Sermon - Baptism: Final New Testament Passages

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We are continuing with our tenth sermon in the series on baptism, and we are reaching a milestone this week, and that is we laid out at the beginning what we felt would be an appropriate and necessary means of studying.

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This is a subject that obviously, given the nature of our church, our interaction with other believers, our

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Catholicity with a small c, and our willingness to engage with and promote the gospel with individuals who have different views on the subject of baptism than we do.

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It is important that we study these things. You may find it interesting. We haven't really made a lot of note of it yet, but on April 22nd, in a little town up in Idaho called

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Moscow, Moscow, ever heard of Moscow, Idaho? And almost no one's heard of Moscow, Idaho.

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Anyone ever been to Moscow, Idaho? Yeah, a few of you have been there, yeah, okay. On April 22nd,

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I will be debating someone I know no one in here's ever heard of, a guy named Doug Wilson. Doug Wilson, on the subject of paedo -communion, not paedo -baptism, oh, we'll be debating paedo -baptism, but it will be the unspoken part of the debate.

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Paedo -communion, because you may know that Christ Church there in Moscow practices paedo -communion as well as paedo -baptism.

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And we're approaching it because in this way, at least from my perspective, because it will shed a,

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I think a very helpful light on the subject of the ordinances, because most of our

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Presbyterian friends do not believe in paedo -communion. And so, when I did a debate against Pastor Bill Shishko on that subject a number of years ago back on Long Island, that was the standard debate, the standard arguments from the

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Presbyterian side, the standard arguments from a Covenantal Baptist side. But then there were others that said, well, yeah, but the problem is they're not consistent.

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The people you're debating aren't consistent, they don't believe in paedo -communion. And so I did the debate a few years later on that particular subject with someone who held to paedo -communion, and I don't really know that it changed a whole lot of what the discussion was, but I guess there was somewhat of a difference in that particular approach.

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But be it as it may, be in prayer for that, and you, I don't know if it will be live -streamed,

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I'm not sure what the situation with that will be. Knowing Canon Press, it'll probably be pay -per -view, something like that, you know, with some interesting before -bout experiences and things like that.

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But that'll be April 22nd, and appreciate prayers, because that basically means

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I will be gone once again for the month of April, pretty much. We're going up to Utah and doing some stuff up there with the church plant and things like that, and then from Utah up to Idaho.

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Please pray that we do not have a snowpocalypse, because I am driving with my

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RV, and I'm really not interested in playing with snow. I had an ice storm on the last trip.

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That was more than enough. It was sort of fun that one day.

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If I had to do that for like three months, forget it. That's why they built Sun City in Arizona and not in Minnesota.

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That's why that worked that way. So we hit a milestone today in that we are looking at the last of the references.

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What we've done is we've defined the term. We've defined what baptism means, and then we have been looking at every reference to baptism in the entirety of the

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New Testament, and we finished those up today. And that means that over the next couple of weeks, as I have opportunity of preaching, we are going to hit the real tough part.

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And the real tough part is not responding to the arguments. That's the last thing we'll do.

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The tough part, which will be enjoyable for me, but this is supposed to be a sermon.

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The tough part will be dealing with the subject of baptism in church history. How did we get where we are today?

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What did the early church believe? How did the early church baptize? When did infant baptism begin?

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Why did it begin? What did the early church think infant baptism accomplished? Trying to put that into a sermonic outline,

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I don't even know yet how I'm going to do that, but we will do our best. And then, having done all of that, we will address the primary arguments.

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Well, isn't this just the continuation of circumcision? What do you do with all these things?

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And of course, our argument specifically focused upon the nature of the new covenant and a better mediator and better promises and things like that.

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And then we'll eventually be done, and I have a feeling we may get done with Matthew before we actually get done with this, but it will hopefully be a full study.

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So, today we're going to be looking at a bunch of passages, and some of them we'll be looking at them very quickly. Actually, all of them we're going to be looking at them very quickly, but some of them even faster.

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In fact, if you tune out, you'll probably miss one as it goes by. So turn with me to Hebrews chapter 6.

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The first three are just simply—these are references, they're references to the term.

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They have almost nothing to do with our fleshing out what baptism means or what it meant back then or things like that, but we want to be thorough.

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So, Hebrews chapter 6, therefore, leaving the elementary teaching about the Christ, the

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Messiah, let us press on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, of instruction about washings and laying out of hands and the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment, and this we shall do if God permits.

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And so all you have here is washings is the term, baptisms literally, so there's nothing here about what specifically is in reference.

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This could be in reference to some of the Old Testament washings. There were many of those.

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How that applies to how we understand baptism in the New, we're simply not told.

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It's just simply included in a list of things that these are the elementary teachings about the

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Christ and we're not going to repeat these things. Let's press on to maturity, and so it's just sort of a thing.

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We're not going to be talking about this, so it doesn't give us a whole lot of information to go on or shed a whole lot of light on things, but you need to know that the term does appear there in Hebrews chapter 6, verse 2, and of course you could have all sorts of discussions about what that might have referred to in regards to Old Testament issues and things like that, but there's simply no application made.

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It would remain completely in the realm of speculation. Same thing pretty much, well, not even the same thing pretty much, if you turn down to Hebrews chapter 9,

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Hebrews chapter 9, verse 11, but when

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Christ appeared as a high priest to the good things to come, He entered into the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation, and not through the blood of goats and cows, but through His own blood,

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He entered the holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling those who have been defiled, sanctify for the cleansing of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal

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Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living

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God? Now, in verse 13, you have a reference,

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I'm sorry, I'm sorry, not verse 13, I started looking at the theology there going, hey,

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I actually missed it, verse 10, sorry. Back up to verse 10. Since they relate only to food and drink and various washings, regulations for the body imposed until a time of reformation.

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I was thinking about it later on because when it talks about blood sprinkled, sometimes that ends up entering into the debate about the mode of baptism.

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It's a different… completely different term that's used there, but some people utilize that to say, well, if that sprinkling, if you can connect that to baptism, then you could… you could sprinkle would be the proper way to do that.

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But the specific term for baptism occurs in verse 10, since they relate only to food and drink and various washings, regulations of the body imposed until a time of reformation.

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Again, that seems to be connected with what we saw in chapter 6, but exactly what it's referring to, it's not talking specifically about Christian baptism as an initiatory rite, who should receive it, what was done in it, anything along those lines.

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It is not really directly relevant to our study of baptism. Revelation chapter 19, verse 13, and this one will take about three seconds.

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Revelation 19, 13, it is interesting, he is clothed with a robe dipped in blood and his name is called the

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Word of God. So, as you can imagine, in Romans… I'm sorry,

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Revelation chapter 19, that terminology of dipped, not sprinkled in that point, but dipped is related in its root to the same concept of putting something down into a liquid, so on and so forth, that we saw when we first defined the term, but it's not really relevant to the subject of baptism, again, unless you're trying to come up with a strange way of viewing baptism.

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So, there are only three then, only three references, and each one of them is important. But interestingly enough, the last one is important in a way that even

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I hadn't really thought of until preparing for our time together. One of them most of you are very, very familiar with, and we're going back to Paul for this,

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Galatians chapter 3, and here you have the discussion beginning at verse 23,

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Galatians chapter 3, But before faith came, we were kept in custody under the law, being shut up to the faith which was later to be revealed.

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Therefore the law has become our tutor, to lead us to Christ who may be justified by faith.

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But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor. For you are all sons of God, through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.

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There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus, and if you belong to Christ, then you are

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Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise. Now you know that this is obviously a text with tremendous importance to it.

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It is central in the discussion of understanding justification by faith, the relationship of faith and the law.

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Therefore, the law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ who may be justified by faith.

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There is a… there is a verse that needs to be considered more often in many evangelical churches today, to have a proper understanding of the relationship of law and proclamation.

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A lot of folks want to try to completely bury the law and say it has nothing to do with what we do in the church today, but the law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ.

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That, we may be justified by faith. It never had the power to justify. There's a great hymn that a lot of Reformed Baptists sing, and one of the lines about the… it's a… it's a hymn about the greatness of God's law, but one of the lines in that hymn is it never had power to justify, and that's true.

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And as long as you maintain that, you will not fall into the trap of legalism and justification by keeping of law and things along those lines.

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But that doesn't mean that the law was given for no purpose. It is a tutor to lead us to Christ who may be justified by faith, but now that faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor.

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The law has pointed us to what we must do, and that is faith in Christ, for you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.

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There is… if you want to know how it is that a person has a relationship with God, how do we have peace with God today, there it is, through faith in Christ Jesus.

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It couldn't be any more plain. It couldn't be more obvious. What mankind tries to do is to crack open that door and put into the idea of faith all sorts of other things.

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So that's what you do when you encounter, when you speak with people who know

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Roman Catholicism fairly well, Roman Catholic apologists. They will look at something like this, oh yes, we are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, but what is that faith?

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That faith is faith working through love, and it's working, and therefore that working includes the mass and propitiatory sacrifices and penance and priests and indulgences and purgatory, and you've got to try to open up a space in there to cram that entire sacramental system in.

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It's amazing to watch at times, and I'll be honest with you, having spoken over the years to many who once sat amongst us, who have swum the

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Tiber River, entered into Roman Catholicism, I have never understood and never gotten a meaningful answer from someone as to how you could go from trusting

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Christ explicitly, His imputed righteousness, the imputation of your sins to Him, His righteousness to you, how you can go from that to the treadmill of penances and sacramental forgivenesses in Roman Catholicism.

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Never – they normally don't want to talk about that part. They want to talk about sola scriptura and the need for the

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Pope. Well, they're not talking about the need for the Pope as much these days either for some odd reason. I'm not sure quite why.

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Ever since Francis came along, it's, yeah, let's not talk about that either. Wow, the weather is weird today, isn't it?

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You know, it's a strange thing. But that's what mankind does. But the faith that Paul is talking about – he is defined in Romans, he's defined in Galatians – is that empty hand of faith.

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It's that empty hand of faith that then fits into the hand of grace. If you put something in that hand, you will not be able to grasp hold of grace.

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You can't bring something with you. There is nothing you can pay. It's an empty hand of faith.

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You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. That is the only way.

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But then look at the assumption of verse 27, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.

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What's the assumption? That anyone who is a son of God has been baptized.

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The congregation is made up of baptized believers, and all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.

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Now think about, especially with baptisms coming up next week, what then we're talking about.

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When you come up out of the water, walking in newness of life, clothed with Christ.

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This is what the picture, again, is all about, and it's sad that something that is meant to be a picture of the grace of God, a picture of what

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God does by His power, man is always trying to insert something into it to where we then can control the grace of God because we're doing these things.

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And so there are many people who think, well, see, you can't be clothed with Christ until baptism.

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Baptism is the mechanism by which you clothe yourself with Christ. And since you're in charge of being baptized, there you go.

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So, that's why there can't be any election and predestination and all the rest of this kind of stuff. And there are folks who believe these things, and they are absolutely intent upon finding every way they possibly can to make sure that mankind is always the one in final control.

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God had to do 99%, but that 1 % He left for us, and that way we can control these things.

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It's a sad thing because when you're baptized, I can assure you, I've baptized plenty of people in my life.

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I did the baptism. They didn't. You're passive in that action. And so this idea that, well, but I'm the one that chose to do it and all the rest of this type of stuff, the point is baptism is a picture of your death, your burial, and your resurrection, and those are all things

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God does. It's amazing that man can take that situation where you are helpless.

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I mean, if I wanted to just keep you under until you bubbled, I could. I mean, you're trusting that person doing the baptisms, and we can turn that into something that is actually controlled by the exercise of our will.

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Amazing. What's really being said is all of you who were baptized into Christ, now, was that how we became a part of Christ?

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How are you all sons of God? Through faith in Jesus Christ. So baptism is picturing what has taken place when we placed our faith, and we know from the

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Apostle Paul that's even the gift of God, we placed our faith in Jesus Christ.

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And the whole point is you go under the water, when you come out, you are dripping wet, and you have represented your death, and you're going into the water, you come out, and here is a new aspect of the picture, you have clothed yourselves with Christ.

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You've left the dead body, the old self, in the grave, and now you're clothed with the glorious righteousness of Christ.

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You're clothed in Christ. And here's the point. Why is Paul saying this? What's his great concern in Galatians?

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There can't be two churches. You can't have a Jewish Christian church, and you can't have a

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Gentile Christian church. There's only one church because there's only one baptism.

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There's only one Savior. There's only one righteousness. There's only one Lord's Supper. There's only one

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Lord's Table. You can't have multiple churches because it's

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God's intention to create one body of Christ. And so anyone who places their faith in Christ Jesus is a son of God.

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And we have seen the picture of what this means in baptism. You have been clothed with Christ, and therefore there is neither—what's the next phrase?

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There is neither Jew nor Greek. There is neither slave nor free man. There is neither male nor female, for you're all one in Christ Jesus.

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That baptistry and this table both scream the same thing.

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And that is, the source of unity in the body of Christ has absolutely nothing to do with who you were before you came to Christ.

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It has everything to do with who you are in Christ. One righteousness, one baptism, one being clothed in Christ, one table.

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I think some of you know that a few years ago, a rather well -known writer in a book—he didn't name names, but everybody knew,

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I think it's called subtweeting, I'm not sure if it's in a book, if it's a subtweet, but anyway—made reference to me as a heretic, and in fact had called for a general council of the church.

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Now think about that one. That's like, you know, for the Roman Catholics, the last one was

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Vatican II. They wanted to have it in Philadelphia. Whoop!

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I'm not sure that's the safest place to have a council these days, but all to condemn me as a heretic, because I had dared to say that at the

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Lord's table, there is no space for anything but for Christ.

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It is a Christ space. Our mind is to be on Him and Him alone.

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And I was saying that in response to people who were saying that there needs to be spaces for different ethnic groups in the church, and you need to leave these spaces open.

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And my whole point was, when you come to this table, you come in only one way, as a redeemed sinner, period.

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You bring anything else, and you're violating this table. You're violating this table. If you go into that baptistry thinking that because of your ethnic heritage or the color of your skin or anything else that your baptism is different than someone else's, you don't understand what's going on there.

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You don't get it. Now haven't we seen over the past few years the result of all this?

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It's astonishing what's going on. If you don't let the Bible define how we are to have unity with one another, what men come up with won't work.

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It will not work. So the whole point here is, you were baptized, all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.

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Now that is easy for us to understand, because we're thinking of the person…

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What is verse 26? All sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.

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But what happens if you baptize people who have not expressed faith in Christ Jesus? What if you baptize people in the hope that your faith will result in their having faith?

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And yet we know, in many instances, heartbreaking as it might be, that there are many who are baptized as infants that never do put faith in Christ Jesus.

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And so you have a different group here. Now some might say, yeah, but you've had people been baptized who walked away.

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Yes, that's called apostasy. That's not deconstruction, by the way.

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Let's not… let's not allow the neo -Marxists to redefine biblical terms.

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When you make a profession of faith in Christ, and then you deny that Jesus Christ was

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God in the flesh, you deny that Jesus Christ rose from the dead, you deny that God's law determines what is sin and what isn't sin, that's not deconstructing, that's called apostasy.

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And there are a lot of people doing that today, but they like the deconstruction term instead. Well, it's… the biblical term is apostasy.

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But you see, we see the consistency in Galatians 3. You're all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.

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For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. So if you have faith, then you're talking about your union with Christ.

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Baptism is talking about something that is real. It is not something where you're hoping that something will become real in the future.

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Not only that, but the people Paul is talking to could remember their baptism. It had meaning for them.

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It was the shedding of the old life, the taking on of the new life, being clothed in Christ.

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All this is perfectly consistent from our perspective. I don't see how it's consistent for someone to say, well, what you do is you baptize a whole… everybody at a certain age, and then those who eventually are converted can look back… well, they can't look back on it… well, they can look back on your telling them when you were baptized, but you didn't really put on Christ that time, but you've put on Christ now, and you just have to trust that, yes, you were baptized back then, and it was cute.

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And some of you are going, what do you mean by that? That was a line Doug used in our debate in 2004, as I recall.

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He said, well, you have to admit, even if you disagree with child baptism, that it's cute. So I grant the premise, but I'm not sure it really fits into the text all that well.

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So, the text is relevant because the assumption of the text is that those who were baptized were individuals who understood what they were doing.

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They had had faith in Christ. It's not the baptism that joined them to Christ, they are sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, but the baptism pictures what has taken place.

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And so, every time that the New Testament addresses us in that way, remember your baptism, this type of language here, the assumption is, yes, and you remember that, and you had an understanding of what it was that you were doing.

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I think Galatians chapter 3 is important in that way. Now, turn with me to Ephesians chapter 4.

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Ephesians chapter 4, and it is, again, in the context of unity.

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I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, entreat you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling of which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness and patience, showing forbearance to one another in love, being diligent to preserve the unity of the

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Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one

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Spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling, one

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Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

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But to each one of us, grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift.

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And so the issue is preserving the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

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And how do we do this? We do this by recognition that there is one body. It was an absolute, and it's hard for people today to understand this, but there was an abhorrence of division in the early church, an abhorrence of division.

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The idea of a divided church was to them the greatest symbol of the failure of the church.

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So when schisms began to take place, now there were, you can see schisms in the apostolic period, but when schisms would take place within what would be called the

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Orthodox church, it was a scandal. When the

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Donatist controversy took place in North Africa, the very existence of the

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Donatist churches, and there were hundreds of those churches, was considered by everyone else as a symbol of God's judgment upon all the church for its sinfulness.

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And so, when it says there is one body, we, in our modern situation, tend to under -hear the emphasis upon that, and we struggle because what we see today is not only a church on every street corner.

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I mean, if you come down Stapley from a Kellops, how many churches do you pass before you get to this one?

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Right? On both sides of the road. And that's been our experience our entire lives, and so we're sort of accustomed to it.

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But there is only one body, and so what we struggle to do is to find what the parameters of that one body are, especially when you live in a day of massive and rank apostasy, entire denominations that call themselves

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Christian, that fundamentally deny every aspect of the

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Christian faith. There's a lot of folks that don't know which ones are which.

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I noticed recently that there's a small church near my house. I go by it very often on my way to my office, and I noticed that they changed their sign recently and have identified themselves as United Church of Christ.

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Now, Church of Christ and United Church of Christ are two very different things. Isn't that fun? I have a

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Muslim friend who contacts me once in a while and goes, okay, there seems to be a lot of Lutherans and a lot of Presbyterians.

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What's the difference again? You know, because from their perspective, that is, that'd be really, really confusing. And just like when we look their direction, and it's like how many different Sunni groups there are and Shia groups, and it's really, really confusing for us, too.

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But Church of Christ, especially the old -style Church of Christ—I understand we had some folks out on the sidewalk this afternoon—very conservative, you know, very frequently no piano, no instrumental music, you know, issues along those lines.

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But the United Church of Christ is a denomination that became fully, 1 ,000 percent apostate a long time ago.

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There is nothing of Christian orthodoxy left within the United Church of Christ, at all. And so people see things like that, it causes confusion, and it says, wow, you all do not have one body, but what we have to do as believers today is seek to find where that one body is and to define what the parameters are that define that one body.

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And that's not always easy. We have the Word of God to guide us, but it's not always easy to figure out exactly what someone believes, and there may be people who are a part of a particular group that don't believe everything that particular group teaches.

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So it can be a real challenge, there's no question about it. And sometimes some people just want to give up and not even bother.

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We can't. We have to be diligent in defining that one body, that one

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Spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling, one

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Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

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Now, obviously, it would be beneficial to do an entire sermon on the unity of the one body in light of one hope of your calling.

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That's important too, folks. Jehovah's Witnesses, I've always, the most sad group

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I've ever dealt with are Jehovah's Witnesses. I've attended a couple of their district conventions.

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There was one down in Tucson a number of years ago. Places, the whole place is filled up.

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We had more joy in this room during the greeting time than was in that entire place for hours and hours on end.

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It was dreadful. You don't know how good you've got it. You really don't.

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I mean, to be one of Jehovah's Witnesses and to not be one of the anointed class and to, and you're not, you're going to live forever in a paradise on earth, but they believe in the doctrine of eternal insecurity, and so if anything, if you ever do anything wrong, if there's ever any evil found in you, you're wiped out and you're done, and you don't really have the imputed righteousness of Christ, and it is just a joyless drudge.

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It truly, truly is. That's because they don't have one hope of their calling.

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They have multiple hopes, multiple classes. They're even developing their theology on that right now because they ran out of time.

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It used to be based on 1914, and 1914 was a long time ago now. There's really not anybody around that remembers any of that stuff, so one hope of your calling.

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There is your foundation, once again, for unity in the body.

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We only have one Lord. He is not divided. We only have one faith.

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You don't get to have one faith over there, another faith over here, and this faith here would be the body of the faith, the body of teaching, and there is only one baptism, baptism, and one

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God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and all. The point of all of this, clearly, is that what unifies us is found in the fact that these things are defined by Scripture.

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I don't get to have a more special baptism than you. Now if you're thinking with me, you know that our

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Mormon friends, you know that there are certain temples that when you get your endowments in those temples, that's a little bit higher up on the rung than if you get them someplace else.

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We all know that. They deny that. Oh, no, no, it doesn't matter where you get your endowments, but look, the reality is if you get your endowments in Salt Lake City, or you get your endowments in the little itty -bitty temple out there on Pinnacle Peak Road in North Phoenix, there's a difference.

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There's a difference, and they all know it. We don't have any of that. It doesn't matter where you're baptized, it doesn't matter who does the baptism.

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There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism. Now let me go ahead and address what some of you are thinking right now, and that is some of you are probably aware that in the experience of the average

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Southern Baptist in the United States today, the average Southern Baptist has been baptized 2 .73

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times. That's by their own denominational numbers, 2 .73

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times. And some of you are going, yeah, I know exactly how that works. First you have

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Baptist pedo -baptism. So that's the—remember, I don't know if any of you remember, but about 15 years ago there was a big megachurch, and they built a special child baptistry.

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And the baptistry—if you can imagine this—the baptistry was in the center of a pirate ship.

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And when a kid would get baptized, cannons would come out and explode confetti.

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Very effective. Man, they were leading the convention in baptisms.

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But that's a six - or seven -year -old kid, he thinks it's really cool to have the pirate ship cannons go off, and then that one goes to camp as a 13 - or 14 -year -old, and there's all sorts of angst and all the other things that hit 13 - and 14 -year -olds, and they get right with God, because that's what everybody else is doing.

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And so I didn't really understand that. I've really gotten saved now. And then there's a certain portion of them that get into their adult years and realize they had no idea about anything that was actually going on and want to be baptized again—I guess that would be the .73—and

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you end up with, on average, 2 .73 baptisms. Now, there are—obviously there were many people in the early church who, on the basis of this text, said, nope, you get baptized once, period, end of discussion.

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And then, of course, you know that during the Reformation, when the Anabaptists began questioning paedo -baptism and were practicing adult baptism based upon a confession of faith, that's why they were called

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Anabaptists, Anna again, re -baptizers. Of course, they were saying, no, this is just my first baptism.

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But the others were saying, no, there's only one baptism. If you're baptized as a child, if you're baptized again, not only are you violating

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Scripture, but in those days, they would give you your third baptism. And I have stood on the bridge in Zurich, Switzerland, where under Zwingli's direction,

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Anabaptists would be—have their hands tied, and they would be weighted down, and they would be put into the river.

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Frequently, they would be brought back up to ask if they wanted to recant, but then they would be left down there, and they'd be given their third baptism, and they would be executed in that fashion.

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So, it's called the third baptism. So, this phrase has been understood in church history by various people as an absolute assertion that you can only be baptized one time.

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But the reality is, when you think about one Lord, one faith, one baptism, what's it saying? There is only one true

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Lord, there is only one true faith, and there is only one true baptism. You don't have to keep getting baptized over and over and over again, but it's obviously not saying, no, if you were baptized inappropriately, that is, without understanding, you don't—you're baptized as a child, whatever it might be, that's not saying, oh no, you could never be baptized again.

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You just simply have to look back on that one, even though you can't remember it, type of situation. That's not what's in picture here.

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What's in picture here is, there is only one baptism. One person's baptism is not greater than somebody else's baptism.

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There is not a higher baptism and a lower baptism. There is one baptism, and it's a baptism in which you are confessing that Jesus Christ is

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Lord, and that you're dying to your old life and rising and walking a new life in Him. That's what it's talking about.

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And so, I think the text has been abused in the past, but I would say that, once again, that the use of the term here in Ephesians fits seamlessly with our understanding of what we saw in the apostolic example.

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And what did we see when we walked through all of Acts and every single reference in Acts to baptism?

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What came first? Proclamation of the Word, acceptance, faith, baptism.

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Fits perfectly. And I think that flows rather naturally from looking at what the text is actually saying to us.

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But once again, we just in passing have to note, you get the idea that Paul was very concerned about division.

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He was very concerned about there being a Jewish Christian church and a Gentile Christian church, this kind of division.

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No, there is one body, one Spirit, one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one

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God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. And I just have to wonder why it is that so many people today don't think that's enough.

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There's only, there's one clear answer, because they have adopted the idea that these things are insufficient apart from the philosophical, political, and to be perfectly honest with you, neo -Marxist concepts that they have embraced and that they are trying to bring into the faith.

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We must resist that kind of thing. All right. Ready for an interesting one?

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1 Peter 3, beginning of verse 14.

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And I will have to be, this is, again, every one of these texts would be more than sufficient for an entire sermon, but we're putting them all together.

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It's just the only way to get through our entire section. 1

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Peter 3, 14, but even if you should suffer for the sake of righteousness, you are blessed. You do not fear their intimidation, do not be troubled, but we all know this one, but sanctify

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Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence.

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You know, if 12 years ago Brother Jeff had known how to read that and pronounce it in Greek, this would be a polygya church.

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But anyway, we have just decided to accept God's providence in these issues and move on from there.

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But we all know, make a defense, prosopologia, a reasoned defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence.

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I will not give you my sermon on this text right now. I'm not sure if I have in our context before, but this all goes back to the fact that Peter is still quoting from Isaiah.

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This is about sanctifying Christ as Yahweh in our hearts and the result of that being a change in how we respond to everything which results in people asking us to give an account for the hope that's within us.

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It's very, very important. Yet with gentleness and reverence and keep a good conscience, so in the thing in which you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame.

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For it is better, if God should will it so, that you suffer for doing what is right rather than for doing what is wrong.

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Well, there's a truism, isn't there? For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, nor that he might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, made alive in the spirit.

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In which also he went and made proclamation to the spirits now in prison, who once were disobedient when the patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah, during the construction of the ark in which a few, that is eight persons, were brought safely through the water.

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And corresponding to that, the Greek term is antitupon, as an antitype, as an antitype, baptism now saves you.

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Keep going, huh? Just thought I had arrived at a

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Pentecostal church, so keep going. Baptism now saves you.

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Now, you will hear that from lots of folks that we talk to. You'll hear that from not as much the

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Mormons, you certainly get it from the Church of Christ. Any group that has a sacramental theology where baptism is salvific, this is their favorite text.

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Baptism now saves you. Not the removal of dirt from the flesh, which is the physical act of baptism, but an appeal to God for a good conscience through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who is the right hand of God, having gone into heaven after angels and authorities and powers had been subjected to him.

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It's always, always good to read the whole context. Because I've met many a person, well, you know,

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Peter said baptism saves you. And I want to ask them, what do you think he meant?

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What was the context? What's he talking about? Now, it's almost dangerous to try to deal with the

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Noah subject before this. It is extremely complicated. It requires us to go to 2

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Peter and Jude and go back and talk about the Nephilim in Genesis 6.

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And it, again, would be something worthy of a full study in and of itself, yes.

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But briefly, the point is that he's referring to the flood.

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He's referring to the story of Noah. And he wants us to recognize that the patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah during the construction of the ark, in which a few persons, that is eight persons, were brought safely through the water.

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Now, what did the water do? The water wiped everybody else out. The water was judgment.

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And a small number of people were saved by God by means of the ark that God commanded and provided for.

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So, this is meant to be 99 .999 % of humanity gone.

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A few, eight people, saved through water.

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Water was the means of judgment, yes, but it was also the means by which the ark was kept up and they were saved.

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So, the water could be something that was judgment for one, depending on who they were, or depending on where they were, it was the means of salvation.

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The point is this, verse 21, that uses the term, baptism now saves you, begins with the recognition that Peter is going to give us an example, a corresponding example, or what's called an antitype.

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And as I mentioned, the Greek term there, we're not even translating it. We are transliterating it because it's, that's what it is.

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It's antitupon. So, it's antitype. So, he's saying,

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I am giving you an example that you already know of. It is a type and I'm saying that I've already said in the preceding verse that eight persons were brought safely through the water.

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And now I'm going to connect this to something where we go through the water, but I'm going to tell you that it's not the removal of dirt from the flesh.

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It's not the physical act that saves you. It is the appeal to God for a good conscience through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

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Now, when do you make that appeal? Well, obviously, we're talking about faith in Christ.

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We're talking about that. If we're going to assume that the person who wrote 1

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Peter was in the Jerusalem Council in Acts chapter 15, then it is appropriate for us to assume that what he's teaching here is consistent with what was taught there and what was agreed to there and what is taught by Peter elsewhere in his epistles, in his sermons, and everything else.

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And so, we have to ask anyone who would point to this and go, ah, see? Baptism is the very means of salvation.

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But what about faith? No, it's baptism. But didn't Peter say, I don't care? There's this one phrase.

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Yeah, and it's the one phrase where he says, not, right afterwards, not what you think it is, the removal of flesh from the body, the removal of the dirt of flesh from the body through baptism, the water, but instead an appeal to God for a good conscience, the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

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How do you get a good conscience through the resurrection of Jesus Christ? By understanding that he bore your sin.

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How can you have a good conscience because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ? It means that he's at the right hand of the

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Father interceding for you. It means that you have his righteousness. It means that what Peter has said elsewhere about the fact that the just for the unjust, his righteousness for our sin, that's what he's talking about.

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And a person who recognizes that is going to be a person who does what? And this is what,

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I'll be honest with you, I hadn't really considered a lot before preparation for this week.

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Because if you've been listening to me, a lot of us are apologetically minded.

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Well, we go to apologia, so it's sort of necessary. And a lot of you, how many of you have had to have a conversation at some point with someone about the phrase, baptism now saves you?

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How many of you have had that conversation? How many of you are going, I hope I never have to? We've had the conversation before, and so it's natural for us to be thinking along those lines and not to be thinking along the lines of other realms of dispute.

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But as I was thinking about this, if the plain meaning is the clear meaning, and that is that Peter himself is saying it's the appeal to God for a good conscience through the resurrection of Jesus Christ who is at the right hand of God having gone to heaven, it's all about Christ.

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It's not about us. We are appealing for a good conscience from God by faith in Christ because of his sacrificial work and all of this is represented in baptism.

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If all that's true, does this text actually say something about our subject?

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Our subject being who is baptized, who are the subject of baptism, what is baptism, who should be baptized?

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And I think that it does. Once again, none of this would make any sense unless the entire congregation had experienced baptism.

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Well, every Pado Baptist says, well, yes, that's to be the case because we baptize all of our kids. Now, historically, we're going to discover that's not what was going on at this time in history.

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There is no historical evidence for any kind of apostolic connection to infant baptism.

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There just isn't. You have to stand on your head and spin around and wrap yourself in tinfoil to get to that conclusion.

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But I get it. I hear you. I hear what you're saying, that that's what the apostles were doing.

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I'm just saying there's no evidence of it. But the point is that the only way that the example would make any sense is if the people hearing it understood what it to go through the water.

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And I can guarantee you the ark was not sprinkled in the flood.

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The ark was thoroughly wet. It went up and down in the waves and everything else in the process.

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The ark was baptized. That's the first thing.

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Secondly, these people remembered it. The people to whom this example is being given remembered it.

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And Peter is saying, your participation in this baptism is the demonstration of what?

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Your appeal to God for a good conscience. What do we believe in?

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Credo baptism. What does credo mean? I believe. That's what these people are doing.

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I believe that because the resurrection of Jesus Christ I can have forgiveness of sins.

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And that's what my baptism represents is my union with him. This is not going to fit with the idea that, well, later on you can look back on what your parents did to you and say this was your appeal for a good conscience with God.

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You can't do that. And so, I had never really thought through.

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It was, I was thinking of it primarily within the context of most of the people who use this, not all, but most of the people who use this text with whom

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I've had conversations were not paedo -baptists. There are obviously sacramental paedo -baptists that believe that paedo -baptism is salvific.

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But that then makes the appeal to God for a good conscience an empty phrase. It simply doesn't make any sense any longer.

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Well, you can do it later on. No. This is a concurrent action.

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It defines what the action is. And it's through the resurrection of Jesus Christ you have to know about that before it has any meaning for you, before it has any meaning for you.

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And so, I do believe that this last text does, in fact, have relevance for us in regards to audience.

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I think it has relevance as to mode. And therefore, even though it's normally something we have to be dealing with, with people who are trying to insert some type of sacramental meaning, it likewise has relevance to our topic here.

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So, we've now looked at every reference specifically to the term.

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Now, some might argue that there are references that don't use the term baptism.

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Okay, if there's, if it, you know, we can have a conversation about that and see if there's something that's specifically there.

01:00:00

But we have looked at what the word means. We've looked at what it was understood to mean historically.

01:00:06

We will look at that a little bit more. We have now looked at every reference in the New Testament. And so, beginning next week,

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Lord willing, and since we do have baptisms next week, I'm going to have to be short, which in dealing with church history is not really my strength, but we'll do our best.

01:00:29

And we'll try to make it something that for those of you who will be baptized next Sunday will sort of fit in and be worthwhile, even though I do have to talk about some of the interesting ways in which baptism was done in the early church next week.

01:00:46

And some of you are going to go, really? Oh, interesting. And I will be mentioning that, for example, for many people it was common to have a meal of bread and honey for everyone who had been baptized.

01:01:00

For those who are being baptized next week, no, we are not offering any sweets after baptism, in case you were wondering.

01:01:08

But then once we've done the church history aspect, then we'll finally dig into the specific arguments and really look at, especially from my perspective, the most important argument, and that is what is the nature of the

01:01:24

New Covenant? Who is in the New Covenant? What does the

01:01:30

Bible teach us about that in regards to specifically the theology that was developed by a man

01:01:40

I love to read, by a man who

01:01:45

Jeff says he hasn't read. Now, I know he's read some quotes, and I'm just simply saying, you know what,

01:01:53

I think what I'm going to do is maybe I can get Jeffrey Rice to leather -bind the institutes of the

01:02:03

Christian religion, you know? And then, so if you've got a version like that, you'd be willing to—Jeff's going, yeah, that sounds good to me, sounds good to me.

01:02:14

We've got to get him—because I love reading Calvin, and there is just so much in Calvin that is just so mind -blowingly solid and good and awesome and wonderful, but the fact of the matter is the theology of paedo -baptism held by believing

01:02:33

Presbyterians, not the liberals and stuff like that, but believing Presbyterians was developed by Calvin.

01:02:41

It did not exist before Calvin. It didn't, and so that's what we've got to be talking about, and reality is

01:02:53

Calvin never had a meaningful conversation with someone who believed what we believe.

01:03:01

He couldn't have, and if you want to know why, go listen to the two episodes of Sheologians that I did in February of 2019 after I got back from Munster and learn about the

01:03:20

Munster Rebellion. Even if you don't care about the baptism subject, you still need to listen to those two episodes because they're kind of epic, and it's the wildest story in all of church history.

01:03:33

The point is it happened before Calvin takes the positions of authority that he has, and that led to an impossibility, quite honestly, of any meaningful conversation taking place with almost anybody for a couple hundred years in Europe on this subject.

01:03:59

That's a shame, but that's the history. That's the history. So, that's where we're going to be going.

01:04:05

I hope this is useful to you. I think it is very important that the church understand why it does what it does, and hopefully you're finding that to be helpful as well.

01:04:17

Let's close with a word of prayer. Our Graced Heavenly Father, we are indeed thankful for your

01:04:23

Word and your truth, and we are thankful, Lord, that you have given us so many opportunities of working with so many wonderful Christians who may not agree with us on this subject, and there are those amongst us that do not agree with what

01:04:39

I have said, and yet we love these individuals, and we work with these individuals, and yet we believe the

01:04:47

Scriptures are straightforward and clear. Help us as we examine these things to grow in our appreciation of the wisdom that you have shown in baptism, in having this incredible experience, whereby we understand that it is a picture of what you have done for us in Christ.

01:05:11

And Lord, even next week, as we look forward to having baptisms, Father, that you would prepare the hearts, not only of those who will be baptized, but us as well.

01:05:21

May we derive tremendous joy by not only watching these testimonies of faith, but remembering our own baptisms and being renewed in the passion that we had at that time.

01:05:38

And now, Lord, as we prepare to obey your command to observe the other ordinance you've given the church, be with your people.

01:05:49

we bring honor and glory to you, even in this act of obedience and worship, we pray in Christ's name. Amen.