The Significance of Baptism

In this powerful message, Pastor Steve Holt explores The Significance of Baptism—revealing why it is far more than a symbolic act, but a defining step in the life of every believer. From the call to repentance modeled by John the Baptist to the example of Jesus and the early church, this sermon unpacks baptism as the gateway into true discipleship.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hello everyone, I'm Dr. Steve Bolt. I want to welcome you to the Road Church Podcast. Each week we go into God's Word. We teach chapter by chapter and verse by verse. We are here to build the Kingdom of God revolution through empowering people to change the world. So we pray this will minister to you at your heart level and change your life. So I want to just talk briefly about the significance of baptism, the significance of baptism. And what we have, men and women, in the New Testament on the significance of baptism comes from John the Baptizer, sometimes known as John the Baptist, Jesus, and then the early church, at least at the beginning of the book of Acts, which we're going to be back in next week. We're going to be back in the book of Acts. For you that are regulars with us coming, we're in Acts chapter 1, and the next week we'll be in Acts chapter 2 and Acts chapter 3 as we move through the book of Acts. But so we have Peter immediately baptizing people after they got saved, that first 3,000 that came to Christ after Jesus had ascended to heaven. But then the lion's share of the theology of baptism comes from the Apostle Paul. And so he gives us a beautiful, I believe, description of the gospel itself. So we're going to look at two passages today. And if you have your Bibles, look at Mark chapter one. And if you don't have a Bible, can't say this for the front row, but for everybody else, there's Bibles in front of you in those slots there. But look at Mark chapter one with me, and I'm going to just move through three aspects. I'm going to do three aspects of baptism. But then I'm going to shift and we're going to go to Romans. And in Romans, we're actually going to look at how baptism is a stage set by Paul when he wrote of the gospel itself. So what you're going to see here in this tank, what's going to happen in baptism, is a reenactment. It's literally a visual reenactment of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It's just so exciting. But let me give you three aspects that we find in the New Testament. Mark chapter 1, the shortest and the first of the four gospels. So even as we looked at Luke, Luke's writing Acts, and Luke wrote his own gospel, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. They all, we believe, historically copied parts from Mark. So Mark's the shortest, shortest one. But look at verse 4. Mark 1, verse 4. John came baptizing in the wilderness and preaching a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. Then all the land of Judea and those from Jerusalem went out to him and were all baptized by him in the Jordan River, confessing their sins. So the first aspect of baptism is it's a baptism of repentance. And so when we get baptized, we're repenting. Well, what's repenting? It's from the Greek word metanoia. It's the idea of doing a 180, not a 360. I mean, there's a lot of Christians that call themselves Christians, they do a 360. So they get baptized, they go right back to their old lifestyle. But a 180 means we actually turn and go in a different direction, right? So baptism is a visual public display that we're confessing our sins to the Lord, our mistakes, our inability to live the Christian life, the inability to live a godly life, a holy life, without God. And so we're coming to Jesus and we're saying, Jesus, I have tried my whole life to try to live a good life. And maybe for some of you you'd say, well, no, that was really bad. But I think most people are trying to live a good life, but I failed. I keep failing. I'm not able to do it. And men and women, if you were able to do it through following the Ten Commandments or being a good person, or not cheating, or lying, then Jesus came needlessly. There's no need for the sacrifice of Jesus. But Jesus set it up after Adam and Eve, by which we had the law, which is the Old Testament, especially the Torah and the Ten Commandments in the Jewish system, to be a tutorial. It's a tutor. It's preparing us for the fact that you can't do it. You can't do it. And so it's, first of all, John being the first one out of the gate, the first one that God had set up to come, he was preparing, he was a preparation, uh prophetic voice to prepare people for the grace that would come through Jesus. So the baptism of repentance. So for all of you that are getting baptized, and for some of you in this room right now, that as you hear my voice and as you hear this message, God may be pricking your heart to say, I need to get baptized. And we come every time we do baptisms, people get baptized, closing all. So you'll you could you could be walking out of here dripping wet with new life. And then we love that. That's fantastic, you know? It's really, really powerful. Look at verse 6. Verse 6, now John was clothed with camel's hair and with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. I can't tell you how many times I've wanted to dress up like this. And and he preached, saying, There comes one after me who is mightier than I, whose sandals strap I'm not worthy to stoop down and loose. He's talking about the Messiah coming, he's talking about Jesus. He had he's a cousin. John was a cousin of Jesus, but and he grew up with him. I mean, they probably threw dice together. I don't know. Um, but but they knew each other, and there probably was this sense, maybe in John, because it because his uh tradition tells us that he went into the wilderness at 12 years old. So at 12 years old, he knew his calling, and I wondered if he, even as he began to baptize people, and there's actually a there is a John the Baptist cave in Israel that you can go to that has a pool right there, and it's called the John the Baptist Cave. But I wonder if he had a sense that that Jesus was the Messiah. So he's predicting, he's prophesying here. Verse 8, I indeed baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit. Now that's really interesting. So there's a baptism of the Spirit. Number two, there's a baptism of repentance, and there's a baptism of the Spirit. Now look what happens next. It came to pass in those days that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee, verse 9, and was baptized by John and Jordan. And immediately coming up from the water, he saw the heavens parting and the Spirit descending upon him like a dove. Then a voice came from heaven, you are my beloved son, in whom I'm well pleased. Okay, so Jesus models baptism before he models anything else. Really interesting. He doesn't do anything in a public ministry way until he's baptized. So what's that say to us? It says to us that Jesus is modeling, I think, a standard of the Christian way, the new way that was going to come, as we see it inaugurated in the book of Acts. That's what we're studying right now, the early church and the history of the early church. But the fact that you need to be prepared for that. You in this room need to be prepared for that. In other words, by getting baptized, you're fulfilling the requirements, as it were, of discipleship, which should have come right when you got saved, right then. And for some of you, that's happening today. For some of you, it's coming later. I didn't get baptized as a believer where I was immersed in the water in the Jordan River by my dad until I was 22. So I'd gotten saved at 18, really saved. I mean, I grew up in a Christian home, and I could tell you intellectually everything about God, but I hadn't personally encountered Jesus yet. And isn't this cool? This is how cool my dad is. So dad's a Lutheran pastor, they sprinkle as infants. How many of you are like sprinkle as an infant? Okay, see, so so many of us. And I'm not against that at all. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna make any point about that because I understand the history of that even in the early church. But that's the way, but I feel like I wanted to get baptized by immersion. And so I went to dad, and dad, who'd be a big believer in infant baptisms, yeah, let's do it. And so dad baptized me, and that shows the inclusive nature of my father, which is really cool about him, and I love that about him. But the reality is, is that the way it should be, is that we get saved and we get baptized almost immediately. But whether that happens or not, it's different for all of us in our story. In that situation, I get baptized, right? And then I'm on this trip with my parents, and we go to Rome. So we're in Rome, Italy, all right? And we go to the prison where Paul was incarcerated at one point in his journey. It looks like they say it that's where it happened. You don't, by the way, I don't know if half these places are real or not. It just makes a lot of money for Israel. That's all I know. But it's still cool to be there. So I'm so we're in Rome and we're in this, we're in this jail jail cell, not, it's about, I don't know, like 10 by 10 feet. Supposedly Paul was there, but somebody was there. And they and the group lays hands on me. I don't know anybody in the group except my mom and dad. Dad's leading the tour, and this guy prophesies to me, you're gonna be a missionary. And three years later, I'm in Japan as a missionary. I wasn't even thinking about it at the time. So that was right after my baptism. So here's why I'm saying that. Because you don't know what God might start doing in your life right after this water baptism that is related to a call on your life. Now, I'm not talking about full-time Christian work. It could be that, but it could be something that you're gonna do in the community that you never had a vision for that you know is led and empowered by Jesus because of the baptism. You say, well, what's so special about it? I don't know, but it's just in the Bible as being very special. So there's something spiritual, mystical, and beautiful about the significance of baptism. So Jesus infers that he was baptized and empowered by the Spirit at his baptism. It says, this is in Acts 1, 5, John truly baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now. So Jesus actually, very interesting here, he's baptized in water, but he's also baptized by the Spirit. Okay? So for some of us here, you may receive a baptism, and I'm not talking about you don't have the Holy Spirit, but I'm saying that you may experience a filling or a baptism of power through your baptism in water. So Jesus modeled that. Number three, number three, is a baptism into discipleship. A baptism into discipleship. So Jesus not only at the very beginning of his ministry got baptized, but he ends his ministry encouraging the disciples in their ministry to other people that would go forth to the whole world to immediately get them baptized. So look what he says. He says, Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations. I think I have that up there. There you go. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that have commanded you, and lo, I'm with you always, even to the end of the age. Amen. So Jesus' last command before he ascends to heaven is go make disciples and baptize them. So it's the first step. It's the first step of the discipleship model. So that's that I can say for me was huge. So that baptism was another step in that step of discipleship. So what do I mean by discipleship? Well, discipleship comes from the word matisseo, which is where we get the word math. It means to be a learner, it means to be a studier. So my prayer for all of you that are getting baptized is that there be something that happens in your heart, hopefully before you got baptized, but especially when and after you get baptized, that you start to have a love for this book. You start wanting to read it, wanting to meditate in it, want to see your life change through it. This is the key to everything in the power of the Holy Spirit for us to grow as you start to spend time in the Word. So the first thing is that it's a first step in discipleship. And you really see this with Peter, kind of interesting. Peter in Pentecost, that's Acts chapter 2, when Pentecost comes, we're gonna look at that next week. So, I know in two weeks. So in two weeks, we're gonna look at Pentecost. So that these people, 3,000 people, give their hearts to Christ, and then he says this. And I want before I read it, I want, I want you to see the correlation between what happens with the instrumentation of what had happened with Jesus, and now what's happening as Peter projects and telescopes into the future, he says this repent. Did that sound like John the Baptist? Repent and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins. That sounds exactly what the message of John was. So many believe Peter was the disciple of John who switched over to Jesus when Jesus got baptized. That's what tradition tells us. So then Peter said, repent, let every one of you be baptized in the name, the difference in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and then look what he says. And you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. See what he's doing? He's combining the baptism of John, repentance, and the baptism of Jesus, which probably he witnessed. He probably saw this whole thing happen. I don't know if he heard the voice of this is my beloved son, in whom I'm well pleased. I don't know. But he's combining both here in the book of Acts, which is really, really cool. So why get baptized? Why get baptized? Well, the gospel itself is embedded in the act of baptism. The whole act of baptism is the gospel reenacted. It's going under the water, the death of the old man, in a sense, you could say that this is a tomb. This is a tomb. It's a symbolic tomb, water. Going under the water is dying to your old life, dying to the old man, dying to the old self, and then resurrecting. Resurrecting the new life, coming out of the water, boom, coming up. And the word baptism is I've shared before. Baptizo means to die, d-y-e, to dye a different color. So baptizo would be the term that any uh Hebrew uh would have used at the time of Christ for dyeing clothes, for taking something like a white garment and then dyeing it red or dyeing it blue. That's that's baptizo, dipping, dipping in, covering, and I've seen those vats in Morocco when I was there, where you see them just drop it in there, they'll soak for like two hours, uh boiling hot, but it's reds and blues and blacks and greens, and then they come out different. That's baptism. That's baptism. But you're coming out, you're coming out with the resurrection power of Jesus. Now, for some of you already have that. For some of you don't have that. But God knows whether you have it or you don't. But He by virtue of being obedient and getting baptized, you're gonna get it. It's really cool, right? That's like the best thing. And I and you may feel it, you may not feel it. Don't trust your feelings. Believe. Believe you get it. Believe that you're dying to sell and you're raising in Christ with his resurrection power. So the spiritual, our spiritual blood is contaminated. Let me just say that. So I'm gonna call it our spiritual mitochondria. So our spiritual cell structure is tainted with sin. I'm going somewhere with this, so go with me on this. It's just a metaphor. That our blood, because of our sinful nature, is contaminated by sin, selfishness, arrogance, jealousy, all those things that are characteristic of our heart, which I talked a lot about on Easter. And so we have this tainted blood. So now turn to Romans 6. So this is where Paul describes the gospel embedded in baptism. So go to Romans 6. Follow me in this. Take you on a little quick journey in Romans 6. We're gonna start at verse 3. Verse 3. Or do you not know that as many of us were baptized into Christ Jesus, were baptized into his death. Therefore, we were buried with him. Remember what I said? You're buried under that water. It's a picture. And by the way, let me just say this: I do not believe that baptism is just symbolic. Some church traditions in Protestantism teach that baptism is just symbolic of an act. And I'm not gonna argue with that, but personally, I think there's actually something supernatural here. So when I say symbol, I just simply mean the act itself is symbolic of a tub with water in it, or a lake, or an ocean with water in it going under. But the act, as it were, of what's actually happening, there is a spiritual power in it that is very, very supernatural. So here we we read, do you not know that as many of us were baptized into Christ, Jesus were baptized into his death. So baptism is about identifying with the death of Christ. Jesus understood that only his death, listen, this is important, only his death could eradicate death. Only the death of Christ could eradicate death in our lives. We are slowly dying through sin, but he took our place and he died for us. So Romans 6.23 says, the wages of sin is death. So wages means a payment. So the payment for our sin is death. And we see it all around us, church. America is in big trouble because of the wages of sin. The wages of sin is death. Meaning that as we get addicted to something, the wages of sin is death. When I say death, we're all gonna physically die, but I mean spiritual separation from God. Some of you in this room are spiritually separated from God, and you're slowly dying, your bloodstream, your spiritual mitochondria, those cells are eating away at your heart, eating away at your body, and you just want to quit. And I'm telling you that it's time for you to die to that. It's time for you to go to Christ and say, Jesus, I cannot change. I've tried. I've tried all the different little solutions and little packets and magic formulas that are on the internet. And still, when I wake up in the morning, I'm lonely, I'm broken, and I'm separated from God. That's the wages of sin is death. But there's an answer. And there's a solution in Christ that's really, really exciting. Guess what? Let me read Romans 5 8. Listen, it's gonna be up on the screen. But God demonstrates his own love toward us in that while we were still sinners, I mean, still caught up in death, Christ died for us. Much more than that, having now been justified by his blood. Remember, I said our mitochondria is tainted by sin. Justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his son, much more having been reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. Hello. We need a blood. Transfusion. We need a blood transfusion. Baptism is about a blood transfusion. It's about replacing that sinful mitochondria that we all carry with the perfect, pure blood of Jesus. That's what was shed at Calvary. That's what was shed on that old rugged cross, the blood of Jesus that cleanses us from all our sin. That's right. That's right. So I went in recently and got blood work done. Lots of blood work done. And then you have this doctor, he looks at it and he can tell you everything about everything about you. You know, and what you're missing, what you're not missing, and all that, right? Okay, that's what works. But guess what? One of the first things they ask you, have you ever had AIDS? Have you ever had chemotherapy? Have you ever had cancer? And there's all these questions because they know that my blood could be tainted. Okay? So they need to know that. And if you ever are doing a blood transfusion for someone else, that's the first thing. Those are the questions they're gonna ask you, right? So listen, this is really important. Man cannot save man. Man's blood cannot be transferred into your bloodstream and save you into a new life of righteousness and resurrection power. Only Jesus can. And he was fully man, but he was also fully God who lived a perfect life. So Muhammad can't do it, Buddha can't do it, uh, the gurus that are out there can't do it. Only Christ can do that. That's why we're we've got this advantage over everybody else. That's why I don't care. I don't care if a Buddhist temple gets built in our city. I don't care if a Muslim temple gets built in our city. Bring on the competition. We win. We win. And so truth wins out. And God is moving, God is moving all across the world. Church, I was listening to a lecture by a lady, she was in Oxford, she was speaking at Oxford recently, and I was listening to her, I can't remember her name, she's Danish, and she was talking about the revival that's happening in Islam. Islam is so scared right now because so many are getting saved. It's just crazy. And it's like a revival is happening in the Muslim world. And so it's very, very exciting. So listen, this is look at verse 4. So, verse 4, therefore we are buried with him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. That's the gospel message. Old identity, I'm dead in sin. New identity, I'm dead to sin. We have a new identity buried with Christ. We're no longer alone. Ezekiel says it well. He says, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you. I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. So God takes that old heart of stone and he replaces it with his spirit, and he begins to give you a new heart. That's how we say you're born again. Listen, everyone that is getting baptized today has a good heart. You had a bad heart, now you've got a good heart. It's been replaced by Christ. Isn't that exciting? Verse 5. For we have been united together in the likeness of his death. Certainly we also shall be in the likeness of his resurrection, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, and the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. For he who has died has been freed from sin. So there you go. That's the reenactment of the gospel. And so you're rising up to this new life that we have in Christ. And he said, I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, though he die, he shall live again.

SPEAKER_00 26:18

Thank you for listening to the Road Church Podcast. We pray today's message has empowered you to make a difference in your world. For more information about The Road Church and to find more content like this, go to theroad.org. That's theroad.org.