WWUTT 2556 Repent and be Baptized (Acts 2:37-38)

At Pentecost, Peter told the men, repent and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.

We need to be careful not to twist this instruction to mean something that it doesn't mean when we understand the text.

Many of the Bible stories and verses we think we know, we don't. When we understand the text is committed to teaching sound doctrine and rebuking those who contradict it.

Visit our website at www .utt .com. Here once again is Pastor Gabe.

Thank you, Becky. In our study of the book of Acts, we come back to chapter 2. We've just been through Peter's sermon at Pentecost.

He showed the people from the scriptures how Jesus is the Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.

And upon hearing the gospel, the people are now cut to the heart. And that's the next portion that we read as we finish up the chapter, verses 37 to 47.

Hear the word of the Lord. Now when they heard this, they were pierced to the heart and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, men, brothers, what shall we do?

And Peter said to them, repent and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.

And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off, as many as the

Lord our God will call to himself. And with many other words, he solemnly bore witness and kept on exhorting them saying, be saved from this crooked generation.

So then those who had received his word were baptized. And that day there were added about 3000 souls and they were continually devoting themselves to the apostles teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to the prayers.

And fear came upon every soul and many wonders and signs were taking place through the apostles.

And all those who had believed were together and had all things in common. And they began selling their property and possessions and were dividing them up with all as anyone might have need and daily devoting themselves with one accord in the temple and breaking bread from house to house.

They were taking their meals together with gladness and sincerity of heart, praising

God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord was adding to their number daily.

Those who were being saved now, again, this comes right after Peter's sermon that went from verses 14 to 36, where he showed from the scriptures, how

Jesus is the Christ. First of all, he tells the people that what you are seeing happening here with the apostles speaking in different tongues, they were communicating in different languages and all the people there at Pentecost from all the different lands, they understood what the apostles were saying because they heard them speaking in their own respective languages.

And Peter said, what you're observing here, this is in fulfillment of what had been prophesied through the prophet

Joel. And that's the first portion of the sermon. The second portion is just hot gospel.

It's just him talking about how Jesus Christ lived, died, rose again in fulfillment of the scriptures, this

Jesus whom you crucified. And in the last portion of the sermon, speaking about how

Jesus had been exalted to the right hand of God in fulfillment of Psalm 110, the

Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I put your enemies as a footstool for your feet.

And after hearing Peter proclaim that Jesus is the Christ, Jesus is the anointed one, the

Messiah who was promised, but you crucified him, God raised him from the dead and seated him with him at his right hand.

And after saying all these things, the people were cut to the heart. That's what we read here in verse 37.

And now when they heard this, they were pierced to the heart and said to Peter and to the rest of the apostles, men, brothers, what shall we do now?

That is a great response to hearing the gospel. That's surely how you can identify that a person has been convicted over what they've heard.

They have heard from this scriptural biblical presentation that they are sinners deserving of judgment.

If God were to pour out his wrath on me right now, I would be deserving of it. How can I be saved from the wrath of God?

What can I do in order to be saved? And Peter responds to them, repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.

Now today we're just going to be looking at verses 38 and 39 primarily, and then tomorrow we'll come back to the remainder of it, verses 40 to 47.

And along the way throughout this section that goes from verses 37 to 47, we're going to be confronting some false teachings or even some misunderstandings about the text and coming to a right understanding of what is being communicated here by the

Holy Spirit even to us today. So in verses 38 and 39, let's come back to that.

Peter said to them, repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.

Now from these two verses, verses 38 and 39, there are three either false teachings or misunderstandings that get taken from this text.

So first of all, where Peter says, repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.

There are many who will say that baptism needs to be done only in the name of Jesus Christ and disavowing the

Trinity, saying that there is no such thing as the Holy Trinity. They will say that you must be baptized in the name of only

Jesus Christ. And if you've been baptized in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, as Jesus had commissioned his disciples to baptize in Matthew 28, 19, if that's the way you baptize, then it's a false baptism.

And I know of this teaching, I've personally encountered it because where I pastored in Kansas for 10 years, there was a church just down the road from us that would enforce this, that there was no

Trinity, but you had to be baptized only in the name of Jesus Christ. And unless you had been baptized in the name of Christ only, then you haven't truly been baptized.

I'll share more about that here in just a moment. The next part though, is where Peter says, you must be baptized for the forgiveness of your sins.

And some have taken this to mean baptismal regeneration, that it's through baptism that you are actually forgiven and saved.

And you're not saved before you're baptized, but you're saved after. And then going on even to read, you will receive the gift of the

Holy Spirit. So the Holy Spirit only comes upon us after we have been baptized. And then the third misunderstanding is in verse 39, for the promises for you and your children.

And that one is taken and isolated by itself to mean that infants are supposed to be baptized.

This is like the prime infant baptism verse right here in Acts 2 .39.

So as we go through these, we'll understand what is being spoken of a little bit more clearly.

So again, verse 38, Peter said to them, repent and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.

Now, what kind of baptism are we talking about here? Let's be real clear about our terms. This is a baptism of immersion.

And baptism was always by immersion, which we read about in the gospels, wherever John the

Baptist baptized, it was always a huge body of water, the Jordan River.

He goes wherever there was water so that he may baptize, a lot of water so that people could be completely immersed.

And what baptism represents helps us to understand that that's exactly the kind of baptism we're talking about.

Because as said in Romans chapter six, baptism is a picture of how we've been buried with Christ and we've been risen with him to walk in newness of life.

So if you're just sprinkling water over the head, then you don't have a clear picture of being buried.

In fact, Colossians 2 .12 says this explicitly, 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.

So the same power that raised Christ from the dead raises us from the dead and lives inside of us that we may walk in a way that is honoring before the

Lord. So that picture again there in Colossians 2 .12, buried with him in baptism. This is full immersion that we're talking about.

And that's the meaning of the word baptism means immersion. So it is a full dunking.

I am a proud Baptist. And whenever we baptize, we go where there is a lot of water so that that person can get all the way under.

I was teased even by my fellow pastors at First Baptist Lindale because they would say whenever I would baptize, well,

I was really dedicated to make sure they got all the way under. They said I was a little too exuberant in making sure they got all the way wet.

I had a guy that wouldn't go all the way down once. I think that's stuck with me ever since. Gabe is going to make sure that you get all the way there.

You know, the didache is the the oldest document that we have that's extra biblical.

So it was not included in the New Testament, but was likely written in the mid to late first century.

So not among the not among the New Testament scriptures. It would not have been divinely inspired.

It wasn't written by one of the apostles, but in the late first century still puts it in the time of many people who would have heard the teaching of the apostles.

So the didache being that earliest document that we have with instructions for the church, that's an extra biblical document in there.

It talks about baptism and it mentions that baptism needs to be done wherever there is a large body of water, wherever there is living water is what it says.

So that would be flowing water. And if you can't get to water like that, then you need to have a basin of water, which you will pour three times on the head.

So that being done, that the person may get completely drenched. But the ideal baptism, if it can be done, ideally, what you want to be looking for is a large body of water so that you can immerse, you can get all the way down.

And in archaeological discoveries of the first churches that would actually have baptismal fonts, those fonts were large.

They weren't small. They weren't basins like really the majority of churches have today.

The whole sprinkling of water is what most churches practice. Full immersion baptism is not what the majority of churches practice.

So the whole basin of water thing is not what's reflected in archaeology of the church.

In archaeology, it's a large baptismal font, just like you would find in most Baptist churches.

Of course, ours are made out of fiberglass and plastic or whatever. Back then, they were actually cut into stone and they might have been even tiled with small marble tiles or something like that.

I've seen pictures of them. They're very ornamented and very detailed. But this demonstrates that even what the early church was practicing was a full immersion baptism, repent and each of you be baptized.

And that's specifically what we're talking about here. Now, there's more than one baptism talked about. And we've even discussed this as we've been going through Luke and Acts.

Jesus also talks about a baptism of the Holy Spirit. They're not the same. I was

I was talking with somebody online not long ago who was saying, you know, baptism is baptism. And whenever we read in the scripture about baptism, it's just baptism.

It's just water baptism. So you guys who are talking about or who are denying baptismal regeneration, because that's what this guy was for.

If you're denying baptismal regeneration, you're saying there's some sort of spiritual baptism. You're just making that up and putting it into the text.

And I cited for him scriptures where Jesus says you will be baptized by the

Holy Spirit or where John the Baptist said, I baptize you with water. He will baptize you with the

Holy Spirit and with fire. There's very clearly a difference in in being baptized by the spirit and being baptized by the water.

In fact, we are all baptized by the spirit before we're baptized in the water in that it is the

Holy Spirit that washes us clean and regenerates the heart, as talked about in Titus three, seven, as as the

Lord had even spoken of in Ezekiel 36. And then Jesus repeated those words to Nicodemus when talking about being born again.

This is the washing of water that comes from the Holy Spirit. We also read of that in Ephesians five and other places.

So being baptized in physical water is an outward demonstration of something that has happened inside the outward demonstration of an inward change.

The Holy Spirit has already changed our hearts. He has already washed us clean.

And now in our baptism, we demonstrate outwardly what has already become the reality for us.

Repent and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.

Now, I won't spend as much time on this one because this is this is fairly easy to debunk. So you have some of those churches who will say that you must be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ only.

And they will use this verse to say that it has to be baptism in the name of Jesus Christ. They deny the

Trinity. They will say, if you're baptized in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, you will not receive a true baptism.

Like I said, there was a church down the road from me where I pastored in Kansas. It was called Faith Tabernacle, and they would even send out proselytes from Faith Tabernacle if they found out if somebody from that church found out that another church in town was having a baptism on a

Sunday morning. They would send their proselytes out to intercept the person who was being baptized probably after they had been baptized.

They would come up to them. They might even get them coming like right out of the baptismal font whenever they leave that room.

They may not even wait until the end of service. And they would be there with a card, and they would say to them, you've not really received a true baptism.

You must be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ and him alone. And so if you want a true baptism, come and visit us here.

We had to kick a guy out of the church. We had security escort him out because he was there doing that very thing.

This is a false teaching. This is heresy, really, because it's a denial of who

God is, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And I had encountered them before, and I debated with some of them over it and what

Matthew 28, 19 says. But some of them would just say that that was like an addition to scripture, that isn't really what that means, or they would just try to write off the text.

But remember again that Jesus told his disciples to go into all nations, making disciples and baptizing them in the name of the

Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. So where Peter says here, be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, this is not at the exclusion of Matthew 28, 19.

If you're baptizing in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, then you are being baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, for Jesus is in that declaration of baptism.

Now the next part of this here is that you are to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.

And this is what has led many people to believe in what is called baptismal regeneration. So you are not regenerated, you are not forgiven your sins until you are baptized in water.

I just had a debate about this with a Lutheran pastor just a few days ago.

We were arguing over this particular passage and what it means. He was trying to say that my system is the reason why

I believe something different than what this plainly says. But I said to him, it's because of your system that you think this says something more than what it really says.

And I took him to Romans chapter four. I really don't know what, I didn't follow up with him to see if this had made a difference to him or not.

But I took him to Romans four, because there in Romans four, Paul even explicitly asks the question, how was righteousness credited to Abraham?

So remember, first of all, that Romans four, three quotes from Genesis, where it says, for what does the scripture say,

Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. And then

I read from verse 10, how then was it counted to him? Was it before or after he had been circumcised?

It was not after, but before he was circumcised. He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he already had by faith while he was still uncircumcised.

Now I'm not drawing the connection between circumcision and baptism, that baptism is the new circumcision. That's not my argument, but simply you can still apply what

Paul is arguing here to the argument regarding baptism as well. At what point is your faith counted as righteousness?

Is it before or after you are baptized in water? It's before, you know, it's before, you know, it's before, or you're going against what

Paul is saying here in Romans chapter four, and we've got a real big problem. You are saved before you enter into the waters of your baptism.

If you were to go into a baptismal font and be dunked for baptism and drown, like you don't come back up, did you ever really get saved?

There's so many different things that we can spin that as, you know, asking all kinds of questions. At what point in that process of baptism is the person actually saved?

Is it when they step into it? Is it when they go under the water? Is it when they come back out? But the water has no mystical property to it.

It is not through the water at all that a person is actually saved.

You were saved by faith in Jesus Christ before you ever even went under the water.

So then what is meant by this statement? Repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the

Holy Spirit. So it really does sound here like Peter is saying that you are forgiven your sins through baptism.

But no, again, it's everything that baptism is tied to. That is the forgiveness of your sins.

You are buried with Christ, you are risen with him, and it's in this that you are forgiven your sins.

And baptism is that act that demonstrates that this has actually taken place for you.

Jesus suffered and died for our sins. He rose again for our justification, as said in Romans 4, verse 25.

And all of this is, in the manner of baptism, represented in this ordinance.

All of this is represented in baptism. So when we are baptized, when we go under and we come back up again, that represents baptism.

Baptism is an expression, it is a willingness to want to have your sins washed away that we may walk with Christ in new life.

And whoever comes to be baptized comes with that professed conviction that he is a sinner and there is no other way for my sins to be washed away except in the precious blood of Jesus.

But I know that I have received this by faith. And so then the act of baptism, again, demonstrates outwardly that we have received this cleansing from God.

And so in such a way, we recognize how this ordinance does indeed represent the forgiveness of sins.

It is for the forgiveness of your sins. Now how about that last part? And this is really all that we have time for now as we,

I won't even get to verse 39, we'll do that tomorrow. Verse 38, and you will receive the gift of the

Holy Spirit. And once again, they've already had the Holy Spirit. The very fact that they're convicted over their sin is a work of the

Holy Spirit. So what is the gift of the Holy Spirit that they are receiving? This is likely in reference to the gifts of the

Holy Spirit that will be given to them. Gifts that will be, that will demonstrate a manifestation of the

Holy Spirit. We'll talk more about that later, because of course we see that come up at least two other times in the book of Acts.

But for now, as we've studied just these two verses, verses 37 and 38, we understand that baptism is given for those who repent and believe.

Peter says, repent and each of you be baptized. These are men who are saying, what should we do now that you have spoken these things to us and we've been cut to the heart, pierced to the heart by the work of the

Holy Spirit, by the way. So they repent, they turn from their unbelief, their sin, their wickedness, especially that which they had done to Christ, because even as Peter was saying to them there,

Jesus was crucified at the hands of you lawless men. So be baptized in his name instead.

And everything that you have been guilty of for putting the son of God to death,

God will be merciful to wash these things away and you will actually have the

Holy Spirit dwelling inside of you. The power of God that raised Jesus from the dead is the same power that dwells in all of us now.

What a blessed truth that God gives us through baptism. It's not something to be entered into flippantly or lightly, but it's also not something to overplay.

The water does not wash away our sins. It is Jesus Christ and his precious blood that has washed away our sins.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for what we have read here and reminded of these great truths that we have from scripture.

And I pray, Lord, that we would, having been risen from baptism, walk in newness of life, that we turn from our sin and walk in the goodness of God that has been demonstrated to us through Jesus Christ, our

Lord, being imitators of Christ with our whole lives. If there is anyone listening who has never been baptized, maybe they would be convicted by this message.

They would go to a pastor and they would say, hey, I want to show that I've been transformed by the

Holy Spirit of God. I want to testify of being buried with Christ and risen with him to walk in newness of life in baptism.

What a wonderful ordinance that our Savior has given to us, a great picture of us being risen to newness of life.

May we walk in it all our days until we come into glory with our Savior. It's in Jesus' name we pray.

Amen. Thank you for listening to When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. If you'd like to support this ministry, visit our website www .tt

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