins are forgiven. That's the first way that that is resolved. That means that basically their baptism was an expression of their confidence in the reality that their sins had been forgiven.

Now that is a possible interpretation of that phrase. I don't think that it is the likely interpretation of that phrase. According to Wehmeyer, there are only three verses in all of the New Testament where the word for can be translated in that way and possibly mean that, and all three of them are contentious.

In other words, it's not clear in any of those three. So that is not my preferred interpretation of the passage. The second possibility is that for the forgiveness of sins modifies the verb repent and not the word be baptized.

In other words, that it should be translated, repent for the forgiveness of sins and be baptized, period. Grammatically, that is difficult to work out in the New Testament simply because the way that the words are used in singular cases and plural cases and all that stuff, and I don't even wanna get into that, not because I don't have time, but because I don't understand it myself.

So that's obviously not my chosen interpretation of the passage. There is a third possibility and it is this, it is to take Peter's words at face value. If you were to be forgiven, you're gonna have to be baptized.

Now you say, but how do I reconcile that with my Protestant understanding of faith alone, grace alone, Christ alone? That is a problem for us until we realize this, that baptism was the public confession of one's allegiance to Jesus Christ.

It is the public confession of one's allegiance to Jesus Christ. So Wehmeyer writes this, to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ was to publicly declare one's allegiance to Christ and one's desire to follow him as a disciple.

For this reason, when Peter exhorted the Jews to be baptized, he was commanding them to express their allegiance to Christ, an allegiance that was indeed a necessary response to the gospel. In this way, the command to be baptized incorporated both the physical act of water baptism and the commitment to Christ that it symbolized.

In the context of Acts 2 then, an unwillingness to be baptized would have exposed an unwillingness to obey the gospel and become a disciple of Christ. Let me say that again. An unwillingness to be baptized in Acts 2 would have exposed an unwillingness to obey the gospel and become a disciple of Christ.

In that sense, and for that reason, the Jews had to be baptized to be forgiven for to refuse baptism was to refuse Christ and the salvation that he offered. In other words, the apostle Peter links baptism and faith so closely there as to almost not even draw a distinction between them because the faith that saves is a faith that will say, be baptized, absolutely.