Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / July 25, 2021 | Good Question - What's the Big Deal with Baptism?

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July 25, 2021 | Good Question - What's the Big Deal with Baptism? · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Cause I know you're still asleep, because I know it's dark, because I want to wake you up.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's why I clapped.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not a clapper, but you're dead.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm dead.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: You didn't sleep well.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't sleep well.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: Melanie and I were drinking coffee this morning outside.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: She says, I didn't sleep.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: I said, I didn't either.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: She said, Do you think it's the drop in what was that?
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: Julie's dropping barometer or something?
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, barometric pressure.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Why do you listen in high school?
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: My goodness.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: So we have a baptism scheduled for tonight, 6.30.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'm told, personal conversation with the weather people, not that uh the rain's supposed to get worse this morning, but then stop uh after that.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: So we should be fine.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I decided that I would address this question what's the big deal with baptism?
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: Don't fall asleep yet.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: I know, you know.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I was looking through.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: I've only preached on this, wow.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: I preach on it about once out of every 40 years, so you're you're good.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: You'll be good after this.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: So it's uh a fun topic.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: I came across an old story this week that I hadn't seen before.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: A story about the early days of Henry Ford and the Ford Motor Company, and Detroit apparently uh concerned a machinist with the Ford Motor Company, who had borrowed over a number of years uh a number of tools and parts of automobiles and so forth.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: It was against company policy, of course, but everybody did it.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: But one day the machinist apparently, according to the story, was converted and uh came to Christ and then got baptized.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: And he took his baptism as he heard about what baptism meant, he took it seriously.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: And the day after his baptism, he gathered up all the tools and all the auto parts and so forth that he'd ever stolen, put them in the back of his pickup, drove them, drove them to the company, and uh presented them to the foreman with an explanation of the fact that he had gotten converted and baptized and realized that he should live a new life in Christ.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: He asked for forgiveness.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: And the foreman was so overcome by the whole thing that he cabled Henry Ford, who was in Europe at the time at a uh uh European plant, cabled him the whole story.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: And Ford immediately, we told him Henry Ford immediately cabled back this response Dam up the Detroit River and baptize the entire plant.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: So thought that was a cute story.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: I want to talk to you about baptism this morning, but I want to actually turn you to a specific story.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: If you have a Bible on your cell phone or in your hand or in the pew bottom in front of you, turn the eighth chapter, eighth chapter of the fifth book of the New Testament, the book of the Acts of the Apostles.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: It is a famous story, it's a story of a baptism, verses 26 to 39, better known as the story of, say it with me, the Ethiopian eunuch.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever heard this story before?
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: Is it still asleep?
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, that's fine.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so I want to tell you the story, and I've actually got it uh uh up here, so if you can't move your head down without falling asleep, then just look up here.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: An angel of the Lord spoke to Philip.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: That's how it begins.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, you should immediately think, Angel of the Lord.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: I thought New Testament's all the Holy Spirit.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the Holy Spirit's gonna make a showing in this story, but angel of the Lord is what is what you found in the Old Testament.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, you always had the angel of the Lord, a hundred times the angel of the Lord, the angel of the Lord.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: That is a specific, high-up uh emissary of the Lord, like Gabriel, sometimes the angel of the Lord in the Old Testament is Lord Jesus Himself.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: But so this is sort of a, we're in the midpoint sort of of Old and New Testament transition.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: So you have both the angel of the Lord and the Holy Spirit showing up in this passage.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: That was extra.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: Angel of the Lord spoke to Philip.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: Who's Philip?
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: That didn't work.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: Philip.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: So Philip is a deacon, okay, one of the first deacons, seven deacons.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: And these were not, uh these were, you know, these are godly men.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: These were amazing guys who are filled with the Holy Spirit, it said, and and they were uh serving the church in Jerusalem, but they were more than that.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, Stephen was one of them, and he eventually got martyred.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: Philip became a well-known evangelist.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: You'll see him evangelizing in this passage.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: They became famous.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: So he's uh he's a deacon, and he's just been up, by the way.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: We're at that point in Acts where they're fulfilling the second stage of Jesus' statement that you shall go into the world, starting in Jerusalem and Judea, Samaria, and then to the uttermost parts of the world.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so the story we've just had is Philip goes up and starts evangelizing Samaria, okay, north of Judea, the half-breeds.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: And now we're going to move a little beyond Samaria.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: Now we're going to move really to the uttermost parts of the world.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: If you're watching the Olympics, you're watching the world, we move into the world, into Africa this morning.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: So spoke to Philip, get up from Samaria and go south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: About 60 miles.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: Today they're shooting rockets the opposite direction from Gaza up toward Jerusalem.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: This is the desert road.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: So Philip obeyed.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: Philip got up and went.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: Map.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: Here's a map.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: Here's Samaria where Philip's been.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: He comes to this is a mountain region.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: So he walks back down close to Jerusalem and heads toward Gaza.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: And the interesting thing is the story is going to end by the Spirit moving, zapping, teleporting, transporting Philip away, you know, but he doesn't do that.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: Doesn't make it easy for him on the way.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: He's got to walk all of these miles, and in the end, in verse 30 of this chapter, you're going to see that he's running.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: So Philip's in his 30s, so he's he still can run, unlike many of us in this room.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: So, and by the way, so here's the road from Jerusalem to Gaza.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: Why is the why why is the why is this guy Ethiopian eunuch?
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: Why is he going here?
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: Because he wants to catch the Via Maris, which is the main highway.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's called the Sea Highway, and it goes all the way down here into Egypt, and then all the way down uh uh, you know, goes down into Ethiopia.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: So the next verse says, there was an Ethiopian man, a eunuch, that means he was castrated, generally before he was uh hit puberty, and it was intentional, you know how even in the uh in a hundred years ago, you know, they were they would castrate voices, maybe they still do, in Europe so that they can keep their high voices and they sing in these beautiful choirs.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: And and and we and yes, horrible, we think it's just horrible, but yeah, I was watching uh Olympics yesterday, day before.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: And there was a story about some of these swimmers and gymnastics, gymnasts and so forth, and it just reminded me that some people are willing to sacrifice their whole lives, or at least the first 20 years of their lives, for one and one purpose only.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: They don't live a normal life, they don't go to normal school.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's everything is given up, right, for the sake of the swimming, for the sake of this one Olympics.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: And they are there, and this is their one big moment, and they've been training for this for 20 years, and the parents have given up all their money and their friends, and they have moved to someplace.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: The one I was watching was a man who built a two-lane pool, you know, in his own house, trained his son.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's all they had done.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: So, so so let's not be too critical of people, poor people thousands of years ago, who gave their sons up to be castrated so as a result they could serve in the palace.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: It was very popular, especially in kingdoms where they had a female emperor or king.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: This is Candacey, which is like the name Caesar in Ethiopia, Candacey.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: And uh she was the queen of the Ethiopians, and in cases like that, they generally kept men around who were castrated so they wouldn't be uh a problem.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: Same reason you spay your dog, I guess.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: Let's not go there.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: I shouldn't have said that.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: So, anyway, he was in charge of the her entire treasure, so he had risen to where, you know, he was he was the best, he was the best swimmer, you know, in the pool.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he was he was at the top.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he was like the chief of staff, handling all the money.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: And he'd come to worship in Jerusalem, which you go, whoa, hold it.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: I thought he was Ethiopian.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: I thought he had, you know, the pagan religion, which they worshiped down in Miro, their capital, and so forth.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: Well, he somehow has become a proselyte.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh uh Ethiopia and Jerusalem have had a connection for a thousand years since the Queen of Sheba came from that area and and became a big follower of Solomon.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: And there's always been a connection, by the way, between Ethiopia and Israel, still is today, a thriving Jewish community in Ethiopia.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: Thousands of those Ethiopians are now in Israel.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: They moved up into Israel, and you will see them when you go down toward Beersheba sitting by the sides of the road because they're job problems in Israel.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: They're poor, they're beautiful people.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: Ethiopians are beautiful people.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: They don't consider themselves like the rest of Africans, because Ethiopians and Eritreans are just gorgeous, and they consider themselves, actually, they're wrong about this, but they consider themselves their ancestors were Solomon and Queen of Sheba, they think got together, and that's why they're so beautiful.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just rambling here.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so sorry.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, but it's a fascinating story, okay?
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: And Ethiopia was huge back then.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: It was called Cush, uh C U S H or K-U-S-H.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: And notice it went all the way up into Egypt and it included Eritrea, included Ethiopia, included much of the largest country today, uh, Sudan.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and so when I went over to when I've been over speaking in Sudan, I'll use passages in the Bible that mention Cush in Ethiopia because that's what it included.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: So the Ethiopian eunuch is heading down this way.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: This is called the Via Maris, all the way, this is this is Israel, and he's gonna go across Sinai, hit into Egypt, and go, this is 1,500 miles.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: And all the way down the Nile, the second cataract, fourth cataract, too, this amazing uh archaeologists, archaeologists have uncovered this amazing huge city, Miro.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: That was the capital, that's where he lived, where the queen was, and he was in charge of.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine being the head of all the money for this entire, the largest kingdom in Africa at that time?
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: So, anyway, this is a really, this is a really mix of a guy, right?
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: On the one hand, he's rich, he's he's important, you know, he's well known, he's got a nice chariot, he's got servants.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: On the other hand, let's be honest, he's a castrati, he is, he's a eunuch.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: His voice has never changed, it's high.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: He has no hair on his face.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: People talk about him behind his back.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's just the way it is.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: That's the way it's always been.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: You can read about it in in you know in in early historians about the time of him, about how the Romans admired them, but they always laughed at them behind their back.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: So he's an outsider but an insider, and he's also an outsider because he doesn't worship the gods they worship.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: He worships the Jewish God.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: He's reading, trying to read the Torah, he's trying to understand it.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: He thinks that the Jewish God, that single God, that that's the right God.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: This Ethiopian is such an interesting guy, isn't he?
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: You feel for him.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: Because he's kind of a victim.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: On the other hand, he's privileged, right?
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: We live in a day when somehow you're either privileged or you're a victim.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: But the truth is that most of us are some sort of a mix in between.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: You're privileged.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: Every one of us is privileged, but you're also a victim.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: And the Ethiopian eunuch, this rich guy who is also a eunuch, is that same way.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: And he had come to worship in Jerusalem, and he's now sitting in his chariot on his way home.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: Reading the prophet Isaiah aloud, proof of how rich he was, is that it would take a king's ransom to buy a scroll of Isaiah.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: But he owns one somehow.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: And he's reading it aloud, uh, up until, by the way, up until just a few hundred years ago, nobody ever read silently.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't until the days of the monasteries that people started reading silently.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: So, so that's the way reading was always done.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: You always read out loud.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: So he's reading out loud.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: This is not unique, this is just what everybody did.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: And the spirit, now we move from the angel of the Lord, now the spirit told Philip, go and join that chariot.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: All right?
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: So it's in the way, it's in the desert, like he says.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so Philip ran up to the chariot and he heard him reading the prophet Isaiah.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: And Philip says, Do you understand what you're reading?
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: Now, let's just say you were riding in your Lexus.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: You go, I don't have a Lexus.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: Pretend you have a Lexus.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: Pretend the window's down, you're in Washington, D.C., or you're in New York City, or in LA, and you're reading out loud from the Bible, and a street preacher runs up to the window, hears you, and says, Do you understand what you're reading?
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: What are you gonna say?
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna say, Driver, punch the pedal.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: This this guy goes, Do you understand what you're reading?
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: And he talks to him and says, How can I?
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: He doesn't know Philip at all.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: How can I unless someone guides me?
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so then he invites Philip to come up and sit with him.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: So next time a street preacher comes up and sticks his head in your window, invite him to ride with you.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: Now the scripture passage he was reading was, you know what it was, it was Isaiah 53.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: No accident.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: God is sovereign.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: God is sovereign.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: He moved a chariot, chariots moving fast, faster than Philip.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: Philip is walking and running, and somehow he gets them to merge, God does, and his sovereignty on this desert road.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: And he also makes sure that this guy reading the Isaiah scroll is up to chapter 53 at that moment.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, Well, I'm reading this.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: He was led like a sheep to the slaughter.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: Who?
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: Who is led like a sheep to the slaughter?
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: And as a lamb is silent before its sheer, so he doesn't open his mouth.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: We talked about this last week, remember?
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus is way too passive.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: He's not noisy enough.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: Like Superman, right?
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: And in his humiliation, justice was denied him.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: Who will describe his generation for his life is taken from the earth?
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: And you think, oh, we know who that is, that's obvious.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: But Jewish people today don't know who that is.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: They most of them think, well, I think maybe that's the nation Israel.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's no wonder that the Ethiopian who's who studied the Torah apparently is interested.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: He goes, he says, Um, I ask you, who's the prophet saying this about it?
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: Is this himself or someone else?
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: And Philip proceeded to tell him the good news about Jesus, beginning with that scripture.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that cool?
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: So Philip's sitting there by him in the chariot.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: It means it's a nice chariot.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of chariots back then, just room for one person.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: So, and he's sitting there and he explains it to him.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: I just wonder, by the way, just on the next page in the Isaiah scroll, or just over a little ways, just three chapters later, you have these words.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: God saying, Let no eunuch complain.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: I am only a dry tree.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: For this is what the Lord says to the eunuchs, I will give within my walls a memorial and a name better than sons and daughters.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'll give them an everlasting name that will endure forever.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: This man is rich.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: This man is well known.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: This man is beloved by his queen.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: But he doesn't fit into Israel at all.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's a family society.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: You're nothing if you don't have children.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: He'll never have children.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: Probably, maybe never have a wife.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a verse in Deuteronomy that says if you're a eunuch, you can't even go into the temple.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: And yet he's come 1,500 miles to worship.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe they'll let him into the court of the Gentiles on the very edge, but he really can't go where everybody else can go.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: This is a man who can never have children and sons and daughters.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: He's an outsider.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: And yet the Lord says, and you know he read this, maybe I like to think, I like to think that Philip said, by the way, let's read a little further.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, there's this amazing promise for people like you.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: If you'll follow Jesus Christ.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, I move on.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: So as they're traveling down the road, they came to some water.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: And the eunuch said, Look, there's water, what would keep me from being baptized?
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: What?
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: Where do you even get that idea?
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, he's been up in Jerusalem.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: He knows that Jews have loads of baptismal, even nice private dwellings, have steps going down, you know, and you and you basically cleanse yourself or wash every day.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: And and he knows that they, and maybe, maybe he knows, maybe he was there when Peter preached his message in Acts chapter 2.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: And 3,000 people were saved.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: And they said, What do we do?
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: And Peter said, Repent and be baptized.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: All of you.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: And it used to be that people said, Jerusalem has no water.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: That's this is crazy.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: In the last 20 years, we've found, we, I'm not, I haven't dug there, but uh, you know, archaeologists have found dozens and dozens and dozens of these mikvaot, these ritual baths, these baptismal fonts, dozens within just feet, just a few feet of where Peter was preaching there on the south steps of Jerusalem's temple.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, maybe he saw that.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe he saw that immediately after they trusted Christ.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so he goes, What would keep me from being baptized?
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: And he ordered the chariot to stop, and both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water and he baptized them.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: Same thing we're gonna do tonight.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly, same thing.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: Dozens of people tonight are gonna go into the water, and we're gonna baptize them.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: And when they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord carried Philip away, and the eunuch didn't see him any longer, but he went on his way rejoicing, and that's how it ends, and that's why we always rejoice when someone comes out of the water, we shout and we cheer and we clap and all of that stuff, and we'll do that tonight.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: Now I want to talk to you about baptism.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna ask some questions.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: We'll ask the easy questions first, the ones that this passage easily answers, okay?
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: One is does it matter where I get baptized?
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: Some people would say, Yeah, you need to get baptized in a church, you get baptized in a baptist tree.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: How many of you were baptized in a church in a baptistry like I was?
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: Remember those days?
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: How old were you?
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: My folks wouldn't let me get baptized until I could recite the whole, you know, New Testament tomb or something.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I I was eight years old.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, uh, but it doesn't, it doesn't really, and by the way, here's the here's the it doesn't matter whether whether you baptize in a Pentecostal church or Baptist church or outdoors or indoors.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: We like to baptize outdoors just because it just feels more New Testament-ish.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: But we baptized right here, as you know, in a cattle trough.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: And we're fine with doing that.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, uh fitting in with this, I didn't put this question up, does it matter if it's public or private?
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you want it to be as public as possible.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: This is a public, this is, I mean, if I mean, what would you think of a bride who's if who's has who said, you know, really, I really want to get married in private.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want it to be in front of anybody.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: And he goes, really?
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: Friends, family, something?
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: So, so you you you know, you uh uh best uh public, right?
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: And it'll be public tonight, and and and but I mean I I baptized in a tiny little bathroom in a Muslim country once.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: I baptized uh this big guy in his 30s, and there wasn't even room for anybody but him and me in this little upstairs bathroom in the middle of a Muslim country, and he knew that his family would reject him and he would be persecuted and lose his job if anybody knew.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: But but those other believers, his friends and so forth, they're their heads poked into the room, and and it was just funny.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, two weeks ago I baptized somebody privately in my pool.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, a nurse from Boston who who and of her family goes to this church and they were there, and they and and to make it public, they videoed it and they took pictures and so forth, so she could put it on her Facebook page and tell people.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: So, but that doesn't that's not critical either.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, your baptism counts even if it was just semi private.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: Is that a good word for?
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: So here's another question.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: Doesn't matter how I get baptized, in other words, there's sprinkling, there's dunking.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: There's there's immersion, and I would say, well, yeah, yeah, it does seem to.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, every case that we know of in the New Testament is always immersion.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, we know there's no doubt anymore.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: All scholars agree the word baptize, baptizo, in Greek means, literally the word means immersed.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: That means you go all the way under water.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: And and because it's that's the best picture of what baptism means, you know, Romans 6 says, uh, don't you know that you were buried with him by baptism and a death, so that you could, you know, could rise out of baptism into new life.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it the the picture is an immersion, which which then leads you to ask, well, what is the Bible way?
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: To baptize babies?
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: We all have family, friends, maybe some of you baptized an infant, or to baptize people old enough to make a pro personal decision.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: And again, you don't find any infant baptism either commanded or practiced in the New Testament.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's always people who are old enough to make a personal decision.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: And that's illustrated.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: All of these things are illustrated by the very story I just told you.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: It was semi-private, right?
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: The eunuch, he had a couple of servants there, but it wasn't in front of hundreds of people.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: Semi-private.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: It was outdoors in this pond, a pond that happened to be there.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: It was immersion, clearly, because he came up out of the water.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: He went into the water.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: And he had made a personal decision.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: And some people will say, well, you know, in Acts 16, the jailer says, What must I do to be saved?
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul says, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, you should be saved.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: And then he baptized him and his whole household.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so they go, well, maybe that included little infants.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: The problem is the previous verse says, now his whole household listened to Paul and believed.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: So we must be talking about people who are old enough to make a personal decision.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: So then the question is, what if I was baptized as an infant, not by immersion?
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: This is a question I get asked a lot, especially around the time we do baptize.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: Baptism, and the first thing I'd say is you need to be grateful that you had parents who cared enough about you to want to devote you to God, to want to give you to God, who cared enough, to want to dedicate you in that way or baptize you in that way to God.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: And because they understood that spiritual things are important.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: And though they may not have perfectly understood water baptism in their testament, they they had the right idea.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: The second thing I'd say is for you to go ahead and get immersed as an adult, having made the personal decision, is not disrespecting your parents, it's fulfilling what they wanted for you.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: If they are extremely offended, I sometimes will tell people, well, put it off.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know, wait a year or something, wait until.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: But even if you're baptized in an infant, realize that every baptism in the New Testament happened after they believed.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: Right after they believed, in fact.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: It was the first step of the Christian life.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: 3,000 people trust Christ day of Pentecost and immediately are baptized.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: The next one you have the Ethiopian unity.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: He believes, and in the next instant, he says, it's time for me to get baptized.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: And the chapter after this, you have Saul on his way to Damascus, and he gets converted, soundly converted, and before he even eats a meal, he gets baptized.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: And same with the jailer.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so so immersion and and and and soon, and that relates to the question: how much do I need to know in order to be baptized?
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the Ethiopian eunuch didn't know a whole lot, did he?
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: And neither did the 3,000 on the day of Pentecost.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: And neither did Saul, and neither did the jailer.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: But he knew that Jesus that he believed in Jesus Christ.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: So I sympathize since I grew up in that family, and since I did a little bit of the same thing with my four kids, I made sure that they at least understood baptism before I let them go under.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: But you should get baptized, but you don't know, you don't have to know a whole lot.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: So now we get to the main question of the sermon.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: What's the big deal about baptism?
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: And here you have this very, very interesting.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: You have these two extremes.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: Baptism is all important to some people, that you can't go to heaven without it.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: That it's what saves you.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's everything.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: And then at the other extreme, you have people say, well, since it doesn't, since baptism doesn't save me, it doesn't mean anything.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's unimportant.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have to do it.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: There are more unbaptized believers in Jesus in America than there have ever been today.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: And that's partly because baptism has become one of those obediences that somehow just doesn't matter as much.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: Even though Jesus only gave us two ordinances.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: Baptism, and I think Connor next week can speak on uh communion since we're gonna celebrate the Lord's table.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: He wanted to do baptism.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: I said, I'm doing baptism, it's the baptism day.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: You do communion, just shut up.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: So that argument was really short.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I mean, it's logical, right?
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm not gonna do communion the week before and you do baptism the week after.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: Why am I telling you this?
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: So, but anyway, so the thing is, yeah, these two, and you hear these extremes, and it's really sad.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: And we're just looking for people who will be in the middle who'll understand no baptism doesn't save you, right?
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's the next question.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: Does baptism save us?
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: Is it the way to heaven?
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: And the answer is heavens no.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: Now, on the one hand, I must say that every single person who's a believer in the New Testament got baptized.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: No unbaptized believers in the New Testament, except one.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: Who was it?
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: Thief on the cross, right?
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: And because of the thief on the cross, that I believe God put that intentionally there, so we would see that the very first convert to the crucified Christ was a person who had no creed, no catechism, no confirmation, no dogma, no baptism, just saved by Jesus.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: He had never been to church, never given an offering, never been baptized, only said one prayer in his life, but that prayer was sufficient.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: That prayer to Jesus got him saved.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: And he all alone is proof if we needed it, because you can find it throughout the New Testament from the explanations, from the 70 plus passages on baptism, is proof that baptism doesn't save us, that it isn't the way, the doorway to heaven, without which not you go down instead of up.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: So if it doesn't save, why then is it important?
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_00: Well, first of all, because like I said, 70 plus times God or Jesus says it is.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: And secondly, it's all about obedience.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: Is there anything that we do for God that isn't somehow tied to the most important single requirement of a Christian, which is that we obey God, which isn't tied to the fact that Jesus on the night before he died said, if you love me, you will keep my commandments.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's just sad, it's the sad state of American Christianity that somehow we will do whatever we want to do, whether it has to do with baptism, whether it has to do almost anything else, even though Jesus has made his desires clear, so obedience, which is the sign of our devotion, our love for our Savior, says get baptized.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_00: And third, for instance, here's have you ever noticed that Jesus' story in the Gospels is book-ended by baptism?
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: It starts with him getting baptized, and the last words to the disciples at the end of the story are the Great Commission, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_00: And if we're to make disciples of all nations, and baptizing them is the first way that we make them disciples, and then we teach them to obey everything I've commanded you, then it's obviously an obedience statement for each of us individually that we get baptized.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_00: Not only do God and Jesus say it's important, obedience, showing our love for Christ, but salvation says so.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, I mean, salvation is this amazingly beautiful plan of God, which involved Jesus coming down and dying on the cross for our sins and then going down into the grave for three days and then rising from the dead.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's salvation is the most beautiful thing in the world.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's like Handel's Messiah.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_00: And for me to stand here and try to talk about that baptism is like a kazoo trying to play Handel's Messiah.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: But when you see baptism as flowing out of the beauty, as displaying the beauty and glory of God's plan, and Jesus dying on the cross, then being buried, then rising again, all of a sudden you say it's important because it is the chosen picture of our salvation.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: What does it mean then?
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the answer is it means I'm united with Christ in his death, in his burial, in his resurrection, plunged under the plunged under the water, I die as the water surrounds all of me, I am buried as I'm brought out of the water, I am raised.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: I am showing my union with Christ in his death, in his burial, and in his resurrection.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: I am displaying the beauty of God's salvation plan when I get baptized.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: So baptism is my personal response to what Jesus has done for the world and for me personally on the cross.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_00: Baptism is my act of obedience to the Savior whom I love, who died for me.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_00: It is the outward confession of an inward reality which is my faith.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's not the act that saves me, it's the faith that saves, but this is the outward confession before hundreds or maybe just before four or five people, that I am a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to close with a story that I think illustrates it.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: You familiar with the story of the man of La Mancha, the story of Don Quixote?
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's the story of, it's also the story of a woman, the story of a woman named Al Donza.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: Al Donza was a woman who was a waitress during the day for traveling camel drivers, camel herders, and at night Al Donza serviced them in a different way.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: She sold her body.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_00: And the man of La Mancha came to her one day and told her that she was beautiful, and he called her his lady, and she said, Lady.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, Yes, you are my lady, and I am going to give you a new name.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: Your name is Dulcinea.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: Beautiful name.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_00: Dulcinea.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_00: And she laughed at him and she mocked him, but every day he told her that she was beautiful, that he loved her, that she was his lady, and that she needed to dream the impossible dream, and uh and so forth.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_00: And um one day the ultimate insult happened to her.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_00: She was brutally raped.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_00: And uh uh Quixote came upon her, and she was disheveled, disheveled, her clothes were ripped off, she was beaten, she was distraught.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: And he cried and he said, What happened to you, my lady, my lady, what happened to you?
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_00: And she exploded.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_00: She says, I am not your lady, I'm not a lady, I am Al Donza.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: My mother gave birth to me in a ditch, and because and she did not care.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_00: She walked away and she hoped I would die because she knew what kind of a person I would become, and I didn't have the wisdom to just roll over and die.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_00: I was too hungry even to cry, but I've lived and I am nothing.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_00: And she ran away.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: She ran away, weeping.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_00: And he was distraught because now she was gone.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_00: And he searched for her and he could not find her, and finally Don Quixote is dying, and he is dying, distraught and despairing and weak, and as he is very close to death, a Spanish queen comes to him, dressed in lace and beautiful, and she kneels beside him and she puts her hand on him and she calls him by name and uh and he opens his eyes and he says, Who are you?
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: And she says, You don't recognize me.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_00: You used to sing me songs, you gave me a name.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_00: You told me to dream the impossible to dream, to bear the unbearable sorrow, to go where the brave dare not go.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I have done that, and I am now your Dulcinea.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_00: And standing up and loudly crying, I am your lady.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_00: And as I reread that story recently, I thought that's that's what we do in baptism, for we were Ethiopian eunuchs, we were Aldanzas, we were brutalized sinners, we were unworthy people.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_00: And God always looked at us, and in the person of Jesus, he said, I believe you have a great future.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_00: I believe that I have a great dream for you, something that you could be.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_00: And he came and he sacrificed himself for us on the cross, and he was buried, and then he rose again to save us.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_00: And somehow, somehow one day, by his grace, we are saved.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_00: We we hear that message.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_00: The message of an outcast person, the message of a person who died himself on a cross, unloved, without children, like the eunuch himself.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_00: And we trust him as our Savior, and in gratitude to him, like the queen, we stand up in water and we say, I am yours, Lord, because of what you've done for me.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what baptism is about tonight, and that's why it's such a big deal.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_00: Father, thank you for these ordinances, these ways of picturing the glory of what you've done for us.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_00: I pray that those who go down into water tonight and come up, whose testimonies are read, will be blessed by you, will be shown favor.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_00: We know that baptism is a serious business in heaven, but the serious business of heaven is joy.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so we pray for joy for our church and for these people who are following you in obedience tonight.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name, all God's people said.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for coming.