I’d like to ask you to turn with me to Matthew’s Gospel, at the very end—the last two verses: Matthew 28:19-20. This is the only passage we’ll read; the rest we’ll refer to.
This is the Lord Jesus speaking. He said:
Go, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them unto the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit;
teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have enjoined you;
and behold, I am with you all the days until the completion of the age.
Now, the words “therefore,” by the way, are doubtful in their authenticity. So, in my Bible they’re in brackets. Thus, it is simply, “Go.”
Well, let’s just have a word of prayer.
Lord, we thank You that we have heard these testimonies this morning—that our sisters and our brother simply want to follow You. We thank You for the reality of baptism. We thank You for the testimony of baptism. We thank You for the clarity that is in baptism.
We ask You, as we consider Your Word this day, that You will quicken it to us, and that we will have greater understanding of this calling. Once again, we say, like Peter said:
Thou alone hast the words of eternal life.
To whom shall we go?
We praise You that when You speak, things are clear, and we trust You to speak to us today, that we may, in a deeper way, enter into the reality that baptism is. For we ask this in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.
I’ve already been told—and I’ll comfort you, at least try to comfort you—that this is supposed to be a shorter message. I think I have about thirty minutes. Now, I know some of you are already worried they picked the wrong fellow, but don’t worry so much. We’ll try to do our very best to touch upon this matter of baptism.
We’d like to see what the Bible teaches about baptism. Now, you see, it’s not important for you to know what I think about baptism, and it’s not important for you to know what someone else thinks about baptism. What’s important is what the Bible teaches us about baptism. So that’s really the thought and burden today.
Now, like we have been looking at the breaking of bread recently and the fundamentals, we have seen something I think is very precious: in the early church, the breaking of bread was not an outward thing, but it was a spiritual reality. It was a passion among the believers. They did it with regularity. They did it with understanding, and they took it up as the explanation of who they were as they gathered every Lord’s Day to break bread. Something marvelous.
It wasn’t just an outward sacrament. It wasn’t just an outward sign. It wasn’t just some sort of religious activity. Well, I think you can apply all those things to baptism.
When you look at the early church and read the record in the book of Acts, you can see the passion with which they took up this issue of baptism. You see the response in the early church to baptism. You see how they entered into the reality of baptism. In a real way, their whole testimony was wrapped up in this issue of baptism.
So I’m hoping that, just as the Lord wanted to recover something of the reality of the breaking of bread as we gather in His name—and deliver us from just tradition, just outward things—in the very same way, He would deliver us from just outward things when it comes to baptism: just following some command, just doing some outward act. But we, by the grace of God, just like the early church, would enter into the reality that baptism is.
Now, when you read the Scripture, you have to see how important baptism is. It reminds me of a story. Our sister said, “You always have to tell a joke.” I don’t know. Some of my jokes fall pretty flat too, sister.
There was a Southern preacher for whom baptism meant everything. Everything—baptism. Whenever he preached, he preached on baptism, so much so that finally the deacons got a little upset with him, because every message was baptism. He understood the importance, and he was determined, by the grace of God, whenever he spoke, to speak on baptism.
So finally, in their frustration, they came and said, “Brother, would you consider speaking on another subject?”
He said, “Well, I haven’t thought of that. What do you mean, speak upon another subject?”
They said, “Well, give me a text.” And they gave him a text. They said, “Speak on Genesis 1:1.”
Sure enough, next Sunday he got up and said:
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Then he said, “You know, when God created the heavens and the earth, it was three-fourths water and one-fourth land, and that brings me to my subject of baptism.”
Now, this one understood the importance of baptism. But do we, as the church of the living God, understand the importance of baptism? Have we seen the spiritual reality of being identified with Christ, being in union with Christ? Have we seen that? I believe that’s the issue.
Well, we’re going to look at three simple questions:
Now, in such an abbreviated time, we’re not going to touch upon all the meaning of baptism. So if I don’t hit your favorite point, be merciful to me. At least we may touch upon some of the meaning of baptism.
Some people may not understand why we’re going to go out into the front yard and take that old hot tub we’ve had for years and duck these people in that hot tub and pull them back up again. Why do we baptize the way that we do?
So these are sort of the three questions for today. For those being baptized today, this is a looking forward, to understand what you’re doing. For those of us that have been baptized many years, this is a looking backward. And for those of you who may not know the Lord Jesus at all, this may be your first looking into what baptism is.
So that’s the burden. May the Lord be gracious to me and to you, and share some of what’s on my heart. And I’ll try to abide by the clock.
Who can be baptized? That’s an important question. Who can be baptized? Have you ever thought about that? Can anybody be baptized? Who should be baptized? This is a vital question that we ought to ask one another.
Now, when the Lord Jesus, in the book of Matthew—the Gospel writer Matthew recorded the last words of the Lord Jesus—I believe He gave us a hint as to who can be baptized. We’ve already read that verse:
Go, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them unto the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have enjoined you.
Baptism was so important to the Lord Jesus that, in this closing of this great Gospel of Matthew, it was the thing that was on His heart. These were His last words. Now, I always think last words are important.
I believe, as we look at this, we begin to see how important it was to the Lord Jesus: go, make disciples, baptize, and teach. This was the command. This is so important.
Some people refer to these verses as the Great Commission. It is the commission. It is the thing that is left with us. And just as our brother talked about the Lord desiring to be with us at the beginning, the Lord concludes the whole thing: “Lo, I will be with you even to the end of the age.”
This matter of baptism is so important that here in Matthew it is the Lord’s last word.
Now, when I was young and not a Christian, I used to think there were only twelve disciples. I don’t know if you thought the same way. There were twelve disciples; most of them were fishermen, but the Lord saved them, and they were the disciples. So does this mean that only the twelve disciples that I thought there were can be baptized?
Well, brothers and sisters, that was a misunderstanding. Since I became a Christian many years ago, I’ve discovered that every Christian is a disciple. A disciple is simply a follower of the Lord Jesus.
These four that stood up this morning simply said, “I want to follow the Lord Jesus.” A disciple is a follower. So every follower of the Lord Jesus is to be baptized—without exception. Every follower of the Lord Jesus is to be baptized.
If you are a disciple, if you believe in the Lord Jesus, if He has come into your life, then you are to be baptized. Without exception, every disciple—that’s who is to be baptized.
Every Christian, then, is a candidate, and every Christian should be baptized. I often tell people, when I meet with them and talk about baptism, that the Bible only teaches one candidate that can be baptized, and that is believers. It only teaches believer’s baptism.
Now, I know you can go into John’s baptism, and you can go into the different baptisms and washings, like Hebrews 6:2, and talk about those things. But when you get down to it, the subject we’re dealing with and the reality of it is that baptism is believer’s baptism. It’s disciples that are baptized. It’s followers that are baptized.
When you read that grand story in the book of Acts, from beginning to end, you see the one thing that all those many diverse ones had in common: they were believers in the Lord Jesus. They believed, and they were baptized. So all the Bible teaches is believer’s baptism.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—this was a passion for him—said this: “Nothing is more plainly taught in the Bible than that every believer in Christ is to be baptized.” Every believer. It’s believer’s baptism from the beginning to the end. It’s not deacons’ baptism. It’s not elders’ baptism. It’s not apostles’ baptism. It’s not whatever label you want to put in. It is simply, from the beginning to the end, believer’s baptism.
And then, when we turn to the book of Acts, you begin to discover how prolific this practice was. It doesn’t matter if they were Jews. It doesn’t matter if they were Samaritans. It doesn’t matter if they were disciples of John. It doesn’t matter if they were Corinthians. It doesn’t matter if it were Lydia, a seller of purple. It doesn’t matter if they were the Philippian jailer. It doesn’t matter if it was Saul the apostle.
Every one of them had one thing in common: they were simply believers in the Lord Jesus. So this diverse multitude believed in the Lord Jesus, obeyed, and was baptized.
Turn with me to Acts 2. I’ll try to give you a little bit of the flavor of it. This is right after the Day of Pentecost, when the church was born. It says in Acts 2:38—their response after they heard the Word was, “What shall we do, brethren?” This was the response of those that heard the Word.
And Peter said to them:
Repent and be baptized, each one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of sins; and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Then look at Acts 2:41. Those who had accepted His word—now, that “accepted” there means fully received. I think this is often the problem. We have dumbed down—pardon me if this is offensive to anyone—we have dumbed down this word “acceptance” so that it almost means anything. But in the biblical sense, this word “acceptance” means fully received.
Maybe, just maybe, if you think about it, that’s the problem with many believers. We haven’t fully received all that the Lord Jesus has said and all that He has talked about. So it says, “Those who had accepted His word”—what?
Those who had accepted His word were baptized. Those who believed were baptized, and there were added in that day about three thousand souls.
You remember what the Ethiopian eunuch said in Acts 8:36. He was so moved after he believed in the Lord Jesus. He said, “There is water here. What hinders me, then, from being baptized?”
How we should say, when we’re moved by the Spirit and when we see the importance of this issue of baptism, our spirit—the passion of the early church—should be, “What hinders me?” All too often, we’re trying to convince people to be baptized, but the spirit that was in the early church was, “What hinders me?”
It was such a part of their testimony. I’ll read to you Acts 18:8:
But Crispus, the ruler of the synagogue, believed in the Lord, with all his house;
and many of the Corinthians, hearing, believed and were baptized.
Brothers and sisters, the Bible teaches believer’s baptism. They are the only candidates, and everyone that believes in the Lord Jesus should be baptized.
I’ll never forget recently—a brother told me this. He said, “I was talking to a dear sister who had been a Christian many years, and that dear sister said to me, ‘I’m not led to be baptized.’”
And I thought, what a strange testimony. You know, what a strange testimony: “I don’t feel led to be baptized.”
When we see that it was the Lord’s parting command, when we see that it was the practice of the church, when we see that it was a passion—the reality—we cannot help but respond the way the early church did. And that is what He is after.
Only one person can be baptized: believers.
Now, what about the second question? What is the meaning of baptism? Have you ever thought about the meaning of baptism? To me, it’s important that we know baptism.
Turn to Romans 6. There are just a few verses we’ll look at. Romans 6:3-4:
Are ye ignorant that all we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death?
We were buried therefore with Him through baptism into death:
that like as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father,
so we also might walk in newness of life.
In these words are the meaning of baptism, along with other places. “Are you ignorant?” This is Paul speaking. Now, you know, sometimes, brothers and sisters, we’re ignorant. We’re ignorant.
The church assumed they knew about baptism, but what the apostle Paul said to them was, “Are you ignorant?” Now, he didn’t mean that they were stupid. You understand, he didn’t mean that. He said, “Do you know what’s involved in baptism? Do you understand the meaning of it? Do you see the importance of it? Do you see what you’ve done in baptism? Are you ignorant, brethren?”
That was his beginning word on this. Paul, along with every believer, we know, at that time was baptized. It was a common thing with them. They were baptized. They knew the reality of it. They responded to it.
And so what he wanted to get to them and say to them was, “Do you really understand the meaning of what you’ve done?” It behooves us to understand the meaning of baptism, to understand what the Bible says about baptism.
So I think in these precious three little verses, we have at least three essential facts to consider about the meaning of baptism. Now, these are facts. So often we live in our feelings. So often we live according to our circumstances. But, brothers and sisters, as believers in the Lord Jesus, we need to learn based on the facts. The facts are what’s important.
I think it’s crept into our English language. I wish we could excise it, but how often are you talking to people and they say, “Well, I feel. Well, I feel today. Well, I felt about yesterday. Well, I just sort of feel.” Pretty soon you’re wondering, is that all we’ve got left today—feeling?
I have often before sung the song “Feelings.” I’ll resist. I see a sister saying, “Amen, brother.” I’ll resist singing that song to you.
But what we need to understand is to know the fact. Many of you grew up in my generation. Many of you are the same age I am. I am fifty-seven. That’s not so bad, brother.
There was a television show when I grew up called Dragnet. You remember Sergeant Joe Friday, the monotone detective. He would question these lady informants, and he would say, “All we want is the facts. All we want is the facts, ma’am.”
Now, people have worded it differently. Actually, it wasn’t until a parody followed sometime after that the whole vernacular of what he said got changed to “Just the facts, ma’am.” But with believers, this is what we need: just the facts, ma’am.
Do we see the facts? You can live in the facts. You can stand upon the facts. You can believe the facts. You don’t have to trust your feelings. You don’t have to rely upon your circumstances. But the fact of the matter is, there are truths that are immovable. If we stand in those immovable truths, then we will grow in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now, here are some of those facts. The first fact is this: “Are you ignorant that as many of us as have been baptized have been baptized unto Christ Jesus?” First fact.
Now, you weren’t baptized unto a denomination. You weren’t baptized unto a church. Even worse, you weren’t baptized unto a person, other than the person of the Lord Jesus. The whole meaning of baptism is: “Do you not know that as many of you as have been baptized have been baptized unto Christ Jesus?”
That’s the opening salvo. That’s baptism. That’s the meaning of baptism. It’s not a man. It’s not a denomination. It’s not a belief. It’s not a religion. It’s a person, and it’s the person of the Lord Jesus. That is the whole meaning of baptism.
And that’s what Paul brought to the Roman church: “Do you not know that as many of you that have been baptized have been baptized unto Christ Jesus?”
And you know, when Paul said to the Corinthians, when he was correcting them on this matter of division in 1 Corinthians 1:13-15, he said to them, “Is Christ divided?” And then what did he say to them? “Were ye baptized into the name of Paul?”
He said, “I thank God that I baptized none of you, save Crispus and Gaius”—and I think Stephanus; I don’t quite remember right now, but I think that’s right. But the whole point is, we’re not baptized to any man. We’re not baptized to any religion. We’re not baptized to any belief. We are baptized unto Christ Jesus. That’s the meaning.
The Greek word is eis. It’s not like ice—ice—but if you can remember it that way, it is a good way to remember it. It means baptized into. It means baptized to the name of Jesus. It means coming into the reality that is in Christ Jesus, coming under the authority of His name. That’s what it means. That is the first fact. Just the facts. That’s what we need.
The first one is baptized unto Christ Jesus. It’s similar, if you’ll remember the story of the Red Sea in 1 Corinthians 10:1-2. It talks of those that were baptized—and listen to the word it uses—unto Moses. Isn’t that strange? The Word of God says the children of God were actually baptized unto Moses. What’s the same thought? When you come to New Testament baptism, we are baptized unto Christ Jesus.
Well, here are three more facts. Romans 6:3: “We have been baptized unto His death.” Notice the word: “We have been baptized.” That’s a fact. Someone said facts are stubborn things.
We have been baptized unto His death. Did you not know, when the Lord Jesus died—this is the meaning—He died as a federal representative of a whole race? Did you not know that?
When you read 1 Corinthians 15, you begin to discover that God only sees two people—not three, not four, not millions. Now, you may want to debate with me over that, but He sees: you’re either in Adam or you’re in Christ. That’s federal headship. It’s representative headship.
So we read in 1 Corinthians 15 there was the first Adam—that’s our forefather, Adam—but we also read there was the last Adam, and that’s the Lord Jesus. Then we read that there was this second Man, a title given only to the Lord Jesus. This is federal headship.
Do you not know that when Christ died, you died with the Lord Jesus? That’s what baptism means. So often we struggle against sin. So often we fight against sin as if we’re alive. That’s the problem.
You need to see you’re dead. That’s the secret. That’s the fact.
“As many as have been baptized unto Christ Jesus have been baptized unto His death.” Have you ever seen a dead man struggle? If you do, please come to me and help me to understand. A dead man can’t even lift a finger—unless rigor mortis, you know. Maybe. But we won’t go there.
The secret, the meaning, is we have died with Christ. How beautiful. We don’t need to struggle with sin. We just need to stand upon the fact.
The second of these three essentials is: we have been buried with Him. Verse 4: “We have been buried therefore with Him through baptism unto death.” Do you not know that when the Lord Jesus was buried—another fact—you were buried with the Lord Jesus?
You may not have thought about it, but once you believe in the Lord Jesus, your funeral has already happened. You will never die again. Buried with the Lord Jesus.
And the third glorious fact in this set of three is from verse 4: “In order that, even as Christ has been raised from among the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also should walk in newness of life.”
Now, isn’t that beautiful? He didn’t just die—fact. When He died, you died. He wasn’t just buried alone. That old man, when He was buried—the old man, the whole old creation, which included you—went to be buried with Him.
But wonder of wonders, glory of glory, fact of facts: the Lord Jesus was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father. And now, just because of that mere fact, you and I can live the Christian life. We can walk in newness of life. Isn’t that glorious?
There’s a new life at our disposal. There’s a new life within us. We were dead, and the old man is dead. We were buried—put away. That’s the right thing to do, the respectable thing to do: to put away dead people.
I’ll never forget, when I was growing up in North Carolina, we used to bring dead people to the homes. I always thought that was a bit eerie. I remember one of our great-aunts lived down on a little country farm, and I never would go into the living room after that because they brought dead people into the home.
Well, you did that in Southern culture. Don’t get freaked out by it. But you brought them in, and that’s where you did the viewing and that’s where you did things. But we’re to bury dead people. That’s what we’re supposed to do with them.
Do you not know? Are you ignorant? And then this glorious truth: we have been raised in newness of life.
These ones that are going to be baptized today are testifying: they died with Christ, they were buried with Christ, and miracle of miracles—the greatest miracle—they were raised in newness of life. So now, for the first time, living the Christian life is possible because of the finished work of the Lord Jesus.
This is the meaning of baptism: this being raised with Christ to walk in newness of life.
The word actually is “walk about.” You remember in 1 Peter 5:8, it says our adversary, the devil, walks about seeking whom he may destroy.
Well, “walkabout,” the single word “walkabout,” is an Australian term—an Aboriginal term. Aboriginal native males used to go out. If you ever lost your Aboriginal husband, he was on a walkabout. He might go out into the wilderness and walk about for up to six months.
Some people look at me like I’m strange. This is true, by the way. And when he walked about in the wilderness, they had things called songlines, where he would think about his ancestors and where he would try to relive through his ancestors. This was walkabout.
Now, the Christian life is walkabout. We don’t live through ourselves. We have died in Christ. We have been buried in Christ. And now we walk about in Christ. Do you get the point? It’s a spiritual experience.
We who could not walk the Christian life now, because of the work that He has done—the meaning of baptism—can walk about in the Lord Jesus, in our ancestor, the Lord Jesus, unto the Lord Jesus. This is the meaning of baptism.
My thirty minutes is up, but the last point is really brief, so bear with me. There’s another thing about baptism I want to touch upon because it confuses people—another meaning.
If you look at Mark 16:16, it has confused many people:
He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved.
Now, that’s a strange verse. Think about it. Does that mean we believe in baptismal regeneration? No, it doesn’t. It doesn’t mean we believe in baptismal regeneration.
The problem is, we have lowered the standard and the definition of what it means to be saved. In other words, let me put it this way. Maybe this will make it clear: believing and eternal life are connected.
When you believe in the Lord Jesus, you have eternal life. The Bible makes that very clear. It is the free gift of God. All you have to do, like the thief on the cross, is believe in the Lord Jesus, and you have eternal life.
But then what about saved? Because often we sit there and say saved is eternal life. Well, not exactly. Saved has to do with the world. Saved has to do with being separated from the world. Saved has to do with judgment upon the world.
When we read in 1 Peter 3:20-21, we read how, at the time of Noah, eight souls went into the ark. They were saved by the water. And it says this extraordinary thing: “Which also after a true likeness doth now save you.”
Salvation is being delivered from the world system. The meaning of baptism is that the world has come under the watery judgment of God, just like the ark. That world is drowned and left behind. And when you come into the Lord Jesus, you are saved, and that world is dead to you, and you come out in newness of life.
You are forever separated from the world. Paul said in Galatians 6:14 that he was praising God that he was crucified to the world, and the world was crucified to him. This is the meaning of baptism.
These ones will say today:
The world behind me,
the cross before me.
No longer am I part of the world. The world has been judged at the cross of the Lord Jesus. And those who are in Christ Jesus are no longer part of this world. They are otherworldly, if you want to use that phrase.
Now, the last thing: why do we baptize the way we do? Think about it. We ought to think about it. Why do we baptize the way we do? Why do we immerse? Why don’t we sprinkle? It’s easier.
I love what Lance says about a dead person. He says, “You never sprinkle a little dirt upon a dead person and say they’re buried.”
The word baptism—the Greek word comes from baptō, or baptō. I’m not so sure; I’m not a Greek expert. But it means to dip. And it means more than that. It means to immerse. It means to submerge. It’s a little hard to get away from when you take into account all the meanings.
And not only does it mean to immerse and to submerge, but it also means emergence. Isn’t that beautiful? That’s the meaning of baptism. We’re submerged in Christ Jesus. We are immersed. We have died in the Lord, but we emerge in the Lord Jesus.
That’s beautiful. He didn’t just leave us in the grave without hope. But the testimony of every Christian that is to be baptized is that they are to emerge.
That’s the reason we dunk people, if you will. We don’t hold them under till they scream uncle. We don’t hold them down until we’re sure they’re well watered. We don’t hold them down because we like to see wet people.
We baptize people because they’re buried, and you bury the dead. And we raise people out of the water. We don’t leave your darlings in the water. Don’t worry about Jeremiah; we’ll bring him up.
Because the whole meaning of baptism is we are raised in newness of life.
This is baptism: death, burial, and resurrection.
It is so full, we can’t cover it in one session. We need to see who can be baptized: only believers, nobody else.
We need to see what is the meaning of baptism. It’s unto Christ. We have died. We have been buried. We are raised. We are identified. We are saved from the world.
And we need to see why we baptize the way we do. It is immersion. It is emergence.
These, to me, brothers and sisters, seem to give a part of what baptism means. So may the Lord recover among us the full meaning of baptism.
If it’s a tradition with you, may it not be a tradition any longer. If it’s something you just did because someone said, “Do it,” that was wrong. If you were baptized into a church, it is wrong. You were baptized unto Christ Jesus.
If you were baptized to a man—I’ve had people say to me, when I’ve talked to them, “I was baptized a Methodist.” I’ve had people say to me, “I was baptized a Baptist.” Now, they’re sure they were baptized.
But we were baptized unto Christ Jesus, in the glory of all His work, resulting in the fact that now, because of that work, we can walk about in newness of life.
Lord, we thank You for the reality of baptism. We thank You for the privilege that we’ve heard these testimonies today. We pray for these souls, as they enter into the waters of baptism, that You will strengthen that testimony in them.
That as believers in Christ Jesus, they will say, “Today is my day,” entering more fully into the Lord. That You will meet them in a full way, that they will have a fuller understanding of the meaning of what they’ve done.
May they see that union, that unbreakable union with Christ, and from now, for the rest of their life, live in the facts of what You’ve done.
Then, Lord, we pray—We just pray You would meet them and keep them. And that as we do this thing, it would be a testimony to the world, to their families, to their friends, that they’re no longer part of this world, but they follow the risen Christ.
And we pray that this testimony will be to the heavens and to principalities and powers, and that all will see and know that I am the Lord’s. And teach me all it means. For we ask this in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.