Heartbeat: Baptizing Them…

Sermon

We are in the middle of our Heartbeat Series, which is examining the statement that you see in the Welcome Center. This is what we say Calvary is all about. Quick review for those of you who were here last week, we started looking at the Great Commission and I said you could boil the entire statement that Jesus makes down to just two words. Those words were “make disciples”. The Great Commission tells us to do one thing and then tells us what that looks like. I said last week that every single pastor that I know, when they talk about the Great Commission, puts it in one of two categories. They talk about baptizing (evangelizing) people. Or, they talk about teaching people (education). They usually separate one from the other and I feel that that is wrong. Baptizing and teaching are both part of the Great Commission.

Tonight we will be focusing on baptism. There are several statements in the Great Commission about baptism that we need to look at. Like, why did Jesus include this and why did he use the terms that he used? I want to also ask that you will make a commitment to memorize the last few verses from the book of Matthew.

Matthew 28:18-20
¹⁸ And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 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…

The reason why I asked you to read it out loud with me is because at the end of this study I want to hear you say it without the words on the screen. We are going to look at the last phrase, “baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

1. Why Jesus asks us to baptize.

Remember the Great Commission says, “as you are baptizing and teaching “. These are ways of defining what it looks like to make disciples. Jesus only asked us one thing when he left Earth to go to heaven and that was to baptize them. There is no question that making disciples has an aspect of evangelism. It is teaching someone what Jesus has done for them and introducing them to the Gospel for the first time. That is why Jesus includes the phrase “baptizing them” in the Great Commission. He expects us to structure our lives in such a way that we come in contact with people who don’t know him personally and need to hear what he has done for them. He expects us to tell others about him.

By the way, baptism is putting on display for the world to see what Jesus has done inside of you. Baptism shows on the outside to the world and to the church what Jesus has done inside someone. It is a really big deal in the church. It’s supposed to be a big deal because it unifies Jesus’ church.

1 Corinthians 12:12-13
¹²For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. ¹³ For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.

The body that the writer is referring to is the church. You have different body parts in the church that have different roles from each other. You have different types of people in the church but they still become unified. Jesus’ church is wonderfully and gloriously diverse. You have some people who are supposed to look different from one another. Don’t read this statement too fast! Paul himself a Jew was writing to a bunch of Greeks saying that Jesus’ church is supposed to be unified. Jews and Greeks are supposed to be one as brothers and sisters in one body, the body of Christ. We are supposed to be one regardless of the color of our skin or our age. It is my prayer that the demographics of this church look like the demographics of heaven. It is my prayer that we have Asians, Latinos, African Americans, young and old in every worship service worshiping Jesus together because that is exactly what heaven is going to look like.

One of the ways that we become unified is in baptism. When a brother or sister goes through the waters of baptism it is a visible demonstration to our church. It tells the world that you have a spiritual family that doesn’t end when your time on earth is over. It lasts forever in heaven. On Sunday when Pastor Alan Smith baptized his niece he called her “my sister in Christ”.

I want you to picture in your mind someone that you know who is probably not a follower of Jesus. If you’re thinking to yourself that you don’t know anyone, I am convinced that Jesus included this statement in the Great Commission so that we would change the way that we live our life in order to come in contact with people who don’t know him. I want to ask you personally to make a commitment that over the next twelve months that you would introduce Jesus to someone who doesn’t know him, stick with them through the waters of baptism and train them until they are able to do the same thing in someone else’s life. That is the model of discipleship that Jesus is describing in the Great Commission.

Some of you may feel that you are not “called” to be an evangelist. However, you are still called to share your faith. Don’t mistake the spiritual gift of evangelism with what Paul refers to as doing the work of an evangelist. Basically this is not an all or nothing statement. It is saying that as you are living your life introduce someone to Jesus. It doesn’t mean to go to uptown Columbus, stand on a milk crate and start shouting to people about Jesus. It is living your life in front of nonbelievers in such a way that they are drawn to Jesus.

2. The Words Jesus tells us to use during baptism

Why did Jesus tell us to use these words during baptism? Jesus says, “baptizing them.” Who is the “them” that Jesus is referring to? The “them” is almost certainly those people that you are making disciples of. What about the statement, “Father, Son and Holy Spirit”? Is this something special about this statement? Is Carrie Underwood right? Is there something in the water? The answer is no. Jesus, in this statement, is equating himself to God and is referring to the unity of God. In doing so he is also describing the unity that he expects in his church.

Ephesians 4:4-6
⁴There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call— ⁵ one Lord, one faith, one baptism, ⁶ one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

The one body that the writer is referring to is a reference to the church. The one Spirit is Jesus’ Spirit that unifies every church that professes faith in Jesus all over the world. The one Lord is of course a formula that if you were a Jew would cause you to think back to the way that you were raised and the prayer that you prayed every day. Jesus is saying as God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit are one so his church is supposed to be one. What unites a person to Jesus’ church is baptism.

I said this statement a couple of years ago. There is only one baptism. If you were like me and as an infant your parents took you to church and someone sprinkled water on you but later on in your life you came to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ, after you came to that knowledge, you were baptized. What happened to you as an infant was not baptism. In fact there is no such thing as being re-baptized. We throw that term around but it doesn’t make any sense. There is no re-baptism. There is only one baptism and it is only reserved for someone who has professed faith in Jesus Christ. Anything other than that is simply getting wet in a church. When Jesus said there was only one baptism he meant that one baptism unites God’s people to one another just like God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit are united to one another. We don’t tell pastors what to say when they are baptizing someone but every single pastor on this staff uses the same words when they are standing in the waters of baptism. They say, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.”

Baptism is life transforming!   The sin that you were once enslaved to you are now declared free from. Do you recognize the name Nina Pham? She was the nurse from Dallas, Texas who was treating a patient with Ebola. She then contracted Ebola as well. She spent three weeks quarantined from everyone. Nina was moved from the hospital in Dallas to the National Institute for Health where they treated her. Last week she was declared clean or free from the Ebola virus. She was allowed to go back to her hometown. When she arrived back in Dallas she received a hero’s welcome because everyone knew this Ebola virus could have killed her.

Listen closely; you were infected with the virus of sin when you were born through your parents. This virus can be traced all the way back to Adam and Eve. Every human being has been infected by it. There is no cure for it. All of us have this terminal condition called the sin virus. Can you imagine how elated Nina’s family was when she came home from the hospital declared clean from the virus? When someone is standing in the water of baptism they are essentially saying Jesus has cleaned them from the virus of sin. It should be as much of a party when someone is baptized around here, as it was when Nina returned home. Some of you in this room may have been declared free from sin but have never followed Jesus in the waters of baptism. If you haven’t, you need to because it is a really, really big deal. Maybe some of you have never been made clean from your sin. Maybe you’ve been going to church, being a good person, reading your Bible and hoping that your good deeds will outweigh your bad ones. Maybe someone in this room needs to confess faith in Jesus Christ for the first time right now.

If that is you, I want to pray for you and ask you to surrender it all to Jesus Christ right now. Prayer: God, our Father in heaven, I pray for someone in the room who after hearing the Gospel understands they can’t earn freedom from their sin on their own. There is no way they can be cured from this virus except that you would send your son Jesus, who would die on the cross as payment for their sin and who would rise again to prove we would have everlasting life. God, I am asking you to work in someone’s heart. If there is a man or woman who doesn’t know you, I pray that now would be the time that they would confess faith in you. I pray that they would say ‘I need my sins forgiven by Jesus. Right now I am trusting you and turning it all over to you, Jesus.’ Lord, if that prayer is real and sincere, would you give them the courage to let us know so we can follow up with them and even see them baptized. I pray this in Jesus’ name.

3. Baptism serves as a Witness to Jesus

If you were to go back to the Old Testament you’re not going to find a lot of examples of baptisms. In fact, some scholars think that baptism in the New Testament points back to circumcision in the Old Testament. I think that is wrong. It is probably more of an image of the ceremonial cleansing in the Old Testament. If you did something that made you ceremonial dirty you then had to be ceremonial cleaned before entering into God’s presence. By the time the New Testament starts John the Baptist was on the scene and many people were turning to God in faith. John the Baptist was reaching all over the Promised Land. He had soldiers, Pharisees, businessmen and housewives coming to him to hear about their sin and deciding that they needed to be clean from their sin. They would ask John what they needed to do and he would tell them they needed to be baptized. When Jesus enters the equation in the New Testament baptism from that point forward took on a whole new perspective. From that point, baptism described for everyone around you what’s happened inside of you. Jesus’ church today should make a real big deal about baptism.

When it comes to denominations you have one of two errors that can sometimes happen. Some denominations make too big of a deal of baptism. By that I mean they essentially say that by being baptized you are now on your way to heaven, whether an adult or an infant.   They feel that baptism saves you. We would say they are wrong because it is what happens in your soul that saves you. Other denominations make too little of a deal about baptism. We treat it like it is insignificant or like it is a door of membership into a local church. I would tell you that even the Baptist Faith and Message is wrong on this. Baptism is much bigger than simply entry into the local church. It indicates entry into Jesus’ church (universal) and entry into the body of Christ, which lasts forever.

1 Peter 3:18-22
¹⁸ For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, ¹⁹ in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, ²⁰ because they formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water. ²¹ Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, ²² who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him.

Why on earth would Peter say that baptism saves someone when we teach that it doesn’t? Here’s what Peter and God’s church should be saying…Baptism is every bit as important as your redemption (which means God’s purchasing you back from your sins). Baptism is every bit as important as your adoption into the family of God. It is every bit as important as your sanctification, being set on the path to be like Jesus. It is every bit as important as your glorification, seeing Jesus face to face. Baptism is essential to your salvation. If you’ve never followed Jesus after you professed faith in him through the water of baptism you need to do it. It is that important!

I want you to hear my heart on this. This church has on an average 650-700 people in its worship services each week. When this service is over with, I challenge you to go next door into Hightower Hall and look at the Baptism board in there. You’ll see five pictures on there. Four of the five pictures are of children who were born and raised in a good godly home where their parents introduced them to the Gospel. Every person who is baptized is every bit as miraculous as anyone else. It doesn’t matter where you came from. It doesn’t matter how old you are. Baptism is every bit a miracle for a child as for an 86 year old man in Hospice. What that board tells me every time I walk by it is that as a church we are not reaching out to our city. If we were reaching out there would be a lot more pictures on that wall. In this room on a Wednesday night for the last two years, not one person has been baptized. Hear my heart on this. All of us in this room are responsible for that. All of us are guilty if not one person in two years has passed through the waters of baptism during a Wednesday night service. We need to get serious about this for King Jesus’ glory.

Last week I challenged you with the same challenge as tonight. Will you commit to God that in the next twelve months you will meet someone, introduce them to Jesus, walk them through the waters of baptism and teach them how to do the same thing for someone else? That’s the biblical definition of discipleship. Then this church will start to make an impact that will multiply across the city and our Savior is made famous all across the Chattahoochee Valley. This is not just the pastors’ job; it is all of our responsibility. Next year as a church let us make a bigger impact then we did in 2014.

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Discussion Questions:

1. What does the word ‘baptism’ mean?
2. Why did Jesus mention baptism in the Great Commission?
3. Does the baptism 1 Corinthians 12:12-13 refer to the baptism of ‘the Spirt’ or does it refer to ‘one body’?  Explain your answer.
4. Does baptism save you?
   a. If yes- why don’t we do it a lot more at Calvary?
   b. If no- why do we make such a big deal out of it?
5. Read Ephesians 4:4-6.  Why does Jesus only give the authority to baptize to his church?
6. From 1 Peter 3:18-22 what does baptism symbolize to the world?
7. Pray that God would give you opportunities to introduce people you know to Jesus and disciple them through the process of baptism.