The Baptism of New Disciples in Lord's Day Worship

Sovereign Grace Family Church

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November 19, 2014

00:01: We are continuing tonight in our lesson, Decently and in Order, the title of our series, Understanding Proper Lord's Day Worship.
00:14: You should be getting a handout now as it's coming around.
00:17: And today, we're going to begin a two-part series, a series within a series, on ordinances in Lord's Day Worship.
00:30: So, the ordinances of the church, which are baptism and the Lord's Supper.
00:36: We're going to look tonight at the subject of baptism.
00:40: And then, after next week, Thanksgiving, we will not have service on Wednesday night.
00:45: And then the week after that, Wednesday, we will move on to our study of the Lord's Supper.
00:53: So, let's look at our introduction.
00:55: In our last lesson, we addressed the division which is caused by music in the modern church.
01:01: In church history, there is another even more divisive subject which still divides believers to this very day.
01:11: That two-fold subject consists of baptism and the Lord's Supper.
01:16: I use the singular subject because it's the subject of ordinances.
01:19: It's the subject of what could also be called, in some churches, sacraments.
01:24: That's the subject which is so divisive.
01:27: It was the subject that divided Martin Luther and Urich Zwinglich, was the understanding of the ordinances.
01:32: It's been divisive not just between Catholics and Protestants, but it has been divisive even within Protestantism.
01:41: So, we're going to spend two weeks, certainly not enough time to really flesh everything out, but we are, in the larger series of worship, going to spend two weeks examining how these are to be understood in Lord's Day worship.
01:55: So, that is our goal and our focus for tonight, to look at the subject of baptism.
02:05: So, tonight we will be looking at the subject of baptism.
02:10: We're going to look at three main headings.
02:14: Number one, baptism is the external sign of a person's entrance into the New Covenant.
02:21: Number two, baptism is a living picture of the promise of God in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
02:28: And number three, baptism is a public event which is meant to be participated in by the assembly of believers.
02:38: So, that's our three-fold lesson in how it relates to Lord's Day worship.
02:44: So, let us move now back to number one.
02:48: Baptism is an external sign of a person's entrance into the New Covenant.
02:55: Letter A, all believers are in a covenant relationship with God through faith in Jesus Christ.
03:05: All believers.
03:09: If you want to take down a few verses just to have them there under that.
03:14: 2 Corinthians 3.6, Paul identifies himself as the minister of the New Covenant.
03:22: He is a minister of the New Covenant.
03:25: And of course, we know that that's language which comes from the Old Testament, where the Old Testament prophets would say, there is coming a new covenant that God is going to establish.
03:35: And Jesus, of course, establishes that covenant in His blood.
03:39: Hebrews 7 and verse 22 tells us that Jesus is the guarantor of a better covenant.
03:48: And in Hebrews chapter 7, it's related specifically to saying that the New Covenant is not just new, but it's better than the old.
03:57: It's not bound by the same restrictions as the old.
04:00: It's not held under the same problems as the old.
04:03: And one of the problems that Hebrews talks about is the fact that that priests would die and new priests would have to come.
04:10: But now we have a priest that liveth forever.
04:12: And so we have a new covenant with a new priest.
04:15: And he lives eternally to make intercession for his people.
04:20: So that's the blessing of the New Covenant.
04:22: Now, I do want us to read a text together in Hebrews.
04:25: If you ever are really interested in studying the New Covenant and how it relates to the Old Covenant, Hebrews, of course, is a great place to go.
04:34: Hebrews chapter 8, and we're going to read verses 6 through 13.
04:47: Hebrews chapter 8, beginning at verse 6.
04:52: But as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old, as the covenant he mediates is better since it is enacted on better promises.
05:05: So here he says, he says, Christ mediates a better covenant with better promises.
05:10: Verse 7, for if that first covenant had been thoughtless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second.
05:18: For he finds fault with them when he says, and this is a quote, Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, for they did not continue in my covenant, and so I showed no concern for them, declares the Lord.
05:41: For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord.
05:46: I will put my laws into their minds and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God and they shall be my people.
05:53: That's covenantal language.
05:54: God owns us.
05:55: We're his and he is ours.
05:58: Verse 11, and they shall not teach each one his neighbor and each one his brother saying, Know the Lord, for they shall all know me from the least of them to the greatest.
06:08: For I will be merciful toward their iniquities and I will remember their sins no more.
06:15: Then he goes on in verse 13, in speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first covenant obsolete and what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.
06:26: It's an important passage because he relates the new covenant to the old covenant.
06:30: He said the fact that the new covenant comes makes the old covenant void.
06:34: It's obsolete.
06:35: It's no longer binding.
06:37: We are now under the new covenant.
06:39: We are now part of this relationship with God through Christ, which is established in the new covenant.
06:47: So all believers are in a covenant relationship with God through faith in Jesus Christ.
06:56: Now, letter B, baptism is compared to circumcision because both are external signs meant to indicate entrance into a covenant relationship with God.
07:15: So the word there is entrance, the first word was believers, the second word is entrance.
07:24: If you're taking notes and I don't want you to miss any of the words, baptism is compared to circumcision.
07:36: Well, where do we see that? Turn in your Bible to Colossians chapter two.
07:40: Colossians chapter two compares baptism and circumcision.
07:46: It brings them together.
07:48: In verse 11, Colossians chapter two, it says in him also, you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands.
08:01: By putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God who raised him from the dead.
08:21: Now, this is an important passage.
08:25: Because of the connection between baptism and circumcision, many Christians believe that infant children are to be baptized.
08:37: They point to the old covenant and they say in the old covenant, an infant child was circumcised.
08:46: And because circumcision was a picture of the entrance into the covenant with God, that in the new covenant, we have a new sign.
08:56: The sign is baptism.
08:58: It's no longer circumcision that now we can baptize infants because they are rightful candidates having been born to Christian parents or at least one Christian parent.
09:11: Now, I want to make a note.
09:16: I don't want to make tonight's lesson specifically a lesson of infant versus believers baptism.
09:24: However, as a congregation which teaches believers baptism and would reject the practice of infant baptism, yet at the same time admiring men like R.C.
09:36: Sproul himself, a person who believes in infant baptism and teaches infant baptism.
09:41: It would be foolish of me not to at least let you know why we draw the line where we do and why as a church we teach what we do, because again, this is not something wherein we would say a person is a heretic.
09:56: We would not say a person is a heretic if they believe in infant baptism.
10:01: I don't believe R.C.
10:01: Sproul is a heretic.
10:03: I don't believe he's correct on this issue, but I don't believe that he is so far removed that it would be a gospel issue.
10:09: And that's what's important here, that we understand that there are things that we disagree on and we can do so without calling each other unbelievers, because that's what you say when you say a person is a heretic.
10:21: You're saying they don't believe the gospel.
10:23: OK, and that's important in the Old Covenant.
10:26: Here's here's our position.
10:27: Make it simple.
10:29: In the Old Covenant, a person was made a member of the covenant by physical birth.
10:36: Everybody agree.
10:37: In the Old Covenant, a person was made a member of the new covenant or a member of that covenant by physical birth.
10:42: You were born into the family of Israel.
10:44: Thus, you remember the covenant with God.
10:45: Thus, you received the sign of the covenant, which was circumcision.
10:51: However, in the New Covenant, no one is a member of the covenant by birth.
10:58: The Bible does not say anywhere in the in the New Testament that a person is a member of the New Covenant by physical birth.
11:04: Membership in the New Covenant is by spiritual rebirth.
11:11: John, chapter one, verse 11, Jesus said he came into his own or I'm sorry, John, speaking of Jesus as he came into his own and his own people did not receive him.
11:21: But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave them the right to become children of God who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
11:34: How is a person made a child of God? By being born again, not by being born physically, but by being born spiritually.
11:45: That is how a person becomes a member of the New Covenant and is in covenant relationship with God, who then becomes their father.
11:52: He is not their father.
11:53: Prior to that, he gave them the power, the right, the ability to become children of God.
12:00: By faith, Jesus was actually very emphatic that physical birth does not constitute entrance into a saving relationship with God.
12:10: John, three, six, that which is born of flesh is flesh and that which is born of spirit is spirit.
12:17: John, six, sixty three is the spirit who gives life.
12:21: The flesh is no help at all.
12:25: As a result, while the children of Christians have the blessing of being raised in Christian homes, they have the blessing of being taught in Christian churches, they have the blessing of having at least one Christian parent.
12:38: They are by no means member of the New Covenant until such time as they receive the gift of regeneration.
12:46: We are spiritually, not physically born into the New Covenant.
12:53: Baptism is then meant to be an outward sign which accompanies spiritual birth, not physical birth.
13:01: That is our position as a church.
13:04: Yes, baptism is a sign.
13:06: Yes, it symbolizes entrance into the New Covenant.
13:09: But we do not give it to children, infants, because we do not believe that infants are part of the New Covenant until they are born again.
13:20: Makes sense.
13:23: OK, now, letter C, I've given you the outline in the 1689 Second London Baptist Confession of Faith, which succinctly expresses what we teach in regard to the ordinance of baptism.
13:38: Number one, baptism is an ordinance of the New Testament ordained by Jesus Christ to be to the person who is baptized a sign of his fellowship with Christ in his death and resurrection of his being engrafted into Christ of remission of sins and of that person's giving up of himself to God through Jesus Christ to live and walk in newness of life.
14:01: Number two, those who actually profess repentance towards God, faith in and obedience to our Lord Jesus Christ are the only proper subjects for this ordinance.
14:11: Number three, the outward element to be used in this ordinance is water in which the person is to be baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
14:23: Immersion, the dipping of the person in water is necessary for the due administration of this ordinance.
14:30: Now, that is how it is outlined in the 1689 Confession, and that is how we practice baptism in this church.
14:38: When I'm teaching a person, a baptismal candidate on the subject of baptism, when a person comes to me and says, I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as my savior and I have a desire to follow him in obedience and baptism.
14:51: And my response would be, let us go and examine what we believe about baptism and make sure that you understand.
14:58: And we'd go here to the confession and we would read it along with the Bible verses which accompany these passages.
15:04: It's not written in, but there are Bible verses in the document which accompany this teaching.
15:12: Now, having said all that, and I'm going to spend a lot more time on this than I am on the later thing, so don't think that this lesson is going to go two hours.
15:20: It won't.
15:21: But I do want to make a distinction because I think it's important.
15:25: You will hear the term sacrament and you will hear the term ordinance.
15:35: You will hear the term sacrament and you'll hear the term ordinance.
15:40: Now, we prefer to use the term ordinance.
15:47: However, I am not absolutely opposed to using the word sacrament as long as we understand the meaning of the word sacrament, because sacramentalism and sacerdotalism are a problem because that's why we fought with Rome in the first place.
16:09: So using the word sacrament, you need to understand that it does come with a little bit of baggage.
16:14: And that's what I wanted to kind of express why I prefer the word ordinance.
16:20: Let's just go over it very quickly.
16:22: The word sacrament in the early Latin meant an obligation or an oath.
16:29: Much like the word ordinance, it's something you're supposed to do, it's ordered, it's ordained, it's something you're supposed to do.
16:35: However, later in the Latin, it would become synonymous with the word mystery.
16:50: It's not the original intended meaning, but it was what became the meaning later is the word mystery.
16:59: Now, here is why this is an issue, because in Roman Catholicism, the belief is that God's grace is channeled to us through the sacraments, which means that the church has the authority to dispense and to hold back the grace of God as it sees fit.
17:27: Now, why is that important? Well, if you consider what that means, none of you are saved.
17:36: Because the Roman Catholic Church has the authority to dispense God's grace, you are not Roman Catholics, you have not received the mass, nor have you received Catholic baptism.
17:45: Maybe some of you have, but I don't think any of you were born a Roman Catholic.
17:48: But if you've not received the Roman Catholic ordinance or sacrament of baptism, then you've not received the grace of justification, which comes along with that, according to Roman Catholic teachings.
17:57: Neither have you can receive the continual grace of the mass, which is necessary to keep you justified.
18:03: Justified.
18:05: Yes, what would be some of the.
18:12: Yeah, if you if you are there, the divorce can be one.
18:16: I mean, there's all kinds of sins that could cause you to be held back from the from from mass.
18:23: And if you left the Roman Catholic Church, you would be then considered to be outside of the of the operation of the of the sacraments.
18:32: I taught on this a while back, but since I'm sure some of you were not here and some of you probably don't even remember.
18:36: There's something called X opera close and actually X opera operato, X opera operato, X opera operato.
18:54: What X opera operato means in Latin is the thing working works or the thing, the work working, the work.
19:02: It does the work essentially.
19:04: Let me let me let me back up because I'm sounding like a fool.
19:07: What it means is that the sacrament actually does that, which it signifies.
19:12: So the water that is being used for baptism is literally causing it is working that rebirth.
19:20: It's doing it.
19:22: It doesn't depend on the priest or anyone else.
19:24: It works because it has been imbibed with with power from God to do that thing.
19:30: In a sense, baptism becomes the channel of God's justification.
19:35: God's grace.
19:38: Now, I mentioned another word earlier, sacerdotalism.
19:41: Sacerdotalism is the view that the sacrament has the power to confer the grace which it signifies.
19:48: And again, it's very similar to X opera operato.
19:51: It actually does what it pictures.
19:54: We say baptism is a sign.
19:57: They say the sign is doing the work and thus the sign.
20:01: And in Roman Roman Catholicism, there's not two sacraments.
20:04: There's seven.
20:06: There's seven different sacraments, including marriage, last rites and several others and baptism, the Lord's Supper or the mass.
20:15: OK, so within the system of Roman Catholicism, there is a belief that the grace of God is channeled through these sacraments.
20:25: Now, I want to clarify something here, because you will hear Protestants and you may even hear me at times talk about means of grace, the term means of grace.
20:46: Now, when a Protestant like Brother Steve Jennings was here, he used the term means of grace when he was preaching.
20:55: When a Protestant uses that term, he does not mean X opera operato.
21:01: I know that he doesn't, because this is what we fought against when we left Rome.
21:06: By saying that it is a means of grace, they believe that the sacraments confer sanctifying grace or what we would say growth in grace.
21:19: And that's why typically if I say I will say it's a means of growth and grace.
21:24: I won't just simply you can shorten it to say a means of grace, but it is essentially a means of growth in grace, because the Bible does say in 2nd Peter 318 that we grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
21:38: We can grow in it.
21:39: And thus, if we can grow, what are the means to growth? The means to growth or participation in worship and in the participation in worship, we have the hearing of the word, the preaching of the word.
21:49: We have the the prayers and we have the ordinances or sacraments, which are all means that God uses to grow us in grace.
22:00: So in that sense, we can say that the ordinances or the sacraments can be means of God's dispensing of his grace in our sanctification.
22:16: So to say that we grow in grace through participation in sacraments is not a problem so long as we do not fall into the trap of Roman Catholicism, which would say that these graces cause and or affect our justification, because that's the issue and many fall into this error.
22:35: They believe that baptism confers justification on a person, and that is not so.
22:45: The Bible says we are justified by grace through faith and not of ourselves.
22:52: It is the gift of God, not of works.
22:54: And I had a friend because the churches of Christ believe that baptism is how a person is, their sins are remitted through baptism.
23:05: And he said, well, baptism is not much of a work.
23:09: It's not really a work at all.
23:11: And I said, but it is.
23:12: It's applying something of necessity that we must do to have God's grace given to us in justification.
23:23: That is not true.
23:24: The Bible says God's grace comes to us as a free gift, and that must be understood.
23:31: Do the ordinances have value? Yes.
23:34: Do they? Are they means of God's sanctifying grace? Yes.
23:38: But are they justifying works in of themselves? The answer is no.
23:44: And that must be made clear.
23:45: Yes, you're.
23:50: Yes, I agree.
23:51: The argument back, because I have had this debate before, they would argue back and say, well, the thief on the cross was he died according to the old covenant, not the new covenant, because Christ had not yet established the new covenant, because he had not yet died.
24:06: So the new covenant rule that baptism brings justification did not come until after Christ died.
24:13: That's their argument.
24:13: I don't agree with it.
24:16: They would all disagree.
24:17: I think the I think the stronger argument is when the Apostle Paul attached the Judaizers for saying that you have made circumcision the way that a person is saved.
24:31: You've made circumcision a requirement for salvation.
24:34: Well, in the very same way, the churches of Christ and many others have made baptism.
24:38: Basically, they have they have let baptism take the place of circumcision, but in a different way, because they've said baptism is now the have to for justification.
24:46: Baptism is the thing that a person goes into the water, say, then they come out or goes into the water lost and comes out saved.
24:53: And here's the thing, guys, I don't know how many of you watch those guys with the big old beards that go shooting ducks on television.
24:58: All those guys are Church of Christ guys.
25:00: All those guys believe in baptismal regeneration.
25:07: They believe something false about the gospel.
25:12: And it's a huge deal because I believe that what they believe is wrong.
25:21: Well, Roman Catholics believe a different way of understanding it, much different way of understanding it.
25:26: But it is essentially a view of ex operato that the water is doing the work of of remission of sins or justification.
25:35: So having said all that, what do we believe baptism is? It is a sign of entrance into the new covenant.
25:43: It does not have a causal effect, meaning it does not by itself bring about our justification or our regeneration.
25:53: It is the sign of that, not the cause of that.
25:59: OK, well, thank you.
26:04: I appreciate the encouragement.
26:06: OK, number two, this is important.
26:11: Baptism is a living picture of the promise of God in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
26:19: It is a living picture of the promise of God in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
26:25: Here's where I'm going to maybe step on a few toes and I hope I don't.
26:30: It is not a time to celebrate the baptismal candidates decision or actions.
26:37: So the next blank is decision or actions.
26:45: It is not a time to celebrate the baptismal candidates decision or actions.
26:51: Here's here's what I'm getting at.
26:54: Often you'll hear a person say, little, little Johnny was baptized.
26:58: I'm so proud of him.
27:01: Slow down, because I'm telling you, that's a misunderstanding of baptism, because the candidate is not on display as having accomplished something for himself.
27:14: He is on display, if you will say it that way.
27:18: He is on display before the congregation as having received the grace of God, not as having earned any righteousness in and of himself.
27:26: It is not that we would stand up and say three cheers for little Johnny, because the reality is little Johnny is the recipient, not the cause.
27:38: I know that here's the big deal.
27:40: I saw a picture put a cake online no longer a heathen.
27:45: That was on the cake.
27:47: It was a baptismal cake and I see people all time.
27:51: My my my child, whatever was baptized, I'm so proud of him.
28:01: Yeah, well, the thing it's all about, it's all about being proud of the person for the decision or the action.
28:11: There's there's a there's a church up north that had a baptismal fire truck.
28:19: And by the way, if I give infant baptized people who believe in baptism, I don't agree with that.
28:25: I also don't agree with baptizing three and four year olds who go to VBS.
28:28: And you ask them, do you love Jesus? Do you want to go to heaven? Well, we need to get you baptized.
28:33: That's that's worse.
28:37: Making a baptismal like a fire truck, putting the people in it and it goes when the when the kid goes in, that's blasphemous is what that is.
28:50: That's worse, because now you're celebrating little Johnny's decision.
28:59: He doesn't even know what decision has been made.
29:01: He doesn't know anything about a decision.
29:03: He doesn't know anything about conversion or regeneration.
29:09: It's worse.
29:11: And this is one of the modern failures.
29:14: Of the decisional view of salvation, by the way, one of the books that I recommend on our book table is this book right here, Decisional Regeneration.
29:26: It's only a couple of pages long.
29:28: It's a one night read.
29:30: And this tells you what the big problem in American evangelicalism is today is that we've made everything about a decision and we've robbed God of his part in conversion.
29:41: It's become all about you and what you do.
29:43: It's become all about your participation in your action and what you did.
29:48: It's not about you.
29:50: If you come to God, it is because he has been merciful in opening your heart.
29:54: It's not about what you did and we're not congratulating you.
29:57: We celebrate with the angels of heaven that God did good to you, not that you did good to God.
30:05: And that's the next blank.
30:08: It is a time to celebrate, but we celebrate two things.
30:10: One, we celebrate God's conversion of the baptismal candidate and we celebrate God's promises to the baptismal candidate.
30:21: The baptismal candidate comes and says, I, Jesus is the Christ, the son of the living God.
30:27: I have repented of my sins and I've received Christ as my Lord and my savior, and I want to follow him all the days of my life.
30:33: We say, praise God, not praise you.
30:36: We say, praise God.
30:38: And we celebrate the mercy of God and seeing another soul come into the kingdom by grace.
30:47: And so it's a living picture.
30:50: This is going back to the heading.
30:51: It is a living picture of the promise of God.
30:58: It's a living picture of the promise of God to the person.
31:00: That you have been buried with Christ in baptism and raised to new life.
31:10: That's the promise that God makes in our conversion.
31:14: And that's what we celebrate.
31:18: Third, are we are we good on time? I think we're actually doing good on time.
31:25: Wow, I'm amazed.
31:32: OK, number three, baptism is a public event.
31:36: This is how it affects worship, because this is this kind of bringing it all together.
31:41: Now we're going to talk about how this affects what they worship, because baptism is a public event which is meant to be participated in by the assembly of believers.
31:52: Letter A, the example of scripture is a baptisms which were performed publicly.
32:00: Publicly is the answer to letter A.
32:03: John baptized in the Jordan publicly, the apostles baptized publicly, even the Ethiopian eunuch who was traveling when Philip came to him and preached the gospel to him.
32:16: And he said, here is water.
32:17: What prevented me from being baptized? And he said, if you believe you may be baptized.
32:21: So they get down and they go down and they're baptized.
32:23: Even that eunuch was not alone.
32:25: He was he was a emissary.
32:27: He was somebody who was who was certainly traveling with an entourage.
32:30: And so he has there his entourage to bear witness to this event.
32:38: Private baptisms, while not excluded expressly or forbidden exclusively in scripture, are not exemplified in scripture either.
32:52: We don't ever see two people hiding in a room baptizing.
32:58: It was always a public event.
33:00: It was meant to bear testimony to God's promise and his grace.
33:08: Now, the didache, and I use this document quite a bit in my teaching because I think it's a valuable tool and kind of getting a picture into what the what the what the early church sort of looked like outside of what we have in scripture.
33:21: The didache, which is an extra biblical document dating somewhere in the second century, possibly even to the late first century, explains this, that the baptismal candidate, the baptizer and the congregation should all prepare for baptism with fasting.
33:42: I'll read to you what it says in chapter seven of the didache.
33:46: It relates to baptism and it says this.
33:50: It says, but concerning baptism, thus shall ye baptize, having first recited all these things, baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit in living water, which means running water like a river.
34:06: But if thou hast not living water, then baptize in other water.
34:11: And if thou art not able in cold, it should be cold running water.
34:16: If thou art not able in cold, then in warm.
34:20: But if thou has neither, then pour water on the head thrice in the name of the father and of the son and of the Holy Spirit.
34:29: So you go, you find living water that you can be baptized in.
34:32: But if you can't, if you don't have it, if it's not available, then you take a picture and you take it and baptize that person.
34:39: I've been asked oftentimes, what would you do if a person was on their deathbed and they wanted to be baptized? Well, we're not going to come and hoist them into the baptistry.
34:46: But I certainly would have no qualms with taking water to them and administering the ordinance in that situation.
34:56: And I think the early church expresses here to us, this is an option.
35:02: Verse six, but before the baptism, let him that baptizes and him that is baptized fast and any others also who are able and thou shalt order him that is baptized to fast a day or two before.
35:20: So here's here's the way it works.
35:24: You come and you say, I've received Christ, I want to follow Christ, I want to go through the narrow gate and follow the narrow path, which is Jesus.
35:34: OK, then we fast two days.
35:39: You're going to be baptized, we're going to fast and pray, I'm going to baptize you, I'm going to fast and pray and everybody else who's a witness, if you are able, you fast and pray on behalf of this person.
35:52: So it was taken seriously as an act of worship among God's people.
35:58: It was not a flippant thing.
35:59: It was not fire trucks and bells and whistles.
36:02: It was a serious moment of self introspection and deliberation.
36:06: All right, let her see public baptism is beneficial in worship for both the baptismal candidate and the congregation.
36:20: The baptismal candidate is testifying.
36:25: Before the congregation of his faith, consider, I mean, today we bake cakes and we have celebrating parties, but consider what it meant to be baptized publicly in the first century.
36:40: What did it mean to be baptized publicly in the first century? Giving up everything you're following Christ and your family, if you're a Jew, you're disowned.
36:51: If you're a Greek, you're you're likely going to be disowned because you have now followed that false, crazy Jewish or Jesus religion.
37:02: And so you're put out.
37:05: Society has removed from you all worldly comfort simply because you testified to your faith in baptism.
37:15: Matthew chapter 10, verse 32 and 33.
37:18: Matthew 10, 32 and 33.
37:19: Jesus makes this point.
37:21: Most of you are familiar with this verse, but think of it in the context of this.
37:25: It says, so everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my father who is in heaven, but he who denies me before men, I will deny him before my father who is in heaven.
37:39: When somebody comes to me and says, I want to be baptized, but it needs to be private.
37:43: I don't want anybody to see it just needs to be me and you.
37:45: I say, how do you square that with Matthew 10, 32? How do you square that with the passage which says that we must be willing to name him before men when today it is such a it is such an easy thing to walk into a church that's already got a baptistry built into the chancel.
38:02: It's already built in to just walk in.
38:03: Everybody's going to clap when it's over.
38:07: Two thousand years ago, you lose your head over this.
38:12: So it's you have to search your heart and think about this passage, I think.
38:23: So the baptismal candidate is testifying before the congregation of his faith.
38:28: The congregation is participating as witnesses to the candidate's testimony.
38:34: Your bad, your your witnesses to the testimony of this candidate.
38:38: You're coming in and you're saying, yes, this person has before all of us given testimony.
38:43: That's why I like it when somebody comes to be baptized.
38:46: I like it when they sit in the baptistry and they tell us why they're there.
38:52: Now, some people that's really hard.
38:53: Some people have a difficulty.
38:54: Public speaking is not a requirement, but for a person to be able to express why they're there is is is a beautiful thing.
39:06: It's a valuable thing because it's you are now bearing witness to their testimony.
39:11: And therein lies where later in their Christian walk, if they start to fall off the narrow path and start to and start to stumble, you can go to them and say, brother, sister, I love you and I know that you've testified to your faith in Christ.
39:26: Why do you walk this way? In love.
39:30: Yes, sir.
39:36: Yes, the way that we do membership, if you come from another church here, you have to come to a new members meeting or at least meet with one of the elders to talk about faith and baptism and your understanding of what those mean.
39:53: And if you've been baptized, if you haven't, you know, we encourage you to be baptized prior to membership in the church.
39:59: So all that's part of all that's part of when you join.
40:03: Yes.
40:05: Everyone involved.
40:07: This is your last blank.
40:09: Everyone involved has an opportunity for worship during baptism.
40:17: The baptismal candidate is worshiping by demonstration of the reception of God's grace and the testimony of their faith.
40:24: The person performing the baptism is being used as an instrument of God to perform this ordinance on this person.
40:32: And the testimony of the witnesses or I'm sorry, the witnesses are bearing testimony of having heard their confession of faith by sitting in observation of this event.
40:42: So all of this is an opportunity for worship.
40:46: And thus it is part of our Lord's Day worship.
40:51: When we have someone come to faith, we we we use a portion of Lord's Day worship for them.
41:00: And we say here is the sign of baptism yet performed yet again.
41:06: All right.
41:08: We have time for our discussion questions, we never have time for our discussion questions.
41:12: How did this lesson not go way over? Must have been very particular in how I wrote it.
41:17: But and I've been I've stayed, of course, I've stayed on my notes pretty tightly.
41:22: All right.
41:23: Two discussion questions.
41:25: What would you say to a person who claims conversion but has not received the sign of baptism? The person should do this publicly and he wouldn't be doing that publicly.
41:49: Well, he.
41:50: Yeah.
41:50: And he.
41:51: Yeah, OK, I should say he should confess his faith publicly.
41:55: And this is he hasn't confessed it publicly because he hasn't demonstrated his faith in baptism.
42:01: OK, OK.
42:02: Yes, Mr.
42:03: Pam, did you put your hand up? I'm sorry.
42:05: I'm going to call you.
42:08: What else? Anything else, anybody? If somebody said to you, yeah, I'm safe.
42:13: And if you said.
42:20: But if a person said to you, I'm safe, but I don't need to be baptized.
42:25: I didn't say it that way.
42:27: And let me just read it again.
42:28: What would you say to a person who claims conversion but have not received the sign, has not received the sign of baptism? And I guess my my my my what's insinuated in the question is that they don't believe that it's something that they should do or that they need to do.
42:43: Because I run these people all the time.
42:45: I run it when I'm talking to people about Jesus.
42:47: We'll be talking and I'll say, you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as your savior.
42:52: Oh, yeah, man, I know Jesus.
42:55: And I say, have you have you received the sign of baptism? I don't need to.
42:59: I don't need that church stuff.
43:00: I got Jesus is me and Jesus, man.
43:02: We together, we write, you know, it's I don't need that church business.
43:11: Huh? Yeah.
43:14: Yes.
43:15: Did you, Pat? Did you have.
43:19: Yeah, yeah.
43:21: Yes.
43:27: If you go, you get back.
43:32: Well, what if he said I went down at a Billy Graham crusade? Well, OK, well, taking him at his word that at least he said, you know what? I did go forward at the at the at the first Baptist Church of Waterloo, whatever, the first Dirkwater Church of whatever, Dirkwater, Arkansas.
43:49: I went to the you know, I went to the forward and I gave the I put my hand in that pastor's hand and he prayed for me and he told me I had Jesus.
43:57: I wrote it in my Bible that I accepted Jesus on January 1st.
44:00: You know, so and so that, you know, I did that because I didn't and I met those words like, yeah, I know that.
44:48: But we've been admitted publicly and you will be more.
44:57: You know, I don't think you're getting from, OK, I think I understand.
45:05: Yes, ma'am.
45:06: You we believe that immersion baptism comes after faith, so we don't infant baptize so that that situation wouldn't happen here.
45:32: It would only happen if someone came to us having only been infant baptized in the past.
45:37: And then we would ask them to be baptized.
45:40: We have we do that.
45:41: Yes, we would ask a person to be baptized in accordance with their faith.
45:53: No, no.
45:54: In churches that infant baptize, they do not baptize again.
45:58: But because we do not infant baptize, we believe in what is called we believe there's a soul that was left out of the Reformation.
46:06: So I think that's, huh? Yes, baptism of infants is not to be repeated.
46:14: We believe that the sixth sola is the baptism of disciples along the hanging sola because we believe that the problem in the Reformation was that the reformers did not go as far as they should have.
46:28: And the reality is that's what baptism Baptists were teaching in England was that the Reformation was still needing to continue.
46:38: That Semper Reformanda is real, that the Reformation needs to continue.
46:43: We need to continually reform the church.
46:46: Yes.
46:53: Yes.
46:54: Well, that's what I'm getting around.
46:55: My answer to the question, if a person came to me and said, I believe in Jesus Christ, but I have not been baptized, I would simply ask them.
47:04: Well, I would simply say, where is your obedience? Do you seek to be obedient to Christ? Because if you don't seek to be obedient to Christ, you have not been converted to Christ.
47:18: And if a person says, I don't need baptism in any way, shape or form, I don't need it, then I would say, you, sir, have demonstrated by your lack of obedience, a lack of conversion.
47:29: That would be the answer.
47:30: A lack of obedience is a lack of conversion.
47:33: If you if you if you maybe repeat that a couple of times, repeat it in however way you want to.
47:37: But that's the truth.
47:38: The Bible says the reason why we go to hell is not because we don't believe it's because we do not depart lawlessness.
47:45: Jesus said many will come into me on that day and say, Lord, Lord, did we not do this in your name and do that in your name? And he said, but I will tell them I never knew you depart from me.
47:54: You who continue to work lawlessness, you continue to disobey.
48:01: So obedience and baptism is part of the gospel.
48:06: We tell people repent and be baptized.
48:08: We tell people to go out and make disciples, baptizing them.
48:13: The antecedent of them is disciples.
48:15: That's an important passage.
48:17: We go out and make disciples and then we baptize them in the name of the father and the son to the triune name.
48:25: Absolutely.
48:26: And that's another problem I have with the Church Christ, because they baptize in the name of Jesus.
48:33: They don't.
48:34: Most of them don't use the Trinitarian formula.
48:36: They say I baptize you into Christ.
48:40: And they'll say, well, there's a few parts in Acts where the phrase baptizing into Christ, those of you who have been baptized into Christ, have put on Christ, you know, you've heard those words in scripture.
48:50: So they'll say you're being baptized into Christ.
48:53: And I would argue and say, but that doesn't eliminate the need for the use of the Trinitarian formula, which is given to us in Matthew 28, which is to baptize in the name of the father and the son of the Holy Spirit.
49:03: All right.
49:03: Last question.
49:05: Should a person wait a prescribed amount of time after conversion? Now, again, this is assuming what we teach, which is believers, baptism or baptism of disciples.
49:17: Should a person wait a prescribed amount of time after conversion before receiving the sign of baptism? Do you understand the question? Yeah, I would agree.
49:40: I don't believe in a prescribed amount of time myself only because of the biblical picture.
49:47: When when Paul was singing with Silas and the jailer came in and he said, you know, what shall I do to be saved? He said, believe in Lord Jesus Christ and I shall be saved.
49:57: You and your household.
49:58: They went and his whole household was baptized.
50:00: And of course, that brings up the issue of infants.
50:02: And we could talk about that, whether or not there's infants in the house and whether or not they were baptized.
50:07: The idea, though, is that it was an immediate baptism.
50:10: There is an issue.
50:11: They were immediately baptized.
50:12: The 3000 who came to faith on the day of Pentecost, when Peter preached, 3000 came to faith, 3000 were baptized and it was an immediate thing.
50:25: They were not put through catechism class.
50:27: They weren't put through a time of testing.
50:29: They weren't put through a time of of having to prove their faith.
50:34: They were baptized at that moment.
50:36: So I myself, when when somebody comes to me and says, I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, normally I will say, because it's normally sometime in the week.
50:45: It doesn't always happen on Sunday.
50:46: Like people think people would just come up.
50:47: It happens.
50:48: You know, people come and call me.
50:49: People come and see me.
50:50: We talk and I say, well, we need to baptize you as soon as we can.
51:06: Well, I was saying that was the way that they did it.
51:11: Yes, that's true.
51:12: I wasn't saying that's necessarily what we need to do.
51:14: I was saying that was what was done during the time of the decade, during the time of the writers of the decade and what they were doing in their local area.
51:20: I think it's a great idea.
51:21: But you're right.
51:22: You guys normally don't know.
51:23: That there's a baptism until you get here that morning.
51:25: And it's in the bulletin because that week at some point I've met with a person who's decided.
51:30: But if you want to start praying for a person, I can as soon as I find out that we're doing a baptism, I'll send out an email, let people know and we can do that.
51:39: You're doing pretty good with emails.
51:40: I'm doing my best.
51:43: I'll add it to.
51:44: Yeah.
51:51: Well, well, we've got to do it all on Sunday.
51:53: So all right, well, let's let's it would be a great week if we had to fast all week and baptize a whole slew of people.
52:02: I'm all over that.
52:31: That's a that's a that's a social thing.
52:36: Yeah, well, I know people who have been baptized multiple times because they couldn't get under the water because of girth.
52:44: They come up with a dry patch on their foreheads and a guy put them back down.
52:47: They can't get them under the water.
52:51: The sheer girth will keep you keep you from being fully immersed.
52:54: For the fasting needs.
52:58: Making their week.
53:00: There was I will tell a joke on behalf of my Presbyterian friends, because this is great.
53:05: This is a great joke.
53:06: Presbyterian and Baptist were arguing about baptism and the Presbyterian asked the Baptist.
53:11: He said, if you baptize a person up to their knees, is that good enough? And the Baptist said, no, baptize the whole.
53:19: He said, if you baptize them up to their shoulders, is that good enough? He said, no.
53:24: He said, what do you he said? We have to baptize all the way up to here.
53:27: He said, well, we take care of that part.
53:29: That's obviously the most important part.
53:30: So that's the part we take care of.
53:33: That's the most important part.
53:34: Yes, ma'am.
53:39: Yes.
53:39: And that's the dedicate references that to be baptized three times, one in the name of the father, one in the name of the son, one in the name of the Holy Spirit.
53:46: So that's that's that's not uncommon in the history of the church.
53:49: It's not uncommon to pour three times.
53:52: Not uncommon at all.
53:54: Yeah.
54:03: Yeah, I've heard that argument as well, that there was that there would been three thousand would have been hard to put through the Baptist baptisms.
54:13: But there's there's certainly water areas around which could have been available for immersion, as the text says, or as the dedicate says, not the text, not the scripture, but as the dedicate says, they did allow for pouring when running water, when pools of water were not available.
54:29: So that certainly is a is a possibility.
54:33: You know, there's so much on this subject which could be discussed and metered back and forth.
54:39: But the reality is the most important thing as far as this series is concerned is that baptism is a part of worship.
54:47: It's a part of the congregation, the faithful coming together and witnessing the grace of God on display in a picture and sign which represents that grace being distributed to an individual.
55:00: Let's pray.
55:01: Father, thank you for the study that we've had tonight.
55:04: I pray that it has been glorifying to you and ultimately that you would use this to instruct your people through the power of your Holy Spirit.
55:12: And it's in Jesus name we pray.
55:14: Amen.