Sermon / Teaching Helps

?Baptism?
A sermon by Frank Pollard

Receiving Christ is just the beginning of a wonderful adventure. The next step is to identify with Christ through baptism. This is the New Testament way to publicly profess your faith. In the following message Dr. Frank Pollard, Pastor of the First Baptist Church of Jackson, Mississippi, explains baptism and encourages all believers to take this important step of obedience.

There?s one thing I would really want for everyone in this room. It is that you would have a clear conscience toward God. That you would know in your heart that you have done all you can do to please him. That His grace has accepted that offering and has made you his.

There are two common denominators that run through the life teachings of John the Baptist; of our Lord, Christ, on earth; and of His early church. As we study the things that these emphasized in this drama of redemption in your New Testament ? the beginning of the teachings of John; the teachings of Jesus Christ; the actions and teachings of the new church, that jolly band of effective followers of Jesus Christ ? we see that there are two common denominators that are consistently there, each designed to help you know in your heart that you have peace with God and all really is well with your soul and with your eternity.

John, the son of Elizabeth and Zechariah, began his ministry ? we read, I guess, the best account of it beginning in Luke 3, where we find Luke ever the wonderful historian. What a great historian Luke was. Even secular historians say the finest historian of the first century was this man, Luke, who wrote the gospel that bears his name and also the Acts of the Apostles. Luke wants us to understand when John the Baptist began his ministry, so he said it was the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar over in Rome. It was when Pontius Pilate was in charge of things in his homeland in the South, and Herod and James and another tetrarch were running things up in the North in the spiritual, the religious kind of power structure of the day. Annas and Caiaphas were the high priests. The Word says that the Word of God came not to those prominent places nor to those powerfully placed and prominent people. The Word of God came out in the sticks, out around Qumron they think, to this son of Elizabeth and Zechariah named John. The Word of God to John was this: Preach a baptism of repentance, for the preparing of the coming of the Messiah. And John did that. From the very beginning he pointed away from himself and to Christ. From the very beginning John the Baptist said, ?I am not the one you?re looking for. I?m just the master of ceremonies in this banquet of redemption. I?ve come here to point to Him.? One day, in John 1:29, the Word says that John saw Jesus approaching as he was baptizing and he [John] said, ?Look, behold there the Lamb of God who is going to take away the sin of the world. I came baptizing with water so that I could prepare the way for him.?

One of the interesting things, one of the most puzzling things, is that of all the people that John baptized ? a baptism, remember, for repentance of sin, because of repentance of sin; a symbol of sin having been repented ? Jesus Christ was one of the people he baptized. Why? He didn?t sin. He had no sin. He had nothing to repent of, and yet he came to this man who was baptizing for the purpose of people saying, ?I have repented of my sin, and this is my public testimony that my sins have been repented of and I want them out of my life.? Yet Jesus came one day. You remember that John said to him, ?You need to baptize me, not me baptize you.? And Jesus said, ?No, this fulfills righteousness.? He was saying the plans of my father to bring the world back to him are all coming into place. I?m convinced that Jesus was saying, ?The thing I am here for, the thing that I will do in the end of my life, I want to allow my acceptance of at the beginning of my ministry. I?m here to take all the sins of the world upon me. And as I go to the cross with all the peoples? sins in the world upon me and am nailed to the cross as a sacrifice for that, I want to do this symbolic act that indicates that I am willing to take the sins of people upon me.?

Now someone imagined what it must have been like when John was baptizing. Can you see this? Hundreds of people came to be baptized. How did they do that? Maybe there was a table set up with someone sitting behind the table with a Magic Marker and a whole lot of those stick-on labels people wear at banquets and things, and people lined up there. The one at the table asked the first one what is the sin you have repented of, and he said, ?I have not told the truth.? So he writes on that stick-on label under his name the word ?LIAR? and sticks it right on his lapel, right on his robe. The next one: ?What have you done?? ?I stole from my employer.? And he writes on the label ?EMBEZZLER? and sticks it on his chest for everybody to see. Someone else comes up and he says, ?What is the sin in your life?? He dips the head and says, ?Adultery.? So they write ?ADULTERY? on that thing and slap it on. And on and on they go until all these people are standing in line waiting to be baptized with their name and their sin written on their chests. Then Jesus walks up to that table and the one registering says, ?What is your sin?? ?Well, there isn?t one.? There?s nothing for Him to repent of. But Jesus begins to go down that line, and he takes those lapel stickers off of other people and puts them on himself. He walks up to the one who has the word ?LIAR? written on his robe, and Jesus puts it on his robe ??MURDERER,? slaps it here; ?ADULTERER,? he slaps it here; ?SLANDERER? ? slaps it here; ?LIAR,? puts it here; ?GREEDY,? puts it here ? until Jesus has taken every one of those labels off of everyone else there and he?s made his way to John. His robe is covered with those labels of people?s sins. John baptizes him, and when he comes up out of the water the sins are gone. The ink is dissolved in the water; it?s washed down the water.

Maybe this trite little picture is a way to understand what Jesus was doing that day. He said, ?I came into this world to take upon me the sins of the world. The only way those sins will be forgiven. And I declare at the beginning of my ministry what I will do at the end of my ministry. I take these sins and find a way for them to be forgiven and forgotten and for people to have right standing with God.?

John the Baptist came with a repentance, declaring baptism for the repentance of sins. But what did Jesus say? We find in John chapter 3 it says, ?After this Jesus and his disciples went out into the Judean countryside where he spent some time with them and baptized.? Jesus baptized. Now John also was baptizing at Aenon near Salim because there was plenty of water. There always has to be plenty of water when you baptize. People were constantly coming to be baptized. They came to John saying, ?Rabbi, that man who was with you on the other side of the Jordan. Remember the one you said, ?Behold the lamb of God that takes away the sin of the World?? The one you testified about? Well, he is baptizing, and everyone is coming to him.? John said, ?That?s good. That?s good. He?s the groom of the church. He?s the one who has the right to the church, the bride. I must decrease. He must increase.? Jesus went through that ministry. Just before he left here he was ascended, he had demonstrated the power of God in his life. They realized that he had power even over death and so, in Matthew 28:18-20, he said, ?You have seen that I have all the power and authority of Heaven and on Earth in my hands. Now here is what I command you to do with that power. I want you to go and tell people about me. And I want you to baptize them. And then I want you to teach them to observe everything that they need to know in order to be followers of me.? You remember in Acts 1:8 he said, ?You will receive power when my spirit comes upon you. You?re going to be witnesses.? Well, what happened? The Spirit did come upon them and immediately they hit the streets. They hit the streets telling people about Jesus Christ in languages they hadn?t even learned. The Holy Spirit had come upon them and they were indeed becoming witnesses. As the people gathered there under all that conviction in Acts 2, they said to Simon Peter and the others, because Simon was their spokesman, they said, ?Brothers ?? Acts 2:37 ? they said, ?Brothers.? Does that mean they were already believers? They said, ?Brothers, what shall we do?? Now what did Simon Peter say? ?Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, because your sins have been remitted, and you?ll receive the gift of God?s Holy Spirit.? They were baptized.

It is so all the way through. In Acts 2:41, the Word says there everyone who received the message was baptized. Everyone who received the message was baptized. That?s the pattern through the book of Acts. In chapter 8 we find they have done what Jesus said. They had gone into Samaria by this time, and the Word says in Acts 8 that all the men and women of Samaria who believed were baptized. In the latter part of chapter 8 you remember that Philip is told to go and to find this man in a chariot. And he finds this man there. This man is described as an Ethiopian official. In fact, he is in charge of the queen?s treasury. He wants to know God. He is reading the messianic passages in Isaiah, and Philip came to him and said, ?Do you understand what you are reading?? He said, ?No, I don?t. Somebody needs to explain this to me.? So Philip sat down with him in his carriage, and he explained what he was reading in the life of Jesus Christ. He said, ?The one Isaiah is talking about is the Lord, Jesus Christ.? The next thing this brand-new Christian asked was this: ?Here is enough water. What hinders me? Why shouldn?t I be baptized?? And Philip baptized him.

In chapter 9 of the book of Acts Saul of Taurus, who will become the apostle Paul, has this dramatic encounter with Christ on the road to Damascus. As soon as he got into the city, the Word says, he was baptized. Meanwhile, back on the other side of the nation on the Mediterranean Sea, there was a man named Cornelius. A centurion who lived in Caesarea-Philippi. He had called his whole household and many people he loved together so they could hear Simon Peter explain the gospel of Jesus Christ. The Word says that all of them believed and all of them were baptized.

In Acts 16, when the church moved into Europe, we find the apostle and Silas and others finding a prayer meeting of five ladies ? Lydia and four friends ? down by the riverside. They explained to them the Lord Christ and all of them were baptized. A great revival broke out in Philippi. This wonderful, spiritual renewal swept the city and that got the people in peace. The apostle and Silas were arrested and beaten and put in jail on a trumped-up charge of disturbing the peace. I wonder how often it is in the history of the world that those who are arrested for disturbing the peace are the ones who are trying to make peace? You remember that, while Paul and Silas were singing and praising God and praying there, that God shook those jail doors open. They took advantage of that, not to run and save their own hides, but they took advantage of that to tell them how to receive Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. You remember that the jailer and his whole household heard that message and they believed. The Word said that they were baptized.

In the 17th chapter of Acts, in Corinth, the Word says that many men and women believed and were baptized. That?s the 18th chapter. Many men and women believed and were baptized.

In the 19th chapter of Acts the apostle came to that aesthetic art, intellectual, and wealthy center of Asia Minor, Ephesus. He found there twelve men who had been baptized by John the Baptist in his baptism of repentance. He explained to them that this baptism was for repentance and not for salvation; that this baptism was done by a man whose life was pointing to the Lord Jesus Christ. And the people there, those twelve men, believed in Christ and were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.

In the ministries and the life teachings of John the Baptist, of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the early church, there are two things that are consistent. One thing is that Jesus Christ is the only way that people will find peace with God. Belief in Jesus Christ is the only way our sins will be remitted and forgiven. The second is that everyone who accepted Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord was baptized as a symbolic statement of their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, some observations about baptism. Baptism was something that followed a decision to repent of sins and receive Christ as Savior. There is no infant baptism on the pages of God?s Word. Baptism always followed a decision to receive Christ as Lord and Savior. Baptism is a symbol of what Christ did to save us. It was a way of openly symbolizing what Jesus did. In Romans 6 the apostle links the death and burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ to baptism and says this is the way we symbolize what God has done for us. He died. We are buried under the water. He was covered over for us, and he was really buried, and then he rose again. We are symbolizing his death and his burial and his resurrection when we are baptized.

Baptism in the New Testament is by immersion. Martin Luther, who was describing what the word baptizo ? the word ?baptism? ? means said it means being covered over with water until the water comes together on top of you; to be completely covered with water.

Now there is not a New Testament scholar in any denomination anywhere who would deny anything I?ve said. They know that baptism is by immersion; that?s what the word means. They know that baptism in every New Testament case was done to people had made a conscious decision ? I am a sinner, and I need Christ to save me. But they say it is a symbol, and so a symbol of a symbol is OK. What?s wrong with having the symbol of a symbol?

I have no reaction to that except to say that God?s Word stands on its own. I was thinking, this ring I wear, this wedding ring, is just a symbol. It?s a symbol of my love and commitment to Jane Pollard. I never take it off. It?s there all the time. It?s there for everyone to see. It?s a symbol of love and commitment and loyalty pledged. I guess there could be a symbol of that symbol. I guess I could take a picture of my wedding ring and carry it in my billfold, every now and then I could to a few people, ?You know, I?m married, and here?s a picture of my wedding ring.? But I don?t think it would mean the same thing to her or to me. So I?m simply saying that God?s Word is saying to you and me that this must be important to him. It really must be important to him. It?s what everybody did in the New Testament after they received Christ. It?s a part of His command to His church to go and baptize and then teach and observe all things. It must be important to Him.

In 1 Peter 3:21 we are told that baptism doesn?t save us; it doesn?t wash us clean; the resurrection of Christ does that, he says very clearly. But he says that baptism is the answer of a good conscience before God. It is saying, ?I have received Christ as my Savior, and I have done this thing because I want to obey him, and it?s one thing I can do to say ?I mean this.? ? Others can see this and know that I mean this, and it?s a thing that I do and in doing so I have a clear conscience. I know in my heart that I?ve done what you?ve asked me to do, to accept and demonstrate my acceptance of Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.?

When Jesus was baptized Matthew 3:16 said as soon as he was baptized he went up out of the water. In that moment Heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on him and a voice from Heaven said, ?This is my son, whom I love. With him I am well pleased.? The Word of God tells us that when you receive Christ as your Lord and Savior the Holy Spirit comes upon you. If we could see with the eyes of Heaven and hear with the ears of Heaven we could know in our own hearts for sure that that thing we accept by faith is true; it is real. God?s Word says that when you ask Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior that he comes to live in you; the spirit of God comes upon you, just like He did Jesus that day. I wonder, in fact I?m pretty sure of it, that when you?re baptized, if you could hear, and I think some people almost do, you would hear the great, wonderful Father in Heaven say, ?Because of Jesus you?re my child, whom I love, and in you I am well pleased.