Immersed in Jesus

Good morning.

We have a special time for children right now downstairs.

Our children's church will be meeting with our lustrous leader Lindsay.

While we get ready for today's sermon.

If you'd like a sermon outline, our ushers have them in hand.

Just raise your hand.

They'd be happy to give you one.

Now we've been studying uh the Acts of the Apostles on Sunday morning for quite a while.

I'm going to do something a little different today.

I'm going to take a detour and talk about baptism.

And to get us started, I read a story about a mother who looked out her window one day and saw her seven-year-old son Johnny playing church with three little kittens.

He lined them up and he's preaching at them.

And she went, her mother, his mother came back a little while, looked out the window, and he saw that he was dunking them in water and baptizing them.

She shouted out to him, Johnny, stop that.

You're gonna drown those little kittens.

And he said, Well, they should have thought of that before they joined my church.

Well, I don't think Jesus ever told us to baptize cats, but he did tell us to baptize people, people who have believed in him as their savior.

And in our study of Acts, the apostles, water baptism is a recurring theme throughout the entire book of Acts.

Luke mentions it 24 times.

And since four people are coming forward today to be baptized, I thought it'd be a good time to talk about what baptism is and what it means and why we do it.

I'm going to begin by looking at how the Apostle Paul understood baptism as a picture of our new life in Jesus Christ.

I'm reading from a passage today in his letter to the Romans, chapter six, a few verses in, and then we'll talk for a few minutes.

Romans 6, beginning in verse 1.

If you have a Bible and want to follow along, Paul says, What shall we say then?

Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase?

May it never be.

How shall we who died to sin still live in it?

Or do you not know that all of us who've been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death?

Therefore, we've been buried with him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

For if we become united with him in the likeness of his death, certainly we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection.

Knowing this, that our old self was crucified with him in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin.

For he who has died is freed from sin.

Now, if we've died with Christ, we believe we shall also live with him.

Knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again, death no longer has dominion over him.

For the death he died, he died to sin once and for all, but the life he lives, he lives to God.

Even so, consider yourselves to be dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

I'm going to look at three things about baptism from the New Testament this morning: the meaning of baptism, the kinds of baptism, and why believers in Christ are baptized.

First, let's consider the meaning of baptism.

I know different denominations baptize a wide range of ways.

Some denominations sprinkle with water, others put people down three times, things like that.

There's no direct admonition as to how a person is baptized, but the interesting thing is the Greek word for baptism, baptizo, means to be totally immersed in something.

That's just the meaning of the word.

And one reason we take people under the water and back up again is to immerse them completely in the water.

You see the idea of this word when John the Baptist baptized Jesus.

In Mark 1, 9 to 11, we see in those days Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.

And immediately coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens opening, and the spirit like a dove descending upon him, and a voice came out of the heavens.

In you I am well pleased.

Notice that Jesus was totally immersed in the water and then came back up out of the water.

That's what baptizo means.

That's how people were baptized in the New Testament.

The word baptism then means literally to immerse in something, but it can also mean uh other things that are metaphorical or symbolic.

Uh it also can mean being totally identified with something.

You're so immersed in it that you're identified with it.

That's kind of the idea also about baptism.

Paul explains baptism in terms of our complete identification with Jesus Christ, specifically his death for us and his resurrection to life for us.

As we just read, Romans 6, 3 and 4.

Don't you know that all of us who've been baptized into Christ have been baptized into his death?

Um, therefore, we've been buried with him uh through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too might walk in the newness of life.

So, in a sense, water baptism is our willingness to completely identify with Jesus Christ as a sign we too have believed in him as our Savior.

Then we can move to the different kinds of baptisms we see in the New Testament.

Um there are a few different kinds, but all of them convey the idea of immersion and identification with something.

The Apostle Paul refers to what he calls the baptism of Moses in 1 Corinthians 10, 1 to 4, says to the Corinthian church, I don't want you to be unaware, brethren, that our fathers were all under the cloud, all passed under the through the sea, all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea.

And they all ate the same spiritual food, all drank the same spiritual drink, for they were drinking from the spiritual rock which followed them, and that rock was Christ.

Being baptized into Moses meant the people of Israel were being, they are identifying with Moses as God's people.

And identifying with Moses, they were immersed in everything.

Moses, with Moses identifying as God's people, the same Red Sea, the same spiritual food, the same spiritual rock, this the same spiritual drink.

The same, the same, the same.

They were immersed in life together as God's people.

That's how they were identified.

The same God.

We also see in the Bible what is called the baptism of suffering.

You have the baptism of Moses, which only really applied to people in the Old Testament that came out of Egypt.

The baptism of suffering, though, goes much broader.

Jesus said in Mark 10, 39, Jesus said to them, The cup that I drink, you shall drink, and you shall be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized.

But but I have a baptism to undergo, and how distressed I am until it is accomplished.

Of course, he's speaking of the baptism of his own suffering on the cross.

The baptism of suffering means to be totally immersed in suffering.

And for believers in Jesus, what means for us is we're when we suffer, we're identifying with Jesus' sufferings through the adversities we experience, remembering that on the cross, Jesus experienced the ultimate baptism of suffering for each of us.

The third thing we see about baptism, John the Baptist also refers to the baptism of repentance and the baptism of the Holy Spirit and the baptism of fire.

Matthew 3.11.

I'm not fit to remove his sandals, and he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.

The baptism of the Holy Spirit refers to the gift of the Holy Spirit that Jesus gives to everyone who believes in him.

Just as we are immersed in water, Jesus immerses us in the Holy Spirit when we believe.

John also mentions this baptism of fire.

I think we get a little more uh information about it in chapter in Luke chapter 3, where he's saying the same thing, but then he follows it with a statement.

Luke 3 · chapter mention

Uh John answered, said to them all, as for me, I baptize with water, but one whose coming is mightier than I, I'm not fit to untie the thong of his sandals.

He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.

Then right after that, he says, You know what?

His winnowing fork is in his hand to thoroughly clear his threshing floor and gather the wheat into his barn, and he'll burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.

The baptism of fire utterly refers to the coming judgment of God, the wrath of God coming on people who are unbelievers in Jesus, who are in die in their sin.

Um, it means to be totally immersed in the wrath of God.

Just remember the word immersion.

These baptisms speak to whatever it is we are immersed in and identified with.

Finally, we come to the last most frequent kind of baptism in the New Testament, the water baptism of believers in Jesus Christ.

What does that mean?

Well, first of all, physically it means a person is going to be totally immersed in water.

Second, spiritually, it symbolizes that we're immersed in Jesus' death and resurrection life.

Believers' water baptism is a kind of, I like to look at it like this: it's a physical, dramatic reenactment of what happened to us when we believed in Jesus, when we were saved, when we received eternal life, when we received the Holy Spirit.

It's a dramatic reenactment of that.

Notice that look at what Paul says in Colossians 2, 12.

Uh, having been buried with him and baptized in baptism, in which you were also raised up with him through faith in the working of God who raised him from the dead.

Notice that he says, by our faith in Jesus, when we believed in Jesus, that's when we were buried with him, and that's when we were risen with him.

When we believed.

When a person believes in him.

Water baptism is a picture dramatically illustrating that when we believed in Jesus, our old self has died.

We've become a new creation in Christ, raised to new life in Jesus.

It's a picture, if you will.

It's significant to note that water baptism in the New Testament always happens, always happens after a person has professed faith in Jesus Christ.

Acts 8.12, as they're out sharing the gospel with people, but when they believed Philip preaching the good news about the kingdom of God in the name of Jesus Christ, when they did that, when they believed, they were baptized.

Men and women alike.

Or Acts 10, 47-48, Peter said to Cornelius, the Roman centurion and his household, he said, Surely no one can refuse water for these to be baptized who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have.

Then comes baptism.

Baptism does not save you, apart from your save you from your sins.

Your faith in Jesus saves you.

Baptism is a way of confessing that we have put our faith in Jesus.

And that leads us to the reason believers in Jesus are baptized with water.

Let me give you the main reason we get baptized as believers in Jesus.

Because Jesus asked us to.

That's why.

Nothing magical about the water?

Matthew 28, 18 to 20.

Jesus came up to his disciples saying, All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth.

Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all I've commanded you.

And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

Notice that Jesus links baptism with making disciples.

They're linked.

Discipleship, the word means learner.

Um, you're gonna follow somebody, learn from them.

You're gonna follow their example, and so on.

Discipleship is learning to follow Jesus and obey him.

That's discipleship.

In a sense, baptism, from what I understand in this verse in Matthew 28, baptism is a kind of first test of being Jesus' disciple.

Jesus is asking us to humble ourselves and get wet.

Will you?

Just because I said to.

I'm doing this because he said to.

There's no other reason.

It's like the command is so simple.

It transcends the ages in millennia.

Oh, you gotta you gotta have some water.

So simple, even the youngest of believers can do it.

There's no magic in the water, there's no practical benefits, it's not a logical necessity.

In fact, it's just plain humiliating.

You're gonna let somebody dunk you all the way into the water and back up again, you're gonna get all wet in front of a lot of people.

I think it was funny.

One year we had a baptism, and I and uh lady new to the church came in and she had never been baptized, and she came up to me and said, Well, I see you're having a baptized.

Can I be baptized?

I said, Well, have you believed in Jesus?

She says, Yes, I have, but I've never been baptized.

Well, yes, you can.

She was baptized in her Sunday clothes.

I mean, okay.

That was probably humiliating.

I don't know.

Uh, but you see, it's it's just a very simple thing, Jesus asks.

Will you get wet for me to show that you want to follow me and learn from me and be my disciple?

After that, you see, as his disciple, he's gonna ask his followers to do a lot of difficult stuff.

A lot of difficult stuff coming up.

But he wants us to start here.

Will you do this simple thing just to show me you're ready to obey me?

So baptism makes our obedience to Christ real.

We also get baptized because it helps us, it helps us.

Uh, and here's how I I would describe it helps us personally visualize and feel what has happened to us spiritually that we cannot see.

Feel it.

When we place our trust in Christ, automatically, God forgives all our sins, past, present, future, and gives us His Holy Spirit to reside inside us and eternal life as a gift.

Did you see that happen?

No, we just believe it's true.

I think baptism gives us a dramatic reenactment of what happened to us spiritually that we couldn't see in our salvation.

When we go down into the water, that's our burial.

We're dead to the old person we were.

And when we come back up, it's like God allowing us to feel you've got new life, you're a new creation.

You're risen in Him.

The final reason we are baptized as a believer in Jesus is to join us together with other believers in Jesus, in the body of Christ, and in the local church.

Um Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12, 13, for by one spirit we were all baptized into one body.

Whether Jews or Greeks, doesn't matter your nationality, if you believed in Jesus, you're automatically immersed in and identified with God's people in the church.

We're all made to drink of one spirit, the same spirit.

In Ephesians 4, 1 to 6, Paul says, Therefore, I, the prisoner of the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling which you've been called with all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing tolerance for one another in love, being diligent to preserve the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.

You know why?

Because there's one body and one spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith.

One baptism, one God and Father over all, who is through all and in all.

Believers in the local church, when they're baptized, are identifying together with others who believed in Jesus as the body of Christ.

They we are immersed in and share in the same Holy Spirit, the same body, the same hope, the same Lord, the same faith, the same baptism, the same God.

The reason baptism is so important for a believer in Jesus to do is because Jesus made it important.

It is a way to identify ourselves with him publicly.

It is a way to demonstrate we want to follow him as a disciple of his and obey his teaching.

It's a way to share our identity in him and experience it with other believers who've done the same.

One body in the local church.

You know, what's always been interesting to me is when Jesus came down to the Jordan River to be baptized by John.

John's water baptism, I said before, was a baptism of repentance for sins.

What happened was people, John would preach, identify, here's he probably mentioned a whole lot of ways they violated God's law.

People came down of the water and said, I'm a sinner, I repent.

And John would baptize them in the water as a sign they are turning from their sin to God.

But Jesus was without sin.

And John actually said to him, Look, I need to be baptized by you.

You don't need to be baptized.

Jesus insisted.

He volunteered, even though he didn't have to.

He had no sin to repent of.

Why did he do that?

Jesus basically said it was to fulfill all righteousness.

What does that mean?

Well, in Jesus' mind, he's saying it's the right thing to do.

Why?

Well, I believe it's tied up into why he came to us in the first place.

While Jesus was not a sinner in need of repentance, he was baptized by John to identify with us and our sin.

He's taking our place, you see.

He said, It's the right thing to do because that's why I'm here.

To take their place.

John the Baptist saw him again.

He pointed to him and he said, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

Jesus came to take our place and receive God's judgment of death for our sins, so that we could be forgiven and has have his eternal life in us forever.

Look, if you've never believed in Jesus yet, for the forgiveness of your sins, all of them, past, present, future, it's a gift.

Came to give us his Holy Spirit, he came to give us the gift of eternal life with him forever.

I just would invite you to call on him.

Whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

The scripture tells us.

You can call on as I close in prayer.

You pray silently in your heart.

Say, Dear Jesus, I want I believe in you.

I want you to be my Savior and receive him right now.

If you do that today, you come up and be baptized, would you?

I'm serious.

What a testimony that would be.

Let's pray.

Father, thank you that when we believe in Jesus, you immerse us in his life.

You immerse us in the person of the Holy Spirit, whom you send into our hearts to always be with us.

Help us as believers and followers of Jesus to live as bright lights for Jesus in this dark world.

I thank you for those, these four coming forward today to be baptized.

I I really pray that you would just give them a sense of your real presence with them.

May they pick up a sense that Jesus picked up that how how pleased you are with them in doing this for Jesus.

We ask for your blessing now.

In his name we pray.

Amen.