Sermon Notes

The Identification Test

Introduction

1. Since the time of Christ, believers have participated in baptism, sometimes with great fanfare and exuberance, and sometimes with solemnity and reverence.
2. Regardless of style, though, the visual and emotional appeal of this confessional act is at the very heart of who we are as followers of Christ and as a people called Baptists.
3. Baptism gets its meaning and its importance from the death of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, in our place and for our sins, and from His triumph over death in the resurrection that guarantees our new and everlasting life.
4. Talking about baptism means talking about how Jesus taught us to express our faith in Jesus and His great salvation.
5. So don’t have small thoughts about baptism. Have large thoughts. Have great thoughts about a great reality — Jesus Christ, the Son of God, crucified to bear the sins of millions and raised to give them everlasting life in the new heavens and the new earth.
6. Baptism has significance for individual believers, for the church, and even for nonbelievers.

Baptism is an act of obedience.

Matthew 3:13 - 17

¹³ Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John, to be baptized by him. ¹⁴ John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” ¹⁵ But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he consented. ¹⁶ And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him; ¹⁷ and behold, a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”

Have you ever asked yourself why Jesus had to be baptized?

1. This is a significant emergence of Jesus from His many years of obscurity.
2. These first events in His public ministry carry great meaning in understanding the rest of His ministry.
3. Jesus came: No one compelled Jesus to be baptized.
4. John recognized the inherent irony in this situation. Jesus had nothing to repent of and it would be more appropriate for Jesus to baptize John.
5. Jesus understood why this seemed strange to John, but it was nevertheless necessary to fulfill all righteousness.
6. This was an important step in the overall mission of Jesus to identify with fallen and sinful man, a mission that would only be fulfilled at the cross.
7. Yet it would be easy for any onlooker to think that Jesus was just another sinner being baptized; so He identified with sinful man.
8. This is exactly what He did in His birth, His upbringing, and His death. So here, Jesus stood in the place of sinful man.

At the end before His ascension, Jesus gave His disciples a threefold instruction: make disciples, baptize those who believe, and teach them His commands (Matt. 28:19-20).

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 all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age. Matthew 28:19-20

If for no other reason, we baptize because Jesus told us to. Obedience is a characteristic of followers of Christ. In Matthew 28:20, Jesus said we should teach new believers "to observe everything I have commanded you." Baptism is an act of obedience both for the new believer and the church. We baptize because we desire to obey Christ's command.

Baptism is an opportunity to witness.

1. The New Testament and church history seem to indicate that baptism served as the initial profession of faith of early believers.
2. After Philip preached Jesus to the Ethiopian, the new believer's initial request was to be baptized (Acts 8).
3. When the Philippian jailer responded to the preaching of Paul and Silas, he and believing members of his family were baptized (Acts 16).
4. The same is true for Lydia (Acts16), Cornelius (Acts 10), the Corinthians (Acts 18), and others.
5. For these believers, baptism was a silent witness, an outward expression, of their new faith and new way of life.

How is baptism a witnessing opportunity for us?

1. According to Romans 6:1-4, our baptism is a witness to the saving work of Christ - His death, burial, and resurrection.

¹ What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? ² By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? ³ Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? ⁴ We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. Romans 6:1-4

2. As a symbol, baptism visually reenacts His burial in the grave and His resurrection to life. When we see a new believer walk into the water, go under the water, and come up from the water, we are seeing what Jesus did to save us.
3. Baptism is a dramatic representation of Christ's work of atonement (1 Cor. 15:1-4). Baptism is also a witness of what happens at salvation. Romans 6:3 declares that in salvation we have been "baptized into Christ Jesus" and "into His death."
4. Baptism symbolizes that as Christ died, was buried, and rose again, so the believer has died, has been buried to self, and now has new life in Christ Jesus.
5. Baptism symbolizes that he or she is a new creature in Christ.
6. Being a new creature in Christ is reflected even in the term baptism.
7. The Greek term baptizo was commonly used in the first century to describe putting cloth into dye.
8. The cloth came out of the dye vat looking different than when it went in.
9. Being a new creature in Christ means that our lives have changed. As believers adopt a Christlike character, the change becomes evident to those with whom they associate.
10. Baptism symbolizes that change in the new follower of Christ.

 Baptism is a testimony to nonbelievers.

1. At Gilgal, Joshua set up 12 stones from the Jordan River (Josh. 4:21-24). The stones served as both a memorial to the saving acts of God and a way to teach the subsequent generations about the God who had delivered them.
2. The same kind of thing happens in the lives of persons who have yet to experience saving faith.
3. New believers often ask friends and relatives, some of whom may be nonbelievers, to come to their baptism.
4. Questions naturally arise in those who are unfamiliar with the rite.
5. Children may ask, "Why is that man putting her under the water?" Others will wonder about or even hear for the first time of the significance of baptism.
6. The Holy Spirit can use the act of baptism as the initial entry point into the lives of those who will come to faith in Christ.
7. Therefore, the very act of baptism can serve as a powerful witness of the saving work of Christ and the salvation experience of the believer.

Baptism is an open door into the church.

1. The early church clearly took seriously the concept of church membership who were born again.
2. Acts 2:47 tells us that "the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved."
3. Peter's preaching earlier in Acts 2 tells us that those who had repented and received Christ were baptized.
4. Therefore, the first church was made up of those who had been saved and were then baptized.
5. In spite of some obvious cultural and social differences between the first-century church and today's church, the requirement for congregational inclusion should still be believer's baptism.
6. Everyone who is part of the fellowship of a local congregation should have experienced personal salvation and believer's baptism. This is not only baptistic, but it is the biblical pattern as well.
7. As long as the church has existed, baptism has been an integral part of the worship and witness of God's people.
8. Let us never diminish the meaning or practice of this command of our Lord. Baptism should be a time of celebration for the believer and for the church.
9. Every time we baptize, we should recognize the importance of this public commitment of faith.

What is the significance of immersion?

1. We believe this expression of union with Christ in death and resurrection happens “by being immersed in water.” The clearest evidence for this is Romans 6:3-4 which describes the act of baptism as burial and rising from the dead.
2. This is most naturally understood to mean that you are buried under water and then come out of the water to signify rising from the grave.
3. The word baptismin Greek means to go into or immerse.
4. Most scholars agree that this is the way the early church practiced baptism. Only much later does the practice of sprinkling or pouring emerge, as far as we can tell from the evidence.
5. There are a few other pointers to immersion besides the meaning of the word and the imagery of death and burial.
6. In Acts 8:37-38, the Ethiopian eunuch comes to faith while riding with Philip in his chariot and says, “See, here is water! What prevents me from being baptized?” Philip agrees and it says, “He commanded the chariot to stop, and they both went down into the water, Philip and the eunuch, and he baptized him.” That they “went down into the water” makes most sense if they were going down to immerse him, not to sprinkle him.
7. Similarly, it says in John 3:23, “John also was baptizing at Aenon near Salim, because water was plentiful there.” You don’t need plentiful water if you are simply sprinkling. You just need a jar.
8. So there is really very little dispute that this was the way the early church baptized. They did it by immersing the new believer in water to signify his burial and resurrection with Jesus.
9. Baptism is important and the nature of the local church, as a sacred expression of the universal body of Christ, is important.
10. Failing to be baptized is a serious matter of disobedience.

I would like to conclude the message by referencing a passage of scripture from Galatians 3:26-27.  

²⁶ for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. ²⁷ For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.

Here, using the picture of baptism, Paul illustrates what it means to have faith in Christ Jesus.

1. He doesn’t say we were baptizedinto water but baptized into Christ.
2. Just as in water baptism a person is immersedin water, so when we place our faith in Christ Jesus, we are immersed in Jesus.
3. Many Christians seem content with just “dipping a bit” into Jesus.
4. God wants us to be fully immersedin Jesus; not sprinkled, not just a part of us dipped.
5. When a person is immersed in water, you don’t even see the person much anymore – you mostly see the water. When we live as baptized into Christ, you don’t see so much of “me” anymore; you mostly see Jesus.
6. It should be stressed that thisis the baptism that really saves us (baptized into Christ): our immersion into Jesus.
7. If a person isn’t baptized into Christ, he could be dunked a thousand times into water, and it would make no eternal difference.
8. If a person has been baptized into Christ, then he should follow through and do what Jesus told him to do: receive baptism as a demonstration of his commitment to Jesus.

Another way of expressing our immersion in Jesus is to say that we have put on Christ.

1. In the original language, the phrase has the idea of putting on a suit of clothes.
2. So we “clothe ourselves” with Jesus as our identity. THE IDENTITY TEST
3. Paul says to us, “Your appropriate clothing for each day is to put on Christ.” People should see that you belong to Him by looking at your life.
4. You should live with the awareness that you are adorned with Jesus.
5. Some people might wonder if this is only play-acting, if it is really an illusion, like a child playing “dress-up.” The answer is simple. It is only an illusion if there is no spiritual reality behind it.
6. In this verse, Paul really speaks of the spiritual reality– those who were baptized into Christ really have put on Christ. Now they are called to live each day consistent with the spiritual reality.

Three Questions:

• Have you “Put on Christ?”
• Are you fully immersed in Jesus or are you just “dipping a bit” into Jesus?
• Have you taken this very important step of scriptural baptism?