SPEAKER_00: First Peter three, verse eighteen.
SPEAKER_00: For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and proclaimed the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey when God's patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water.
SPEAKER_00: Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him.
SPEAKER_00: This is the word of God.
SPEAKER_00: In the early church, baptisms were normally done in fountains.
SPEAKER_00: As the church expanded from a kind of Jewish setting in Jerusalem to more and more Gentile cities, baptisms took place more and more frequently in fountains.
SPEAKER_00: And when you picture fountains, I'm not talking about the things that, you know, like just sort of spraying water in the air, uh, but more like the kind of fountain you could go swimming in.
SPEAKER_00: Like you've seen, if you've been to old churches in Rome, you've seen these kind of fountains.
SPEAKER_00: They're often outside of it.
SPEAKER_00: In the Greek world, people could bathe in them, and churches started using them for baptisms.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes churches would meet in wealthier people's houses.
SPEAKER_00: They would have these often in their courtyard, like the entrance to their house.
SPEAKER_00: Oftentimes churches are meeting in catacombs or caves, graves kind of places, and they would generally place these fountains there.
SPEAKER_00: And they would only do baptisms once or twice a year, often on Easter and Pentecost, which are close together.
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't designed to be balanced throughout the year.
SPEAKER_00: People would spend a significant amount of time in preparation for baptism.
SPEAKER_00: There was always a danger that if you baptize somebody too early, and they were then subject to persecution.
SPEAKER_00: And what have they recanted?
SPEAKER_00: What have they apostasized?
SPEAKER_00: And so it was to nobody's benefit to rush baptisms.
SPEAKER_00: People, and when I say early church, I'm talking about from basically the book of Acts to the early 300s, those first 200 years of church history.
SPEAKER_00: And so baptism was often preceded by a long period of catechism, often up to a year.
SPEAKER_00: And it was at the moment of baptism where a person was then kind of transferring their ultimate allegiance from the Roman Empire, so to speak, to the church.
SPEAKER_00: And this is why people that weren't baptized generally were not subject to persecution.
SPEAKER_00: When somebody was baptized, their name would be written down, and it would often be hidden in walls around the church.
SPEAKER_00: Some churches kept baptismal logs.
SPEAKER_00: That was the membership, the early membership logs were like that.
SPEAKER_00: The Romans quickly discovered this, and when they invaded a church to seize people, or they discovered a church that was illegally meeting, one of the first things they would go after is those baptismal logs.
SPEAKER_00: And they'd find the list of the people who were baptized into church.
SPEAKER_00: And so there was kind of a detente here between the Roman Empire and churches where if somebody was attending a church but wasn't baptized, they weren't subject to persecution.
SPEAKER_00: In that sense, withholding baptism was a way of protecting people for a period of time.
SPEAKER_00: These fountains, many of which have been discovered, have artwork in them.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the artwork would be on the wall of the catacomb above it, sometimes it'd be on the base of the fountain.
SPEAKER_00: Churches today have artwork, usually above the baptismals as well.
SPEAKER_00: Most churches now have crosses above it, as ours does.
SPEAKER_00: That's very common in the world.
SPEAKER_00: But in the early church, they did not use crosses for that purpose.
SPEAKER_00: Probably because people were still being executed on crosses, so it'd be an odd thing to put on your wall.
SPEAKER_00: You can understand that.
SPEAKER_00: If people were still being executed on crosses today, we likely wouldn't have them on our wall, or at the very least, you wouldn't have one on your necklace.
SPEAKER_00: The most common artwork in the early church for the baptismals, for the walls above the church or in the church, it's an odd image.
SPEAKER_00: It's a picture of Noah.
SPEAKER_00: Normally, Noah would be in the Ark.
SPEAKER_00: Let me show you one of the, it's probably the oldest one that has been excavated.
SPEAKER_00: The Latin word for ark is sometimes translated chest, and so these early pictures of Noah have him sitting in what looks like a box or a chest.
SPEAKER_00: But that's the ark.
SPEAKER_00: It is not to scale.
SPEAKER_00: All the animals are not hiding under Noah's feet.
SPEAKER_00: It's not designed to communicate how Noah fit all the animals in the ark.
SPEAKER_00: It is designed to communicate that God protected Noah through water.
SPEAKER_00: The dove there, it's hard to see, but the dove is bringing the olive branch.
SPEAKER_00: The dove is emblematic, of course, in the church of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: So this became the most common image in a church.
SPEAKER_00: It was Noah being saved through water while the Spirit was ministering to him.
SPEAKER_00: It became a New Testament artwork that the Holy Spirit empowers the church as people are saved through baptism.
SPEAKER_00: Now, the exact artwork varies from church to church, of course.
SPEAKER_00: Thomas Kincaid hadn't been invented yet.
SPEAKER_00: Not everybody had the same painting.
SPEAKER_00: So some pictures of Noah are more elaborate, some he have beards, some he doesn't have beards.
SPEAKER_00: I read a whole journal article this week on the difference between how Noah's beard changed throughout the artwork.
SPEAKER_00: Eventually he and St.
SPEAKER_00: Peter became the identical beards, which prefigured the church.
SPEAKER_00: I don't buy that.
SPEAKER_00: But this is the oldest one.
SPEAKER_00: It's a fitting image for the church because of 1 Peter chapter 3.
SPEAKER_00: That God takes this image of Noah and through Peter's writing applies it to baptism.
SPEAKER_00: Now, also in the early church, this passage that we just read this morning was the most frequently used text on baptism.
SPEAKER_00: People wrote on it, preached about it, it became the kind of baptismal text.
SPEAKER_00: And for us Americans, it is more of a neglected text.
SPEAKER_00: We don't often look at it.
SPEAKER_00: I've never preached on it before.
SPEAKER_00: But in my reading of things in early church history, I've been drawn towards this as a pretty definitive teaching on baptism.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to bring you there this morning as well.
SPEAKER_00: Like I mentioned, the early church recognized the connection between Noah and baptism.
SPEAKER_00: Water becomes a frequent image in the New Testament for salvation and for the church.
SPEAKER_00: It is used in two different ways.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes water is used in the New Testament to speak of spirit baptism or an internal cleansing of the conscience.
SPEAKER_00: The theological word we use for that is the word regeneration.
SPEAKER_00: That's from Titus chapter 3, uses that word.
SPEAKER_00: He saved us, not according to the works that we've done in us by us, but according to his own mercy by the washing of regeneration.
SPEAKER_00: That's Titus 3.5.
SPEAKER_00: That God cleanses our hearts.
SPEAKER_00: Now, regeneration is just a word that means you're dead in your sins and trespasses, and then you're made alive.
SPEAKER_00: You're spiritually blind, and then God gives you spiritual sight.
SPEAKER_00: You're spiritually deaf, and then God opens your ears and lets you hear the word of God.
SPEAKER_00: Because remember, faith only comes through the word of God.
SPEAKER_00: Faith comes by hearing and hearing the words about Christ.
SPEAKER_00: That's how salvation comes.
SPEAKER_00: You place your faith in the gospel, which is from the text of Scripture.
SPEAKER_00: That doesn't mean you can't be saved unless you're physically holding the Bible, but it does mean you can't be saved unless you hear the words about Christ from the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: However, it gets to your ears.
SPEAKER_00: That's the external work.
SPEAKER_00: And you recognize when somebody's dead in their sins, the word of God just bounces off of them like toy arrows.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't penetrate the heart, it doesn't penetrate the conscience because they are spiritually dead.
SPEAKER_00: Their heart is stone.
SPEAKER_00: That's the language the Bible uses.
SPEAKER_00: And a stony heart, the seed of the Word of God, can't implant in it, it bounces off of it.
SPEAKER_00: And then the Lord changes somebody's heart by giving them spiritual life.
SPEAKER_00: The language the scripture uses is the circumcision of the heart.
SPEAKER_00: The flesh is pulled back, the stone is removed, a heart of flesh is given, the word of God is implanted in it, and the person goes from death to life.
SPEAKER_00: Now, the imagery of the New Testament of that is the washing of the water of the word.
SPEAKER_00: The word becomes transformative.
SPEAKER_00: The word is cleaning the heart and implanting faith in the heart and watering that faith, and the person grows in godliness.
SPEAKER_00: That's regeneration.
SPEAKER_00: You're saved against your will, but the Lord saves you by changing your will.
SPEAKER_00: You're resisting God, and then God takes you from resisting him to submitting to him.
SPEAKER_00: You go from blindness to sight and death to life.
SPEAKER_00: And the image is that you do that through the washing of the water of the word.
SPEAKER_00: That's also called being born again, by the way.
SPEAKER_00: Regeneration is one term for it.
SPEAKER_00: That's a kind of a fancier theological word that Paul uses in Titus.
SPEAKER_00: But, you know, Jesus just calls it being born a Nothin, which is the Greek word from above, born from above.
SPEAKER_00: Or it comes in English, born again.
SPEAKER_00: No one can even see the kingdom of God, Jesus says in John 3, verse 5, unless they're born again.
SPEAKER_00: And you can remember those verses.
SPEAKER_00: Titus 3.5, John 3.5.
SPEAKER_00: They're both 3-5.
SPEAKER_00: That's how I remember it.
SPEAKER_00: John 3.5, Jesus says, truly, truly I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_00: The water there speaks of the Word of God, washing the heart.
SPEAKER_00: It's an image from Ezekiel, where you are dead, and I will cleanse you with the word.
SPEAKER_00: I will wash you with the water of the word.
SPEAKER_00: And of course, the word operates with the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: The Word of God transforms the heart as the Spirit circumcises the heart, and your heart is transformed.
SPEAKER_00: It is cleansed.
SPEAKER_00: That's an internal, invisible working.
SPEAKER_00: The second way the New Testament uses the image of water is for baptism, for the actual ordinance of baptism, where a person goes underwater and comes up out of water.
SPEAKER_00: That's a visible presentation.
SPEAKER_00: Now, what's confusing is that both of these are called baptism because the image of water is used in both.
SPEAKER_00: So there's a spiritual baptism, which speaks of the washing of the water of the word of the heart, that's regeneration.
SPEAKER_00: And there's a physical baptism, which speaks of the submerging of water and the coming up in new life.
SPEAKER_00: Peter links onto both of those in verse 18.
SPEAKER_00: Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous.
SPEAKER_00: The context here of Peter is important.
SPEAKER_00: Christians are suffering.
SPEAKER_00: That's the bottom line of what Peter is dealing with throughout the whole epistle of Peter, but specifically in 1 Peter 3.
SPEAKER_00: Christians are suffering.
SPEAKER_00: Why are they suffering?
SPEAKER_00: Because they are forfeiting their own rights and embracing the righteousness of Christ over and against their rights in the world.
SPEAKER_00: There's example after example of that in 1 Peter 3.
SPEAKER_00: The first one is that of marriage.
SPEAKER_00: If you look at verse 1, wives be subject to your own husbands.
SPEAKER_00: So even if some don't obey the word, they could be won without a word by the conduct of their wives.
SPEAKER_00: This is an admonition for a wife in a difficult marriage.
SPEAKER_00: Peter says, Don't abandon your marriage.
SPEAKER_00: Stay in it.
SPEAKER_00: And you and you, it's very tempting to see why a wife would abandon her marriage because she thinks I've come to the end.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not, I didn't sign up to be treated like this.
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to be treated like this.
SPEAKER_00: I'm at the end of the rope, so to speak.
SPEAKER_00: And Peter's call is a call to suffer.
SPEAKER_00: That's the word that is frequently used in this chapter.
SPEAKER_00: He gives you the example of Sarah in verse 6, obeying Abram.
SPEAKER_00: Likewise, husbands live with their wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman so that their prayers can't be hindered.
SPEAKER_00: The bottom line of this passage is that you embrace suffering in this world because you recognize this world is not all there is.
SPEAKER_00: If this world is all there is, of course you would reject suffering.
SPEAKER_00: Like who wouldn't?
SPEAKER_00: But if this world is not all there is, then suffering can be embraced, especially when it is for righteousness' sake.
SPEAKER_00: That's verse 8.
SPEAKER_00: Have the same unity of mind.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 9, don't repay evil for evil or revile people who revile you.
SPEAKER_00: But on the contrary, bless those who persecute you.
SPEAKER_00: This is Christian ethics on steroids here.
SPEAKER_00: You're being persecuted, you're being reviled, you're being cursed.
SPEAKER_00: And Peter says, lean into that.
SPEAKER_00: Don't, it would be so tempting to return evil for evil, to return suffering for suffering.
SPEAKER_00: Peter says, no, don't do that.
SPEAKER_00: Embrace it.
SPEAKER_00: Embrace it, verse 12, because the eyes of Yahweh are on the righteous.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord is listening to those who pray while they're suffering.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 13, there's nothing's gonna truly harm you, spiritually speaking, here, if you're zealous for what is good.
SPEAKER_00: But verse 14, even if you suffer for righteousness' sake, you will still be blessed.
SPEAKER_00: Don't be afraid of suffering, he says.
SPEAKER_00: Don't be afraid of evildoers.
SPEAKER_00: Don't be afraid of it.
SPEAKER_00: Because God is watching you.
SPEAKER_00: And this is where your view of the resurrection and your view of the omnipresence of God is actually on display.
SPEAKER_00: As a person in suffering, really believe that God is good.
SPEAKER_00: It is better, verse 17 says, to suffer for doing good.
SPEAKER_00: If that should be God's will, then for doing evil.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, don't lash back.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 16, have a good conscience through your suffering.
SPEAKER_00: So that when you're slandered, those who revile your good behavior may be put to shame.
SPEAKER_00: People are slandering you for being a Christian, and because you don't fight back, everybody else on the outside sees who the shameful one is.
SPEAKER_00: If you fight back and you revile in return, or you push back in return, then the world is confused.
SPEAKER_00: They don't know the sides of this.
SPEAKER_00: But if if you do not revile but bless, then the lines are clear.
SPEAKER_00: Even the world looks at you as suffering for the sake of Christ and thinks, man, Jesus must be magnificent to empower that kind of person.
SPEAKER_00: But it's so tempting to think at that moment.
SPEAKER_00: I can't suffer like this anymore.
SPEAKER_00: And that point, Peter tells you, Christ also suffered.
SPEAKER_00: He too endured.
SPEAKER_00: And he makes you ask this question: Did Jesus deserve to suffer?
SPEAKER_00: Did he deserve his persecution?
SPEAKER_00: Did he deserve what was happening to him?
SPEAKER_00: And the easy answer that's on the top level here is obviously no.
SPEAKER_00: He was innocent, holy, undefiled, unstained by sin.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, they arrested him and charged him with saying, don't pay taxes to Caesar, because on Tuesday of that week they asked him, Should you pay taxes to Caesar?
SPEAKER_00: And he said yes.
SPEAKER_00: And so on Thursday of that week they charged him with saying, Don't pay taxes to Caesar, convict him, and sentence him to death.
SPEAKER_00: So, no, he did not deserve this at all.
SPEAKER_00: And yet, if you push a little bit deeper in verse 18, you recognize he did deserve his suffering.
SPEAKER_00: Not because of anything he did, but because of our sins which he took.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 18, the righteous for the unrighteous.
SPEAKER_00: That's the great exchange.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus was righteous and had never sinned.
SPEAKER_00: And then he takes on to himself our sin.
SPEAKER_00: Our sin is given to him, really and truly given to him.
SPEAKER_00: Now you hadn't even been born yet, so your sins hadn't been committed yet.
SPEAKER_00: And so this is what theologians refer to as a forensic accounting move here, a forensic transfer, or imputation is another fancy word, but it just means that truly, in a real way, your sins, though you had not done them yet, your sins are imputed or given or credited to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And so as Jesus is dying, your sins are given to him.
SPEAKER_00: So is the wrath of God being poured out on him is deserved by him, even though he was sinless, but because he possessed your sins at that moment.
SPEAKER_00: He, though being righteous, became unrighteous because it was our unrighteous deeds that were given to him.
SPEAKER_00: So that's what Peter means here, the righteous for the unrighteous.
SPEAKER_00: So he suffered for our sin.
SPEAKER_00: Why would he do that?
SPEAKER_00: Why would anybody endure suffering?
SPEAKER_00: Much less for somebody else's sin that's given to him, and the answer is given to you in verse 18, so that he might bring us to God.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus had a goal.
SPEAKER_00: And do you recognize that phrase to bring us to God?
SPEAKER_00: I just read it a second ago.
SPEAKER_00: It was what was described to wives earlier.
SPEAKER_00: So Peter didn't forget about you.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus also suffered to bring us to God.
SPEAKER_00: What a precious promise.
SPEAKER_00: Well, this is called the great exchange.
SPEAKER_00: Our sin becomes his, and his life becomes ours.
SPEAKER_00: So that's Peter's teaching here.
SPEAKER_00: Peter suffers, Peter describes Jesus as suffering physically.
SPEAKER_00: Notice it says in verse 18, being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit.
SPEAKER_00: So Peter is now embracing this twofold image, flesh and spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus was truly human.
SPEAKER_00: He was truly God, of course, but also truly human, with a true human body and a true human soul.
SPEAKER_00: His soul did not die on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: His body died on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: That's what he means by he suffered in the flesh, the Greek word sarx.
SPEAKER_00: It's just a word for flesh.
SPEAKER_00: His body died on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: He was put to death in the flesh.
SPEAKER_00: According to his humanity, his body died and was put into the grave.
SPEAKER_00: But does a human soul die?
SPEAKER_00: And the answer is no.
SPEAKER_00: Human souls never die.
SPEAKER_00: You can be accounted as spiritually dead because of Adam's sin.
SPEAKER_00: Your sin nature makes you spiritually dead, but your soul never truly dies.
SPEAKER_00: When you die, you speak of your body dying.
SPEAKER_00: But what happens to your soul?
SPEAKER_00: Well, until the resurrection of Christ, the souls of everybody who died went down.
SPEAKER_00: They went down to Sheol, to the grave.
SPEAKER_00: And so Jesus' physical body goes into the grave.
SPEAKER_00: His soul goes down to Sheol, where he proclaims victory over the demons and the devils.
SPEAKER_00: We'll talk more about that in a minute.
SPEAKER_00: And then his soul comes back to his body.
SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit re-energizes his body and he resurrects.
SPEAKER_00: So spiritually, he's made alive again, physically, he's made alive again.
SPEAKER_00: Both happen.
SPEAKER_00: So Peter's thought process here is endure suffering because it glorifies God.
SPEAKER_00: You're trusting in him.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus also suffered, and now Peter introduces he suffered physically and died physically, and he was made alive spiritually.
SPEAKER_00: Ultimately, he'll be made alive physically as well, but he's made alive spiritually.
SPEAKER_00: He's proclaiming victory.
SPEAKER_00: While his body was dead, his spirit was alive and victorious.
SPEAKER_00: What a contrast.
SPEAKER_00: The body decomposes in the grave while the spirit is doing victory laps in Sheol.
SPEAKER_00: Just an incredible image.
SPEAKER_00: So that embracing, physical, spiritual, reminds Peter and reminds us of that twofold baptism: spirit baptism, physical water baptism.
SPEAKER_00: And this is, of course, prefigured by Noah.
SPEAKER_00: This is where Peter goes because Jesus physically died, spiritually victorious.
SPEAKER_00: Noah too, verse 20, because those spirits formerly did not obey when God's patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, people died, the whole world died, eight people were saved.
SPEAKER_00: Baptism, verse 21, corresponds to this.
SPEAKER_00: And now Peter says the most outrageous phrase in 1 Peter 3 is that baptism now saves you.
SPEAKER_00: The ESV dilutes it a little bit with some commas, baptism, comma, which corresponds to this, comma, now saves you.
SPEAKER_00: But the the thrust of the Greek is crystal clear.
SPEAKER_00: Baptism now saves you, Peter says.
SPEAKER_00: Don't read this verse, please.
SPEAKER_00: So what does Peter mean when he says baptism now saves you?
SPEAKER_00: That'll be our outline.
SPEAKER_00: This morning, there's three ways that baptism now saves you.
SPEAKER_00: Peter describes two of them directly, third implicitly, and we'll cover all of them right here.
SPEAKER_00: The first way baptism now saves you is by burying you in a watery grave.
SPEAKER_00: Baptism saves you by burying you.
SPEAKER_00: And you think that doesn't sound like saving me.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna save you by drowning you.
SPEAKER_00: Well, yes, I mean I can't save you from drowning unless you're drowning.
SPEAKER_00: You can't be saved from a watery grave unless you first go to your watery grave.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what Peter says in verse 2.1.
SPEAKER_00: Baptism corresponds to this.
SPEAKER_00: Now, the this here is what the devil and demons did in the days of Noah.
SPEAKER_00: So you really do have to step back here.
SPEAKER_00: And for the Jews, this was very common teaching.
SPEAKER_00: The Jews understood what happened in the days of Noah.
SPEAKER_00: We don't so much now.
SPEAKER_00: Gentiles not so much now.
SPEAKER_00: The thing that would be jarring for the Jews reading this passage is that Gentiles can be baptized just like Jews.
SPEAKER_00: That's what would freak them out.
SPEAKER_00: We don't have a problem with that.
SPEAKER_00: We stumble over the demons and the spirits in the days of Noah.
SPEAKER_00: So we have opposite problems of the Jews.
SPEAKER_00: So it's worth stepping back.
SPEAKER_00: Do you remember when God created the world, he gave it to Adam and Eve to have dominion over and told them to be fruitful and multiply?
SPEAKER_00: The devil looked at the world.
SPEAKER_00: He wanted dominion over the world.
SPEAKER_00: Isaiah and Ezekiel both describe this.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 8 describes this, Hebrews 2 describes this.
SPEAKER_00: The devil wanted dominion over the world.
SPEAKER_00: Because it was beautiful.
SPEAKER_00: It was the capstone of God's creation.
SPEAKER_00: And instead of giving it to the devil, God gave it to Adam and Eve.
SPEAKER_00: Dirty, stinking, no-flying Adam and Eve.
SPEAKER_00: This produces bitterness in the devil.
SPEAKER_00: He wanted to be like God, and God expels the devil from heaven.
SPEAKER_00: The devil wanted to be like God, meaning have dominion on the earth and gets expelled from heaven.
SPEAKER_00: And the devil then attacks Adam and Eve, and he attacks them at the point of dominion.
SPEAKER_00: Adam and Eve are supposed to be fruitful and multiply and subdue the earth.
SPEAKER_00: The devil attacks that.
SPEAKER_00: Eve steps away from her husband's protection.
SPEAKER_00: Adam abdicates his protection.
SPEAKER_00: They both abandon the roles that God gave them.
SPEAKER_00: They give into the devil's sin.
SPEAKER_00: They both then promptly blame everyone.
SPEAKER_00: They blame the snake, they blame God, they blame each other, they blame the whole world basically for their sin.
SPEAKER_00: It's everybody's fault except them, as they're naked and hiding from God.
SPEAKER_00: The whole thing is absurd.
SPEAKER_00: God says, Where are you?
SPEAKER_00: And they're like, huh.
SPEAKER_00: You understand when God asks a question, it's never for God's own benefit.
SPEAKER_00: God knows where they are.
SPEAKER_00: They're naked, ashamed, and hiding and sinful and all that.
SPEAKER_00: God covers their sin and then gives them a promise.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, he tells the devil that you're going to be destroyed, man.
SPEAKER_00: You're on the losing side of this.
SPEAKER_00: Specifically, you're going to be crushed by an offspring, a seed of the woman.
SPEAKER_00: There's going to be a human being.
SPEAKER_00: Do you remember the devil hated people because he wanted dominion on the earth?
SPEAKER_00: And God will, in a twist of his divine plan, God will defeat the devil through a human being.
SPEAKER_00: It's one thing for the devil to get owned by other angels, but that's not what God's going to do.
SPEAKER_00: The devil is going to get owned by a human, the very people he thought he was superior to then.
SPEAKER_00: Will be a seed of the woman.
SPEAKER_00: That seed one day will crush the devil's head.
SPEAKER_00: It's written in English, bruise the devil's head, and his foot will be bruised.
SPEAKER_00: The word bruised has changed over English history.
SPEAKER_00: The word bruised used to be like obliterated.
SPEAKER_00: Now it means like it's a mark you have on your arm because you bumped your dresser or something like that.
SPEAKER_00: That's not what the word originally means.
SPEAKER_00: The word means to be bashed in.
SPEAKER_00: The word means a bruise in a banana, not a bruise on an apple.
SPEAKER_00: You know the difference?
SPEAKER_00: The devil is going to have his head bashed in by this human being.
SPEAKER_00: The human being himself will be struck.
SPEAKER_00: His foot will be bit, which makes sense.
SPEAKER_00: If you're fighting a snake, you're going to get bit on the foot.
SPEAKER_00: Especially if you're bashing in his head.
SPEAKER_00: Where do you think you're going to get bit?
SPEAKER_00: On the foot.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what happens.
SPEAKER_00: But there's no mystery about who wins.
SPEAKER_00: The devil will lose.
SPEAKER_00: His head's bashed in.
SPEAKER_00: The seed of Adam and Eve will win.
SPEAKER_00: He got his foot bit.
SPEAKER_00: So now you fast forward.
SPEAKER_00: Sin is proliferating on the earth.
SPEAKER_00: And demons come and cohabitate with human beings.
SPEAKER_00: They're again attacking dominion.
SPEAKER_00: That's their objective.
SPEAKER_00: Undercut this promise of a savior coming from the human race, dilute the human race.
SPEAKER_00: I have no idea genetically how this worked.
SPEAKER_00: I have no idea how angels procreated with human beings.
SPEAKER_00: I just know that it happened.
SPEAKER_00: And God responds by flooding the world and putting those sinning demons in angel jail.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't put all demons in custody, only those who sinned in the days of Noah.
SPEAKER_00: Other demons still roam the world.
SPEAKER_00: And if you wonder why doesn't God put all demons in angel jail?
SPEAKER_00: And that's because God is glorified by their activity.
SPEAKER_00: He uses a lying spirit to confound King Ahab.
SPEAKER_00: He uses a demon to confuse David and do the census.
SPEAKER_00: And then God ends up building the temple out of that fiasco.
SPEAKER_00: He the most obvious example is the devil himself fills Judas to betray Jesus so that he goes to the cross.
SPEAKER_00: And then you get the empty grave in the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: Every time a demon or a devil attacks somebody, it comes back on them like a boomerang.
SPEAKER_00: God always wins.
SPEAKER_00: But these specific demons are put into custody and jail.
SPEAKER_00: And God floods the earth, killing everyone.
SPEAKER_00: Fast forward now to Jesus' own death.
SPEAKER_00: His body's put in the grave, his soul goes to the grave, and it says in verse 19, his soul goes down to Sheol and proclaims victory to the spirits in prison.
SPEAKER_00: Mic drop time in Sheol.
SPEAKER_00: Because Jesus was victorious.
SPEAKER_00: The human being beat the devil.
SPEAKER_00: That's the point.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus was victorious.
SPEAKER_00: Christ suffered for sins, then later was victorious.
SPEAKER_00: Baptism saves us by linking us to that death that Jesus suffered.
SPEAKER_00: Romans 6, 3.
SPEAKER_00: Don't you know this?
SPEAKER_00: All those who are baptized are baptized into Jesus' death.
SPEAKER_00: We were buried with him, Romans 6 says, in baptism.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus described his own death in terms of baptism.
SPEAKER_00: He said he has a baptism with which he must be baptized with.
SPEAKER_00: And great is my distress until it is accomplished.
SPEAKER_00: Submission underwater, submersion underwater demonstrates that death.
SPEAKER_00: You're put underwater, you're going down to die.
SPEAKER_00: That's the image here.
SPEAKER_00: In the days of Noah, Peter's mind here, in the days of Noah, God reigned out judgment on the whole earth.
SPEAKER_00: Including on Noah and the Ark.
SPEAKER_00: Noah did not have an umbrella keeping him dry.
SPEAKER_00: The Ark is being pounded by the wrath of God, pounded by the wrath of God.
SPEAKER_00: The ark itself was the protection.
SPEAKER_00: There's no protection outside of it.
SPEAKER_00: The ark itself was the protection.
SPEAKER_00: So God's wrath rains down, destroys the whole world, except for those who place their faith in the ark.
SPEAKER_00: And they were saved, not out of the flood, but through the flood.
SPEAKER_00: That's Peter's image.
SPEAKER_00: The whole world died, he says.
SPEAKER_00: Only eight lived.
SPEAKER_00: Baptism corresponds to that.
SPEAKER_00: We die with Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Our sins become his.
SPEAKER_00: Closest I've come is swallowing Coke Zero down the wrong pipe.
SPEAKER_00: But I have read firsthand accounts of people who have drowned and been rescued.
SPEAKER_00: As your lungs fill with water, eventually you lose oxygen, the brain turns off, the person passes out.
SPEAKER_00: You can be there's a moment of time where a person can still be rescued after that.
SPEAKER_00: They're considered to have drowned.
SPEAKER_00: There's no oxygen deprivation, they're unconscious.
SPEAKER_00: But if they're rescued, their lungs can be cleared and the blood can begin taking oxygen in and they can be rescued.
SPEAKER_00: And almost universally, people that have had that experience describe the sensation as burning.
SPEAKER_00: The lungs don't, you know, have nerves that are often activated, but as water fills, those nerves are activated, and they give the body a sense of burning, which creates a panic and, of course, a release of adrenaline.
SPEAKER_00: Try to fight and to try to float and all of this, and it's a burning sensation until the person is unconscious.
SPEAKER_00: That's the image of baptism.
SPEAKER_00: You go down and you die.
SPEAKER_00: The whole world was drowned.
SPEAKER_00: As I mentioned, this is common teaching in Judaism.
SPEAKER_00: They understood that God destroyed the whole world, even the demons that were there.
SPEAKER_00: You know, we lose sight of that story so often.
SPEAKER_00: We name our we use Noah themes in nurseries.
SPEAKER_00: That would freak out the early church.
SPEAKER_00: You know everybody died, don't you?
SPEAKER_00: That's the picture.
SPEAKER_00: Noah was, of course, named as the one who would give rest.
SPEAKER_00: That's what the word means.
SPEAKER_00: And he did bring salvation through the ark, which is of course an image of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Colossians 2 12, we were buried with him in baptism.
SPEAKER_00: We go down to the water.
SPEAKER_00: This symbolizes dying to the things of this world.
SPEAKER_00: Romans 6 3.
SPEAKER_00: Don't you know that all of us who've been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?
SPEAKER_00: This is the dying to your life.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I fear that we make too low of a standard on baptism.
SPEAKER_00: We make baptism kind of a mental ascent of the gospel, or a person says they accept Jesus kind of thing.
SPEAKER_00: The image of baptism is a person who dies to his way of life.
SPEAKER_00: It says, I surrender.
SPEAKER_00: I'm dead.
SPEAKER_00: Secondly, baptism saves you by raising you to spiritual life.
SPEAKER_00: It kills you by lowering you to spiritual death, but it raises you by linking you to spiritual life.
SPEAKER_00: Believers don't stay underwater.
SPEAKER_00: There are no bodies at the bottom of the baptismal.
SPEAKER_00: I've never lost anyone.
SPEAKER_00: There have been some close calls.
SPEAKER_00: But I've managed to fish everyone out.
SPEAKER_00: In baptism, you raise to newness of life.
SPEAKER_00: You don't stay dead.
SPEAKER_00: Colossians 2.12, you were raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God who raised Jesus from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: Philippians calls this resurrection power.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus' soul comes up and is reunited with his body, and the spirit energizes his body, and he leaves the grave.
SPEAKER_00: That's a resurrection power.
SPEAKER_00: That same spirit, Paul tells the Philippians, is operating in you.
SPEAKER_00: It's pictured by baptism as you are emerged from the water.
SPEAKER_00: You have a union with Christ and the life of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Romans 6, 4.
SPEAKER_00: Baptism illustrates that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too walk in newness of life.
SPEAKER_00: You come out of the water looking forward and excited about what's ahead of you.
SPEAKER_00: Peter says it this way: You're raised with an appeal to God for a good conscience, verse 21 says.
SPEAKER_00: You're coming out of the water with an appeal to God.
SPEAKER_00: Sanctify me, Lord.
SPEAKER_00: I'm counting the cost.
SPEAKER_00: I'm giving you my life.
SPEAKER_00: All of my days I'm going to be spent with you.
SPEAKER_00: If I live 70 more years, there's 70 years for you.
SPEAKER_00: That's what he means, an appeal with a good conscience.
SPEAKER_00: The word appeal is a very unusual word.
SPEAKER_00: This is the only time it's used in the New Testament.
SPEAKER_00: It's used a few times in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: It's used all over the Greco-Roman world, though.
SPEAKER_00: It's a contractual term, it's a covenantal term.
SPEAKER_00: It's like the terms of service.
SPEAKER_00: You're entering into an agreement where you say, I will do this, and in exchange, you're going to give me that.
SPEAKER_00: But it's forward-looking.
SPEAKER_00: It's a specific legal term to mean if I fill my end of the bargain, will you give me these things?
SPEAKER_00: That's why it's translated into English here as an appeal.
SPEAKER_00: That's a great way to translate it.
SPEAKER_00: Like I want this.
SPEAKER_00: That's what baptism demonstrates.
SPEAKER_00: You come up and your conscience is cleansed.
SPEAKER_00: You've counted the cost, and you're saying, I'm the general with my army and I know my troops, and I don't know all that's in front of me on the battlefield, but I know enough about life to know that I'm all in for Jesus the rest of my days.
SPEAKER_00: Give me 70 more years, Lord, and there will be all spent for you.
SPEAKER_00: It's not baptized into perfection.
SPEAKER_00: Of course, you're going to have the rises and falls of your spiritual life, but it is baptized into an appeal with a good conscience.
SPEAKER_00: This is a common verse people in some infant Baptist traditions point to and say, see, baptism is saving you.
SPEAKER_00: But this verse really undercuts infant baptism because the baby does not make an appeal with a good conscience.
SPEAKER_00: And so what is often said is, oh, it's the parents who's their consciences are clear towards their baby.
SPEAKER_00: That is not at all what Paul is describing here.
SPEAKER_00: I mean Peter's describing.
SPEAKER_00: He's not describing a mechanical approach to baptism here, where you go under the water, some kind of ritual like circumcision.
SPEAKER_00: This is not a mechanical operation at all.
SPEAKER_00: He even says that here with not as the removal of dirt from the body.
SPEAKER_00: It's not that the water is washing the dirt off of you, it's that it's making an appeal.
SPEAKER_00: Counting the cost.
SPEAKER_00: Looking forward.
SPEAKER_00: Baptism is significant, not because of what happens in the water, although that itself is representing the full gospel there with the death and resurrection of Christ, but of the declarative effect of the person saying, I have a cleansed conscience to live for the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Hebrews 10.22 uses the same kind of language.
SPEAKER_00: Let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith.
SPEAKER_00: With our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience, that's the inward, invisible sprinkling of the Word of God, and our bodies washed with pure water.
SPEAKER_00: That's the external act of baptism.
SPEAKER_00: You have both.
SPEAKER_00: Your heart is transformed by the Holy Spirit, and you raise a newness of life.
SPEAKER_00: Believers of baptism can be confident on the basis of the work of the crucified Lord and Savior.
SPEAKER_00: Their appeal from a good conscience will be answered.
SPEAKER_00: Because Jesus was resurrected from the grave, verse 21 says.
SPEAKER_00: Because he rose, we will rise with him.
SPEAKER_00: The confidence of Noah in the ark is the confidence of Christians in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, Noah had confidence, of course.
SPEAKER_00: He believed the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: That's why he's in the ark.
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure there are moments of doubt, man, as the water comes up above whatever window is there or whatever, that thing is shaking back and forth.
SPEAKER_00: What's the first thing Noah did when he got off the ark?
SPEAKER_00: Made a sacrifice.
SPEAKER_00: Worships God.
SPEAKER_00: That's our image in baptism.
SPEAKER_00: Noah offers God a sacrifice, an animal sacrifice.
SPEAKER_00: Man, if you had all the animals in the whole world in your ark, the last thing you would do is offer an animal sacrifice.
SPEAKER_00: Kids, that's why there's no unicorns.
SPEAKER_00: Sorry.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: But he very least worships with the animals when he comes off the ark.
SPEAKER_00: He offers a sacrifice, and the Lord says, I'll never drown the earth again.
SPEAKER_00: Christians rise from the water finally.
SPEAKER_00: Baptism unites you to the visual visible, the visible church.
SPEAKER_00: It buries you in a watery grave, it raises you to spiritual life, and it unites you to the visible church.
SPEAKER_00: Now you track the imagery here.
SPEAKER_00: Invisible inward regeneration is spirit baptism and unites you to the invisible church.
SPEAKER_00: The baptism you can't see unites you to the church you can't see.
SPEAKER_00: Visible water baptism unites you to the visible and public church.
SPEAKER_00: Invisible regeneration, invisible church, all the body of believers of all time.
SPEAKER_00: Visible baptism unites you to the visible church.
SPEAKER_00: And this is where Peter goes.
SPEAKER_00: He starts, it's not clear in Peter here, but he starts now addressing people with the plurality.
SPEAKER_00: Since verse 4, chapter 4, verse 1, since Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same way of thinking.
SPEAKER_00: Don't live for the human passions.
SPEAKER_00: He's speaking of the separation from the world.
SPEAKER_00: Now joined to the church is the idea.
SPEAKER_00: Don't live like the Gentiles in verse 3.
SPEAKER_00: Because you have in verse 6 the gospel that was preached, even to those who are dead.
SPEAKER_00: He's going back to the days of Noah again.
SPEAKER_00: They might live in the Spirit the way God does.
SPEAKER_00: And it's implicit here, but it is explicit in other passages.
SPEAKER_00: 1 Corinthians 12, verse 13.
SPEAKER_00: We were all baptized in one spirit into one body.
SPEAKER_00: The water baptism then joins you to the visible church.
SPEAKER_00: It's the marker to everybody of which side you're on.
SPEAKER_00: You come to church for a while and it's unclear.
SPEAKER_00: Then you decide I'm I'm choosing sides.
SPEAKER_00: I'm taking the side of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to live my life for him.
SPEAKER_00: When I was a high school kid, I was not a Christian.
SPEAKER_00: I started spending time with a Christian.
SPEAKER_00: His parents weren't saved, they didn't care, but his he had a grandmother who was saved.
SPEAKER_00: And she saw him spending time with me and she forbid it.
SPEAKER_00: She said, You can no longer spend time with Jesse.
SPEAKER_00: He's a bad influence on you, which was true.
SPEAKER_00: Granted, it was true.
SPEAKER_00: She had discernment, that woman.
SPEAKER_00: Thankful that my friend disobeyed and kept sharing the gospel with me and eventually got saved.
SPEAKER_00: But it wasn't until I got baptized that grandma understood what happened.
SPEAKER_00: As the marker to the church.
SPEAKER_00: Like now he's changed sides.
SPEAKER_00: That's how the church keeps track of who's in.
SPEAKER_00: I loved in the testimony this morning.
SPEAKER_00: You heard Avery say, you know, this is why I'm presenting myself to the church, and I want the church to keep me accountable for my sins, and I want to be confronted, and I want to live my life here.
SPEAKER_00: What a perfect image of baptism in that.
SPEAKER_00: That's why baptisms have always been done in the church.
SPEAKER_00: You don't baptize your friends or, you know, in a park or whatever.
SPEAKER_00: It's that's not how the church has ever really done it.
SPEAKER_00: It's been modeled through life in the church.
SPEAKER_00: I know some of you might be thinking about the Ethiopian eunuch.
SPEAKER_00: He wasn't baptized in a church.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's no churches in Ethiopia at the time.
SPEAKER_00: Cut the guy some slack.
SPEAKER_00: He's doing the best he can.
SPEAKER_00: He's on his way, okay?
SPEAKER_00: He's traveling.
SPEAKER_00: The testimony of the church is the fact that the gospel works.
SPEAKER_00: This thing actually works.
SPEAKER_00: Noah came off the ark.
SPEAKER_00: Baptism corresponds to this.
SPEAKER_00: Acts 2.41.
SPEAKER_00: Those who received his word were baptized and they were added to the church that day, 3,000 souls.
SPEAKER_00: And this is how baptism has been carried out ever since.
SPEAKER_00: Instituted by John, imitated by Christ, and implemented in the church.
SPEAKER_00: Baptism, in that sense, marks the front door to the church.
SPEAKER_00: Last week I said communion marks the back door of the church.
SPEAKER_00: Communion makes sure that once you're in, you can't go too long without being tact, you know, tactically confronted with the gospel, touching it in your hands.
SPEAKER_00: Baptism means you can't sneak in the church without going through the gospel, literally and physically through the gospel, buried with Christ, raised in newness of life.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we're thankful that you give this invitation to the world, that Peter was saved through his faith in the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: As Noah was saved, and those who are with him, through trusting you, I pray for anyone who's here today that has never trusted you with their life.
SPEAKER_00: I pray that you would use the words of verse 18 to prick their conscience that Christ suffered the righteous for the unrighteous.
SPEAKER_00: We are unrighteous, God, and yet Christ suffered for us.
SPEAKER_00: We're so thankful for the precious promises of the gospel that you saved those who come to you.
SPEAKER_00: We're thankful for the picture of baptism, death to life, blindness to sight, drowning to thriving.
SPEAKER_00: We were drowning in our sins, Lord, but you raised us and filled us with your spirit.
SPEAKER_00: We're so thankful for that.
SPEAKER_00: We give you thanks for it in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: And now, for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.
SPEAKER_00: If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, ibc.church.
SPEAKER_00: If you want more information about the Master Seminary or our location here in Washington, D.C., please go to tms.edu.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you're not a member of a local church and you live in the Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emmanuel.
SPEAKER_00: I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service.
SPEAKER_00: But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church.
SPEAKER_00: Now may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel boldly.