Jeremy approaches Bible teaching with a passion for getting the basic doctrines explained so that the individual can understand them and then apply them to circumstances in their life. These basic and important lessons are nestled in a framework of history and progression of revelation from the Bible so the whole of Scripture can be applied to your physical and spiritual life.
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One, two, seven, or eight? How many baptisms are there and which ones apply to modern day belivers? And while we are at it, are any required for salvation or do they only result from salvation?
Jeremy Thomas is the pastor at Spokane Bible Church in Spokane, Washington and a professor at Chafer Theological Seminary. He has been teaching the Bible for over 20 years, always seeking to present its truths in a clear and understandable manner.
Welcome to Beyond the Walls with Jeremy Thomas and our series on the New Testament framework. Today, a smaller, bite-sized piece from the larger lesson. We hope you enjoy
Okay, a couple questions about baptism because we've been dealing with the works of the Holy Spirit, and of course, the classic acronym for memorizing for the works of the Spirit is RIB, right? Regeneration, indwelling, baptism, and sealing. But I didn't follow this order exactly. We followed regeneration, indwelling, and then I thought very important to talk about the filling of the Holy Spirit, since the filling of the Holy Spirit is the only work of the Holy Spirit that's conditioned on our response to Him. So, you know, you are not involved in regenerating yourself, you're not involved in Him indwelling you, you're not involved in Him sealing you or baptizing you, but you are involved in Him filling. And we have commands. For example, Ephesians 5 18, do not get drunk with wine, but be filled by the Spirit. And Jesus said, Abide in me and I in you, and you will bear much fruit. So here it is, we are commanded to abide, we're commanded to be filled. Colossians 3 16, we're commanded to let the word of Christ dwell richly within you. These are all uh parallel ideas. They're all uh, like I say, like facets of a diamond. It's one diamond, but it has several facets. And we can look at this filling aspect or as various facets of the the way the Bible talks about it. Uh so I wanted to integrate that before we went into baptism in our study of regeneration indwelling and uh baptism sealing, and we'll look more at spiritual gifts as
well. But um it's important to understand a little bit about baptism, and we said last time that how many baptisms are there in the in the Bible? Well, I mentioned eight baptisms, and uh a lot of people aren't familiar with that, so they just think you say baptism, they think water, creek, baptismal. I've bap I've baptized people in hot tubs. Um that was nice because it was cold. I've also baptized people in pools and it was cold, but um it's that's what most people think of when they think of baptism, they think of water. But uh, as we mentioned, five of the baptisms that are mentioned in the Bible are actually dry. Like, for example, uh the people of Israel were baptized into Moses as they passed through the Red Sea. And all those people stayed dry. It was the Egyptians that got wet, so you didn't want to be on that side. Uh, you wanted to be on the dry side. And all the dry baptisms are real baptisms, meaning something real happens. In the case, say, of Moses, the real baptism is the fact that they were all delivered through the Red Sea and physically survived, whereas all the Egyptians died. Um, so something real always happens in a real baptism, and they're always administered by God. I mean, it wasn't Moses who split the Red Sea, it was God who did that by means of you know Moses. But yes, God did it. So there are these five real baptisms. There's also three that are ritual, and the ritual ones are where you get wet. So you think of water baptism, of course, but also John's baptism when he baptized people at the Jordan River, and also Jesus' baptism when he was baptized by John. So we went through all these last week. Um, but there were a couple questions, so I want to deal with those. And then what I want to do after those questions is I want to focus on spirit baptism because that's that's why we're doing this study. I just needed to talk about the other types of baptism so we're aware that there are other other types.
So some pat here's the question some pastors slash churches teach seven types of baptism, not eight. How are they wrong, or is there a type of baptism that is disputed? Also, of the seven or eight types, how many can a modern-day saint receive? Is it two, uh, spirit and water, or is it more? Well, yes, it is only two. Okay. Uh spirit baptism, the moment you believe, which is the main thrust of our whole lesson today, will be about spirit baptism. But also water. Water baptism, which is a ritual. And you do it to signify what the spirit does when he baptizes us. So it's a public display of what the Spirit of God did when he baptized us the moment we believed in Christ. So, yes, two is all that you can do. You know, obviously you can't recapitulate Jesus' baptism. You're not Jesus, um, I'm not Jesus. That's not difficult. You can't do Moses' baptism, you're not there on the shores of the Red Sea, 1,444 years before Christ. Uh, you can't do Noah's baptism. I mean, that already happened as a once-for-all baptism. So there's a lot of baptisms we can't undergo, but the two we can is spirit and water.
So the question under dispute is are there seven or are there eight? Well, technically there are seven, because even when I went to 1 Peter 3, which I had you turn to, um, the mention of Noah's baptism, and which is just used as an illustration for a baptism that he's trying to encourage his readers to undergo in 2 Peter 3 or 1 Peter 3, um, is one of these two baptisms. It's either spirit baptism he's talking about or it's water baptism that Peter's talking about. So it would therefore funnel into one of these other categories. I just mentioned it as an eighth because it often gets overlooked that Noah's blood itself was mentioned as a baptism. So um, but the one that he uses to correspond to that is either a spirit or water. Now, this is a difficult passage. I mean, anybody who has spent any time in this section of 1 Peter knows it's very difficult. One of the reasons I don't like non-verse by verse teaching is because then you're going to a passage that you may know very little about inside the story of whatever 1 Peter is writing about, right? And you you have a great tendency to pull verses out of context and give them a meaning that's not intended by Peter. So I really don't like non-verse by verse teaching of the Bible, and I've never taught through 1 Peter. So um it's always been a challenge. Every time I've tried to teach this book in the last 20 years, someone has taught it out from under me right before me at the church. And like Glenn did it, what, two or three years ago? And I was like, you jerk. You know, you just messed it up again. I've tried to do this so many times, and uh, I never can't get to it, so I just suppose that I'm not supposed to be there yet, and we'll just keep going on. But that means it m it makes it much more difficult and uh to study text and get the right meaning and context.
Thank you for joining us on Beyond the Walls with Jeremy Thomas. If you would like to see the visuals that went along with today's sermon, you can find those on Rumble and on YouTube under Spoke and Bible Church. That is where Jeremy is the pastor and teacher. We hope you found today's lesson productive and useful in growing closer to God and walking more obediently with Him. If you found this podcast to be useful and helpful, then please consider rating us in your favorite podcast app. And until next time, we hope you have a blessed and wonderful day.
