2-3: The Ordinance of Baptism

Bookmarks & Needs:

B: Romans 6:1-5

N:

Welcome

Good morning, and happy resurrection day to everyone here in the room and everyone joining us online! He is risen!

We have had a tremendous weekend of worship and ministry here at Eastern Hills, beginning with our Good Friday service and luncheon on Friday, thanks Trevor for preaching that service. Then, as Joe mentioned we had our Egg Hunt on the Courtyard yesterday morning, and then hosted a memorial for the Ingle family. This morning, we gathered outside to praise the Lord and worship together at our Sunrise service, and thanks to the student ministry praise team and to Joe for leading that service. We had breakfast and then Bible study this morning, and now we’ve had such a great time of celebration of Jesus with the choir. Whew!

Announcements

Donna Treece will be holding her sixteenth annual concert called “Donna Treece & Friends” to raise funds to help children attend summer camps, such as Missions Camp. This year’s concert will be held on Friday night, April 29, at 7:00 pm here in the sanctuary.

Our women’s ministry, called “WISDOM,” will hold their annual Spring Tea on Saturday, April 30, from 2:00 to 4:00 pm in Miller Hall. Food will be provided. The keynote speaker at the Tea will be Jane Bickelman with Pursonalities Ministry, and Kelsey Burger will do a Color Street Nails demonstration as a special feature. Ladies, this is a great opportunity for fun, fellowship, outreach, and ministry. Grab a flyer from the Get Connected table in the foyer for more information.

We are in the second-to-last week of receiving our annual Annie Armstrong Easter Offering for North American Missions. We saw a video earlier of one of the ways that offering is used to spread the Gospel in the U.S., Canada, and their territories. One hundred percent of this offering goes directly to support, train, and send thousands of missionaries and church planters. Offerings like the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering are part of how our church unites with other Southern Baptist churches in the mission of sharing the Good News. Our goal as a church for this year is $16,500, and as of last week, we have received $16,523, so we have exceeded our goal! Thank you for your generosity and your desire to support the work of our SBC North American missionaries and church planters. If God is leading you to give to this special emphasis and you haven’t had the opportunity to do so, you can still give to the AAEO goal through next Sunday.

Opening

The sermon series that we are currently in is called “We Believe,” and we are taking time this year to go through our church Statement of Belief. You can read our Statement of Belief online on our website if you’d like to see the whole thing. Last week, we considered the doctrine of salvation: what it means to be “in Christ.” This morning, I said that my sermon began with the baptisms because today we will consider the ordinance of baptism, and next week, we will take the Lord’s Supper together as we consider that ordinance of the church.

Our focal passage this morning is found in Romans 6, verses 1-5. I’d like to ask everyone to stand in honor of God’s Word as we read this passage:

Romans 6:1–5 CSB

1 What should we say then? Should we continue in sin so that grace may multiply? 2 Absolutely not! How can we who died to sin still live in it? 3 Or are you unaware that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 Therefore we were buried with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too may walk in newness of life. 5 For if we have been united with him in the likeness of his death, we will certainly also be in the likeness of his resurrection.

PRAYER (Albuquerque’s First Baptist Church, Pastor Steven Ball)

This morning, we witnessed the baptism of four young believers, and I said that my sermon was beginning then. In a very real way, the church practice of baptism is a sermon in itself, and it has a lot of meaning. Baptism is kind of the first sermon a new believer “preaches.”

I remember my baptism. It was here, in this room, in the very same baptistery. I was saved through the ministry of Eastern Hills, and on November 5, 1989, I was baptized as a profession of my faith in Christ and as the means of joining the membership of this great local church and the Body of Christ, the universal church made up of believers everywhere throughout time. I guess you could say that it was my first “sermon.” But, to be honest, my baptism was very different than those this morning: for mine, it was November, and the baptistery heater was broken. =o)

Baptism is an important act of obedience for every believer, and in fact, our Statement of Belief says this about baptism:

EHBC’s Statement of Belief, Article 8: Baptism & the Lord’s Supper

“Christian baptism is the immersion of a believer in water. … It is an act of obedience symbolizing the believer’s faith in a crucified, buried, and risen Savior, the believer’s death to sin, the burial of the old life, and the resurrection to walk in newness of life in Christ Jesus.”

This statement really gives a good summary of the ordinance and meaning of baptism. The baptism is only for the believer: someone who has already made a profession of faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. And the sermon that it preaches is a public testimony to the saving work of God and what has been done through Christ and in the renewing power of the Spirit.

Before getting into the sermon that baptism preaches, I want to address the first part of our Statement of Belief: the mode of baptism being by immersion. The English word “baptize” is basically taken right out of the Greek without really changing it. The Greek word is baptizo, so you can hear the similarity. And the baptisms that we see in Scripture give us evidence that the Christian practice of baptism required more than a sprinkle of water to complete.

Consider the Ethiopian eunuch’s baptism in Acts 4: Philip shares the Gospel with him in his chariot, and he trusts in Christ. Then as they continue down the road, they come across some water. Certainly this Ethiopian, since he had both wealth (he had his own chariot, after all) and was undertaking a sizeable journey back to his homeland, had water with him for the trip. Apparently that amount of water was not enough for baptism, because they stop the chariot, and the Bible says:

Acts 8:38 CSB

38 So he ordered the chariot to stop, and both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water, and he baptized him.

They “go down into the water.” This isn’t a cupful or a spoonful or a handful—it’s enough to “go down into.” There are other examples, but I use this to show that believer’s baptism in Scripture is a baptism by immersion. That’s why we use immersion here at Eastern Hills—because that is what Scripture says is the proper mode of baptism.

So now you might be wondering: why are we talking about baptism by immersion on Easter? It’s because the mode of baptism that Scripture prescribes isn’t just to get people really wet. Baptism by immersion is in a way an Easter sermon preached in three pictures, a message of the salvation that comes through belief in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus.

1) Baptism is a picture of dying.

On Good Friday, we took time to reflect on what Jesus did for us when He took our place by dying on the cross. Jesus chose to be lifted up on that cruel instrument of torture and death because of the great love of God: Jesus was the only One who didn’t deserve the wrath of God against sin, and yet He’s the One who received it in our place so that we could be right with God by faith. He completed the work necessary to purchase our redemption, and then He declared, “It is finished,” and died:

John 19:30 CSB

30 When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, “It is finished.” Then bowing his head, he gave up his spirit.

On the cross, Jesus truly died. This is what “he gave up his spirit” is a euphemism for. The image of the cross should remind us of His death. Likewise, the practice of baptism by immersion preaches a sermon about dying.

For us, when a person first stands before the congregation to be baptized, the baptismal candidate is symbolizing their old life: the life before they trusted in Jesus. Thus, Paul would write in our focal passage:

Romans 6:1–3 CSB

1 What should we say then? Should we continue in sin so that grace may multiply? 2 Absolutely not! How can we who died to sin still live in it? 3 Or are you unaware that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?

The amazing grace of God’s love in Christ covers all of our sin, but that doesn’t mean that it’s a license to continue in sinfulness. Instead, we have died to sin, so it no longer gets to be in charge. This is because being baptized into Christ is being baptized into and identifying with His death. Just as we are “in” Christ’s life when we are saved, so we testify that our old life is “in” Christ’s death when we are baptized.

When Paul here mentions baptism, he is not saying that one must be baptized in order to be saved. He is giving the people of Rome an image to consider by speaking of the totality of the experience of coming to faith in Christ by referring to the public declaration of that faith, the line we draw in the sand at baptism. This is a literary device called synecdoche. It’s when you refer to a part of something as a representation of the whole. We do this sometimes without even thinking about it. We refer to our cars as our “wheels,” being “behind bars” as being in jail, or “all hands on deck” for everyone joining in a project, for example. He did the same thing in Galatians 3:27:

Galatians 3:27 CSB

27 For those of you who were baptized into Christ have been clothed with Christ.

So, Paul is not saying that baptism is necessary for salvation, however, he is saying that those who are baptized have made a declaration of faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Baptism doesn’t save, but being baptized once you have been saved is that public declaration of your faith—that “first sermon,” so to speak. Again, he’s creating an image for the Romans: a picture of the fact that the believer’s requirement of obedience to sin has been put to death, just like our sins were put to death in Jesus.

When we surrender our lives to Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, we are declaring that our lives are not our own—that we belong to Jesus from that point forward and forever. In this way, we die. We die to the power and control of sin in our lives. We die to our rights to ourselves. We die to being the center of our own little universe. Baptism symbolizes both that death and the death of Jesus on the cross.

So baptism is a symbol of dying, but it’s also a symbol of what happened after Jesus died: He was buried.

2) Baptism is a picture of burial.

After Jesus died, His body was taken down from the cross and then taken by one of His followers, Joseph of Arimathea, who owned a tomb cut into the rock in a nearby garden. He and another follower, Nicodemus, prepared His body and placed it in the tomb according to Scripture. Jesus was buried:

John 19:40–42 CSB

40 They took Jesus’s body and wrapped it in linen cloths with the fragrant spices, according to the burial custom of the Jews. 41 There was a garden in the place where he was crucified. A new tomb was in the garden; no one had yet been placed in it. 42 They placed Jesus there because of the Jewish day of preparation and since the tomb was nearby.

The article that I wrote for the front of the bulletin this morning included a discussion of the garden tomb. Here’s a picture of the outside of a first century garden tomb in Jerusalem. Jesus was buried in a tomb similar to this one. Jesus’ body remained in that tomb over the Jewish Sabbath—our Saturday.

For us, baptism gives us a picture of not just the death of Jesus, but the burial of Jesus as well:

Romans 6:4 CSB

4 Therefore we were buried with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too may walk in newness of life.

Notice that Paul writes that in baptism, we are “buried with Him.” This is why immersion is so important for the “preaching” of baptism. We just baptized four young people this morning by immersion. Each of them started just as we said, standing up there representing their death to sin. But then, as each was baptized, they were taken down into the water, and in essence, they were buried by the water.

Our Statement of Belief says that baptism symbolizes the burial of the old life, just as Paul said in verse 4 of our focal passage for this morning. When we come to faith in Christ, our old self is put to death and the old way of life is buried in the grave, as Jesus was. So in baptism, we are not only identifying with Jesus’ death, but also with His burial. This is a great picture of repentance. We turn away from our old self when we come to faith in Christ, and our old self is buried and ultimately done for.

This is critical for us to grasp. Our old self—the self that did everything its own way, the self that put its needs above the needs of others, the self that refused to submit to God’s direction and guidance—has been put to death and buried if we are in Christ. And this fact should effect everything about us, because in it we have hope:

We no longer have to walk in obedience to sin because our old self has been buried, but instead, we can walk in what Paul calls “newness of life,” because of the fact that Jesus defeated death and rose from the grave. This takes us to our third point.

3) Baptism is a picture of resurrection.

Finally, we arrive at what this morning means for those who trust in Jesus. Jesus didn’t stay dead! He overcame death and rose from the grave and into eternal life, never to die again. The resurrection is the most important aspect of the Gospel for us to affirm, because in the resurrection, Scripture tells us that Jesus proved that He is the Son of God. In the resurrection, Jesus defeated our enemy, death. In the resurrection, Jesus rose to eternal life, and if we have been joined with Him in death, then we will also be joined in life. But without the resurrection, we’re still dead. Paul wrote about this in 1 Corinthians 15:3-4, 13-14

1 Corinthians 15:3–4 CSB

3 For I passed on to you as most important what I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,

1 Corinthians 15:13–14 CSB

13 If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised; 14 and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation is in vain, and so is your faith.

1 Corinthians 15:17 CSB

17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins.

The Gospels declare the resurrection of Jesus: and when we baptize a believer here in the waters, that believer is making a declaration to the congregation that they believe that Jesus really did rise from the grave. They’re preaching the message of the Gospel.

I’ve said before that Christianity is the world’s most verifiable faith. The open tomb, the empty grave, the resurrection appearances. Each of these scream the veracity of the biblical account—that Jesus really did rise from the grave.

And this is the incredible promise of the Gospel of Jesus Christ! That Jesus really did rise from the grave, and that for those who belong to Jesus through faith are not only forgiven and justified before God, but they also will live forever with Him! Look at how Paul wrote about it in our focal passage:

Romans 6:5 CSB

5 For if we have been united with him in the likeness of his death, we will certainly also be in the likeness of his resurrection.

What was Jesus’s resurrection like? It was a resurrection to life that would never die again. A resurrection to a life of eternal future. A resurrection to a life of victory over the grave itself:

1 Corinthians 15:51–57 CSB

51 Listen, I am telling you a mystery: We will not all fall asleep, but we will all be changed, 52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we will be changed. 53 For this corruptible body must be clothed with incorruptibility, and this mortal body must be clothed with immortality. 54 When this corruptible body is clothed with incorruptibility, and this mortal body is clothed with immortality, then the saying that is written will take place: Death has been swallowed up in victory. 55 Where, death, is your victory? Where, death, is your sting? 56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!

This is the message that baptism preaches! The one being baptized declares that they have died to their old life, have been buried in the baptismal waters, and now has been raised to new, victorious life in Christ… death no longer controls the eternal destiny of the one who belongs to Jesus!

Baptism is a celebration of new life, just like Easter is. It’s a celebration of the resurrection of Jesus, and all that we have because of that victory!

Application

Allow me to make one additional point of application this morning:

Because baptism is a picture of our being united with Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection, it is kind of how we “go public” with our conversion: it’s the first way we declare to the church and to the world that we have trusted in Jesus for our salvation, and that we belong to Him by faith. It is where we declare that we are a part of the fellowship of believers—the church, and where the church both affirms our testimony and receives us into her fellowship. This is why being a baptized believer isn’t necessary for salvation, but should be necessary for church membership. Only converted believers are truly members of the church of Christ, and the biblically prescribed way of making that declaration public is in the identifying waters of baptism.

Closing

Believer, have preached your first message of the Gospel? Have you come to the baptismal waters to declare your faith and hope in Jesus, your trust in His death, burial, and resurrection, and your surrender of your life to identify with His? We’re willing to baptize every single Sunday if we need to.

I’m not going to assume that everyone in this room belongs to Jesus. This morning, you’ve heard the Gospel preached by four young people in the baptismal waters. You’ve heard the Gospel proclaimed in the music from the choir. You’ve heard the Gospel preached in the sermon. What are you waiting for? An invitation? Well, here is your invitation: I invite you to give up, and surrender your life to Jesus Christ, turning away from your sinfulness, believing that Jesus died on the cross and rose from the grave. Have questions? Come and ask them.

Identifying with the church body?

Giving?

PRAYER

Closing Remarks

No Sunday evening activities tonight. Church offices closed tomorrow.

Bible reading: Starting James today. Read 1 chapter per day, then we will start reading 1 & 2 Kings on Friday.

Instructions for guests

Benediction

Matthew 28:18–20 CSB

18 Jesus came near and said to them, “All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. 19 Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”