All right, so we re in our fifth and final week of this series called Afterlife and we ve been looking at what the Bible reveals to us about death and eternity. As it turns out, the Bible actually has a lot more to say on this subject, in much more vivid detail, than what we gave it credit for. So hopefully, you ve been here through most of the series; if you haven t then you can certainly go back and catch up online. Next weekend, we re going to start a series going through the book of Revelation. We re calling it, More Than Conquerors, and you ll find out why as the series goes on. I m very excited about this. You ll want to be here next week for the beginning of that. It ll set the tone for this fall in an incredible book. So bring your Bible and something to write with. Bring a friend with you. I ve asked you a few weeks ago, but I would like to throw this out there again. I would really love it if we could just have dozens of people praying during both worship hours throughout this series, for the worship service, for the content, for clarity for me, because I think I m going to need it, for ability for you to listen and understand, because I think you re going to need it. I think together we re just going to ask God to really bring this content to life- in the life of us as individuals and as a church. If you re interested in praying, you ll come and worship one hour and then, maybe, pray with a group of people during the next service. Contact our office and we can try to get you assigned to a Sunday and get you connected. I know there s some life groups that are going to be praying together and I just think that s such a key component that we need to be aware of as we move into the series. Also in our life groups, I know that many of them are going to study the content of Revelation, kind of a sermon based, small groups material that way everything I confuse you on, they can clear up later. So, that s going to be coming up as well, but today we re wrapping up the series, Afterlife. If you ve been here we ve looked at what the Bible teaches about judgment, about Heaven and about Hell. And hopefully you ve seen the consequences are severe and the rewards are great and the needs are urgent. As I was putting this series together several months ago, I said, what did we cover in the last week? What I really want to zero in on today is this question: Now what? You ve got the content; we ve looked at what the Bible teaches about this subject. Is it enough for us to just know it or to be aware of it or should we do something with it? So, the key word for today, regardless of kind of where you re at in your relationship with God, is the word, respond. You ve got to respond to the content in some way for it to come to life. I knew months ago, that I can t tell you about all the things that the Bible teaches you about the Afterlife, if we didn t give you a chance and an opportunity to respond to it. So, today, we ve opened it up for people to respond in obedience to be baptized, and as Dave said, and I don t know how many were baptized in the first hour, it was over 50 but fewer than 50,000. So, I don t know, somewhere in that number. Either way it was awesome. It just never gets old, and I m praying that there would be as many in this service as well. Would you grab a Bible and go to Acts chapter 16. Acts chapter 16 is where we re going to be. If you re new to the Bible it s Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts and then Romans comes right after this. In this passage we re going to see an example of somebody who was introduced to Jesus Christ and what he did with it. It wasn t enough for him to just hear the content he actually responded to it in some way You know one of the things that I love about our church here and being a pastor here is that there are so many people that come from all different backgrounds. My favorite people that come here (I choose Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.
favorites), my favorite people are those that have very little to no church background at all. Or maybe you ve been away from church for a long time and this is your first experience back and you re just sticking your toe in the water and you re just slowly venturing in. Man, my heart beats really fast for you, but I m one of those kind of guys that grew up in the church and I don t know how many of you have that experience. That certainly has its own set of advantages and disadvantages. One of the disadvantages to growing up in church is you hear all these big theological Bible words. You hear them so often that they really kind of lose their meaning, they lose their punch, or their weightiness in your life. A couple of examples of this: when I was growing up, our family grew up in a church of less than 200 people. We had Sunday night services so I d go and we d sit through the Sunday night service and then afterward the preacher would ask if there were any prayer requests, and it was such a small intimate group. Two hundred would show up on Sunday morning, and like fifty would show up on Sunday night. So he d say, Hey, any prayer requests? People would raise their hands and ask for prayer for different things and here is a word that would always get spoken during prayer request time. Somebody would raise their hand and say Unspoken. Any of you, church people remember that word. It basically means, I ve got a prayer request but I m not going to tell you. I ve got a prayer request but that s private. I ve got a prayer request but I m not comfortable sharing it with the whole group - very understandable, personal issues in our lives that we don t want everybody to know about, but we want prayer. I get that. As a young kid, I did not. So as a young kid, I m like sitting here, what s up with the unspoken? It s like come on dude, just tell us man! It got to the place (and I m not proud to admit this) where I d play a game with my cousin. When somebody would have an unspoken prayer request, under our breath, we would try to guess what they needed prayer for, just by looking at them. So it was like, unspoken, I d be like dude, drugs, that dude is a druggie. It s like, unspoken, lust, stay away from her. I d say she s got an issue. Anger, that dude s going to blow. You ve just got all these churched words, my absolute favorite and most baffling, was when the preacher would ask one of the deacons to come up to pray to conclude the service. A very, nice gentlemen, who otherwise spoke very normally would then get up in front and pray in King James Version. Any of you had that experience? Dear, sweet Lord, we come to thee now in thy presence asking for thy blessing over the saints. Amen. Y all have a good week now alright. It s like, what in the world is going on? We call it Christianese. Just this whole language you got to get caught up on; now, all different kinds of words. Here s a word I want to throw out at you this morning - the word saved. When you hear the word saved what comes to mind? And for some of you that means a great deal, others of you may be a little bit confused by it. For some of you, maybe what comes to mind is an overzealous friend, co-worker, or family member who carries around their one hundred pound Bible and with a wild look in their eye. They re like, are you saved? I d like to be saved from this conversation, right now. That s what I d like to be saved from. So here s what I want to do in our brief time this morning, I want to just throw out the saved question and say okay, what is that exactly? Why is it important? How do you do it? And what is at stake? The word saved can be found in another great Bible word, the word salvation. The word salvation basically just means to be rescued from injury or harm. Now that may not have meant much to you, but as we ve been going through this series together, hopefully that s beginning to make a little bit more sense. We talked about how that the stakes are so high, the consequences are severe, the rewards are great, there is actually something that we need to be saved from and Jesus has provided a way. Now there are perhaps many of you in this room that didn t think you needed to be saved from anything. In Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved. 2
fact, in Romans 10 verse 3, it says that there are many who are just ignorant of the righteousness of God. They haven t rejected it, they re just not aware of it. They didn t know they needed to respond to anything. Then there are others that doubt it. Jude talks about people who have doubts and that we are to lovingly lead them to Jesus to be patient with them. Maybe that s you? Maybe for some of you, you ve just been hurt, kind of gun shy, trying to heal the wounds. Some of you, maybe you know it, but you ve rejected it, as we talked about last week, maybe you ve rejected it though for all of the wrong reasons. And then I know there are others of you here today and you ve had this kind of running dialogue going with God. Like God if somebody would just hit with it, if somebody would just say it straight, if somebody would just tell me explicitly what I should do to respond to this, then I d do it. And you are who I want to talk to today. Alright, so we find ourselves, in Acts chapter 16 starting in verse 25. Little bit of set up here. A guy named Paul and a guy named Silas have found themselves in a jail cell in Philippi. They ve been preaching and they got thrown into jail and starting in verse 25. It says About midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God That s kind of an unusual thing to do in a jail cell at midnight, but they re not ashamed. Even in the difficult circumstances they were representing Christ and listen to the impact of this. and the prisoners were listening to them. Just imagine for a minute what was going through their minds. Just imagine the conversations they were having. What s up with those guys? What kind of hope do they have? That, in this jail cell, where all seems lost they seem to be declaring this kind of hope. Verse 26 - we don t know why this happened, it just happens, but.suddenly there was a great earthquake so that the foundations of the prison were shaken and (immediately) all the doors were thrown open and everyone s bonds were unfastened. When the jailer (who was responsible for them) woke up and saw that the prison doors were open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, supposing that the prisoners had escaped. So he s fearful for his life. This is a Barney Fife moment. Just aged myself a little with that reference, but you look at that, all the prisoners have gone, he royally messed up on the job. Thinking, I m going to get fired for this. This was severe. So severe that he s thinking, I m going to take my own life and Paul s words just say so much. Look at verse 28. Paul cries out with a loud voice So this is not a quiet, interception. This is a yelling, a getting of his attention, this is passion, he says do not harm yourself, for we are all here. What do you think that passion comes from? He knows what s at stake, he knows this guy hasn t responded yet to Jesus and so he stops him, like there s way more a stake than what you could imagine here. And he says, we re all here there s no need for you to do anything drastic. And in verse 29...the jailer called for the lights. I love that. He s like I don t believe you dude. Somebody had to have escaped. There s no way that the prisoners would have stayed here, so he calls for the lights. He needs some evidence and so he rushes in, trembling with fear he fell down before Paul and Silas. And then he brought them out and. This is the question, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? Now there are a lot of people that debate what this guy seemed to have meant here. There are some who suggest that he s saying, hey guys what do I need do to save my job? Guys, what do I need to do to save my reputation? I don t think that s the case, they re all there, nothing to be fired for. They had stayed. This is something much deeper. I think what s going on here is this guy says, how in the world? The odds are great, that he d already heard Paul and Silas preach earlier that day, that week, that month. He d been listening; the seed of the gospel had already begun to take root in him. What sent it Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved. 3
over the edge were these guys actions, for hanging in a place and singing hymns, in a place you wouldn t expect. When they get freed from their chains they don t run, they stay. Showing compassion for this guy who was their perceived enemy and so he says Dude, I want what you have. So what do I have to do to be saved? And listen to how they responded to him; it s very simple, if you would just go to church, if you would just go and get into a Bible study, if you could just get your act cleaned up, if you could just work your way to receive God s grace. Uh huh, they don t say any of that. Notice how simple this is, they lead with one word believe..believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved, you and your household. And they spoke the word of the Lord to him in other words this is some additional teaching, so they said, hey, let me explain to you what we meant by that and they explained it to those were in his house. And he took them the same hour of the night and washed their wounds Listen, he was baptized at once So two things that we see happening here in the life of this Philippine jailer, he believed and he was baptized at once, he and all his family. Then verse 34, Then he brought them into his house and set food before them and he rejoiced along with his entire household that he had believed in God. What we see happening here, is that the jailer knew there was something missing in his life, he not only hears the content but sees it being backed up with the actions of true believers. Don t let that escape your hearing there. That s what comes to life, whenever people see not just the content but they see the action that aligns with it. He s in a drastic set of circumstances. Here are three things that happened. His pride melted away, his doubts were minimized and his heart opened up. Friends, that s how it always happens, always. Your pride melts away. Your pride is the number one thing getting in the way of you responding to Jesus. Call it whatever you want, it s pride. And then your doubts get minimized, but they don t completely go away. That s why Jesus said you have to come to me in faith. If you didn t need faith, you would have no doubt. So, doubts, they just play a smaller role, they inform, they fuel the faith that you have, but they shrink, they get lower and then your heart opens up. That s always the Biblical sequence that we see happening. And then he believed and he was baptized at once. So what I want to do in the short remainder of our time is look at both of those pieces and what do they mean? What does it mean to believe? What all is entailed in that? And then, what does baptism mean? What is it? Why should I do it? When should I do it? Is it absolutely necessary? So we have to start here when it comes to the belief thing. You see discussing baptism without understanding Biblical redemption and response just really confuses things much further. And so we have to start here. Are you ready? If you re taking notes, be prepared to boost your self-esteem this morning. Are you ready for this? You and I are not good. Thank you, Pastor Aaron, we ll see you next week. So, I know that that flies in the face of popular culture. It seems to me like I hear, at least weekly, if not daily, something in culture where somebody suggests that deep down inside every human being is good. I think I understand what they mean by that. They mean that every human being has value and if that s what they mean, absolutely, I would agree with that. That they mean every human being is capable of doing good things, I would, absolutely, agree with that. We re created in the image of a good God, but what we have to understand is that fundamentally your heart, your soul, is flawed to its core and the issue is sin. In Romans chapter 3 verses 10-12 it says it so plainly None is righteous. You remember what we said the root word of righteous was, last week? What is it? It is right. That is the root word of righteous, so what that is saying is that nobody is right. no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks God. All Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved. 4
have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one. So, sin is not a rash, it s a tumor. Sin is not a rash that you rub a little good work ointment on and hope it goes away before you wake the next day. It is a tumor that has to be extracted and pulled out. And so, even if you could do some good things, you d never bank enough to pay off the debt of your sin. So if you re here today thinking, you know what, I ll just do enough good things, I ll just be as good of a person as I can and hopefully one day that ll be enough. If you re rolling the dice on that, you need to seriously rethink that plan. It s not the gospel. The gospel is actually so much easier than that and so much better than that make it easier on yourself. We ll get to that in a minute. Here s where Jesus comes in. Most of our culture throughout history, likes to paint Jesus in the light, of being everything but God. So, most of our culture says Jesus is a good teacher, he s a good prophet, he s like a Gandhi figure, he loves kids, he s all about social activism, but he s not really Lord. Now here s the thing, there are many of you, even here today, you ve been attending church for a long time. I want you to, seriously, do this inventory in your life. There are many of you, who have been coming to church year after year after year and you ve never made Jesus, LORD. You ve just simply hired him as your spiritual advisor. How do I know? I thought I made him Lord. How do I know the difference between the two? The difference between the two is usually found in; do I want him to make my life easier and more convenient? Do I treat Jesus a little bit like a vending machine? I just go to him when things are messed up, but when things are not, everything is okay. That s spiritual advisor. Do I go Jesus and just ask advice, or is he the master and I am the slave? This is Biblical understanding here. And so some of you today, need to fire Jesus as spiritual advisor and hire him as the Lord and the Savior of your life. Only Jesus can pay the price of our sins, and He died on a cross to satisfy the justice of God. And the justice of God is His practical expression of His holiness. Last week, we went through all these great words. Words that I don t fully have time to unpack this morning. Words like redemption, reconciliation and substitutionary atonement and propitiation which says this is an offering that turns away the wrath of God. In Romans 3 verse 23 it says For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God... That implies that we try, but we fall short. and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, who God put forward as propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. You are saved by grace and what enacts that grace is faith. You know the Greek word for grace is charis and it means gift or unmerited favor so it is this idea that you are given a gift and you receive it, but you don t earn it like a wage. And almost every other religious system in the world teaches the exact opposite. It s this idea that you are fallen, way over here and you need to earn salvation or earn a right standing, but grace says, no it s given to you. Studies show that most of the people who end up responding to the gospel message receiving this gift of grace are under the age of 16. I ve always kind of wondered why exactly that is. Some have concluded, well they are just more naïve, they re just more open to that sort of thing, but studies show that the further you grow into your adult life, the more resistant you are to the Gospel. Some have suggested, well that s just because you get smarter and you get more sophisticated, I don t think that s the case at all. I think the case is that as you get older it s harder to receive gifts. Isn t that true? Man, think about that, I ve got four little kids at home. Every night when I come home my daughter s like Daddy, did you get us something today? Like no pride. Oh that s awesome, yeah I got you this straw. Oh Daddy that s amazing. Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved. 5
I look back on my own childhood, I would go through the JCPenny and Sears catalog, circling all this stuff, it s like I had no shame. So give me gifts, I want gifts, receive gifts. I think this is why Jesus said, unless you come to me as a child, you ll not inherit the kingdom of God. Think about it, as you get older, every year of life, doesn t it get harder to receive gifts? I think it s just because we re like I got to earn my own way. I ve got to pay this. I ve got more things on my own. Every August, I love my mom (she s listens to the podcast), but she always sends me an email in August saying start making your Christmas list, Aaron. Mom it s August! It s like I don t want to sit down and do that. It s just harder for me, but I appreciate the thought she s putting into that, but it s just harder for me to do that. My birthday, you know, people give me gifts, open it now, open it now. Can I please open it in private? I just know that you re studying my facial expressions and looking to see if I really enjoy it or not. The whole point is, isn t it just harder to receive gifts as adults. Grace is a gift you cannot work for or earn, you must receive it. That requires you to swallow your pride. Many of us don t. It s pride that gets in the way. And when we receive this grace then we are justified in God s eyes. When I was young, I was taught that that means just as if I d never done it justification. And then not only that, but this is the idea that we receive then the righteousness - we are made right in God s eyes. I always used to think that this is God, looking at me going, yeah Aaron s really messed up, but I choose to see him in a different light. That s not what that means. The word here, it s a great, heady, nerdy, theological word. You ready for this? Imputed. Everybody say imputed. Stress the pu. Im-PU- ted. Imputed means transferred into. That s what that means. This isn t God saying, oh I see you as righteous. This is God saying, oh you are righteous. You are right! In right standing with me. Second Corinthians 5:21 says For our sake he made him to be sin, who knew no sin, so that. You ever wondered why? Why did Jesus have to take on the sin of the world? so that we might become the righteousness of God. He takes your sin, exchanges it, gives you back righteousness. That s what happens. Ephesians chapter 2 spells out the Gospel message so clearly. Ephesians 2:8-9 For by grace you have been saved through faith This is not rocket science. It is so profound, yet it is surprisingly simple. God wants to give you this gift. It s enacted by faith. It is not of your own doing, it is the gift of God. Not a result of works. Here s the key:.so that no one can boast. I always wondered that, well why can t I earn it? Well because you d get arrogant if you did. I would. Look at me, God, look at all these things that I ve done to earn Your grace and Your salvation. And He says, number one, you can t even begin to pay it off, number two, if you could you wouldn t come to me in humility. You d just get prideful about it. That s what happens in the life of this Philippine jailer. He comes to this place of dire need and circumstance. His pride melts, his doubts get minimized, and his heart opens up. He believes. And it s, inescapable, to see in this passage that it says that then he gets some additional teaching and he goes and he s baptized at once. He didn t wait, he didn t put it off, he didn t talk himself out of it, and he didn t say is this absolutely necessary. He just did it. What is baptism? This has a tendency to be the part that a lot of people get confused about. There s a lot of baggage that comes with this. What is it? Purely, straight up, the word is used six times in the Greek Old Testament, known as the Septuagint, most notably, Naaman, was told to go dip seven times in the Jordan River in 2 Kings chapter 5 verse 14. The word baptism is mentioned 82 times in the New Testament. Sixty-one of those times had to do with the person being immersed under the water. Fourteen times it had to do with somebody going through a painful ordeal. So Jesus would say can you be baptized with the baptism that I m baptized with? It had nothing to do with water. It had everything to do with going through a difficult circumstance. The other seven times it refers to the baptism of the Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved. 6
Holy Spirit, which is basically the ministry of the Holy Spirit. He in me, I m being immersed, into him. He in me and me in him. The word comes from two Greek words the first word is baptizo which means to place under or to immerse and then the word bapto which means dip or sink. It was not a religious word in the first century. In the first century it was a very practical word that was used to describe anything that was submerged in a liquid. So whenever a ship would sink it wasn t uncommon for them to say, yeah that ship got baptized. That would be unusual for us to say today, because we ve attached all this religious stuff to it, but it s just a very practical word. The ship got sunk. It was also used to describe when somebody would take a piece of cloth and baptizo it into bleach, cleansing it, and then they would take it out and baptizo it into dye changing the color of it, symbolic of what happens in your life and my life. We are being plunged in, we re being cleansed, and we re being changed. My favorite illustration, though, is of the Greek poet and physician a guy by the name of Candor who was writing out a recipe for pickles and he uses the word baptism in the recipe. He says, you take the cucumber and you baptize it into boiling water and then you take it out and then you baptize it into vinegar solution and you ve got a pickle. And this is not a religious thing. Like, I baptize you, Cucumber, in the name of, you know, you go down into the vinegar, you come up a smelly pickle. That s not what this was, it was just a very practical term. Listen, baptism is the ceremonial cleansing, that pictures an internal washing. It s an external picture of what s happening to you on the inside. You might say it this way, baptism is how people in the New Testament said Yes to Jesus. It s tangible, it s something physical you do, it s something public that you do to say, Jesus I m all in. No more, under the radar Christian. No more, ankle deep, Christian. I m going all in. Who is baptism for? Who should do it? The answer to that question, let s just look at a couple passages of scripture. In Acts chapter 2 verses 37-38 Peter is preaching a sermon and when he s done with the sermon the people want to know how to respond to it. It wasn t just enough that they got the content. And look at what it says in verse 37 Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart Have any of you sat in a message, in a sermon, and it cut you to the heart. It just pierced you. The words that were being said that many of you have said, you know, it felt like I was the only one in the room. This is these people here. they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, Brothers, what shall we do?. Man that s such an awesome question. What do we do now that we know this?...and Peter said to them, Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. Acts chapter 8 verse 12 But when they believed Philip as he preached good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women. Even Simon himself Simon was a sorcerer, he was into the spirit world, and he had overheard all this stuff. Even he believed. And after being baptized he continued with Philip. Acts 18 verse 8.And many of the Corinthians hearing Paul believed and were baptized. Here s the Biblical process that we always see in scripture; belief then baptism. You believe, you repent of that sin, and then you turn from it. You confess the name of Christ and then you re baptized. Now baptism is not the means of salvation, but it certainly displays it. Baptism doesn t make you Christian, but in it you re saying I m a Christian! You want to be very careful here. This is where a lot of confusion has come from. Is it baptism that saves me? No! It s grace through faith in Christ. When we add anything to Jesus, it ruins everything. This isn t something you do to receive salvation; in fact, you re not even doing anything at all. You go down into the baptistery and somebody else does it to you. I ve Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved. 7
tried to do it to myself. Many of you remember that story, being in the pool, when I tried to much to long for me to go into here. But it s impossible, basically I love this posture, you re going into the water and you re trusting somebody to take you down and bring you back up. You re placing yourself in this place of submission. Maybe you have this question though in your mind, well can a baby be baptized? I might just answer that question by asking another question. Can a baby believe? Can a baby repent of sin? Can a baby make this their own? Do we have any examples in the scriptures of a baby being baptized? Do we even have any examples of a baby being anywhere near water? I studied that this week and the only thing I could find was Moses in the basket in the Old Testament and I don t think that was baptism. Now about the closest thing we have is this whole household thing. It s even in our passage today. It says that the Philippine jailer s whole household was baptized. We say, well obviously, there had to have been little infants in that household. Well maybe there were, but never does the Bible mention the ages of the household and never does it say that they were sprinkled. That s a lot of conjecture. What we do have in the rest of scripture is a Biblical pattern over and over and over again of belief first and then baptism. What if I was sprinkled as an infant? I know that many of you in this room were and I would say that was a wonderful thing. You should thank your parents or grandparents whoever it was that made that decision because they were declaring before God we want them to know you. I would encourage you, though, as an adult, to make the decision to be immersed. Not to negate, not to disrespect anything that your parents or your grandparents did to you, but to fulfill it. To say, you know what, I d like to have that memory. That was a significant day that I don t remember and I d love to have a moment in my life of Biblical Jesus himself was baptized at the age of 30 - the Son of God. I think he might have understood a little earlier than then, but he did it at the age of 30 to inaugurate his ministry. I remember thinking this as a seventeen year old kid, if I can t follow him into the baptistery, then am I going to follow him in every area of my life. You know, I ve told many of you this story. I grew up in church, when I was six years old, I knew all the answers, and my grandfather was a preacher. I ll never forget the pastor coming over to my dad s office, sitting down with me at a desk, and he just grilled me with a bunch of questions. Aaron, who is Jesus? He s the son of God. Aaron, are you a sinner? Yup! Aaron, do you want to go to Hell? No, way! (So that s an easy question.) Aaron, are you ready to receive? Yes, I am! I think all that s sincere, I m not trying to discredit any of that, but I knew the answers, it was not emotional, I didn t fully know what I was doing. When I was seventeen, the Holy Spirit crushed me. It just hit me. I had that vague memory, but now I fully understood what it meant and with trembling hands I picked up the phone and called my Granddad, who baptized me at six, and said I need to tell you what just happened. I d like to be immersed again, not because I think that yours didn t take, but I have to tell you what s happened in my life as I ve come to fully understand the scriptures. You know what my Grandfather said to me? I m so proud of you. Some of you are kind of imposing what you think family members will say to you, but have you ever asked them? Some of you are like, yeah I have. They ve told me straight up, they don t want me to do it. That s another difficult challenge to walk through. I would simply ask you to look at the Biblical record and say I want to do that. Some of you have been attending church for a long time and yet you still have not responded to the Gospel. You ve not responded to that. You just fill the seat every week. You ve hired Jesus as your spiritual advisor and today s maybe the day that everything s going to change for you. Why is baptism important? First and foremost, we could argue this until the sun goes down, Jesus commanded it. Matthew 28, The Great Commission, Jesus said go and make disciples of all nations Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved. 8
and baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. If I knew none of the other arguments, that s good right there. Here s another reason it s important, because obedience to Jesus is how we demonstrate love for him. John chapter 15 verse 14 Jesus said You are my friends if you do what I command you. It s important because of what it symbolizes. Symbols are always important in our culture. In Romans chapter 6 verse 4 it says we are buried with him in baptism, that we may be raised with him walking in newness of life. That s why I love immersion, because it best symbolizes my burial. I m all in, I m completely dunked, I m totally immersed and then I come up out of it a new creation. It s important because it connects us with the community of faith which is the church. Biblical confession is always public. Your faith may be very private, but it is always public. And so you see here in several passage here in Romans chapter 10 verse 9..because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. So this is a private faith, but that doesn t mean you never go public with it. Jesus said in Matthew 10:32 if you confess my name before men, I will confess your name before God the father. It s important lastly, this is my favorite, because it puts to death your pride and confronts your fears. I have never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever baptized somebody who wasn t nervous, jittery, anxious and wanted to throw up. I m sorry that s a little bit descriptive, but it s true. I m okay with that. I encourage that; not because I m mean, not because I enjoy that, but that just shows me, this really matters. Think about it, every big thing that you do in life, don t you get nervous about it? Don t your hands get kind of clammy? Don t you get butterflies? Think about your wedding day. Think about graduation. Think about that big job interview you don t want to mess up. Why would baptism be any different than that? You re publicly confessing Jesus is Lord and you re publicly dying to yourself. I m okay with you being a little bit nervous about it. And some of you have said I don t want to do it, because I ll be nervous. I don t want to do it in front of others. That s exactly the reason you should, you see if you accept him under the radar chances are you ll just continue to live for him under the radar. This is my wedding ring and I wear it proudly, it s a symbol, that basically says that I m committed to a woman and she s committed to me. I don t have to say anything to people. They just look at my hand, oh yeah, he s married. You know what though? A few years ago I lost my wedding ring at the lake and it took Lindsay and I six weeks to get it replaced. And many of you were not happy about that, because I m up here preaching and you see the hand magnified on the screen and you re like where s Aaron s wedding ring? Are he and Lindsay doing okay? I need to follow up. Like Aaron why don t you wear a wedding ring? Aaron, you really should do that, if I were Lindsay I d be upset. It s like calm down, it s on order, its coming. But it s a symbol and many of you are not wearing your wedding ring with Jesus. You just say well I don t know that I necessarily need to do that. I m not saying you re not saved. I m not saying it isn t legit whatever experience you ve had. I m just asking are you as obedient to the scriptures as you can be? And inevitably somebody will say, well can I be saved without it? Wrong question. Why would you want to be saved without it? I m not saying it makes you saved. I m just saying why wouldn t you want to have that experience. Listen, around here we put a great emphasis on baptism. Not because we re saying that it saves you, but because we re saying that Jesus commanded it and you should do it. I ve been cussed out. I ve had hateful emails. I ve had people who were never coming back to this church again. I can t believe you Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved. 9
would ask me to do this. But we ll do a day like today where I ll just say, hey, everything you need is out there. Before you can talk yourself out of it, why don t you do it? And those same people will come up to me in the hallway in tears and say I finally get it. It took me getting to my feet and quit making excuses and talking myself out of it to understand why the Bible includes this. This is such a hint, first hour; I m just standing out there watching the baptisms after the service is over. There was a couple, I ve never met in my life, first time I ve ever seen them, he s in line to get baptized, she s standing off to the side fully dressed in tears. You can tell they didn t talk about it before coming to church today. It was a surprise to her. She walks over to him, grabs him, they kiss for a little too long, but they kiss and then she s says I m so proud of you honey, I ve been praying for you. He s in tears, he goes down, goes into the tank, comes back around, comes up to me, all wet, grabs me and says you have no idea. Thank you. She comes over to me, in tears, you have no idea. I don t even know their story. That s a powerful moment, in the life of their family. You tell me, if you would have just said, yeah honey I think I believe, let s go home. But something tangible, something physical makes all the difference. This never gets old, man, I ve told this story before, but I was preaching in a church in California a few years ago. I was up front preaching. I noticed as soon as I started it a guy came in, bald head, earrings, covered in tats, sat down in the back, didn t act happy to be there. As soon as service was over he bailed. I didn t get a chance to talk to him. He kept coming back, late every week and then he d leave early and I kept noticing him walk in. I kept praying that God would allow us to maybe cross paths and finally one Sunday he actually approached me. Not with a very kind look on his face and he said Hey man, you the preacher? I was like well that depends, are you angry? We started to talk. He said he grew up Catholic, grew up in Hawaii, he had kind of a rough past. He said you know what, I just bought a house, living in an apartment, my landlord won t let me out of my lease, would you pray that he would let me out of my lease. I said, yeah sure man, I would love that. Can I pray for you, now? He s like can you do that right now? Don t you have to go away to some prayer booth somewhere? Don t you have to send up a request to seek for prayer? Yeah just a minute; yeah cool, we re good. We can do that right here. So I said, hey man what s your name? Can I pray for you by name? He goes, why does that matter? It doesn t, I ll just pray very generally. If you just stand right here, like right all over this 10 foot radius here. So I pray for him, I pray that this landlord will let him out of his lease and then I snuck one in on him. I said Lord, I don t know, his story yet but within the next year I pray that he would come to know your love. He started attending every week, he came up to me the next Sunday. He had a smile on his face. He s like man, you re not going to believe this, but my landlord let me out of my lease. God, listens to you dude! So I brought a list. (Seriously! I m not joking about that.) He says let s go down through this thing, if you just cover that. Better yet, let me just hand that to you and could you pray every morning? It s like, dude, it doesn t work like that way. He started coming to our church; he didn t believe any of this stuff. He would just set up and tear down and helped out and hung out. He was just a lonely man. I will never forget, six months later, him coming to me sitting down and saying man I ve been listening to you teach for six months, would you tell me what I have to do to respond to Jesus? And in tears, I walked Eli through the Gospel message - much of what I shared with you this morning. And he said let s do it. That following weekend, I got to baptize him in a hot tub; because we didn t have a baptistery. It was awesome. There are some of you here today, when it comes to this subject, you ve gotten really good at talking yourself out of this and you ve got some really good excuses. Some of you have even managed to make them sound Biblical. Today is the day, where you need to say, you know what, I m making this too hard. I need to just respond to the Biblical model and I need to do this. I want you to Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved. 10
close your eyes right now, if you would. I want to pray this prayer over you and if you re ready to receive this I just want you to agree with this prayer. I want you to make it your own. Lord, God, I m a sinner and I plead guilty and I ve done things my own way and I am wrong. God, I want to do things your way. I want to surrender the controls of my life over to you. I believe that Jesus is your son, that He came into this world, not to condemn the world, but to save it. Father, I want to accept your free gift of salvation. I want the Holy Spirit to come into my life. I want to follow Jesus for the rest of my days. I believe that Jesus is the son of God and now I accept Him as my Savior and my Lord. My pride is melted away, my doubts are minimized. My heart is opened up and I hear Your voice and today I want to respond to that. You know, in Acts chapter 22 verse 16 it says now what are you waiting for, get up, be baptized and wash your sins away, calling on His name. And for some of you today, you just need to find yourself on your feet. And you need to put one foot in front of the other before you talk yourself out of it. You need to respond to the fact that the Holy Spirit s voice is speaking to your heart today. You respond to that, you seize that, you take an opportunity to say God, if I m willing to take this step will you meet me in it. Then if that s the case, then I want you to just follow me right out of these doors this morning. Would you please stand to your feet, and if you re ready to be baptized, just follow me out of these doors. Come on. Let s go! Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved. 11