Baptism and Our "Jesus Identity" - Baptism Sunday

Hello everyone, I'm Dr.

Steve Holt.

I want to welcome you to the Road Church Podcast.

Each week we go into God's Word.

We teach chapter by chapter and verse by verse.

We are here to build the Kingdom of God revolution through empowering people to change the world.

So we pray this will minister to you at your heart level and change your life.

Well, today is Baptism Sunday.

So we're gonna be doing baptism.

So who's getting baptized?

Raise your hand.

Who's getting baptized right now?

All right, look at all those hands.

Okay, they're kind of packed over here.

Fantastic.

Um, as we transition, as we transition into the message I have, I'm calling it baptism and our Jesus identity.

Baptism and our Jesus identity.

I want to open with a prayer.

This was given to me by Pastor George Stanke.

He's a he's an overseer over me here at the road.

He doesn't come to the road, but he helped plant the road with me.

He's on staff with Focus in the Family and their counseling department.

He sent me this prayer.

And it was so appropriate with what I was going through.

May it be appropriate for you.

I'm gonna read it.

I don't normally do this, but let me read this prayer.

Would you just close your eyes and the parts that are meaningful to you, embrace them.

Lord, make me present to your presence.

When the pace quickens and my soul forgets to breathe, where there is pressure, grant me peace.

Where there is performance, restore to me wonder.

Where there is weariness, renew my strength.

Let me not miss you in the middle of the message, nor trade your voice for the echo of approval.

When I feel stretched thin, be near.

When I fear I've not done enough, remind me you already have.

Let me lead not from striving but from stillness.

Let me preach not to impress but to reveal.

Let me serve not to be seen, but to bear witness.

Grant that I would listen more than I speak.

Trust more than I plan.

Worship more than I worry.

For it is in the broken body that we find our healing.

It is in the empty tomb that we find our hope.

And it is in walking with you that we are made new.

Amen.

So may that be our prayer too today.

So baptism and our Jesus identity.

This is an exciting message, a fun message.

I haven't given this specific message in a long time.

And so it's got some thoughts on it that are fresh and new, and I hope it'll be a blessing to you.

But Jesus, interesting about Jesus.

So Jesus did not start his ministry with preaching the kingdom of God.

Jesus did not start his ministry by casting out demons.

Jesus did not start his public ministry with exorcisms.

He started with baptism.

The first thing that Jesus did, leaving his carpenter father's home, where we know in tradition and legend is that he was a carpenter himself.

And he left that to go into the public ministry that we would observe in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in the Gospels, he launched it with being baptized.

And here's what's ironic: he didn't need to be baptized.

He wasn't a sinner saved by grace.

He was fully the Son of God.

And yet, in obedience, to fulfill an act of obedience, he was getting himself baptized with the Father.

And we're going to look at, don't look there.

I'm going to put it up on the screen.

Mark 1.

Mark 1, we read, it came to pass in those days that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.

And then immediately he goes into the wilderness for 40 days, and there he's tempted by the devil.

And that's how he begins.

That's how he launches out his public ministry of preaching the kingdom, casting out demons, building disciples, but he began with baptism.

Now here's what's interesting.

He concluded his public ministry after he had died on the cross and been resurrected, before he ascended to heaven.

He gave what we classically call the Great Commission to us in Matthew 28.

And here's what he said.

And Jesus came and he spoke to them, saying, All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth.

Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them.

So Jesus starts his ministry with baptism.

He concludes his ministry with baptism.

And then he instructs us that the way to build disciples, the first thing in the discipleship process of becoming a Jesus follower is get baptized.

Get baptized first.

He says, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I've commanded you, and lo, I'm with you always, even to the end of the age.

So baptism's first.

Baptism is actually ahead of teaching and observing the things that he commanded us to observe.

And so, church in the Protestant tradition, I would say, with the exception of the Baptist Church, we've not had nearly the emphasis on baptism as I think the Reformation men of John Calvin and Martin Luther wanted us to have because they believed in two sacraments.

The two sacraments were Holy Communion or the Lord's Supper and Baptism.

Matter of fact, in a definition of the church, which is a great, great question, some of you have asked me, what is the definition of the church?

The Reformation in the 16th century was where the gospel is rightly preached and the sacraments are rightly administered.

That's how high a level they put on Lord's Supper and baptism.

And so in baptism, we're identifying with the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

So why be baptized?

Write this down.

It might be a different kind of way to look at it.

Because your spiritual blood is poisoned by sin.

Your spiritual blood is poisoned by sin.

Two key passages in Romans.

Romans 3.23, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

Romans 6.23, for the wages of sin is death.

So, church, sin is like a cancer.

It's a cancer, it's at the cellular, spiritual, cellular level, and we're all poisoned by the sin of Adam.

So we come into this world with poisoned blood.

And that poisoned blood is coursing through our spiritual veins.

It's missing the mark.

We often think of sin as some major, heinous, bad thing that we do, but what sin is, is simply missing the mark.

It's an ancient term used in an archery contest.

So in an archery contest, you had a judge at one end, hopefully not too close to the target, and then you had the archer at the other end, and they would fire the arrow, and the judge would shout out, sin one, sin two, sin three, according to how far from the perfection from the bullseye that particular arrow had hit.

And so sin is imperfection.

And we're poisoned by this blood, this blood of Adam and Eve.

And it's a spiritual cancer.

We've all known people who actually were carrying cancer, but they look good on the outside.

Right?

And so they're fine.

Maybe they get a slight headache or something like that, they go and find out their whole body's eaten up with cancer.

And so it is in our lives.

We have people, some of you.

Definitely true of me.

Definitely true of me, where if you were to look at me as a kid and up in high school and college coming in, I was a good kid.

Okay, I wasn't like messing around with drugs or running around.

But my blood still was tainted with the cancer of sin.

So all of us have that.

And what we need, what we need is a spiritual blood transfusion.

So turn in your Bibles to Romans 6.

Romans 6 is one of those amazing passages where Paul is talking about the old man, identifying with the old man, leaving the old man, coming into the new man that we are in Christ.

And he actually talks about baptism in Romans 6.

So what is baptism?

Baptism is a blood transfusion.

It's a spiritual blood transfusion.

Here's what he says in verse 3.

Romans 6, verse 3.

Romans 6:3

Do you not know that as many of us as we're baptized into Christ Jesus, we're baptized into his death.

Church, we don't need a dialysis.

Too many times the church is administering a blood spiritual dialysis of taking our old man and kind of running it through a system, right?

We run it through a system and try to clean it out and then put the clean blood back in.

Man cannot heal man.

So Muhammad was a man.

And those in Islam are still lost.

Buddha was a man, and those in Buddhism are still lost.

You can't transfer the tainted poison blood to someone else.

How many of you given blood?

Okay, so when I was a senior in high school, I was an activist.

Okay, and I was I was a do-gooder, okay?

And I had I had our high school mobilized on so many things, it was crazy.

But I did a blood drive.

And in this blood drive, we set a record, I don't know if it still stands today, DeCab County, outside uh the Atlanta area, 300 young people gave blood at Clarkston High School, 1976.

So I'm dating myself a little bit, right?

Um can you imagine what it took to get 300 high school students to voluntarily go into the library and let some dude stick a needle in their arm and suck blood out.

But we did it.

But one of the things that they did, and they still do today, is you have to take a survey, you have to take a questionnaire.

Have you ever had this?

Have you ever had that?

And you've got these sicknesses that they know can be transferred through our blood.

Jesus is pure blood.

Jesus is the only one that can take our cancer in our bloodstream, transfer it into our bloodstream, and start cleaning it out.

That's what baptism is about.

Baptism is coming before the Lord and saying, I'm gonna be, I'm going to identify with the death of Christ, I'm gonna die to my sin, I'm gonna die to my poisoned blood, and I'm gonna get a blood transfusion from Christ.

And that's why we believe at the road, that baptism is for those who have put their faith in Christ.

So I grew up in the Lutheran background where I was baptized as an infant.

So I was baptized as a little kid, but I didn't become a Christian until my freshman year, I, as a volitional act of my will, I said yes to Jesus.

Because that other baptism didn't mean anything to me.

And we see in the New Testament where Christ gives us an example of those receiving Christ, they receive Christ as a volitional act of their will, and then getting baptized, especially in the book of Acts.

So I went to my dad, and my dad's a Lutheran pastor, and I said, Dad, I don't want to hurt your feelings or anything.

I really don't.

But I feel like that I need to be baptized as a believer in Christ.

And I know you actually he didn't, but Pastor Stinder, that was his name.

Pastor Stinder baptized me uh as an infant.

But I wanted to make it intentional to my faith now in getting baptized as I saw it in the New Testament.

Now, here at the row, we take babies and we dedicate them.

That's that's the difference, is we we just did that a couple weeks ago.

We you saw that, that was so fun, you know.

We hold up the babies, we dedicate the baby, but we're really dedicating the parents to raise the baby in the ways of the Lord so that when they put their faith in Christ, we might baptize them in water at that point.

So I said that to dad, and then my dad, he's so cool, he's so un-Lutheran in the sense of maybe what his, I say his paradigm, he's always doing paradigm shifts with my brother and I.

And he's just so open.

But he said, Well, we're gonna we're gonna go to Israel.

Why don't I baptize you in the Jordan River?

And I said, Come on, man, let's do it.

And so we did it.

We got baptized in Jordan River.

And by the way, I think we should be beginning a process over the next few years of considering going to Israel and leading a tour.

We have one all planned.

I don't know, like 75 of you were lined up and then COVID hit.

But I've been wondering if we should revisit that and um go to Israel.

And then you can get baptized there too.

It's really cool.

But here's my point.

My point is that no man can cleanse you of sin.

No church can cleanse you of sin.

The road can't cleanse you of sin.

I can't cleanse you of sin.

Muhammad can't cleanse you of sin.

Buddha or the higher consciousness or Gnosticism is not going to heal you of sin.

Only Jesus has the pure blood.

And that's what this is about.

This is receiving the pure blood.

It's a blood transfusion, it's not a dialysis.

And that blood transfusion is because the shed blood of Christ was drained out of Jesus at the cross.

That's Good Friday.

So, in a sense, church, by doing baptism the week after Good Friday and Easter, you're reenacting Good Friday and Easter again.

On a personal, corporate level.

So Romans 5.8.

But God demonstrates his own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Much more than, having now been justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.

For if when you were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his son, much more having been reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.

So Romans 6.3 is saying to us here that we are baptized into Christ Jesus and into his death, meaning that I'm dead to sin.

I'm dying to sin.

I'm dying to that old life, that old way of thinking, that old way of living.

And it's an identification with the church.

That's what's exciting.

It's with the church, gang.

So we're all in approval as a corporate body before the Lord that we are here to support you.

And what's going to happen today is these men and women are going to come through.

They're going to come out.

We're going to pray for them because if you feel led to come up, I don't care if you're on the ministry team or not, if you want to come minister to people, especially family, of course, but anybody, because you've sent something, come up and pray with them.

This is this is a family reunion.

This is a family reunion through baptism.

And it's the reenactment of Good Friday and Easter.

So the first thing is Good Friday, that we identify with the death of Christ by going under the water.

Look at verse 4.

Therefore, we are buried with him through baptism into death.

Even so, we also should walk in newness of life.

Now, if you're taking notes, jot this down.

This is important.

Your old identity is I am dead in sin.

But your new identity through baptism is I am dead to sin.

That's really huge.

So your old identity is you're dead inside, you're left to your own power, and you can't change, you're alone.

Your new identity is that you're buried with Christ, you're raised up with Christ, and you're dead to sin.

So, my understanding of dialysis, where the blood is taken out of someone and then it's cleansed through a system and comes back in, that's what the church does a lot is we have systems to somehow cleanse us of our sin.

And what I'm saying is that baptism is saying you can't do that.

You don't have the capacity.

So when we go under the water, all of you that are raise your hand if you're getting baptized over here.

All right, over here?

Okay.

So I want you to even say it to yourself.

I'm dying to sin when you go under that water.

You're dying to the power of sin.

Demons hate that.

Your flesh hates that.

But then you're coming up, you're not staying there.

We're not gonna hold you down.

Okay?

We're gonna let you experience the water coming over.

We have a rule around here, that's to cover all of it.

I don't want any dry noses or anything.

We go all the way down that you come back up raised with Christ in newness of life.

That's the blood transfusion.

You've already had the blood transfusion because you put your faith in Christ.

This has a twofold meaning.

Part of it's symbolic, it's a symbol, but it's more than that.

It's more than there's actually a spiritual interaction.

I don't get it in the fourth dimension, but I know it's true.

I was baptizing a young man in a jacuzzi in Anaheim, California, years ago.

And he came out of another uh religion.

And as I took him under, and I think this was only like the second baptism I'd ever done, I put him under, he came back, and this guy was manifesting a demonic power, demonic presence was over him.

And I had to hold on to him, or I think he would have, the demon would have tried to drown him.

So I held him up, called some guys over, and we set this guy free, man.

We set this guy free, and he was transformed.

I stayed in his life for a couple years after that, and I mean, he was right on, fired up, blood transfusion, saint, disciple of Jesus from that day forward.

So there's something more than just a symbol here, there's spiritual power.

There's spiritual power in the Lord's Supper, there's spiritual power in baptism.

These are sacraments of power from the Lord.

So the old identity, I'm dead in sin, or new identity, I'm dead to sin.

I've been crucified with Christ, Paul says.

I've been crucified with Christ.

You're being crucified with Christ.

It is no longer you who live, but Christ living in you and the life that you live in the flesh, you live by faith.

So the old regime, the Moses law, the Jewish law, every religion in the world is about outside in righteousness.

Do this, you'll be right.

Give to this, you'll be right.

Come to church this many times, you'll be right.

No.

If that makes us right, then Jesus died needlessly.

You can't do it.

Just say it all together.

I can't do it.

I can't save myself.

So baptism is surrendering everything to Christ because it's an inside out job.

It's an inside out work.

It's Christ coming in, changing our heart, changing our soul, changing our mind.

And then we begin to live it on the outside.

But it starts.

On the inside.

So baptism is about identity with Christ.

Look at verse 5.

For if we have been united together in the likeness of his death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of his resurrection.

So our new identity is I am resurrected with Christ.

Everybody say that.

I am resurrected with Christ.

I am resurrected with Christ.

Baptism is publicly going under the water, death of Jesus, coming up out of the water, resurrected with Christ.

We are resurrected with Christ.

We've been placed into Christ.

Verse 6.

Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin.

For he who has died has been freed from sin.

No longer a slave to sin.

Dead to sin.

So one time there was this girl that I knew in um, she was missionary.

And uh I decided to take her to a cemetery.

I had two guys that had gone ahead of me.

They were out around the gravestones.

And I said, Do you ever like to go to cemetery?

And she said, No.

I said, Yeah, I don't know what it is, but man, I just dig it.

I like going to cemeteries and stuff, and I just feel I feel close to God when I go to cemeteries.

That's so weird.

I said, I know.

But there's one right over here.

So we went over there and some spooky sounds started coming out from the rocks and stuff.

And she was freaked out, man.

It was so much fun.

But church, if you go to a cemetery, what do you hear?

You don't hear anything.

Everybody there is dead.

And by the way, no one's there except the bones and uh embalmed.

I mean, they're not even there.

They're either with God or without or away from God.

And when you go under that water, I know it's gonna be busy, there's gonna be sounds from the music and everything, but if if you can, if you think about it, you that are getting baptized, you're not gonna hear anything for a moment.

You're not gonna hear anything.

That's that's because you're dead to your sin.

I can put I can go up to a gravestone and I can put my ear against it or get down on the floor, and they're not talking to each other.

They're dead.

That's what baptism is.

It's dying to the echoes of that old life.

Now, will you struggle with it for your whole life?

Of course we do.

But I want you to remember your baptism.

Martin Luther used to say, when you splash water on your face, remember baptism.

So when you go under, and I was a scuba diver, I'm a certified Navy scuba diver when I was in Okinawa.

And how many scuba diver?

So when you go down, all you hear is your breathing.

It's kind of spooky at first, but you get down deep and you hear the breathing, it's just quiet.

That's going down under the water.

Dead to sin.

But now, boom, coming up, and we're gonna we're gonna applaud and we're gonna be excited and we're gonna be joyful with you because now you're coming up to your resurrection in Christ.

But, church, it's a it's a progressive sanctification.

I am transformed, I am being transformed, I have yet to be transformed.

So there is a transformation at baptism that I am transformed, but we're also being transformed, and even as we live out our life, as the years go by, we're yet to be transformed.

That's what I'm experiencing with what's happened the last two weeks.

With some of the stuff that we've been through.

I am transformed, I'm being transformed, I'm yet to be transformed.

Don't raise your hand.

But if you think you've arrived, watch this baptism.

Be reminded that that's just the beginning, and the rest is the great adventure of knowing Christ in our lives.

Now, here's what I want you to do as we close.

Turn to Mark 1, and I want to look at the baptism of Jesus and quickly draw three prophetic principles, three prophetic things from the baptism of Jesus.

Mark chapter 1, verse 9.

Mark 1:9

Mark chapter 1, verse 9.

Mark 1:9

And you might want to underline some of these key points.

It came to pass in those days that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John and Jordan.

Verse 10.

And immediately coming up from the water, he saw the heavens parting.

Underline that.

He saw the heavens parting.

Number one, prophetically, what happens in baptism is God gives you a fresh vision for your life.

For Jesus, he saw the heavens parting, and I'll tell you, the argument that I've debated back and forth with different guys over the years has been: did Jesus know 100% what his calling was before he was baptized?

Because he's been a carpenter and something of the Spirit, because he's fully man and he's fully God, brought him to John to be baptized.

I believe that it's at his baptism that he got his calling.

A church, listen, some of you that are getting baptized are gonna find your calling right there.

You're gonna look back someday and say, I was at the road church right after Easter, back in 2025, and when I came out of that water, I knew what God wanted me to do with my life.

I had an understanding that I'd never had before.

I want you to be open to that.

Or maybe it's three days later, or maybe it's six months later, but I'm telling you, when Jesus came up, the heavens were parted.

I believe he had a fresh vision of what he was called to do because that's when his ministry began.

That's the first thing.

Now look at the next, look at the next line.

He saw heavens parting and the Spirit descending upon him like a dove.

Underline that.

So there's a filling of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus gets, for the first time, he's filled with the Holy Spirit, as far as we know, and he now has the power of the Holy Spirit.

So you'll see that if we as you read on in Luke 4 and in Matthew 4 and other places, that immediately he goes into the wilderness, he's tempted by the devil.

It says he went out with the Spirit, he came back filled and empowered by the Spirit.

So there's a new power over your life that can often happen through baptism.

Ephesians 1.

In him you trusted after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, in whom you believed.

You were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the guarantee of our inheritance.

Church, you can't earn your salvation, so you can't lose it.

How can you lose something you didn't earn?

You're never going to be good enough.

Just say, I'm not good enough.

But guess what?

He's good enough, and he lives within you, and he sealed you with the Holy Spirit, so you have the Holy Spirit, but in baptism, there can be a work of the Spirit that's unique.

And there can be a baptism and filling with the Holy Spirit that can be phenomenal.

So one time I was baptizing a young man, I baptized him, he came up, and this guy is just speaking in tongues.

And he doesn't even believe in that stuff.

But the Spirit of God came upon him.

So we we stay open to the things of the Spirit that we see in Scripture with the filling of the Holy Spirit.

Look at verse 11.

Then a voice came from heaven, you are my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.

First, a vision, new vision.

Secondly, Holy Spirit filling.

Thirdly, men and women, you're beloved.

You are adopted into family.

God really loves you.

He really cares about you.

Romans 8.

For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons and daughters of God.

For you did not receive the spirit of bondage, but you received the spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, Abba Father.

Can you imagine the Son needing to hear from his heavenly father that he's beloved?

How much more do we?

How much more do you?

Some of you have never felt loved.

All you've felt is condemned.

Let's break that off today.

Let's break that off today.

Let's break off a spirit of condemnation and receive the spirit of adoption that you're beloved in Christ.

That's what baptism is about.

Thank you for listening to the Road Church Podcast.

We pray today's message has empowered you to make a difference in your world.

For more information about the Road Church and to find more content like this, go to theroad.org.

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