Understanding Baptism

Introduction

As has already been announced on numerous occasions. Next Sunday begins our spring gospel meeting. And so before we get into the lesson this morning, I’d like to give my plug for that gospel meeting. I want to challenge you and encourage you at the same time to be an active part of that meeting. You recognize we’re only asking for two nights out of your normal schedule. We’ll have our Sunday morning services as usual, Wednesday night at the same time, and then Monday and Tuesday in between those, we’ll be gathered together for a study of God’s Word. I want to strongly encourage you to make that a priority in your life, to be here, to encourage one another, to encourage our speaker to study God’s Word together, and hopefully to encourage those from the community, our friends and neighbors that we’ve invited to be a part of this assembly.

Brother Andrew Roberts from the Tampa area will come and speak for us. I normally don’t like speakers who do a better job than me to come and preach, but I’ll make an exception in Andrew’s case. Andrew is an excellent speaker. He’s been a friend of mine for several years, and he is more than able to present God’s word, and you’re going to be impressed at his knowledge and his ability and his love for the word of God. And I look forward to spending this time with Andrew and with you. So again, I encourage you to be an active part of this. Take the announcements that are on the tables in the foyer. Invite your friends and neighbors. It’s a subject that’s going to be pertinent to all of us in the culture and the society that we live in.

Uh through the week, he’s going to be presenting a lesson and lessons entitled The Devil You Don’t Know. And so hopefully those titles, that title of the series will intrigue you and your neighbors and friends to come and be a part of it. Now to this morning’s lesson, I want you to think about confusion or misunderstanding. Think about a time in which you completely misunderstood something. Or a time in which somebody else completely misunderstood what you said. Can I share with you a time that that happened to me? I was in high school at West Point High School in North Alabama, and it was coming up to be Homecoming Week. I don’t know about where you went to school, but homecoming week during football season was a big deal.

We played a school. We usually tried to pick a school we could beat in football, which for our case was kind of tough to do, but but we tried to find a team that we could beat and we would play. And the week before homecoming game that Friday night was a big week. We decorated the hallways at the stadium that Friday night. It was extra decorated, usually something having to do with how bad we were going to beat our opponent. Well, this one year in high school, we were playing a team we had never played before. They were out of the Huntsville area in Huntsville, Alabama, and the name of the high school was Buckhorn High School. It just so happened that my first cousin went to Buckhorn High School.

And so, since this was an opponent we weren’t familiar with, and this was the days before the internet, nobody at my school knew anything about buckhorn. But the cheerleaders and other ones who were going to do all the decorating needed to know who our opponent was. What were their mascots? Well, luckily I was able to throw my hand up and said, Oh, I know. My cousin goes there. They’re the buckhorn bucks. And so they ran with that information. They decorated banner after banner for the stadium on Friday night of how we, we were the warriors, how the warriors were going to beat the bucks. And so almost every decoration that they had pictured pirates. Bucks as in buccaneers. And so we showed a warrior making a buccaneer walk the plank.

We’re going to make the bucks walk the plank. And all of that. And with this pirates were everywhere, and us beating and defeating the pirates or the buccaneers was everywhere. Well, there had been a misunderstanding.

A buck is a male deer with antlers, and that was their mascot. But we had decorated everything about beating the buccaneers. Well, we looked pretty foolish that Friday night as our opposing team got off their bus that had the bucks and deer painted on the side of it. And they must have wondered just who we were and how ignorant we were. And I felt bad because I thought everybody would know that when I said bucks from buckhorn, buckhorn, I thought that was the first hint that those were deers. And so there was an absolute misunderstanding that made us look completely foolish that Friday night, that was only amplified when they also made us look foolish on the field and beat us, and we ended up being the ones kind of walking the plank that night.

But misunderstandings like that can happen, can’t they? You say something and somebody hears something completely different, or they say something to you, and it’s completely sometimes the opposite of what you intended to convey, and that can be embarrassing, can leave egg on the face, and can even lead to sometimes hard feelings and disagreements and broken relationships. But when it comes to God’s word, misunderstanding what God teaches on a subject can have far more detrimental consequences than just being embarrassed. And so we want to make sure that when we read and study God’s Word, that we are reading and studying it to understand it, to know exactly what God says on a subject and apply it.

And sometimes completely misunderstood subjects. This morning I’d like for us to talk about one of those subjects, and that is baptism, and to try to understand baptism from a biblical point of view. I hope this lesson will be of an encouragement to you and a help to you to maybe help you understand baptism. And if you think you have a good understanding of baptism, maybe listen to make sure that according to the scriptures, not according to what we might say, but according to the scriptures, you do have a good understanding. And if it turns out you do have the correct understanding, then maybe use this lesson as an encouragement for you to share that understanding with others. And so let’s talk about the subject of baptism and understanding instead of misunderstanding it.

1. Baptism Cannot Be Ignored

I think the first place we have to start with baptism is that it’s a subject that if we’re concerned about scripture, if we’re concerned about the New Testament scripture, it’s obviously a subject that cannot be ignored. It will not allow itself to be ignored. It is talked about so prevalently in the New Testament.

If God says something one time, that’s enough, isn’t it? But when God says something over and over and over again, then maybe that should cause us to pay special attention to that subject. Throughout the New Testament, as the Gospels began, John the Baptist and then Jesus would preach baptism. Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand, and they both baptize their followers. Jesus himself was baptized by John the Baptist in the Jordan River. When Jesus was ready to pass the baton, so to speak, to his followers, his apostles, and they were to continue his mission that he had started through his earthly ministry. He made a crucial part of that great commission, baptism in Matthew chapter 28, in Mark chapter 16, and then in the book of Acts, where we read the historical count of the apostles carrying out that great commission from Acts chapter 2 throughout the book of Acts.

Baptism is on every page in our Bible. In fact, you may notice as you read through the numerous accounts of conversion in the book of Acts, every account of conversion in the book of Acts includes baptism. It can’t be ignored. And then when we turn from the book of Acts and we begin to examine the epistles that were written to Christians, many of them who had been baptized in the book of Acts or had been baptized at some other time, place in time, Paul and the other New Testament writers will write to them about their life as Christians, and he’ll include the importance that baptism played in their life. Let’s look at that survey in the letter to the Romans, in Romans chapter 6. The apostle Paul would remind those Roman Christians that they had been baptized and it meant something.

Romans 6, he says in verse 1, what shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not. How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? Or do you not know that as many of you as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death. Therefore we were buried with him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. To the Romans, Paul talked about their baptism. In 1 Corinthians, for example, in 1 Corinthians chapter 12, the Apostle Paul to his Corinthian brethren would say this, 1 Corinthians 12 and in verse 13, for by one Spirit we are all baptized, we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and have all been made to drink into one spirit.

You see, baptism is everywhere. It can’t be ignored. To the book of Galatians, in Galatians chapter 3. In Galatians chapter 3, verses 26 and 27. For you’re all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for as many of you as were baptized into Christ, have put on Christ. In the book of Ephesians, in Ephesians chapter 4. And in verse 4, there is one body, Ephesians 4, verse 4, one body and one spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism. In the book of Ephesians, or excuse me, in the book of Colossians, Colossians chapter 2. To the Colossian brethren, he would say, Colossians 2, beginning in verse 11, in him, that is in Christ, in him you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the sins of the flesh, by circumcision of Christ, buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God who raised him from the dead.

And then lastly, in 1 Peter, John read in our Bible reading this morning in 1 Peter chapter 3 and in verse 21, comparing the salvation through water of Noah in his day, he says, in like manner, you there’s the antity of baptism, which now also does save us.

2. Where It’s Supposed to Be

And so it would seem to me that any honest reader of Scripture cannot ignore baptism. It’s there, it’s there over and over, it’s there in the Gospels, it’s throughout the book of Acts, it’s throughout the epistles, and so it cannot be ignored. It has to be dealt with. If we’re to be honest with Scripture, and if we’re truly trying to understand God’s will for our life, but what do we do with it? We don’t ignore it, but what do we do with it? Here’s what I fear some have done with it. Pardon my illustration. But have you ever bought something, maybe a piece of furniture at IKEA or someplace like that that says some assembly required. Some being the operative word there usually means a lot assembly required.

And you get this bag full of parts and pieces and different things, and you either have written instructions or in IKEA’s case, the pictures of how you put everything together, and you’re trying to match all those pieces and parts, and you’re putting them all in there, and then you get it assembled, and you think you’ve got it right, and you look down, and there’s something there. There’s still parts that you haven’t assembled yet. And you look in the instruction book, and it might say of that part, this is important. This is a safety feature. This is the most important thing. Do not, capital letters, do not use this without this piece. And you come away thinking, well, that’s important. That needs to be in there somewhere.

And so you look at it, you look at the piece of furniture, whatever you’ve just assembled, and you say, This is important. The book says it’s important, it’s got to be in here somewhere. And so you go to your trusty toolbox and you get a piece of duct tape, and you tape that important piece to the back of the bookshelf. And you say, there.

It’s in there. I don’t mean to be flippant, and I don’t mean to make fun of any of our religious friends or neighbors, but I feel like that’s what some religious groups have done with baptism. It can’t be ignored. It’s there, it sounds important. And so let’s kind of stick it in there somewhere. Rather than saying what we ought to do in that assembly is say, this is important. Let me go back. I may have to take this whole thing apart. But if this piece is important, it not only not only needs to be in there, stuck on the side somewhere, but it needs to be where it needs to be, where it’s supposed to be.

It’s prevalent, it’s obviously important. So rather than just trying to put it somewhere, we may have to deconstruct our whole belief system to make sure it’s where it’s supposed to be.

3. Baptism Attached to Discipleship, Faith and Jesus

Jesus didn’t just instruct his apostles to teach it. Some of the last words that he spoke to his apostles was about baptism. And he would say in Matthew chapter 28, verses 18 and 19, that baptism was a key part of people becoming his disciples. Preach the word, make disciples, baptizing them. And so it’s a key part of us being a disciple. In Mark chapter 16, verses 15 and 16, you’ll notice that baptism isn’t just mentioned by our Lord in some of the last words that he would speak to his apostles before he sent them out on this crucial mission known as the Great Commission, that he mentions baptism, but he attaches it, inextrably attaches it to what inarguably is the greatest and most important response we can have to God, and that is faith.

He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved. Faith is important. Can we deny that? And baptism is important because now it’s been attached to faith.

In so doing, in teaching his apostles who would carry out that commission and both teach and practice baptism, in so doing, he connected baptism not only to becoming his disciples, and not only attach baptism to the greatest response we can have to God, that is faith, but baptism is attached to Jesus Himself. In our thoughtful Lord’s Supper talk this morning, Walcott made the statement that the cross is the core of the gospel, and it is. If we understand the cross, we see it as the core of the gospel. But if we understand baptism, baptism is that the scriptures teach us that puts us in contact with the one who died upon that cross, that puts us in contact with his death, his burial, his resurrection, and his blood.

4. What’s Accomplished in Baptism

Let me ask this rhetorical question. If God wanted to say that baptism was important, if God wanted to say that baptism was essential for our salvation, what language could he use that was stronger to emphasize the importance of baptism above the language that would attach it into his death, his blood, his burial, and his resurrection. There are no more important parts of the gospel than those. And if God says we are baptized into his death, that we put on Christ in baptism. How could God have said it if he wanted to emphasize it? How could he have said it any stronger? What’s accomplished in baptism? Very quickly, we don’t have the time to read these verses. I hope that you’ll write them down. If you can ask me, I’ll email you a copy of this chart.

But accomplished in baptism, we in baptism, we obey Christ’s command. That we become his disciples by being baptized into him. We are saved. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved. The like figure whereunto baptism doth also now save us.

The forgiveness of our sins is accomplished in baptism. Acts 2 and in verse 38, a graphic way of saying that was what Ananias told Saul when he told him to arise and to be baptized, washing away your sins. They are washed away in baptism in the forgiveness. We, as we read in Romans chapter 6 and verse 4, we have newness of life. We are buried with him and raised with him in baptism. And in Galatians chapter 3, we put on Christ and we are put into Christ through baptism. If that’s what’s accomplished in baptism, then what is my state if I have not been baptized for the forgiveness of my sins? Do we see that baptism can’t be ignored? Do we see that it’s not just there and there prevalently, but that it’s a key part of God’s plan?

Conclusion

If it’s a part of God’s plan, then it should be obeyed. It may be that you’ve never been baptized. It may be that you’ve been baptized, but it was kind of like duct taping that part to the back of the bookshelf. It wasn’t with the understanding of the importance that it played in God’s plan. Then why not see that emphasis this morning? Why not come to Him in trusting faith, confess your faith, repent of your sins and be baptized for the forgiveness of your sins? You, like Saul, can arise and be baptized and wash away your sins. Would you do that this morning? Can we help you? Can we help you with further study on this subject or in understanding, helping each other understand what God’s will is for our life?

If we can help you in this morning as you obey the gospel with the understanding of what God wants you to do to be a part of his body, can we help you in that this morning as together we stand and as we sing?