Hope Church LV Sermons
Why Baptism?
May the 23rd of 1992, 20 years ago, next month, I celebrated what is next to being born again, the most significant and life-changing event in my life. 20 years ago, next month, I had the incredible joy and privilege of marrying the most beautiful woman on planet Earth, Christi, at that time Christi figured, "Christi, come on stand up, come on, come on, come on, stand up, come here." I pay for this when I get home, so but 20 years ago next month, I had the privilege of marrying this beautiful, beautiful woman. And I know what you're thinking, "Oh, go ahead, put the picture up there," yep. Thank God for LASIK surgery, amen? You're wondering, "Where do you find glasses that big, huh?" And you're also thinking, "And how much money did her dad owe you, right?" What an event. And the wedding ceremony, there comes a part in every marriage where, in every particular wedding ceremony where the couples make an incredible statement to each other. They exchange wedding vows. Sometimes they've written their own vows, sometimes it's vows that have been offered to them by a pastor or a book, but they come to that point in the service where they begin to express their heartfelt desire and emotion towards the other person through the exchanging of those vows. And after the exchanging of vows, there's a very unique ceremony that happens, and having been a pastor now for about 21, 22 years and having had the opportunity to officiate a number of weddings, I've seen this happen over and over and over again. At that point in the ceremony, the couples exchange a ring, and the ring is a symbol. It's a symbol of that union. It's a symbol of that relationship, and the placing of that ring on the left wedding finger makes an incredible statement. Now the ring doesn't, in and of itself, make you married, right? I can take this ring off of my finger and place it there on the pulpit. Now, I'm not single again, right? A single person could take this ring and put it on their finger, and that doesn't make them married, right? This is just a what? It's a symbol. But it's a symbol that has great meaning and great significance when it represents a specific relationship in your life. You see, when you see this ring on my finger, it tells you something about me. This ring says that I have committed my life to a loving relationship with my wife, and I am not ashamed of it. This ring is a public constant testimony of a present relationship in my life with a person. Now as important as this relationship is with my wife, there is a relationship in my life that is even more important than that relationship. And it is a relationship that began in September of 1989. September of 1989, I was a freshman in college at the University of North Alabama, and in my apartment there in Florence, I knelt down beside my bed, and I cried out to God. I turned from my sin, and I embraced the gospel of Jesus Christ, and I was born again into a living relationship with God. And that personal fellowship relationship with God is more important than any other relationship in my life. And here's why, and we're going to talk about this over the next seven weeks. Every other relationship in my life, even my relationship now to my wife, is built on the foundation of my love relationship with God. You see, my capacity and my wife's capacity to love one another as Christ teaches us in His Word is rooted and grounded in our fellowship relationship with God. It's only as we're walking in tune with God and living out of the overflow of intimacy with God that we're able to enjoy the kind of relationship that God desires for us as husband and wife. The most important relationship is a relationship with Jesus, and just like exchanging wedding rings in a marriage, God in His divine wisdom and sovereignty gave us a ceremony. And like the ring, it's not the ceremony that makes you a Christian. It doesn't guarantee our salvation. That happens at the moment of conversion when that relationship begins by grace through faith. But God gave us a ceremony just like a wedding ring to publicly celebrate and give testimony about a relationship with God, and that ceremony is called baptism. You see, baptism is spiritually like a wedding ring. Baptism makes a significant statement. It actually makes three of them, and I want to list them for you, and then we're going to look at a text of Scripture and unpack them. Number one, baptism says, "I have given my life to Jesus." When someone is baptized today, as we celebrate baptism, as we're going to do here in just a few moments, we did it last night with about 12 or 15 people. They're going to be doing it out in Boulder City at our campus out there today. Today, when we celebrate baptism, people are making a statement that I have given my life to Jesus Christ, and I am not ashamed of it. It's reason for us as the body of Christ to celebrate, but there's a second statement that's being made. Baptism also says, "I am a part of God's family." Baptism says, "I'm a part of the family of God." There's an identification with the community of believers that's taking place. And then thirdly, baptism says, "I want to share the gospel with everyone I know." So what I want you to do is I want you to take your Bible, turn to Acts chapter 2, and we're going to real quickly look at some principles about baptism, and we do this once a year, and we do it for a very important reason. Number one, the primary reason we do this is because in a church context, in a place like Las Vegas, there's a lot of denominational, religious background in our fellowship. And we want you to understand it, hope. We only have one rule of faith and practice, and that is the Bible. What does the Bible say? It doesn't matter what our tradition may be, it doesn't matter what our pastors' opinions may be. It doesn't matter what our denomination may say. What matters is what does the Bible say? And so we want to lay a biblical foundation for why we celebrate baptism. Acts chapter 2, before I read it, let me give you the context. Jesus has died on a cross, been buried, and raised from the dead. After His resurrection, He made appearances for 40 days to a number of His disciples. The Bible tells us over 500 different people Jesus appeared to for 40 days. At the end of the 40 days, Jesus gathered them out on a hillside. He gave them the great commission, said, "I want you to preach the gospel in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria to the ends of the earth." And then Jesus ascended back into heaven to sit at the right hand of the Father, where He ever lives to make intercession for us, and thank God for that marvelous truth, amen? Then the disciples gathered in an upper room in Jerusalem, and the Bible says that the Holy Spirit of God fell upon them and empowered the New Testament Church to carry out the mission that had been given of proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ. And in Acts chapter 2, Simon Peter stands up to preach the first ever sermon after the death bell and resurrection of Jesus Christ in the city of Jerusalem. And the Bible tells us when He preached the gospel, 3,000 people in Jerusalem. In women, children, 3,000 people. The Bible says we're pierced to the heart. It means that they felt the conviction of the Holy Spirit of God. They responded to the gospel and said, "What do we do? How do we embrace?" And Peter said, "You repent, you turn from your sin, and you believe you entrust your life to the gospel of Jesus Christ." And then he began to say after that, "You're to be baptized." Look at it in verse 41 of Acts chapter 2. It says, "So then those who had received His Word were baptized, and that day they were added about 3,000 souls." Now go down, skip down to verse 47 of that same text. It says, "Praising God and having favor with all the people, and the Lord was adding to their number day by day those who were being saved." Right out of those two verses, I want to extract, if you will, those three statements. Number one, baptism says, "I have given my life to Jesus." Did you hear what it said in verse 41? The writer of Acts is writing here, and here's what the Bible records for us. "So then those who had received His Word were baptized." Very, very important construction in that verse. It's in the past tense. Those who had received His Word were then baptized. The word received here is a word in the Greek language that means to fully embrace. It means to take fully, to take completely. Here the Bible records for us that 3,000 people had fully embraced the gospel. They had fully embraced the message of salvation. They were not being baptized in order to be saved. They were being baptized because they'd already fully embraced the gospel. They'd responded in repentance and faith and trusted in Jesus Christ, and then they were being baptized not to begin a relationship with Jesus, but they were being baptized because they had a relationship with Jesus and were publicly now giving a testimony that I've given my life to Jesus and I'm not ashamed of it. You know what they were doing? They were putting on their wedding ring. I've given my life to Christ and I'm not ashamed of it. I don't know how this would go over at your house, but if I went home this afternoon and said to my wife now of almost 20 years, "Christi, I love you and I'm so excited about the relationship that we've enjoyed and I know this ring is a testimony of that relationship, but if it's all right with you, I'm going to take this ring and just put it in my drawer and I'd just like to keep this kind of between us if that's all right." Now, I don't know how that would go over at your house, but I'm fairly confident of how it would go over at my house and it would wind up with me sleeping outside in the backyard on a swing tonight, right? Why? Because that's not the way we're supposed to respond to a relationship that's that significant and important, and yet how many Christians? How many of you sitting in this building today, you've given your life to Jesus Christ? You've embraced the gospel and you've said, "Lord, let's just keep this between us." I'm not interested in that public step of obedience and testimony. Two things we know for sure in the Bible about water baptism, the only water baptism after the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ found in the New Testament is believers baptism. Here's what I mean by that. I know that some church traditions practice the baptism of infants and of babies and I'm not here today and nor if after the service you want to debate this, I'm not here today to debate the tradition of churches, all right? It's not what I'm here to do. I'm here to tell you at hope we only value and honor what the Bible says. Tradition of churches doesn't matter. What does the book say? That's our only rule of faith and practice. And the book, in the book, if you read the gospels, if you read Acts and the epistles, there's only one water baptism ever demonstrated in the New Testament and it is baptism of people who've already begun a relationship with Jesus Christ. The second thing I'd say that we know for sure about baptism is the New Testament knows nothing of believers not being baptized. We'd have been a culture today where it's become acceptable and part of it is because theologically we wanted to so make the distinction that you don't have to be baptized in order to be saved, that we've almost gone overboard to make it sound like baptism really is insignificant and it doesn't matter. Listen, you do not have to be baptized in order to be saved. You don't, you don't have to be baptized in order to go to heaven. The thief on the cross with the Lord Jesus Christ died right there. He was never baptized and Jesus said to him, "Today you'll be with me in paradise." You don't have to be baptized to be saved, but to be an obedient disciple, Jesus commands us to follow Him in baptism. It's not an issue of relationship, it's an issue of fellowship. If I told my wife I'm no longer going to wear this wedding ring because I want to keep it private, it necessarily hadn't changed the relationship yet. We're still married, but it's definitely affected the fellowship, right? If I choose not to get baptized, it doesn't affect the relationship, but it hinders the fellowship because in essence I'm saying to Jesus, "Thanks for everything, but I just don't want anybody to know." In the New Testament, salvation and baptism were almost synonymous. That's why theologically people sometimes get confused about the issue. In the New Testament, when people were saved, man, they followed in baptism here in Acts 2, 3,000. In Acts 8, the Ethiopian led to Christ by Philip immediately was baptized after putting his faith in the gospel. In Acts 10, Cornelius was immediately baptized with his whole family after they'd embraced the gospel. In Acts 16, Lydia embraced the gospel and her whole family, the Bible says, was saved. They all were immediately baptized. In Acts 16 at the end, the jailer that was led to Christ in the middle of the night by Peter and John took these men to his house. He shared the gospel with his whole family. The whole family gave their lives to Christ and they were all baptized in the middle of the night. It was such an important deal. Baptism, first of all, says, "I'm putting on my wedding ring today." There are people in this congregation for the very first time, "You are going to put on your wedding ring and you're going to say, 'I'm a follower of Jesus and I'm not ashamed of it.'" The second thing that baptism says, baptism says, "I'm a part of God's family." The Bible here records for us and that day they were added about 3,000 souls. The word added is an important word in the Greek text. It's a word that means to join together with. The Bible here says, at the moment of baptism, these 3,000 people were added to something. But that raises a very important question, added to what? Well, let me tell you what it doesn't mean. It doesn't mean they were added to the spiritual kingdom of God because that happened the moment they were born again. There's scripture after scripture after scripture that teaches as soon as we respond in repentance and faith to the gospel, we're born again and immediately we're added to the spiritual kingdom of God that will be in heaven forever and ever and ever. We become a part of God's family. But the Bible says baptism specifically joined them together with something. What was that something? Here's what I believe it is. The visible community of believers in Jerusalem known as the local church. You see up until this point, there were only about 120 in Jerusalem that had stayed there that made up the community of believers, that local fellowship, that body of Christ. But the writer of Acts tells us that on this day, 3,000 were added to that number. Here's what that means. The church in Jerusalem went from 120 to 3,120 in the church in Jerusalem. These people were making a statement about their belonging to the family of God. And really two statements are being made there in baptism when it comes to this issue of the community of believers. Here's the first statement that's being made. Today, we're going to baptize some people out here. We don't know how many it's going to be yet because some of you are going to get baptized and you didn't know it yet. I got your attention now, don't I? When people get baptized out here, let me tell you what we're saying is a church family. They are us. They're us. They're our brothers and our sisters. They're a part of this family. We embrace them. Let me tell you what else is being said about those people that are being baptized. You know what they're going to say? I'm them. I belong to this family. I'm a part of the body of Christ here. Let me tell you why I know this is such an important thing. We've lost some of this in our Western culture, but you get on an airplane with me and you travel to North Africa or you travel to Southeast Asia or you go to the Middle East and you see men and women give their lives to Christ and embrace the gospel where it means you may lose your life. The community around them, the lost people in their city, don't usually react until they get baptized. Let somebody pray to receive Christ and give their lives to Christ and embrace the gospel and devote them to, but it's at the moment of baptism, why? Because baptism makes a bold statement that I've given my life to Christ. baptism says I am now a part of a new community of believers and it's in that moment of baptism that all hell begins to break loose and persecution begins to come against those people. If you don't believe it, you go with me sometime and you witness some of these men and women that have given their lives to Jesus Christ in some of these parts of the world and you watch them baptize and you can see in their eyes the seriousness with which they make that statement. It makes a statement I belong to the family of God number three. It makes a statement baptism says I want to share the gospel with everyone I know. In verse 47 the Bible says and the Lord was adding to their number day by day those who were being saved. Here's what that means. After this day when those three thousand gave their lives to Christ and were baptized, day after day people kept coming to Christ. Historians and scholars tell us that inside the first six months in Jerusalem, 100,000 people had given their lives to Jesus Christ and followed Him in believers baptism, 100,000. How did that happen so rapidly? Let me tell you how it happened. These three thousand, 120, they started sharing their story with everybody. They couldn't contain it. They started telling other people what had happened in their lives. Can I be honest with you this morning? There's something wrong. There's something seriously wrong in the life of a Christian who doesn't have a passion to share their story with somebody else. Listen, if you have met the God of heaven, if you have heard the gospel of Jesus Christ and you have repented of your sin and you have embraced the gospel and you've experienced the forgiveness of God, you've been reconciled and given a relationship with God and God has secured your eternity in heaven and you know that now you will never stand again on the opposite side of the wrath of God, but you will only experience the grace and mercy of God and it's not because of anything you've done, it's only because of what Jesus did and you don't have a passion to tell somebody, something's wrong. Listen, these people couldn't hold it in, but let me tell you the first time they shared their story when they got baptized because baptism is a beautiful picture of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Let me show it to you in the Bible. Romans chapter 6 and verse 4 says, "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, so we too may walk in newness of life." Here it is in baptism, there's a beautiful picture of the gospel, what is the gospel? Christ died for our sins and was buried and then He was raised again, right? Listen, in baptism it's a picture of our dying with Him, His death is my death and then we don't just hold them underwater, right? We bring them back up, why? Because, amen, we don't hold them down there, we bring them up because He didn't just die for our sin. No, He rose again and the picture is, "I'm buried with Christ, my sins have been forgiven, my sins have been paid for through the death of Jesus Christ, but when I come up out of that water," listen, listen, it doesn't happen in the water, it happened because of Jesus, but the waters of picture, when I come up of the forgiveness and the grace of God and the newness of life that I've been given in Jesus Christ, baptism portrays the gospel. Your first opportunity to share the gospel with other people is by being baptized because you're giving a testimony that His death is my death and His life is my life. So there are really two questions that I have for you today. And the first question is, do you know Jesus Christ? Do you have a relationship with God through Jesus? I'm not asking if you're religious, I'm not asking if you've been baptized, I'm not asking, I'm asking, have you ever been born again? Have you ever in response to the gospel surrendered your life to Christ and like these people fully embraced the gospel, turned from your sin and trusted Christ and been born again into relationship with God? Has that ever happened? If not, in just a moment, in just a moment we're going to stand and we're going to sing a song of worship, we're going to have some pastors right down here at the front. If you've never given your life to Christ, we're going to invite you to slip out of your seat to come to one of these pastors down here and say, I need Jesus and we'll have somebody take the Bible and show you exactly how you can trust Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. The second question I have for you, have you ever been baptized since being born again? I'm not asking you if you went through a little thing when you were a kid, that's not what I'm asking you. Have you ever been baptized in the pattern of the New Testament after embracing the gospel? Have you ever been baptized? Have you ever put your wedding ring on? Listen, baptism does not save you. You can get baptized enough until you come out of the water looking like a California raisin and it won't matter at all if you don't have a relationship with God. But once you have a relationship with God, listen to me. It has meaning, it has value, it has significance, it's an opportunity for me to make a public testimony. Listen, there are two groups of people that need to respond. Today, some of you, we've got almost 150 people in the last five weeks that have checked on a card and said, I've trusted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. You today need to respond and be baptized. You say, pastor, I didn't come prepared to be baptized. I didn't bring any clothes. I didn't do any of that. Hey, that's all right. We got it all. We went to Walmart and we went to Travis where we go. Bed, Bath and Beyond or Bath and Body or whatever you call it. Travis said, I said it wrong last night. I said, he's the only man in the whole building that would know I said it wrong, right? We went, we got shirts in every size. We got shorts in every size. We got lotion. We got hair products. We got hairdryer. We even got deodorant. If you've given your life to Jesus Christ, when we stand to sing and you're ready to be baptized, you may not come prepared today. Here's what we want you to do. We don't want you to come this way. We want you to go that way out those doors. We have counselors that are going to be out there in the lobby to talk to you about your salvation and get you ready to follow Jesus Christ in baptism, all right? You'd be thinking about that, but there's a second group that needs to respond today. You may have my story. I was saved in September of 1989, but it was four years later because I'd been baptized when I was younger. It was four years later. I was a pastor in a church, a youth pastor, but I preached about once a month in a church for about a thousand people and God deeply convicted me that I'd never followed Jesus Christ in baptism. I had to walk up in front of our church as a pastor and say, "I got an area of disobedience in my life to the Lord. I've never followed Jesus in baptism since I've been saved." That night, my dad drove down from out of state and I went up in the water with him and my dad baptized me right there as a testimony in my relationship with Jesus Christ forward almost five years after. Some of you've been saved since you've been coming to hope. Some of you've been saved in the last several years. You've been born again and you've never followed Jesus Christ in baptism today's your day and listen to me. I saw something last night. I wish you could have seen what I saw last night. We had a man in our service who, through an accident, had lost a lower portion of his leg. He was a prosthetic. Last night in the service, God convicted him of his baptism. He walked outside and he said, "I need to be baptized. Talked to him about his relationship with God." He came out, wasn't prepared. We had some clothes he put on. He removed that lower portion and he literally crawled up those steps because he understood the signal. It was one of the most moving things I'd ever seen. It took us about 15 minutes just for him to get in and get out. And he was so passionate about what he felt like God had spoken into his life. Listen to me. Don't you sit here today and worry about your hair? Jesus gave his life for you and gave you his life. And today it's time to put on your wedding reign. So in just a moment, we're going to sing. I'm going to ask our praise team, you guys go ahead and come and get in place. I'm going to lead us in a word of prayer and we're going to stand and we're going to sing. Now listen, we've abbreviated the service today, all right? So please, this is not a time to leave early. Don't pretend like you're going to get baptized and head to the car, all right? I know save people. But if you're ready to respond today, you can come and be safe. You can come and pray while we're singing, we're going to have this altar open. If God's spoken in you just need to come and pray over an issue in your life, you can come and you can kneel here and you can pray. If you need a pastor to pray with you about a specific situation in your life, you can come and we'll pray with you. But those of you that God's spoken to your heart and you know it's time for you to be baptized. As soon as we stand and begin to sing, I want you to head through those doors, I want you to talk to some of our people out there and we'll get you ready. And I'm going to, in just a few minutes, go right over here and I'm going to change. But my swim trunks on, I'm going to be right out there with you, I'm going to get to baptized this morning. So we're going to have a great time together, all right? This is a special, special, special moment. If God's spoken to you, listen to me, don't miss it. [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music]