September 23, 2021 9:00 am
Baptism is one of those subjects that tends to stir up some lively debate among believers. But what does the Bible say on the issue, and why does it even matter?
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Today on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. What it means to come to Jesus is to cross through that river, metaphorically speaking, where you say I'm leaving behind the wilderness where I'm in charge and I'm going into the place where God's in charge and that will be revealed by the fact that my life is surrendered to Him. Welcome back to another day of teaching here on Summit Life with Pastor J.D. Greer.
I'm Molly Vidovich. You know, baptism is one of those subjects that tends to stir up some lively debate in Christian circles. Some people say that you should be baptized as a baby, while others say that you should wait for adulthood.
Some like to sprinkle and others like to dunk. Some think that you're not actually saved unless you've been baptized, and then some just don't see what the big deal is either way. But what we should really care about is what the Bible says on the issue and then in turn why it even matters. Pastor J.D.
Greer addresses those questions today on Summit Life as he continues our series called The Whole Story. So grab your Bible and a pen and let's get started. Matthew chapter three, verse one. First, I want you to note the simplicity of John's message. You could summarize it really in one word, repent.
All repent really means is turn away from your sin. That was basically his whole sermon. And after a while, you'd be like, okay, John got point number one. Why don't you move on to point number two? And John would say, I don't really have a point number two.
All I really have is point one. You see, evidently, most of the people listening to John did not need to be told what to repent of. They already knew what they needed to repent of.
The vast majority of people today do not need to be told. They already know what area of your life right now is not under the full authority of God. Are you obeying him? Is he first in your finance? Is he first in your heart? Is he first in your relationships?
Is he first with your time? The problem is not that we need to learn a bunch of new things. The problem in every age is that we just need to repent and come to Jesus in the areas that we know are not under his control. Second, note the tone of John's message.
The simplicity was repent. The tone was what we call apocalyptic. Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Apocalyptic just means it concerns the end of the world. Jesus said for us to live ready, that there's always an apocalyptic kind of edge to the gospel because there are two things that could happen at any moment that none of us know. One is that Jesus could return.
He says he's going to come like a thief in the night. The other thing that could happen with you not knowing is death. And so you begin to live today in light of what you know is coming and that is the end and it got people's attention and they thought about their lives in the present from a glimpse in the future. The tone was apocalyptic.
Number three, notice the response. Baptism. Verse seven, when he saw many of the Pharisees and the Sadducees coming to his baptism, all the religious people started to come because that's what religious people do.
They find out what cool religious things are happening in the religious world so they go do those religious things so they can add them to their religious resume. So he looks out there and there's all these Sadducees and Pharisees and John says to them, you brood of vipers who warned you to flee from the wrath to come. Verse eight, bear fruit therefore in keeping with repentance. Do not presume to say to yourselves, we got Abraham as our father for I tell you God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees.
In other words, stop hiding behind religion. Religion is going to delude more people out of repentance and send them to hell than rebellion ever will because it keeps you from understanding your need for grace and keeps you from dealing with the core of your heart. So now verse 11, John begins to show you the significance of his baptism. Now that he's prepared the way, now he's going to show you the significance of his baptism.
Verse 11, I baptize you with water for repentance but there's one mighty coming after me that's mightier than I whose sandals I'm not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. John says that his baptism in other words is symbolic of something a greater baptism. The real baptism happens not in water like John is baptizing with. The real baptism he says is going to happen in the Holy Spirit. So verse 13, enter Jesus. Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John and then in order to be baptized by him and John recognizes him.
I mean they're cousins after all and John's like whoa you can't do that. Jesus this is a baptism watch of repentance. So what does Jesus answer? Let it be so now for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness. So John consented and when Jesus was baptized immediately he went up from the water and behold the heavens were open to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him and behold a voice from heaven said this is my beloved son with whom I'm well pleased.
Did you see it? There's the whole gospel right there. Jesus doesn't need to repent yet he's being baptized in repentance and he's being baptized to fulfill righteousness even though he doesn't need to repent and he doesn't need to become any more righteous.
Why is he doing those things? Because he is beginning listen to this his ministry of substitution. You see Jesus is going to live the life that we are supposed to live and then die the death that we are condemned to die. It is true that Jesus did not need to repent but we did. So Jesus does it perfectly in our place so that he can continue to live in our place so that when he dies he's actually going to bear the condemnation that we bore.
He's going to live the life we're supposed to live and then die the death work and then to die. You see it's almost as if if you think of it this way imagine all these people standing around the shore of John's baptism and they all are wanting to repent and be baptized. So imagine they've all got a name tag on and their name tag says hi I'm JD I'm a sinner and everybody's got their own name and I'm a sinner below and Jesus has a name tag on that says hi I'm Jesus I'm righteous. So Jesus from the back of the crowd begins to walk through but as he does he begins to take off people's name tag and he begins to put them all over his chest and he walks down into the water and he gets baptized confessing not his sin but theirs and then Jesus you see is going to go to a cross where Paul is going to say in 2nd Corinthians that God is going to make him who knew no sin to become sin for us. So Jesus is going to be beaten with a cat of nine tails that leaves his back flayed open it lacerates his skin he's going to be beaten to where you can't even recognize him his beard ripped out they're going to take a crown of thorns and shove it down on his face so that his his face is so disfigured people can't even recognize him who know him and when people are new to Christianity they're like that's disgusting and what we say in response is that's the point your sin is disgusting and Jesus actually became your sin on the cross he became your sin we say that Jesus did not merely die for us he died instead of us he took our place so watch when Jesus gets out of the water and the father looks at him and says this is my beloved son in whom I'm well pleased because Jesus repented and died for me I can actually take that accolade and apply it to me because we traded places so now the father looks at me and says this is J.D. he is my beloved son in whom I'm well pleased not because I lived in a way that deserves that but because Jesus lived for me he died for me and all that was mine became his and all that was his became mine the gospel at its core its substitution Jesus in my place this this is what separates Christianity from every other religious message in the world every other religious message has a prophet that gives you a list of things to do do this say this rub this touch that don't touch that and if you do these things you need to do them often enough and well enough God will accept you the list may differ but the content is essentially the same Jesus did not give us a list of things to do or rituals to go through Jesus gave us a story about something he has done for us he substituted for us and he gave himself for us so that in him I could become the righteousness of God and I could hear I'm his beloved son in whom I'm well pleased he wore my name tag of sin so I could put on his name tag of righteousness substitution is the core of the gospel it also is something that I just think so few people really get and the way that you know that you haven't gotten it is it's never offended you deeply when you really get it you're going to suddenly be very offended because I don't like to think of myself as needing a substitute substitute means you're helpless I would I prefer to think of myself as God's like HGTV project I'm a little fixer-upper when you say I need a substitute that means I can't even really get in the game I was my wife and I will sometimes go to the same gym to work out and one of the classes that we'll go to is they'll do these things called partner workouts you know what a partner workout is it's when you have a certain like reps of a certain exercise and then one person does it while the other one rests and then when they get tired you switch off back and forth well I've learned that there are certain exercises that my wife is just a lot better than me at one of them is a burpee you know what a burpee is burpee is something invented by the devil for the vexation of God's people well she is a lot better at burpees than I am so if we're doing one of these partner works out and we have to do like a hundred burpees then what that means is that she does about 65 of them and I end up doing about 35 which is humiliating for me because I'm the man and I want to be able not just to carry my weight I want to be able to take care of my girl right but it's humiliating because she's just a lot better than me what essentially the gospel is is not Jesus saying you do what you can then I'll do the rest he's basically saying you can't even get off the floor I'm gonna have to do all 100 because you are dead in your sin and you can't go anywhere so I'm gonna do them all and then I'm just gonna credit you with them because I'm going to be your substitute and when you feel that it suddenly becomes at the same time really humiliating and totally blessed because your salvation no longer depends on you it's Jesus who did it in your place it is the sweetest and most difficult gospel truth so let me end today by talking about baptism for us for you and me what it means for us today because Jesus you see catch this he's going to take this thing from John his cousin and he's going to make it the centerpiece of the great commission so the great commission says go make disciples baptize them it's going to be the centerpiece of the message because it was a symbol of us whether we're gentiles or jews and almost everybody here's a gentile it's going to be symbol of us crossing over from the wilderness of sin where we're in charge to the land the promised land of faith and obedience where Jesus is in charge Paul is going to say in the same way it's a symbol of us going from the death of sin to new life with Christ therefore Romans 6 3 we are buried with him by baptism into death that just like Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the father even so we also now should walk in the newness of life so let me point out four quick things that we learn about baptism from John that still apply to us number one from John we see that baptism publicly declares your repentance baptism was a public symbol that symbolized I'm leaving the wilderness of sin and entering this promised land of obedience passing from death to life there are many people especially in the south who get baptized but never repent and that's revealed by the fact that they're not really living in the land of faith and obedience they're still essentially in the wilderness of sin because somebody convinced you somebody somebody convinced you wrongly that you could accept Jesus as savior and not surrender to him as lord as if Jesus was a salad bar that you could take the parts you want and leave the parts you didn't but what it means to come to Jesus is to cross through that river metaphorically speaking where you say I'm leaving behind the wilderness where I'm in charge and I'm going into the place where God's in charge and that will be revealed by the fact that my life is surrendered to him there is a large number of people in the south that have gone through baptism but not actually repentance if your life did not radically change when you got baptized it was not a baptism of repentance you just got wet in front of a bunch of people it's a baptism that publicly depares your repentance that's the first thing we learn number two baptism is by immersion baptism is by immersion now I'm not trying to theologically quibble and there's a lot of things that we would consider more important in Christianity than this but I want to explain to you why we do it the way we do it we submerge people when we baptize them for two reasons number one because that's how they did it in the bible John wasn't standing on the shore throwing water out on top of their heads he brought them into the river baptized back then if you go back and look at literature what it meant was to soak or to plunge they used it when somebody drowned not as a joke but like for real like someone so drowned they were baptized when a ship sank that meant someone was baptized we even have a um a recipe that was written down in the first century by a Greek poet and physician named Nikander on how to make pickles he says the first thing you do when you're making a pickle is you bapto the cucumber in water which meant dip bapto means dip quickly he goes after that you baptizo the pickle in vinegar which means you don't dip it quickly you put it in vinegar and hold it down until the vinegar soaks all the way in and it changes the and it changes the constitution of the cucumber to make it a pickle he says then when you pull it up it will come out filled with the spirit and speaking in tongues no no he didn't he didn't say that i mean i made that part up but what it shows us is there's a way that they thought of baptism um and so what we do when we baptize you is we put you under the water until you can quote the entire Nicene creed and then we pull you no i'm kidding um but there's a sense in which in which it's not unclear what the word means it is not unclear at all it means put somebody under in which the second thing is what it symbolizes it symbolizes death when you bury i'm not trying to be cute but when you bury somebody you don't sprinkle dirt in their head you put them into the ground so we are being buried with him by baptism into death that's why we do it by immersion number three we see from this uh story here with john that baptism is not a condition of it's an evidence of salvation the repentance came first nowhere in the bible is baptism made a condition of salvation but i still meet people who are like yeah you got to get baptized if we want to go to heaven i told him i can prove that's not true in one story one story you got jesus and a thief on the cross right next to it and the thief on the cross after a lifetime of sin realizes that jesus of the messiah he repents and he says lord remember me when you come into your kingdom and what does jesus say go get a hose quick and get you a bucket no and he he says today this very afternoon you're going to be with me in paradise the apostle paul said that that if you will confess with your mouth that jesus is lord and you'll believe in your heart that god raised him from the dead that that jesus was your substitute then you will be saved because with the heart you believe unto righteousness with the mouth you make confession unto salvation whosoever calls on the name of the lord shall be saved there ain't nothing about baptism anywhere in that so baptism is not a condition of salvation but it's an evidence of salvation i often describe it to my kids and i've said this to you before too that it's like this wedding ring that i wear this wedding ring i tell my kids symbolizes that i'm married to your mom if i take it off i didn't suddenly become unmarried to your mom if somebody else puts this ring on it doesn't make them married to your mom but this ring just shows everybody that i have a covenant with your mom in the same way baptism is this public declaration that we have repented and that we have been saved by jesus which is why we teach people you ought to do it after becoming a believer because if it's an evidence of your repentance if you do it before you repent then it can't be an evidence of repentance you haven't done and if you do it when you're an infant that's not an evidence of your repentance it's an evidence of your parents repentance and your parents faith and by the way thank god for your parents faith thank god for what they wanted for you when they baptized you and what we say is you should be baptized the way they are in the new testament which is as an evidence of your salvation and not a hope for your salvation so everybody we see in acts gets baptized after they believe acts 241 3 000 people believe and are baptized acts 8 ethiopian eunuch believes and is baptized acts 9 paul believes and is baptized acts 10 the holy spirit falls on all who believe the word and are baptized then they're baptized act 16 15 lydia's heart opened by um god to hear what paul says then she's baptized act 16 30 flippin jailer what am i said to be saved believe in the lord jesus christ you and all your household they all believe they get baptized act 18 8 many crinthians listen to paul's preaching they believe and are baptized now let me read the verses and explain the verses where the people in the book of acts get baptized before they repent or when they get baptized as infants and now i'm completed with that list okay there are none not a single one so what we say is yes i'm not trying to make a mountain out of a molehill but we're just saying it's an evidence of your salvation it why not if if you got baptized when you were an infant thank god for the faith that your parents showed in that moment you get the joyous privilege of calling them and saying mom and dad what you hoped for me 19 years ago 35 years ago what you hope for me has come true and now i have repented and i belong to jesus and i've entered the promised land of faith and obedience i ratified i ratified what you hope for me by joining my baptism to what you did for me so that now i've publicly declared that i belong to him i put on that ring which leads me lastly to number four john shows us that baptism is important the soul story shows us a baptism is important people often are like well i just don't get what the big deal is it's just like a ritual why do you have to go through it it doesn't seem to change anything notice what happens to jesus when he's baptized he hears the affirmation of god this is my beloved son and he gets filled with the spirit he's about to go into the wilderness to be tempted matthew four if you read ahead he's about to go in the wilderness to be tempted by satan for 40 days and this affirmation from the father is going to become the core of his strength in resisting satan because he's going to say the father has declared over me his love and that love and that assurance is going to give me the strength to withstand satan to his face your baptism is important because it's a marker that you put in the ground where you say i have left the jurisdiction of satan you got no more authority here because i now have crossed over this jordan river and i'm now in the promised land of obedience where god rules so you shut up satan that's essentially what what why it's so important it becomes this marker um i have struggled with whether i should do this next part because for some of you this is the only thing you can remember from the whole sermon and i definitely lost the vote when i asked the other pastors but you know what i got the mic so here we go martin luther um who's one of my favorite theologians 16th century martin luther um said that the devil every single night would come to dispute with him what he meant by that was he would tempt him he would whisper discouragement in his heart lie to him he said i felt like i was wrestling with satan in my soul every night he said i learned that there are two things that could drive away the presence of satan number one he says as i say out loud to him satan i am baptized and i declare to him that i have left his wilderness of sin where he is jurisdiction and i've entered into the promised land of jesus where jesus rules and that he cannot talk to me because i am not under his rule anymore and that drove the devil away that was number one he said the second thing that i do is he says i pass strong gas he said because satan's core sin is pride and there's nothing that shows greater disrespect for somebody than passing gas in their face he says so satan can't handle it when i mock him that way and so i humiliate him by passing gas and that drives his presence away you've got to admit the logic is pretty sound correct now there are two ways that luther has given you for you to wage battle against satan the first is more effective and more pleasant for the people around you than is the second but it is important that you have this confession that you harken back to that you say that is this symbol that i made to god that i made to people that i made to my family that i made to satan himself i said i'm leaving the wilderness of sin and i'm not going back i'm crossing over this river and this is the land of repentance and obedience that i'm in here's the question have you repented i i'm not asking you've been baptized and actually pray to prayer i don't have you really repented does your life show that you've repented are you i'm not asking if you're perfect are you surrendered to jesus right now is there anything in your life you know he's not in control of and you just haven't yielded to him then that's what you need to do that's what john's message is repent have you received jesus that's the preparation is repentance have you then received jesus as your substitute that's the gospel because you can do it right now today repent and believe repent and receive have you taken the step of receiving jesus as your savior if not we'd love to walk with you through that process get in touch and learn more about becoming a follower of christ when you visit jdgrier.com you're listening to summit life the bible teaching ministry of pastor jd greer and if you're a regular listener you know that every month we pick out a resource to go along with our study and this time we've paired the whole story with something pretty unique it's a set of books of the bible cards so in this series the whole story we're going from genesis to revelation and jd what's the main thing that you're hoping listeners will take away from this study and how do the cards help us in learning that you know one of the challenges of studying the bible is it 66 individual books written on i think it's three different continents by 40 different authors right sometimes it's hard connecting them all to this one story because the whole bible jesus said was all about him it was all about how he was coming his love for us and his salvation plan i'm hoping that through this series you'll get a picture of the whole story and realize that everything really connects that these are not primarily stories of of saints that we're supposed saints that we're supposed to emulate they're stories about a savior god wants us to hope in and adore to go along with this and to help in that we're giving you something here with this series called the books of the bible cards it's a set of cards that will help you as you read to make connections between whatever book you're studying with the big picture it'll give you historical context but even more importantly how this particular book or this story connects to jesus it's a wonderful little resource produced by our friend mary wiley good thing to keep near your bible or where you study the bible that'll help you make make sense of the whole story we'd love to to get these in your hands or connect you to other resources that may help you at jdgrier.com the suggested donation is 25 or more and every penny goes to producing these programs and keeping them on the radio and web so that more people can dive into the gospel with us you can help someone experience the extravagant life-changing love of god by donating today and be sure to remember to ask for your set of the books of the bible cards call 866-335-5220 that's 866-335-5220 or give online at jdgrier.com i'm molly vidovich be sure to listen next time when we're looking at the subject of temptation on summit life with jd greer today's program was produced and sponsored by jd greer ministries
Whisper: medium.en / 2023-08-18 03:11:09 / 2023-08-18 03:21:32 / 10