Baptism

WHY DO WE BAPTIZE?

Intro:

I wonder if anyone in here has ever wondered why on earth we have services where we invite people up onto the stage to stand in a tub full of water while myself or other pastors dunk them under the water? While most of us might understand why we baptize in the church, I know that sometimes we have questions that we might be afraid or intimated to ask. That’s what I have loved about our foundations classes thus far. We want everyone to know that they have permission to ask whatever they need to about God, the Bible, and the Church because we want everyone to be able to move forward in their relationship with Jesus. Could I remind you or perhaps inform you for the first time why we baptize people?

Baptism is a representation of the freedom that we find when we put our trust in that completed work of Christ. Baptism is a physical representation of a spiritual transformation of what has taken place in our life. Salvation does not come through baptism. We believe that salvation occurs when someone repents of their sins and gives their life to Christ. Because it is a spiritual matter we do not believe in a physical act cleansing sins or bringing salvation.

But, even though salvation does not come through baptism, we believe baptism should take place after someone has become a Christian. It is an outward display of our inward faith. And Jesus set an example for us by being baptized, so we also do it as an act of obedience which is well pleasing to God.

If you want to find your way to Romans chapter 5 today I’ll start reading in verse 18 but I want to set the stage for that passage by summarizing what the chapter says previous to verse 18. Pastor Tom encouraging carrying Bible so you can see context and I love that, but if you want to follow along on your app, you could search for the message as a translation..

The beginning of this chapter talks about a peace that we can have because of the sacrifice that Jesus Christ made on the cross for us. It talks about the fact that Jesus didn’t die for us after we had shown ourselves to be worthy, but instead just the opposite, while we were sinners and completely undeserving He made the awesome move of giving His life for ours. The chapter goes on to describe the fact that Adam’s sin in the garden, set the stage for sin, and death now reigned, but through Christ’s work on the cross everything would be different. Let’s pick up in verse 18 of Romans 5. I’ve never preached from the message here but loved the rendering of this passage, for those of you who have been taking foundations with Pastor Tom you could tell us that the Message is not a translation but a, Anyone just say it outloud, that’s right a paraphrase. Let’s check it out.

Romans 5 18-19 MSG Here it is in a nutshell: Just as one person (Adam) did it wrong and got us in all this trouble with sin and death, another person (Jesus) did it right and got us out of it. But more than just getting us out of trouble, he got us into life! One man (again Adam or mankind) said no to God and put many people in the wrong; one man (Jesus) said yes to God (the Father) and put many in the right. Romans 5 20-21 MSG All that passing laws against sin did was produce more lawbreakers. But sin didn’t, and doesn’t, have a chance in competition with the aggressive forgiveness we call grace. When it’s sin versus grace, grace wins hands down. All sin can do is threaten us with death, and that’s the end of it. Grace, because God is putting everything together again through the Messiah, invites us into life—a life that goes on and on and on, world without end. 6 1-3 So what do we do? Keep on sinning so God can keep on forgiving? I should hope not! (BY NO MEANS, CERTAINLY NOT, ABSOLUTELY NOT, MAY IT NEVER BE, FAR FROM IT… GOD FORBID!) If we’ve left the country where sin is sovereign, how can we still live in our old house there? Or didn’t you realize we packed up and left there for good? That is what happened in baptism. When we went under the water, we left the old country of sin behind; when we came up out of the water, we entered into the new country of grace—a new life in a new land! 3-5 That’s what baptism into the life of Jesus means. When we are lowered into the water, it is like the burial of Jesus; when we are raised up out of the water, it is like the resurrection of Jesus. Each of us is raised into a light-filled world by our Father so that we can see where we’re going in our new grace-sovereign country.

Our first thought this morning is simply one word… Troublemakers.

Troublemakers

MSG one person did it wrong and got us in all this trouble with sin and death,

that one man wasn’t just Adam, it was representative of the flesh of all humankind

From the beginning of creation, God created man with a freewill. He wanted to make a creature that would show forth his glory that he could have fellowship with, but he did not want us to be robots, so He gave each of us the ability to make choices. After some time had passed God saw that man was very frequently choosing his own way. It was a way of wickedness that was leading to death in all sorts of different ways. God tried upon various attempts to gain our attention, at one point flooding the entire population except for eight people. He obviously felt that might have been a little drastic or at least knew He would never do this again so He gave the promise of the rainbow that He would never flood the whole earth again. But the bottomline is that we as humans without the Holy Spirit have always been and will always be troublemakers because of the power of sin that reigns in any of us who have not surrendered our lives fully to Him. But God loves all of us troublemakers, so He would keep trying to redeem us and that leads to our second thought this morning, an aggressive response.

An Aggressive Response

Romans 5 20-21 MSG But more than just getting us out of trouble, he got us into life! One man (adam or us) said no to God and put many people in the wrong; one man (that’s Jesus) said yes to God and put many in the right. All that passing laws against sin did was produce more lawbreakers. But sin didn’t, and doesn’t, have a chance in competition with the aggressive forgiveness we call grace. When it’s sin versus grace, grace wins hands down.

Man I love that imagery there in this passage of the word grace, Aggressive forgiveness. When I read this paraphrase of this scripture this week, I asked the question, by the way when you are reading scripture, one of the best things you can do is ask questions, because when you ask questions you tend to find answer. Anyhow I asked the question what makes forgiveness aggressive. Do you know what came to mind, man this is horrible… But I feel like one of the first cheers that every little cheerleader learns, which is also a spelling lesson, is be aggressive. Do you know the one? Be aggressive b-e aggressive, sing b-e a-g-g-r-e-s-s-i-v-e. Do you know why we did this cheer? Because spelling out be passive just didn’t fit the rhythm right? NO! Well maybe, but they are urging their team on to initiate contact, to run down their opponent that is trying to escape them. This forgiveness is not a passive forgiveness that simply waits to address the situation as someone comes looking for resolution. This is an aggressive forgiveness that chases us down when we don’t want to be caught. He rescues us when we aren’t looking for a rescuer, He protects us from evil that we overwhelms us. He defends us from blindside attacks. Church if we are told to forgive others the way we want to be forgiven I have a lot of growing to do to achieve this aggressive forgiveness that we call grace.

Jesus ran to us.

(SLOWLY) In Malcolm Gladwell’s book the Tipping point he discusses The Power of Context, and primarily writes about it to show how we as humans tend to defer responsibility in a situation where we believe someone else can do something about the problem. For instance he tells the story of a woman who was mugged and murder in New York City as 38 onlookers watched without responding in anyway whatsoever. When those who watched were questioned, none of them were quite sure why they didn’t do anything. But studies have shown that if we believe anyone else can do something about the situation we will excuse ourselves from taking action. But the same studies show that most of us, 85% of the time was the number he used, if we believe we are the only one witnessing such an act, we will respond in one way or another.

The messiness of or sin…. had gotten to a place… where Jesus looked around and realized He was the only one for the job so he jumped in

God continued to send different prophets to persuade the people, using all sorts of phenomenal signs, miracles, disasters, catastrophes until one day He decided that the most drastic measure was going to be necessary. Jesus Christ, God Himself came to the earth, to live like we do as humans and would live a perfect life and then he would be brutally murdered as a sacrifice, once and for all to die for all, for ALL… of our sins. They buried him in a grave and three days later in resurrection power He came out of the grave and appeared to over 500 eyewitnesses so that his resurrection could be affirmed by man. He then ascended into heaven to get a place ready for us and told us that if He went, He would come again so that we might be with Him.

The result of His life, death, burial, and resurrection, means so much more than forgiveness of sins. It’s more than your fire insurance to get out of hell. It’s even more than an eternity, an amount of time that we can’t even comprehend, in a glorious place called heaven. The result of Christ’s complete work of the cross is FREEDOM. But in order to obtain that freedom that comes from the aggressive response of Jesus’ work on the cross, WE must respond with repentance.

A Response of Repentance

6 1-3 So what do we do? Keep on sinning so God can keep on forgiving? I should hope not! (BY NO MEANS, CERTAINLY NOT, ABSOLUTELY NOT, MAY IT NEVER BE, FAR FROM IT… GOD FORBID!) If we’ve left the country where sin is sovereign, how can we still live in our old house there? Or didn’t you realize we packed up and left there for good? That is what happened in baptism. When we went under the water, we left the old country of sin behind; when we came up out of the water, we entered into the new country of grace—a new life in a new land!

So a response of repentance on our part means it’s Out with the old and In with the New…

Our old life has been buried with Christ, Our old self has been crucified, Our body of sin is done away with, We are no longer slaves to sin, We are freed from sin, We are dead to our sinful lifestyles

You don’t have to keep on in that bad habit, You don’t have to stay in that hurtful relationship, You don’t have to keep living in turmoil and chaos, You are empowered by the Spirit of God to live in His freedom. And so it’s out with the old and in with the new.

A new life comes forth in Christ’s resurrection, We are resurrected into a new life with Him. One of the best and easiest ways to understand new life is to simply realize that it is not the old life. Everything about the old you is gone. When we baptize people here, we witness first-hand the imagery of our old life being buried in the water and raising up as a new person in Jesus Christ.

So from there we must go on living out our new life…

Living out our new life

3-5 That’s what baptism into the life of Jesus means. When we are lowered into the water, it is like the burial of Jesus; when we are raised up out of the water, it is like the resurrection of Jesus. Each of us is raised into a light-filled world by our Father so that we can see where we’re going in our new grace-sovereign country.

For us to rightly understand the entire chapter of Romans 6, we must be acquainted with the story of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Too often we allow ourselves to become hurried when remembering such a familiar story. In our minds we quickly summarize the story of Jesus’ death as one that brings us forgiveness for our sins and grants us a place in heaven. I believe that as Paul was writing here to the church at Rome he saw a need to remind them of how much more important this event was.

We need to remember our own baptism. Just a few verses later in Romans 6 its says remember, you've been raised from the dead!—into God's way of doing things. Sin can't tell you how to live. After all, you're not living under that old tyranny any longer. You're living in the freedom of God. Remember is a powerful and important word in scripture. God’s people were told over and over to remember because we struggle with spiritual amnesia. We forget our forgiveness, we forget our conversion, we forget our baptism, we forget the life we once lived that was supposed to be buried in conversion and baptism, we forget the freedom God intended for us to live in.

Our baptism was and is a seal or a pledge. As we mentioned earlier when God promised to Noah that He would never again drown the world in a flood, He set the rainbow in the heavens as a pledge of the promise which He had made. So when He promised to save men by the blood of Christ and by the renewing of the Holy Ghost, he appointed baptism to be, not only the sign, but also the seal and pledge of that exceeding great and precious promise.

RESPONSE AND INVITE TEAM

Some of us need to start this new life with Jesus today and if so here in just a minute we are going to invite you to come and pray and tell God you don’t want to live this life on your own anymore, but many of us today need to remember our baptism and we need to consider if we are truly living out our new life. And I’ll challenge you further on that with an interesting little story. I have friends that have goats and unfortunately a couple years ago one of those goats went on to heavenly pastures, if you know what I mean. They buried the goat in the back yard with a little monument and much to everyone’s concern a few days later the goats feet were sticking up out of the yard. Now no one thought that the goat had come back to life, they knew he was dead, but the fact that he had resurfaced was still a little disturbing and needed to be dealt with. Church when you gave your life to Jesus, when you were baptized in water, when you received the Holy Spirit, that sin was to be buried once and for all. But I’m afraid all of us know all too well that sometimes sin finds a way to resurface, and when that happens it should disturb us and we should get the shovel back out and bury it deep.

I remember my dad overseeing some baptisms I did when i was serving under His ministry, and I can remember a couple people in particular that had just battled hard and long to find their way to God. And when we went to baptize them He’d say ALL THE WAY UNDER, ALL THE WAY UNDER, Christian is there a part of you didn’t go all the way under? What’s resurfaced friends? A habit? An addiction? An attitude? I don’t believe you need to be baptized again, but it’s time to put it down once and for all, and start living in the freedom that was bought with a great price in the blood of Jesus.

EVERYONE STAND

Altar for salvation and Sign up Sheet up for baptism, just interest, maybe cheer for people?

They are going to sing the song that we sang earlier called Made for More, and I love that song because I believe whatever you are doing or not doing for God today, you were made to do even more in the kingdom of God. One of the lines in that song says you’ve buried my past I’m not going back. Before you can do anything more for Jesus you have to make sure that every part of that flesh and those sins are buried once and for all.

Jonathan why do they keep coming back, I’ll tell you and this might give you another prayer point this morning. I was looking over my sermon notes last night, and their was a guy named Luke that lives in my house that was sitting next to me writing a sermon and it was about all the healings of Jesus. He talked about Lazarus, and the pool of Bethesda, the demons being cast out of people, and he even mentioned the healing of Linda Smith. Linda could you just wave at everyone.

Anyhow before he went to bed he said dad I’m having a hard time falling asleep because I’m thinking about those demons that possessed Mary Magdalene. And I said buddy you don’t have to worry about that, they can’t take over you because you are filled with the Holy Spirit, he said really, I said yes really. Maybe this morning it’s time that you give the spirit full rule and reign.

?The word salvation is not a one and done idea. Jesus keep saving me?

HAVE TO MANAGE THE VOTE, Bring guys on stage, Erich Kassner, Colton Dutiel, Jeremy Davis, Steven Nelson, Josh Slone, have to talk about Carter and Rachel here… kid power, prayer/fast, no meal this week, everyone say no meal, baptism signups