Baptism

Now today being a special day calls for a

special sermon and I am out of my element

today and I'm

in uncharted waters. I will not be doing an

exposition of a particular text today. That is

my normal course of preaching and unusual to

say the least. And also I'm also really in an

uncharted waters because I never do this. I

may have never done this. I changed everything

Friday,

Friday. So okay, now I'm really in uncharted

waters. So you pray for me because this is

what I want to do for you today. I would like

to place a case before you for a biblical

understanding

of what we just did outside in baptism. But I

want to also place an emphasis on what preced

es

baptism, namely Bible repentance and saving

faith in the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Now to begin with, in the simplest terms, as I

said outside and I said previously,

baptism for the Christian is a command. Now

all the verses that I'm going to give to you

are going

to be here up on the board. Or if you want to,

if you like a little Baptist air conditioning,

as R.C.'s called it, you want to flip pages

around. There's Bibles in the pews in front of

you.

But Jesus himself, in the Great Commission in

Matthew chapter 28, verses 19 to 20, there

right at the

end, look what he says. He's telling the

disciples, "Go therefore and make disciples of

all nations,

baptizing them in the name of the Father and

the Son and the Holy Spirit." We just did that

.

"Teaching them to observe all that I commanded

you and lo, I am with you always, even to the

end of

the age, on the day of Pentecost. 3,000 people

believed and 3,000 people were baptized." When

the New Testament church began in Acts chapter

2, we find Peter preaching there in verse 38.

And

look what he says. Peter said to them, "Repent

, and each of you be baptized in the name of

Jesus

Christ." Now there, notice he's speaking to

the individual, each of you who repents and

believes.

So the church is commanded by Jesus to baptize

, and the individual is commanded to be

baptized.

So there's really no lack of clarity with this

subject. In fact, in each of the cases where

the Great Commission is given in both Matthew,

Mark, and Luke, there is an emphasis on

baptism.

So let's start by asking the question. What is

baptism? Well, just from a physical standpoint

,

baptism is a ceremony by which a person is

totally immersed in water. As Christians,

we do this because, as I read earlier, because

it's a command from the Lord Himself that we

are

instructed to carry out. Now, there are two

Greek verbs. The New Testament was originally

written in

Greek that are used to translate or that are

translated baptized. Two, one is "bapto," and

the other is "baptizo." Now, "bapto" is the

much less used. It's only used four times in

the New

Testament, and it means literally "to dip into

." It was a word that was used when they dyed

clothes,

a different color, D-Y-E, and when you immerse

the cloth all the way down into the dye. And

it's best

translated into English by the word "immers."

Now, next, "baptizo," kind of how Greek works,

and I don't know Greek. It's all Greek to me,

but I know John MacArthur does when he tells

me it's

Greek. That's the word. My people know that.

But "baptizo" is an intensified form of "bapto

." Then

"baptizo" is used many times in the New

Testament. It's a verb, and it means "to dip

completely."

It's actually the Greek word for "drowning."

And so that shows you how complete the dipping

is,

potentially. It's the word to "immers" or "sub

merse." Now, the noun form "baptism," "baptism

as," is always

used in the book of Acts to refer to a

Christian being immersed in the water. So this

is in general

what baptism is. It's a ceremony by which when

a person believes the gospel, they are then as

an

act of obedience immersed into the water. In

fact, the terms "bapto," "baptizo," and the

noun "baptismas"

could have all been translated "immersed," "

immersed," or "immersion." In every single case

, and that

would have solved a lot of issues between the

differences of opinion in different denomin

ations

who don't immerse, but who pour, and who

sprinkle. But the translators chose to transl

iterate the

Greek word "baptizo" into "baptized." You hear

how they sound the same? Well, "to translate"

means

to give the meaning. "To transliterate" means

to take the pronunciation of a word from one

language

to another without giving the meaning. That's

why it sounds the same. But because it's

become a

technical term for the ceremony of immersion,

they transliterated it out of the root, the

original,

and left it as "baptized." So, "baptizo"

became "baptized." But that doesn't give us

its meaning.

Its meaning is very clear. Immerse. You could

translate it, again, "immersed" every single

time you find it in the New Testament, and you

would be right every single time. In fact,

the Greeks had a different word for "spr

inkling." A whole different word. And so, we

are never in

any instance that we find "baptizing" or "bapt

ism" in the New Testament talking about sprink

ling.

Check me out if you don't believe me. There's

no such thing as a ceremony of sprinkling or

pouring in the Bible or any application of

water to the individual. Every time you find "

baptism"

in the Bible, the word is "immersed," which

means putting the person under the water, even

John

Calvin. Those many consider him the father of

Presbyterianism, who do infant baptism by

sprinkling

or pouring. He wrote this, "The word "baptized

" means to "immersed." No linguist can come up

with

anything else." And then Calvin wrote, "The

word "baptized" means to "immers." It is

certain that

immersion was the practice of the early church

." Now, that's a hand-scratcher. Like, "Come on

,

Johnny C. What are you doing? Why are you not

immersing?" Well, we were not here to make

that

debate. There really is no debate. So, the

actual meaning of the word is what I'm trying

to get

across to you. And the verbs, watch this, "b

apto" and "baptiza," they're never used in the

passage.

That is to say, water is never said to be "b

aptized" on someone, like sprinkling or pouring

water on

someone. They sprinkle, they pour, they dip,

they touch the water on the forehead.

Never are those verbs used that way in the New

Testament. Always, always in the sense of

somebody

being placed and immersed down into the water.

Now, let's look at some New Testament examples

.

Matthew 3-6, John the Baptist. Notice, not

John the Presbyterian, Methodist, or any other

,

just a joke. "And they were being baptized by

him in the Jordan River." You can't say that?

The river wasn't taken to them. They were

taken to the river. I know a band that used to

play that

song, "Take Me To The River," right? Look at

Matthew 3-16. "After being baptized, Jesus

came up immediately

from the water." So Jesus went down into the

water, just like everybody else, and then he

came up

out of the water. Look at it. Look what it

says. "After being baptized," there's the

Greek word,

"baptizo." You could say, "After being

immersed, Jesus came up immediately from the

water," and

doesn't that make perfect sense? Now, next we

have a showstopper. John 3-23. John was also

baptizing in Aeonon near Salem because there

was much water there, and people were coming

and being baptized. The water was deep there.

You don't need deep water in order to pour

our sprinkle. It has to be deep enough to dunk

, okay? Acts 8. "My man Philip, he comes across

the

Ethiopian eunuch. He preached the gospel to

the eunuch," and look at verse 36. "As they

went along

the road, they came to some water, and the eun

uch said, 'Look, water! What prevents me from

being

baptized? Baptizo! What prevents me from being

immersed?'" Look next, verse 38. "And he

ordered

the chariot to stop him, and they both went

down into the water, Philip, as well as the e

unuch,

and he baptized him. Baptizo! Literally, he

immersed him." Folks, what I'm trying to get

across to you is this is the only kind of

baptism that the New Testament knows anything

about.

That's why I'm a Christian by faith, and I'm a

Baptist by my profession through doctrinally

understanding that this is the proper way we

baptize. We never find, again, sprinkling,

pouring,

dipping, touching with water, and there's not

one verse anywhere about baptizing of infants.

Now, listen, I don't have time to get into

that debate. That's a second-level argument.

We fellowship

with Presbyterians who baptize infants. That's

not a first-level thing that we all believe

the

same. Like, my guy over Stuart Amidon and the

guy we had Brandon Leany, it was a Presbyter

ian,

he preached at our conference. We agree on,

like, 90% of stuff. We just don't agree with

this,

and that's a disagreement we can have in-house

. We can have that debate, and there's lots of

debates right about that. However, even though

I know I am not the sharpest knife in the

drawer,

even though in the late 80s and early 90s, I

burned so many brain cells up that to never

return,

from functioning at a very low level right now

, shouldn't the fact that never, in one

instance,

anywhere in the New Testament of an infant

being baptized give us a clue that that should

never be the case? In the New Testament, in

every circumstance, an adult was placed down

into that

water as a believer, and that leads us next as

to why. Why do we do this? Which brings us

from the

physical to the spiritual significance. And to

me, this right here, what I'm fixing to give

you

is the heart of the disagreement between those

who hold to believers only baptism by

immersion,

that's our position, and those who hold to

infant or adult, for that matter, baptism by

pouring,

sprinkling, or dipping. Now, follow my logic

here. Baptism is a command, and as I've shown

you,

if in the New Testament, in every case,

immersion is the mode of baptism, that's not

debatable,

even John Calvin said so. Let's ask the

question next, why immersion? Well, there's a

very important

reason for that. In my view, baptism by

immersion is an object lesson. It's a

depiction. It's a picture.

It's a symbol. It's a physical analogy of a

great spiritual truth that is profound,

and it's crucial if you understand what

baptism signifies to stick with the New

Testament mode

of immersion. Because if you change the mode

of immersion over to sprinkling, pouring, or

dipping,

guess what you do? You completely wipe out the

symbol of what baptism symbolizes. And what is

the symbol? Well, this ordinance of baptism is

what God has designed to teach us all the most

wonderful truth that there is, the truth of

personal salvation. That's what the symbol of

baptism represents. Personal salvation by

grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ

alone,

through the glory of God alone, and you don't

have to be a Bible student for very long to

know that

God teaches us with symbols of all kinds in

the Old Testament. There are symbols and

analogies and

types and pictures, and they depict a

spiritual truth in some kind of physical way,

the most

significant of which always point to the

personal work of Jesus Christ. Like, for

example, the Jews

in the Old Testament sacrificing a spotless

lamb. That's a picture. That's a symbol of the

one true

spotless lamb, the Lord Jesus Christ, being

sacrificed on the cross for our sins. That's

just one example. Jesus taught with parables,

analogies. Paul taught with illustrations.

So we have long seen God dispense his truth

this way, and baptism

is certainly one of the biggest and most

important symbols that there are. Now, let's

drill down on

this. How and why is believer's baptism by

immersion a fantastic symbol of salvation?

Well, before I get to the answer of that

question, first maybe we need to say and ask

the question,

what is salvation? What does it mean to be

saved? In America, you can't get away from

that phrase.

You've all heard it. Save from what? Well, to

answer that question, you have to first deal

with the question of what is the gospel?

Because the gospel is what tells us what

salvation is.

The gospel tells us what we are saved from.

And first, let me tell you what the gospel is

not.

The gospel is not you believe in God according

to however you choose to define God.

You say, "I think God is this way." Well, as

soon as you do that, really what you're doing

is saying

you're God because you're making up a God, and

that's a God that doesn't exist. And this God

that

you've made up in your mind, and you make up

something like this, "Well, if I live my moral

best,

and when I die, if my good outweighs my bad,

God is going to be fair with me,

and I'm going to go to heaven when I die." Let

me tell you, that don't even smell like the

gospel

right there. Sadly, some version of that is

what most Americans believe. But let me show

you one

thing that's not debatable. One thing you do

not want from God is for God to be fair with

you.

When it comes to this notion of you doing your

best and your good outweighing your bad, if

God

is fair with you in that interaction, you will

lose big time. Because there is a massive

difference,

folks, between God's definition of good and

our definition of good. And none of us ever

lives up

to his definition of good. So, no, you don't

want fair from God in his dealings with you.

What you must plead for is grace from God. And

what grace is, is unmerited favor. There's

nothing

you can do to earn grace. Grace is unearned.

And now we're getting into what the gospel is.

When a person presents themselves as a

candidate for baptism, as I've already said,

they have already gone through the process of

believing the gospel with saving faith.

The gospel literally means good news. And it

is the best news that there is.

It is a specific proclamation of biblical

realities laid out for us in Scripture

concerning the person and the work of the Lord

Jesus Christ and our response to his person

and work. When a person at some point in their

life is drawn by the Holy Spirit and what we

call

the effectual call, in that process, somewhere

along the way, it's different timelines for

everybody. They are brought under the

presentation of the gospel, the proclamation

of the person

and work of Christ, defining what that is. And

that could happen in a number of ways.

That could happen in a sermon, like you're

hearing today. That could happen by somebody

individually witnessing to you. That could

happen to you simply by reading your Bible.

However it happens, it's going to happen only

and always on the basis of words explained

from the Word of God. That's the only way it

happens. Look at Romans 10 and verse 17.

So faith comes from hearing and hearing by the

Word of Christ. And again, that Word of Christ

comes from the Scripture alone and it's a

thorough explanation of the person and work of

Christ.

So let's do that. Let me start with who Jesus

is. Jesus is the main character of the Bible,

both the Old and the New Testament. And every

single human being must do something with

Jesus.

After you can accept Him, you can outright

reject Him, you could be indifferent towards

Him. But one thing that you cannot do is you

cannot totally ignore Him. And here's why.

No man who has ever lived has ever impacted

this world with his one life the way Jesus has

.

You want to debate me on that? You will lose,

guaranteed. For example, time itself on earth

is measured by his entrance into this world.

All human beings on this planet have lived or

will live either BC or AD. What other

historical figure has that kind of cloud? Also

, every year,

on December 25th in 195 countries across this

globe, every bank, every government office,

and most non-essential businesses are shut

down to honor the day of His birth. The same

is true.

195 countries around the world on Good Friday,

government offices, banks, and most businesses

shut down to honor the day of His death. What

human being in all of human history comes

anywhere

close to having these kinds of distinctions

made of them, especially over 2,000 years

since they

were here, and a Jewish carpenter at that in

Israel 2,000 years ago, not a prince of any

earthly kind, not a prime minister, not a

president. He was from Poduk, Nazareth, and he

died as a

criminal's death on a Roman cross. Nobody has

impacted the world even anywhere close to the

historical reality of Jesus Christ, and every

person has to make a decision with their life.

About who Jesus is. Many say, well, he was a

great man. He was a wonderful religious leader

.

He was a prophet who founded one of the world

's great religions, and he was all those things

when he walked this earth. But infinitely

beyond all that, every person has to make a

decision

about who he claimed to be. Jesus told his

disciples in John chapter 14, verse number 9,

"He who has seen me has seen the Father." He

said in John chapter 10, verse 30, "I and the

Father are

one." Starting in John 1-1, the Bible says in

the beginning was the Word, and the Word was

with God,

and the Word was God, verse 14, and the Word

was made flesh and dwelt among us. That's

Jesus.

The man that no historian, secular, or

religious denies existed with complete clarity

claimed to be

God in human flesh, and every person must make

a decision about his claim. And as C.S. Lewis

taught

us, there are only three options that you have

when it comes to Jesus. Either he was a liar,

and he lied about who he is, either he was a

lunatic, and he was out of his mind like so

many

others who claim to be God, or the man who

impacted human history more than any other man

ever

is Lord. Liar, lunatic, or Lord, you have to

make the call in your life. And if you choose

to believe

his claim, there are clear and definite ram

ifications that you are forced to deal with,

like the fact

that out of all the magnificent attributes of

God that Jesus possesses as God, the one that

stands

out above all the rest is the crown jewel of

his attributes, and that is his holiness.

Jesus,

the God-man, is absolute purity with a

holiness that is transcendent. What that means

is he has

far beyond just moral purity, far beyond what

our finite minds can comprehend. He is

completely

other from us as God. We are just frail

creatures of dust. And if you come to believe

in Jesus'

claim that he is God, then by necessity you

have to believe that the Bible is his word

because

he himself makes very clear in his word his

view of the Holy Scriptures. And in the

Scriptures,

not only do we learn about the holiness of God

, we also learn that because of his holiness,

look at Psalm 711. It says that God is a just

judge and God is angry with the wicked every

day.

Now that's a verse that doesn't sit well on

the modern man's ears, but you cannot escape

the

reality that it's there. And we also know

because of the holiness of Christ that there

will never,

ever, ever be any sin allowed into the

presence of God in heaven. And because of that

, the Bible

presents to us a standard for all of us to

enter into heaven, to be able to go to heaven

when we

die, a standard that is absolutely staggering.

And that standard is lifelong perfect

obedience to

the law of God, the Ten Commandments. And you

say, "Whoa, brother Philip, what Galatians 310

,

for as many as are under the works of the law

are under a curse." That's all of us,

for it is written, "Cursed is everyone who

does not abide by some things written in the

Book of

the Law." Is that what it says? Cursed is

everyone who does not abide by all things

written in the

Book of the Law to perform them. Jesus made

the standard clear in Matthew 548. Remember

what He

said? "Therefore you are to be perfect, just

as your Father in heaven is perfect." God's

standard

of goodness is not ours. God's standard of

goodness is never sinning. Perfect

righteousness

for the whole duration of your life. That is

the standard for entering into God's presence

when we die. And that, as you cannot help but

know very well, sitting right here in this

little

building on Hooper Road presents all of us

with a huge, very urgent problem.

We don't have a perfect righteousness. None of

us do. In fact, according to God's measuring

right, we don't have any righteousness. Isaiah

said, "Our righteousness, filthy rags." Look

at

Romans 3, 23, "For all have sinned and come

short of the glory of God." Romans 310, "As it

is written,

there is none righteous." Just in case you

didn't get that, no, not one. Romans 311,

"There is none who understands." Look at this.

"There is none who seeks after God."

What a man. Brother, what about all the other

people around the world, all these religions?

Let

me tell you something. There are people who

seek after the God that they make up in their

own mind

as imagination, and that's not God. That's

probably the most, again, the most popular in

America.

Many seek after the God of false religions.

Many seek after the benefits that they can get

from

God, like meaning and peace and purpose. But

the Bible is very clear right here that none

seek naturally after Yahweh, the God of the

Bible. You know what we all naturally do?

We all run as fast as we can away from Him.

And because of our condition,

our sins have separated us from a holy God.

Look at Isaiah 59-2. The prophet says this,

"But your iniquities have separated you from

your God, and your sins have hidden his face

from you

so that he will not hear." That's a

frightening verse. Sin is the breaking of God

's law, the 10

commandments. And when Jesus came, He taught

us the full understanding of that breaking God

's law

is not only done outwardly, it's also done

inwardly where only God sees. And so that

means we have all

broken all of God's commandments many, many

times over. And he just shouldn't think, "Oh,

I think I

got a couple of them. Well, you need to talk

to me after church. And I can prove to you

real quickly.

You've broken everyone up and so have I many,

many times." R.C. Sproul says this, "If you

really

understand the greatest commandment," Jesus

said, "the greatest commandment is to love the

Lord your

God with all your heart, all your soul, all

your mind, all your strength. If you really

understand

what all means there, you know that none of us

have ever done that for five seconds in our

life."

We never love the Lord our God with all our

heart, mind, soul, and strength.

And Scripture makes the standard of law

keeping very clear. Look at James 2-10.

"For whoever shall keep the whole law and yet

stumble in one point,

he is guilty of all." So God's law and our

inability to keep it demonstrates to us

that left to himself, man, is in a helpless,

hopeless, precarious situation because the

consequence and the penalty for our law

breaking is not just missing out on heaven,

but also spending an eternity separated from

the gracious presence of God in the outer

darkness

of hell. Now, the modern man's ears doesn't

like to hear that. Oh, the Phillip.

You don't really believe there's a hell. Only

weak people and ignorant hillbillies believe

in

hell. This is 2025. I mean, even in many

churches today, they stopped talking about

hell.

But I'm here to tell you, I believe my Bible.

And no one can escape the fact that Jesus

speaks

more about hell in the pages of Scripture than

he does about heaven. Go check it out for

yourself.

This means, folks, unquestionably that the

most important question in all of the human

experience

has to be this. How in the world can a sinful

person be made right with a God who is holy

and go to heaven when they die? And that is

where the hero of our story

enters into time, God himself, the God man,

the main character of the Bible. Jesus Christ

comes

to our rescue. You want to know what two of

the most beautiful words in all of the Bible

are?

Look at Romans 5.8 with me. Those first two

words. But God demonstrates his love toward us

and that while we were yet sinners, Christ

died for us. What Christ accomplished in his

life, death,

and resurrection, I'm telling you today, is

the only hope that we have to be made right

with God.

No mere man could come up with the gospel plan

that God himself, under no obligation

whatsoever

to sinners like us, out of pure love for

sinners, became a man in the person of Jesus

Christ

to be, important word here, a substitute for

all who believe. Remember, remember,

we need a perfect lifelong righteousness to

enter into God's heaven and we've all blown it

.

We've all blown it big time. That's why Jesus

came to be our substitute in two ways. First,

in his perfect sinless life, he was our

substitute. What did he do? How did he do it?

He lived the

perfect sinless life that we can't in our

place. And secondly, in his death, he was our

substitute.

The Bible says that the wages of sin is death

and Jesus paid that penalty for all the sins

of all

believers for all time by his sacrificial

death on the cross. Look with me at 2

Corinthians chapter

5 and verse 21. Maybe that is the greatest

explanation summarized of the gospel in the

Bible.

Look what it says. He made him, God made Jesus

, who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf so

that we

might become the righteousness of God in him,

in Christ. So the Father poured out all of his

just wrath for sin that we all deserve on his

sinless Son who took our place as a substitute

.

And I'm going to get to the second part of

this verse in a minute. But first, what is it

that

connects us to Christ's substitutionary work?

We see there in Scripture that that's what it

is.

Well, there's two things. Bible repentance and

saving faith. And repentance means more than

just sorrow for sin. It includes that. But it

also means this, to turn around, to change

direction,

to change your evaluation of who Jesus is, to

turn your will around, to stop living for

yourself.

Providence has heard many times, man, when

life was lived up to me to live

and for me to be in control of it, what a

train wreck that I made of my life.

Repentance means going away from your own way

of living life and going God's way.

It's a complete turnaround and it's only

according to Scripture alone. And then you see

yourself

as you've never seen yourself before. You see

yourself as a lawbreaker in rebellion,

running from God, not wanting to live God's

way, but wanting to live your own. And then

saving faith

is more than just intellectual ascent to these

gospel facts I've been preaching to you today

because the Bible says, the Bible says, the

devils believe and they tremble.

They know they have intellectual ascent. They

have better theology than all of us.

Saving faith is a faith that surrenders all of

our hearts, minds, souls, and wills over to

the

Lordship of Jesus Christ and who He is and

what He's done and says, Lord, take my life

and do what

you want with it. I'm following you. Look at

Romans 9, Romans 10, 9 through 10, that if you

confess with your mouth, Jesus is Lord, and

believe in your heart that God raised him from

the dead,

you will be saved for with the heart a person

believes resulting in righteousness and with

the mouth he confesses resulting in salvation.

And when you have come to Jesus on His terms

of

repentance and faith, realizing that salvation

is all of grace and not by any good works that

we

could possibly do because we don't have any,

let me tell you what happens. It's the

greatest thing

that you'll ever hear. There's a remarkable

transaction that takes place whenever you

believe

in Christ. Go back to 2 Corinthians 5, 21

because I want to tie it together for you.

Look at it again. He, God, made him Jesus who

knew no sin to be sin on our behalf

so that we might become the righteousness of

God in him. You know what that's called? The

Great

Exchange. As I said earlier, when we believe

on Christ's terms, our sins are placed upon

Christ,

punished in Christ, imputed in Christ,

punished in Christ on the cross. And that's

what, look at

this verse, that's what it means when it says

Jesus was made to be sin on our behalf. That's

what that means, but that's not all. We're not

done. At the same time, when you believe with

saving faith, you are then justified in the

sight of God, that perfect righteousness that

the Bible

says you need to enter heaven. Guess what? It

's imputed to you. That means that Jesus'

perfect

righteousness that he attained when he walked

this earth fulfilling all of the law's demands

perfectly

as a substitute for our believers is then that

very righteousness is reckoned to you. Look

again

in this verse, that's what it means when it

says so that we might become the righteousness

of God

in him. Listen to me. You're not made

righteous. You're declared righteous with the

righteousness

of Christ, with the righteousness of another.

Even though you have no righteousness of your

own,

by sovereign grace, Jesus' perfect

righteousness is put on your account. The best

way I've ever

heard this summarized is by my good friend who

's now in heaven with Jesus, Ed Lacey. Listen

to what

he said. "The Father treated Jesus as if he

had lived my sinful life so that he could

treat me

as if I had lived Jesus' perfectly righteous

life." That's the great exchange. So that

again,

the righteousness by which anyone will enter

into heaven will never be their own. It can't

be. We

don't have a perfect righteousness. It must be

Christ's righteousness put on our account,

never ever being able to be based upon

anything we've done, but totally based upon

who he is

and what he's done. Look at Ephesians 2, 8,

and 9. "For by grace you have been saved

through faith

and that what? Not yourselves. It is the gift

of God, not as a result of works." Why, Paul?

Why is it works earn you to heaven so that no

one may boast, so that no one may get to

heaven and

say, "Well, here's why. I'm here. My good. I

'll wave my bad." No. All your good is bad. And

only

Christ's righteousness is what gets you into

heaven. That church is the only gospel that

there is.

That's the only gospel that will save your

soul. Now, let's go back quickly to the

subject of

baptism. We're going to close this out. After

a person believes God's gospel with Bible

repentance

and saving faith, as I said, it's a command to

be baptized of public profession to all the

world

that you have been redeemed. But not only that

, again, the reason why immersion under the

water

is the biblical mode of baptism is because of

what it symbolized. And that's best explained

to us.

Look at with me at Romans 6, verse 3 to 4. "Do

you not know that all of us who have been

baptized

into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His

death?" Now, here, this is a dry baptism. This

is an

illustration. You have been buried with Christ

as if you died, buried into His with Him

through

baptism. Therefore, we have 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 might walk in newness of

life.

Now, number one, you see, that's clearly

talking about a believer, right? Number two,

not only is immersion all the way under water

correct linguistically, immersion is the only

symbol of the different modes of baptism that

works to describe what happens when a person

is

saved. Now, I promise you, I could preach two

more hours on those two verses right there.

And maybe I should because I'm pretty good at

running people off. That's probably the best

thing I'm best at. But I'm going to spare you

because there's a lot more exegesis that needs

to be done on those verses by the summary. And

I just want to close by saying this.

What you have witnessed today with the baptism

of Eric Helfen, again, is an outward

manifestation

of a real, genuine inward reality. Eric has

repented and believed person in work of the

Lord Jesus Christ with saving faith. And as an

act of obedience, he has followed Jesus'

command

today to be baptized. In the ceremony that we

just performed out here under the oak tree,

Eric publicly professed his faith in the

person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ,

and at the same time, his being immersed under

the water, symbolized being buried with Christ

in his death and being united by faith with

Christ under that water, literally being

immersed in Christ. And oh, Eric is gone. He's

gone because he's then raised up out of the

water.

And that symbolizes that he's been united with

Christ in his resurrection and looked there in

verse four. So we too might walk in newness of

life. That symbolizes, folks, that he's raised

out of that water to walk as a new creature

with a new nature, with a new life, with new

desires.

There is nothing more crazier to me to this

day that my desires change. I was wild, man,

okay?

And it all changed over 25 years ago, and I

hadn't got over it yet, okay?

We no longer live life for self when we become

Christians. We now live life for Christ. We

now

live life for his glory. We want nothing more

than to serve him. And I'm here to tell you,

folks,

there's just no better way to live than the

Christian life. As Huey Moke used to say,

peace and purpose while we're here, a home in

heaven when we die. You can't live better than

that.

Now, if you're here today and you've never

placed your faith and trust in Christ and

his gospel in the way that I just explained it

, and you are convicted about that reality,

do not leave this building without coming to

talk to me about it because it's my favorite

subject.

Let's pray. Father in heaven, we thank you.

Thank you for the opportunity once again to

preach

your gospel. It's your gospel. It's all of

your grace. It's all of your mercy. There's

nothing,

nothing that we could possibly do to earn our

way to be right with you. We must have Jesus'

righteousness. There's simply no other way.

And our good works, Lord, those are simply the

result

of the fact that we have been saved. That's a

whole separate sermon. So Lord, we thank you

for the witness of Eric today in making a

public profession of faith,

buried with Christ in baptism, raised to walk

in new lists of life as a new creature.

As I said, peace and purpose while we're here,

a home in heaven when we die.

It just don't get no better than that. And we

thank you, Lord, for your grace to us. Again,

if there's any here who have not bowed the

knee to Jesus Christ in saving faith, I pray

you would

draw them with your spirit and bring them to

yourself just like you did for every believer

here and all to your glory. In Jesus' name we

pray. Amen.