"Baptism as Association" Selected Scriptures Sunday Morning Worship Service

I don't know how much our church would recognize a baptism that took place in the early church.

For better and for worse.

I've been reading a lot about baptism in church history, and my biggest thing I've learned in the last few weeks of reading and preparing for this is how consistent baptisms were from the time of the book of Acts all the way into the 600s.

We're talking like 500, 600 years baptism was celebrated or commemorated with regularity.

It looked the same in every different kind of church, more or less.

Most churches would do baptisms only a few times a year, either in Advent season or at Easter, Resurrection Sunday, or at Pentecost.

The person who was baptized would have gone through a catechism class.

They would have gone through, you know, at our church we call it a new believers class, fundamentals of the faith.

So we do have that in common with them.

They would go through that.

They would often have letters of recommendation turned in from people that knew them in the church.

Pastors or bishops was the title they often used, would meet with the person, pray with them.

On the Sunday before baptism, uh the baptismals weren't generally elevated like ours are, they were more on the floor.

The congregation would gather around it.

In some cases, they were in the middle of the room.

The baptismal candidate would go up to the uh water and would strip naked and stand naked there in front of the church.

Now, a question many Americans will ask is, what?

Some of these churches I read had divisions.

I mean, most churches would practice, you know, men on one side, women on the other.

Some of them would have some kind of divider up to block the vision of the person from half of the congregation, but you know, those kind of dividers don't last, you know, so archaeologists can't uncover those.

Uh you can imagine that some churches had that, who knows?

In the Roman worlds, uh, that kind of practice was very common in the you know, the gyms and the bathhouses, and so it you know, it makes sense that the church would have something that looks relatively like that.

But it was at this point where the person, as he strips, uh the pastor would say a verse, Colossians 3, verse 9, which says, You've stripped off the old self with its practices.

Colossians 3:9

They very much saw a spiritual element uh in the presentation of the person, like a snake sheds its clothes, the person was or sheds its skin, the person is shedding their old way of life and standing before the congregation saying, That was me, it's not me anymore.

They would then walk down into the water.

The pastor wasn't in the water, the pastor was not touching the person.

This is probably a carryover from Judaism where the baptismal ceremony in Judaism was marking that the person was ceremonially unclean.

If you touched him, you were defiled.

Uh, and there was all kinds of other spiritual elements of that.

Totellian wrote that the pastor doesn't touch the person being baptized because you don't want it to look like he's being coerced, like nobody else is pushing him there.

He's coming to the water on his own, so to speak.

He would immerse himself, he would rise out of the water, uh, he would he would walk forward, then back up, at which point the pastor would come and anoint him with oil.

This was emblematic of the baptism of the Spirit.

It was supposed to represent that.

And it was at that point the person would be robed in white.

He would get his right white robe then, and then he would join the congregation, and after all the people were baptized, they would celebrate communion.

It would be the person's first time taking communion.

And not everything the early church did should be emulated.

We've made some progress, some improvements on that baptismal formula.

I personally like the white robe before baptisms rather than after.

But what stands out from reading how the early church did baptisms was this idea of baptism as association.

It was so important to them that baptism marked your association with the church.

It was you presenting yourself to the church and the church receiving you in exchange.

There was artwork on a lot of these baptismal fonts.

The most common scene that was drawn was that of Adam and Eve, naked in the garden, and the verse that was written under it was naked and not ashamed.

And they taught in this that as the person emerged from the water, they are now undoing the curse.

They are now presenting themselves back into the redeemed family.

There is no shame now, they've been redeemed through conversion.

It is taking Genesis 3 backwards.

There's something to be said for that.

As the person then emerges into the church, they're received as a brother and sister in the Lord.

In our American culture, baptism becomes so much more individualistic, doesn't it?

It's not about the church, it's about me.

And we we approach the whole conversation very, very differently.

We approach the conversation with, do you want to be baptized and when and where?

And you can get baptized into a river or a creek or a lake or a backyard or with your friends.

I remember when I got saved, I wanted to be baptized with my friends who led me to faith in Christ.

And we were gonna go to this golf course where we used to go partying, and then we got saved, and we thought it would be so providentially ironic in the whole world that we got baptized in the very lake that we used to go partying at.

So we were gonna go baptize each other, and we had enough wisdom to run this by our pastor at the time, who said, Yeah, no.

And I was like, Can you prove to me that we can't baptize each other?

Baptism has to be done in a church.

And he says, I can prove to you that you're a numbskull.

Would you just listen to me?

I was like, okay.

And at which I'm thankful.

I got baptized at an elder meeting at the church and in front of the elders and the congregation that came.

That's how church did baptisms, and I'm thankful for that.

You know, my appeal to you this morning is for you to try to unwork the individualistic approach we have to baptism and adopt more of a core a cooperative, a congregational approach to baptism, where you recognize baptism as somebody coming out of the water into the congregation, into the body of Christ.

It's the way of the candidate saying, I want you guys to be my brothers and sisters.

I want to throw my lot in with Jesus.

I want to follow, I want to be part of the church and follow you guys my whole life.

And it's the church's way of saying, we see that and we want to receive you as one of us.

The anti-establishment skepticism that marks our own country wreaks havoc in the church.

And so I want to take you through the New Testament and try to persuade you that in the New Testament, baptism is your way of associating with the body of Christ.

Baptism, you'll see the title, is association.

Now, association is an American word.

We have a grid for that.

We have the grid for voluntary association.

It's the first amendment of our Constitution.

You have the right to free association.

You want to join that pool or that club or that neighborhood association, whatever, you have a constitutional right to do that.

Well, that right predates the First Amendment, of course.

It is something that is proclaimed by baptism, that you are voluntarily associating yourself with the church that in exchange receives you.

In fact, the IBC statement of faith, our own church's statement of faith, says that God has given the church two ordinances, baptism and communion.

I mean, notice the phrasing of that.

The baptism is something that has been given to the church.

It's not been given to individuals, it's been given to the church to proclaim those that are part of our congregation.

Now the question is: can I back up our statement of faith biblically?

My confidence is high.

Matthew chapter 3, verse 6 is where you see your first baptism in the New Testament is John the Baptist who is baptizing in verse 5, Jerusalem and Judea, and everybody was going out to that region to see him.

Matthew 3:6

Scores of people were going out there, thousands, tens of thousands.

Some secular historians estimate that over hundreds of thousands of people even were going out to be baptized with John the Baptist.

I've shared this statistic with you before, but I read one book, uh, The Oxford Companion of Baptism, that says that more people saw John the Baptist than any other human being in world history, other than maybe Alexander the Great.

That's how many people went out there.

Hundreds of thousands.

And as they went out there, not everybody was baptized, of course, but many of them were.

Lots just went for the spectacle.

John wasn't baptizing people with his own hands, of course.

They were being baptized under his watch, though, it was certainly his baptism.

The Jews practiced baptisms up in the hills and the mikvas, all the different sects and the Jewish associations or cults or whatever word you want to describe for them, uh, up in the mountains.

They had their own baptism.

John took that down to the river.

Nobody got baptized in the Jordan.

I mean, it was a purification, right?

The Jordan, not pure.

I mean, it is sediment and it's a it's a dead river, it goes into the Dead Sea, and it's it's disgusting.

You wouldn't, on your own volition, go there.

But people did for John to be baptized.

And for John, John's baptism was proclaiming a baptism of repentance.

And that's clear as you look at Matthew chapter 3 earlier, even in verse 2, repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

Matthew 3 · chapter mention

John was preparing the way for the Messiah.

He was telling people to repent.

When somebody got baptized by John, they were associating themselves with John and his ministry, with his call for repentance, with his forward look to the Messiah.

That's what that proclaims.

And it was reciprocal.

You see that it was reciprocal because look at verse 9.

I'm sorry, look at verse 7.

When he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to him for baptism, he said, You brood of vipers, who warns you to flee from the wrath to come?

John refuses to allow them to be baptized on his watch.

He chews them away.

It was not a whosoever will comes kind of thing.

The Pharisees arrive and John says, No, thank you, because John did not want to associate himself with them.

This is going to be the knot the Pharisees can't untie their whole ministry.

I mean, three days before Jesus dies, remember, the Pharisees are confronting Jesus in the synagogue, in the temple in Jerusalem.

And Jesus asked them, he says, I'll answer anything you want me to answer.

If you answer me one question, who gave John the Baptist his authority to baptize?

And they could not answer that question.

They had three years to work on it.

They could not answer that question.

They say, If we say God gave him the authority, the people will say, Why didn't you listen to John then?

And why don't you follow Christ?

And if we say his authority came from man, the crowd will turn against us because everybody loved John.

Baptism marked association with John, and John withheld it from them.

They were unrepentant, as demonstrated by them murdering Jesus.

They refused to believe.

And so John rejected them and would not let them associate with himself.

Which leads to the second baptism.

It's in Matthew 3.13, where Jesus comes from Galilee to the Jordan to John to be baptized by him.

And John says, I want to be baptized by you, not the other way around.

John recognizes the sinlessness of Christ early on.

He knows that this is the Lamb of God that takes away the sin.

He proclaims that in John chapter 1.

John 1 · chapter mention

A Lamb of God, according to Exodus, has to be spotless and undefiled.

If Jesus is a human lamb of God, that means he has to be spotless and undefiled for him to take away our sins.

So John looks at Jesus.

His baptism is one of repentance, and here comes Jesus, and John says, No.

Which makes sense.

Why would a sinless person need to repent?

Jesus' response is, I'm being baptized in verse 15 to fulfill all righteousness.

Righteousness is an outline, Jesus is filling it up.

John came to point people forward to Jesus.

Jesus is now fulfilling John's ministry.

This baptism here is Jesus associating himself with righteousness.

Righteousness.

The Holy Spirit brings righteousness, convicts you of sin.

The Holy Spirit descends upon Jesus right here.

The Spirit brings righteousness.

The baptism of Jesus proclaims righteousness to John, to the disciples who are who are watching, to the crowds, to the Pharisees who are shooed away.

Everybody sees the righteousness of God in Christ through Jesus' baptism.

The Father sees it and proclaims it.

The Son is the one that comes out of the water.

The Spirit descends upon him as a dove.

It's a proclamation of the righteousness of God seen in Christ.

You can turn in your Bibles to John chapter 1, turn right a few books.

John 1 · chapter mention

John chapter 1 provides another description of Jesus' baptism.

John 1 · chapter mention

As he approaches John verse 36, John proclaims, Behold, the Lamb of God.

John recognizes who Jesus is when he baptizes him.

John himself proclaims in verse 29 the Lamb of God takes away the sin of the world.

This is him who I said, after me comes one who ranks before me because he was before me.

John proclaims the pre-existence of Jesus Christ.

He pre-existed me, John says, even though John would have been born first, he says, Jesus was born before me, speaking of his etern eternality.

He ranks before me, he was before me.

In verse 31, I baptized with him so that he might be revealed to Israel.

So notice the association of John's baptism here.

It's to reveal Jesus to Israel.

This takes the place now when Jesus starts baptizing his own people.

You can turn over to John chapter 3.

John 3 · chapter mention

John chapter 3, verse 22.

John 3 · chapter mention

Jesus and his disciples went into the Judean countryside, and he remained there with them and was baptizing.

John was also baptizing out there, just upriver from Jesus, because water was plentiful there.

So there's scores of people coming out to be baptized.

John is baptizing.

Remember, his baptism points to repentance.

It points to Jesus, who is righteousness.

Jesus' baptism is identifying himself as the Messiah.

Jesus is also baptizing.

And a discussion arises, verse 25, between John's disciples and a Jew over purification.

Remember, the Jews would do their own baptism as a purification rite.

So it's a way of saying these guys are arguing about baptism.

Some things have never changed in church history.

Rabbi, the guy who is with you across the Jordan, to whom you bore witness.

You remember the voice from heaven, the dove, all that.

Look, he's baptizing, and everyone is going to him.

You can read through the lines here.

They're expecting this to bother John.

John, Jesus is drawing a bigger crowd than you.

You're the baptizer.

What is he?

Jesus the Baptist, and you're now John the Baptist of the Little Bee.

And John's response is he's going to grow greater.

Look at verse 27.

I can't receive anything unless it's given from heaven.

Yourself bore witness, I'm not the Christ.

I've been sent before him.

Of course I'm going to stop on a verse 29, he compares it to a bridegroom at a wedding.

Americans have a similar ritual here.

We sit at wedding tables and you're having a conversation at your wedding table, and the bride and groom walk over to your table.

Remember, they walk around the dinner and they walk over your table.

You stop what you're doing.

Even if you just cut a piece of steak to talk to the bride and groom, you would never tell the bride and groom, actually, can you hold on real quick while we're finishing our conversation?

You stop.

And John says, That's me.

Yeah, I got my little table here.

But I want more people to be in love with the groom than with me.

This is about association.

He's saying he wants Jesus to grow greater.

He wants more people following Jesus than John.

That's what I mean by association.

John doesn't have a church here, he doesn't have a group of people.

He's baptizing people into a future faith in the Messiah.

And now the Messiah is here.

He's baptizing people, meaning they're associating themselves with him.

And John says this isn't a problem.

And I want you to look down at chapter 4, verse 1, when Jesus learns that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John, which is a phenomenal statement in and of itself.

And notice all the passive verbs here.

Jesus heard that other people figured out that they had heard from their neighbor whose uncle across the street said that Jesus' ministry was growing.

And Jesus, verse 2, says he didn't himself baptize anyone, only his disciples.

So how come John 3 said Jesus was baptizing more people than John, and John 4 says Jesus didn't baptize anybody?

Remember, their hands aren't on the person going under.

It's about association.

As people are baptized under Jesus' baptism, they're associating themselves with him.

Even if it's Peter or John or Andrew, whoever is doing the baptism, and by doing it I mean overseeing it, welcoming the person to water, overseeing it.

The person is associating himself not with Peter and James and John, but is associating himself with Jesus.

Even if he's not there.

That's setting the table for the fourth kind of baptism we see in the New Testament, baptism in the church.

You can flip left back to the end of Matthew's gospel, Matthew 28, the Great Commission.

This is after the death of Jesus, after the resurrection of Jesus, before the ascension of Jesus.

He gets his disciples together and he says, All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me.

In other words, I can do whatever I want to do.

He had all authority in the universe as God, and now all authority is vindicated in the God man.

And he uses it to give the commands, go and make disciples of all nations, nations there is ethnos, all ethnic groups, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

And then teaching them to obey all that I commanded you.

Notice the order.

You make a disciple by baptizing them and teaching them.

Baptism is not one of 20 commands, it's not a salad bar of obedience here.

And John even says, after the soldiers are baptized, be content with your wages, don't extort people, you know, do justice kind of thing.

There's all kinds of commands in the Christian life.

Baptism is not like all those other commands.

It's the first one.

Now, when I say it's the first one, don't confuse what I'm saying.

I'm not saying chronologically it is the absolute first act of obedience.

Of course not.

You know, repentance would be probably the first one, placing your faith in Christ, turning from the obvious sins in your life.

Those are all, those all chronologically predate baptism.

Of course they do.

Showing up to church predates your baptism at church.

I mean, there's obviously acts of obedience that predate baptism.

The point in Matthew 28 is that baptism is marking your discipleship.

It's your association with the disciples that's going to then lead to you obeying everything else they teach.

It marks your joining of the church.

Now, you might think I'm reading into that a bit, but I don't think so because the New Testament gives you what this looks like.

It gives you the Great Commission lived out.

So you can turn over to Acts chapter 2.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

This is where the church begins in earnest.

There was no church, of course, in the life of Jesus.

Jesus teaches about the church in Matthew 16, and he's forward-looking.

He says, I will build my church.

He teaches about the church in Matthew 18.

You will keep your church pure.

This language makes no sense in the synagogue system.

The way Jesus teaches about the church makes no sense.

The old covenant is just fundamentally different than the new covenant.

The old covenant is not a church.

There are not elders, there is not membership, there's nothing like the church has at all.

And so you have to understand that I think to let Acts chapter 2, the severity of it, kick into you.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

For those that practice infant baptism, they see the church as Israel generally.

They see the church as Israel.

They see the church as a continuation or a fulfillment of Old Testament Israel.

I mean, they see it as just the next chapter of the book, so to speak.

And so, of course, if babies are circumcised, so would babies be baptized.

But I submit to you that the church is something new.

It begins in Acts 2.

Jesus spoke of it in the future tense.

He's going to build it through the baptism of his Spirit, he says in Acts 1.

When the Spirit comes, it'll seal people.

But then in Acts 2, Peter preaches a sermon.

The Holy Spirit descends, there's tongues and the miraculous gifts of the Spirit.

The crowd is cut to their core at Peter's preaching.

You can look at Acts chapter 2 and verse 37.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

What should we do?

They don't know what to do.

This had never happened before.

And Peter says, repent and be baptized, every one of you in the name of Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins.

Repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of your sins.

That's the first thing you need to do.

There's one thing: repent and be baptized.

That would be two things if you're keeping score at home.

You're not baptized in order to have your sins forgiven.

You're baptized in light of your sins being forgiven through your faith in Christ.

A common English idiom makes this, people get can stumble over this verse.

There's a common English idiom.

A soldier receives a medal for bravery.

It's the same grammatical construction.

They get the medal pinned on their chest because they were previously brave.

You wouldn't be so hard-headed to say, you said the soldier gets the medal for bravery.

That means by pinning the medal on him, he has become brave.

No, it's clear the medal represents an earlier act of bravery.

So is baptism.

You've repented from your sins.

You are baptized for the remission of sins in light of what God has done in your heart.

But my main point from Acts 2 is what comes next?

They are baptized, thousands of them.

And of course, Jerusalem has all these mikvas all over the place.

It would not be difficult to baptize that many people there.

And the very next verse, baptized, and then added to their number, is what it says.

Verse 41.

They received thousands of people, received his word, were baptized, and were added that day, three thousand souls.

Added to what?

I mean, that's the question.

Added to what?

Well, they're added to the church.

This is the launching of the church.

They don't use this word quite yet, but as you go through the book of Acts, it's very clear this is the inauguration of the church, and people are being added to it through baptism.

Notice what comes after baptism in verse 42.

Devote themselves to the apostles' teaching.

This is great commission language.

They're baptized, and now that the apostles are teaching them to obey all that was commanded.

To fellowship, to the breaking of bread, to the prayers.

Communion comes after baptism.

This is why I often say when we do communion, that communion is for those who have been baptized.

And, you know, that's not a law.

I'm going to pull the cup out of your hand if you haven't been baptized.

It's not a law or anything, but it's the priority in Scripture.

Baptism follows or precedes communion.

Baptism is the invitation to my house for dinner.

Communion is showing up to eat.

Baptism is the invitation to a family member for Thanksgiving dinner.

Communion is showing up to eat.

And if somebody shows up uninvited or that you didn't send an invitation, you would probably just play it out.

You'd probably let them in and let them eat with you, probably the first year.

If they show up the second year, you'd have some more serious questions.

Your college kid brings home a friend for Thanksgiving and didn't tell you.

That's okay, he can join, no problem.

The same friend comes back in year number two, you're gonna have some more different kinds of questions.

And so it is with baptism and communion.

Somebody comes to faith and the next baptism class isn't for two months or whatever.

Can they take communion between now and then?

I mean, I don't really care if they're moving towards baptism.

But if in a year from now they're still, quote, moving towards baptism, I have some questions.

It's certainly not the order in scripture.

The order in scripture is not take communion and teach them all to believe everything that the disciples are telling them.

It's not they took communion and were added to their number, it's that they were baptized and added to their number and then took communion.

Anyway, regardless, baptism here is marking your association with the church.

First hour, I ran through all the other baptisms in the book of Acts, and you noticed that we got out very, very late.

Some of you experienced parking problems because of it, for which I kind of apologize.

So I'm not going to drag you through every baptism in the book of Acts.

That was an 8 o'clock special, but I will summarize it this way to let you know that every baptism in the book of Acts is in association with the church.

Lydia is baptized and even tells Paul, if I have been found faithful in your sight, let me minister with you.

They're launching a church that way.

The jailer is baptized and the promise is for his whole household.

And people say, Ah, there's children there.

It does not say there are children there.

The promise is for him and his whole household, whoever is there, that if they too were to believe, they too could be baptized.

In Acts chapter 2, the language is the promise for you and your children and those who are far off.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

Notice the category distinction: you who are being baptized, that's the you, and then one day your children, and one day those who are far off.

One day the gospel will get to Rome, one day it'll get to England, one day it'll get to India, one day it'll get to Ethiopia in Acts chapter 8.

Acts 8 · chapter mention

The promise is valid then.

It doesn't mean they're baptized there.

The Ethiopian eunuch, he was not baptized in a church.

I'll grant you that.

Because there was no church in Ethiopia yet.

Instead, he was baptized by the church that was sending him out, by the church leader that was sending him to plant a church in Ethiopia.

It is very much his association with the sending church.

It's the Ethiopian eunuch saying, I'm gonna go to Ethiopia and plant a church, but my cord is tied to the gospel of Jesus, the gospel of the apostles, the gospel of Stephen that was preached to me.

It is the cord that runs all the way back to them.

I am throwing my lot in with them, I am tied to them through baptism.

Paul's baptism in the upper room in Damascus.

The scales fell from his eyes, he's baptized, and then it says he spent months with the disciples after that point.

It's association with the disciples.

The Gentiles in Acts chapter 10.

Acts 10 · chapter mention

I said I wasn't gonna do this.

This is an accident.

The Gentiles in Acts chapter 10 were converted, and they said, bring Peter, because remember, Peter was all, you know, Jews at this table, Gentiles at this table, I don't want to eat the bacon.

Acts 10 · chapter mention

They bring Peter there and make him watch with his own eyes.

These people got saved, these people spoke in tongues, and so Peter says, These people are part of us.

Baptize them.

It's their association with the church.

Time and time again.

It marks their association with the body of Christ.

It's not individualistic, although it requires the faith of the individual to be clear.

But it is congregational and corporate.

It is marking the association with the church.

Let's get to the epistles here.

Romans chapter 6.

Romans 6 · chapter mention

Romans chapter 6 is one of the clearer teachings on baptism in the epistles.

Romans 6 · chapter mention

Verse 3.

Do you not know that all of us who've been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?

As the person goes into the water, they're reenacting the death of Jesus Christ.

Baptism is a symbol, of course, it is a sign, just like circumcision was a sign pointing forward to the Savior, a sign pointing forward to the idea that the seed would come to be the Savior.

Baptism is also a sign of something that happened earlier.

But what exactly is it a sign of?

Well, Romans 6 is a sign of the death of Jesus, that Jesus went under, he was killed, and his body was put into the grave.

His soul descends to Sheol, he went down, and then he resurrects up.

Baptism is a sign of that.

But it is more than a sign.

It is a symbol, and it is more than a symbol, in that the water represents death and the new life, but it's more than a symbol, even.

It is a proclamation, it's a witness.

As the person is doing it, they are proclaiming, I believe this, and beyond I believe it, it's I'm actually it.

You know, you watch Tom Cruise in some movie, you know he's not actually a double agent.

Glad you're sitting down.

When you're baptized, you are proclaiming, you're not doing a role, you're not playing out a role.

You're not like, oh, as Jesus did this, I'm playing the role of Jesus here.

No, you are saying, I believe what happened to Jesus in his death and resurrection.

I'm united to it.

As Jesus died, I die.

Look at verse 4.

We were buried with him by baptism into death.

As you go under, it's the death of Jesus, and you are with him.

And he goes down.

You're united to him.

And you're proclaiming that to all who watch.

You're proclaiming Jesus died and rose, and I believe it.

More than believe it, he died with me in him.

My sins are his.

My life is his.

Because he rose.

The Corinthian baptism, 1 Corinthians chapter 1.

1 Corinthians 1 · chapter mention

Turn right just a few pages, 1 Corinthians chapter 1.

1 Corinthians 1 · chapter mention

The Corinthian church's divisions.

Paul's trying to navigate those divisions.

Verse 12, they're arguing with each other, and some are saying, I follow Paul, I follow Apollos, I follow Cephas.

Come on now.

You could picture the same kind of argument in our church today, couldn't you?

I am discipled by Tom Joyce.

Oh, not me.

I'm discipled by Steve Hawley.

Ooh.

A third person comes along and says, I'm more spiritual than all y'all.

I'm discipled by Jesus himself.

Ooh.

And Paul says, This is ridiculous.

Now, what evidence does he use to shut down those divisions?

Think back to your baptism, he says.

You weren't baptized into Tom Joyce.

You weren't baptized into Steve Hawley.

You were baptized into the body of Christ.

And as a pastor, I just want to share this with you.

I love verse 14.

I thank God I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius.

Also, that one household, Stephanus.

Beyond that, I don't know.

I don't know if I baptize anybody.

I don't remember that guy's name over there.

I don't know.

Maybe I baptize him, I don't know.

I love that Paul, who's been here not that long, is like I already have lost track.

I don't remember your names.

Let's move on.

Encourages my heart.

The point is that everybody comes out of the water united to Christ.

It's their, in a sense, their new birth.

Now you're born through the washing of the water of the word on your heart, of course.

Baptism reenacts that by showing your new birth, faith in Christ, undoing the curse, welcomed back into the Garden of Eden, received by your brothers and sisters in the Lord with unity.

Now, Paul's going to circle back to that point later.

1 Corinthians chapter 12, you can turn right in 1 Corinthians over to chapter 12.

1 Corinthians 12 · chapter mention

Chapter 12 is a spiritual gift chapter where Paul says, hey, eyes don't covet the hands, hands don't cover the feet.

The hand can't say, how come the feet get to do all the walking?

Because it's a foot.

And the hand can't say, how come the eye gets to do all the singing?

It's an eye.

Everybody be happy with their gifts, okay?

Just serve the body.

But how did you get into the body which you're serving?

Well, through the Holy Spirit, you have a spiritual gift, so the Holy Spirit is gifting you.

But secondly, in verse 12, just as the body is one, of chapter 12, verse 12, the body is one and has many members, all the members of the body, though many are one, so it is with Christ.

Everybody is united because it's all Christ's body.

In one spirit, we were all baptized into one body.

Jews, Greeks, slave, free.

We're all drinking the same drink.

Paul says we're all united.

We shouldn't have divisions.

The Roman world was so eclectic.

Rich, poor, slave, free.

Every ethnic group, every language group, every skin color.

One of the accusations given against the early church is that they did not have their service times posted on the walls.

It were secretive.

It was not a proclamation of the world.

Do you see this even in Acts chapter 5?

Acts 5 · chapter mention

People didn't want to associate with them even.

People wondered what happened in there.

Well, what happened in there is that people from every ethnic group, from every social class, from every every male, female, rich, poor, slave, free, they're all brother and sister in the Lord.

That's what was happening in there.

To the outside world, they saw the unity of the church, and it was off-putting, to say the least.

Baptism is what Paul says proclaims that.

Everybody is in this together.

Notice in chapter 12, Paul uses baptism synonymous with membership.

He's using the word membership here.

You're members of one body.

How'd you get there?

You're baptized.

I tried to think of an example of this.

If I want to take an airplane flight tomorrow, the Delta Airlines afternoon flight from DC to LA, I want to take that tomorrow.

Can I take it without boarding the plane?

No.

Can I board the plane without taking it?

Also, no.

There's a linked progression here.

Can I say, I just actually want to be on that flight, but I don't want to board it.

You're so legalistic.

Or I want to board the flight, but how dare you say I'm gonna board it and then I have to actually fly?

That's the connection of baptism and membership.

How do you be, they're ontologically the same thing.

How do you become a member?

You're baptized.

How are you baptized?

Through presenting your testimony and being received by the congregation.

Yeah, but I want to be baptized and not a member.

Sure, some people want to get on a plane and not fly, but it doesn't work that way.

They're united.

They're united.

Look at Galatians 3, verse 27.

Galatians 3:27

Keep turning right here at Galatians 3.

Verse 27, where here Paul proclaims pretty clearly.

As many of you are baptized into Christ Jesus, have put on Christ.

That's the reality.

This is the difference between the new covenant and the old covenant.

You couldn't say this in the old covenant.

Everybody who was circumcised did not put their faith in the future Savior.

Not all who is Israel is Israel.

But everybody who's baptized into Christ Jesus has put on the faith in Christ Jesus.

They're united to him in faith.

We're all brothers and sisters in the Lord.

Did you see recently that Hulk Hogan got baptized?

Oh man, he was my hero as a kid.

Tell me it's fake and we will fight.

Hulk Hogan was real, okay?

Real.

And he got baptized recently.

And what shocked me most about this is that the church put the video of his baptism on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram.

And you read to the comments, which I did purely in the means of research, I assure you.

And every genre of Christian, from Lutheran, Presbyterian, Baptist, everybody on the spectrum is all jumping in with like, welcome, brother, welcome, brother, welcome, brother.

That was everybody's comment.

Like they recognized, without the theology behind it for the most part, they recognized that the baptism of somebody is us receiving him, regardless of what church he's part of.

He's now received as a brother in Christ.

That's his doing.

He wants to do that.

That's the point of baptism.

And we all respond with open arms.

Welcome to the family.

One last verse.

Colossians chapter 2, verse 12.

Colossians 2:12

You've been buried with him in baptism.

There's that linkage again.

Jesus died.

You die with him in baptism.

He dies in your place.

I mean, this is the great exchange.

You're a sinner who deserves hell.

Your judgment is given from you to Jesus.

He dies in your place.

So, in a sense, you died with him.

Even though you didn't.

He died, not you.

But you died with him.

That's proclaimed.

Verse 12.

In baptism, it says.

How did I die with Jesus?

I mean, the gospel is at stake here.

How did I die with Jesus?

In baptism.

That's how I died with him.

I was raised through the wonderful and powerful working of God.

God, the Holy Spirit, brought Jesus out of the grave, conquering over death.

That's what happens in your own heart.

You're brought from death to life.

You put your faith in Christ and you're spiritually dead and you become spiritually alive.

You're spiritually blind, you have spiritual sight.

You're spiritually deaf, you have spiritual ears now.

You can hear the word of God through the scripture.

Your life is alive through Christ.

That's what happens in baptism.

You go under the water, the water seals you off.

It is just a split second under the water, a split second.

But for that moment, the water is there.

You are dead in Christ, and then you rise as Jesus rose from the grave.

And newness of life.

Verse 13, you were dead in your sins and trespasses.

And God made you alive together with him.

How?

Verse 14, he canceled the record of death that stood against you.

This happened at the cross, but you're joined to it at baptism.

When were you forgiven?

Well, in eternity past, when God wrote your name in his book of life.

When were your sins actually forgiven, though?

When Jesus died on the cross and declared it is finished.

No, I mean actually.

When you're united to Christ through a generation, proclaimed by your baptism.

And even then there's still a feature tense.

When you're glorified, when you're finally looking at Jesus in heaven.

But for now, you're part of the body of Christ.

When I say the body of Christ, what do I mean?

This.

The church.

The church is the body of Christ on earth.

The church is the body of Christ on earth.

Now let me speak to you pastorally for a second, recognizing full well that I may step on some toes.

What age is appropriate to be baptized?

You know, our our church has said you can't be a member before you're 18.

All you received a letter in the last few weeks saying that we're gonna lower that age to 16.

Because I do believe, I have this conviction, throughout the last hundred years of our of American Christianity, the big danger has been kids who make false professions of faith.

You know, they I see this as a pastor all the time, you know, somebody who is baptized at six or ten or whatever, and then they grow up and they don't go to church and they're just they abandon the faith, and there's genuine confusion in the family and in that kid's heart.

Is that kid saved?

And he's like, I was baptized.

I've even sat in recently I sat in a conversation with a college kid and his parents, where the college kid was trying to convince his parents he wasn't a Christian, and his parents were arguing back with him that we were there when you were baptized.

Like it's total of the roles were reversed, entirely reversed.

Normally it's the other way around.

There's so much confusion.

However, I also think now with the kind of our culture shifting in so many different ways, that we are seeing at Emmanuel Bible Church over the last few years, we have, especially since COVID, we have seen so many people, young people, coming to our church.

Their churches were closed.

We had this all the time.

Their churches were closed, their parents didn't want them going to church, their parents weren't saved, whatever.

They found their way here.

High school kids, 16, 17 years old.

Their parents aren't taking them to church.

They're saying, My my church won't won't have us.

Why would you not what's to withhold water from baptism from that kind of person?

I would say nothing.

Now you drive down to a lower age, you got younger kids, and the individualistic concept of baptism, you look at an eight-year-old or ten-year-old and you say, They made a profession of faith, why not baptize them?

Prove to me you shouldn't baptize them.

And my response to you is that baptism is more than just recognizing they made a profession of faith.

It's more than that.

It's not less than that, but it's more than that.

It's we even use the language of credible profession of faith.

Credible to who?

When you say that phrase, credible profession of faith, credible to whom?

To the church.

To the church.

And it's so hard with little kids to discern this.

You know, the parents bring the 10-year-old and they say, he believes in Jesus and it's his own doing, not us.

We have nothing to do with it.

I'm like, well, that's not a good thing.

You should have something to do with it.

You know, how can you discern in the kid's heart if his faith is his or if it's his parents?

How could you even begin to you can't discern that in your own heart?

How could you discern that in a little kid's heart?

And why is that a good thing?

It's not a good thing.

You know, let me flip it around, parents.

Do you love your kids because God told you to or because you love them on their own?

What's the difference?

As a parent, what is the difference to that?

There's no difference.

Both.

It'd be very unhealthy to try to unwind that.

God made the family so that kids are protected in the family.

The parents protect them, the parents feed them, the parents tuck them into bed at night, they drive them to church, they protect them and clothe them.

And it is good for the kids to grow up loving their parents and trusting their parents.

And it's good for the kids to say, I believe in Jesus because my parents believe in Jesus.

That's good.

I don't want to diminish that at all.

That's I hope that's my kids' testimonies.

I hope my kids say, I never remember a time I didn't believe the gospel.

But baptism is more than that.

I've been preaching through Proverbs in the night, and at Proverbs 1, there's just this gripping scene, isn't there?

Like around verse 20, where the this kid, 15, I've been saying 15, 16, whatever, is standing at the fork in the road.

And that road is the road of folly.

That road is the road of riches.

That's the road where all his friends are on.

His friends are there and they're saying, Come join us, come join us, let's go, let's go get illicit gain.

Let's go murder and let's go plunder.

Let's go get rich.

The adulterous woman is on that road and she's calling, she's saying, Come this way, come into my house this way.

And this kid, this, I'm saying 16 years old or whatever, is standing there on the top of the road and he hears those voices, and his friends are saying, Come with me, come with me.

And he's wrestling, he's torn there.

It's like everybody, everybody is going that way.

Everybody.

And then over here is the voice of wisdom.

Say, don't do it.

Come.

I was with God when He created the world.

I'm wisdom is saying, I'm God's son, I made the world.

I know how the world works.

I can forgive you of your sins.

I can show you forgiveness and a rich life with God's people.

Come this way.

And that person is stuck there and is torn.

But eventually, he has to take a step.

Eventually, he's going to go this way and follow the world, or this way into Christ.

And when I say into Christ, what do I mean?

In the church.

That's gonna happen.

One road or the other.

And I think to baptize somebody at an age before that is almost a disservice to them.

Saying, because you said the prayer, because you believe in Jesus even.

You're part of the church now.

And they encounter that tear, that tug in a few years.

And if somebody doesn't drive, they don't have that tug.

The most persuasive thing to me about changing our age from 18 to 16 was Ryan Francis or Youth Pastor saying, look, the kids are driving at 16.

This is where you're seeing it.

They metaphorically and literally choose which road they're gonna go on.

That makes sense to me.

Where are they gonna go?

Are they gonna go down that road or down that road?

And baptism is their way of saying, I want this road so bad.

I want to be with you guys.

And it's the church saying, We want you too, brother.

We want you too, sister.

Welcome.

That's the joining.

That doesn't mean a baptism is not valid if it's done at a younger age, of course.

But that's just my own conviction that I have with my family and that I want to share with you, and that I I know many of you have as well, but I don't know if you've heard it expressed that way.

I wanted to express it to you.

The reason I think it's good for kids to wait until they're 16, 15, I don't want to put an age on it.

Every kid is different.

Every 15-year-old, if you have a 15-year-old, you know they're not all the same.

Believe me, I have one.

Every 16-year-old is different.

There's no age fixed.

But it's this tearing in the heart and them saying, I'm I'm going all in with Jesus.

If you believe that, you're finding your identity in Christ.

You know, our world is so lost when it comes to identity.

People don't even know what the word identity means.

They look in for their identity, they look to social media for their identity, they look to friends for their identity.

I'm telling you, your identity is forged not horizontally, it's not forged as friends, it's not forged eternally.

Your identity is given to you as a gift by God proclaimed through baptism.

What's your identity?

You're buried with Christ.

You're resurrected in newness of life with Him.

We're your brothers and sisters.

That's your identity.

God, we're thankful that you have given us this picture that's really alive.

It's more than a picture, it's a video of what the gospel is: death to life, judgment for sin to freeness and new life.

We're thankful for the promise that is for us and our children and all those who are far off.

The voice of the world calls, the voice of folly calls, and says, Come.

The voice of wisdom is the voice of Christ.

And he says, Turn this way.

That's the turn we've made.

I pray for anyone here this morning that has never given you their life.

I pray they would see in the waters of baptism the promise of dying to the power of sin and rising to a new life.

Pray that they would believe that in their hearts.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now, for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to TMS.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.