Baptism Matthew 28:18-20

The same is true when we actually meet His heart. We discover His love and we want to proclaim it to everyone. We are not ashamed. We want everyone to know, whether they understand or they don't understand, whether they think you're crazy or they don't think you're crazy, whether they're excited or they're not excited, we still want to proclaim it because Christ has become that love in our lives. And one way to proclaim and tell the world is by following the Lord and believe His baptism. Well, again, I'd like to welcome you. I'm excited that you're here to be a witness. Judge, I was thinking a number of thoughts as we get ready to see the baptismal service. All churches are different. And even within denominations or within associations, churches are different. We sing different hymns and different styles of music. Of course, everyone should know all the hymns I grew up with, right? Those are the only right ones, the ones I know. Our church has the only right kind of instruments, or some churches have none at all. And music is kind of a controversy in a lot of churches, the style of music and so on. We're all different. We structure our services differently. Would you believe some churches have the audacity to take an offering instead of put a box in the back? They actually pass the plate. Can you believe that? They put the words of the music or the notes on the wall instead of using a hymn book. How dare they do such a thing? We decorate differently. How many churches look like ours? Some days, I hope not many, but I've been in other churches like Walmart churches. Pretty nice, okay? And so we decorate differently. I come across some that are similar, but they're still not the same. They have different little touches here and there. So we're not here today to argue church theology or polity or talk about do others do things better than us or do we do things better than them. Our purpose today is to celebrate and witness a very important decision in the life of Adam, who is being baptized this morning. To take a few minutes and explain why we here baptize the way we do and what it means for us. I was, again, as I mentioned earlier, I had not mentioned baptism to Adam. And he came and he's been here, I don't know, he's been here about a month. And he said, I need to be baptized. Okay, so I baptized the baby, I want to be baptized. And I was like, no. So I need to be baptized. And we talked about it, I made sure he understood what he was doing and so on. And he's perfectly clear on what he's doing. I didn't have to, I didn't even mention it. I was very excited about that. The God that led him to that point. And so, as we talked about it, I said, well, let's set a date. And so today was the day he picked. Excuse me. I never knew it was going to be present in our services. Perhaps there are some, and there's not many today, but there's some who have never seen anything like this baptism before in their life. Never seen this. You've seen other styles or other methods, but you've never seen this. Malachi's in the back saying, I've never seen it. That's how long it's been since we've had baptism. So I hope when we're done today, you'll understand what we believe and why we do what we do a little better. Why we baptize people the way we do. Some have seen this lots of times. Please celebrate with Adam as he's being baptized. Encourage him in his faith. If you have your copy of Scripture, please turn with me to chapter 28. Before I knew we were going to do this, we're going to do it today. Matthew chapter 28. I want to consider two things. First of all, I want to consider the commission. And then I want to consider the commands. If you don't have a Bible this morning, feel free to look on with somebody, or you can listen as we do this. Before we look at Matthew chapter 28, let's stop and have a word of prayer. Father, thank you for this great day, and thank you for the opportunity of being here. Thank you for all those who are here. I do pray for those who couldn't be here. Some are sick, some are traveling. They have other ministries going on, a lot of things going on in their lives. So I pray you bless them, you encourage them to bring them back again next opportunity they have to be here with us. I thank you for our visitors this morning. I thank you for Adam and his testimony, his willingness to follow you and step through with believers in baptism. We bless him as he does this, and then as he continues to go on forward in his relationship with you. That you help him to grow, and you bless him. Father, I ask now that you would just be with us. May the Holy Spirit teach us, and guide us, and lead us this morning. In Jesus' name we ask it, and give you the praise. Amen. My first point this morning is the commission. The commission. Again, we just looked at this a couple weeks ago, but it's very fitting for our purposes again today. I am with you always, even to the end of the age. Amen. This is often referred to as the great commission. While I've heard this broken down in many ways, in many different directions, I believe the most common is to consider it as one command, and we're going to do that today. We're going to consider it as one command, with three participles, or three instructions, or three parts of that command, however you want to word that. And the breakdown goes like this. First of all is the command. What is the command? The command is to make disciples of all nations. If you look at Matthew chapter 28 verse 19 again, it says, Go therefore and make disciples of all nations. A disciple is a follower. So you can have disciples of lots of things. You can have disciples of religions. You can have disciples of teachers. Just be a follower, a follower of what they teach, a follower of what they do. In this case, we're making disciples for Jesus Christ. And we're going to come back to explain that in a minute. So the command is to go and make disciples. That's the command, make disciples. The first part of that command, then, is to go, or while going, or as we are going, wherever we go. It might be maybe to the store, maybe to school, maybe to work, wherever you go. As you are going, you are to speak of Christ. You are to make disciples of those you come in contact with. Again, I'll throw this in there. We aren't the ones that can actually make the disciples. We can't make people believe. The God, the Holy Spirit does that. But we are the instrument to go and present the gospel. And as we're presenting the gospel, the idea, then, is to make disciples of those who will listen, those who will accept. The second instruction, then, is to baptize. I put baptizing them in my notes. Again, if you look at verse 19, it says, Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, secondly baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Now, who is the them? It says baptizing them. Who is them? That would be the disciples. Again, now, instruction number three is to teach. Teaching them, Matthew 28, 20, teaching them to observe all things I have commanded you. This is a lifetime of learning and growing. So we are to make disciples. How are we to do that? We're to go. Or while we're going. We're supposed to talk about Jesus everywhere we go. Now, I think we all can work on that. I know I have a lot of work to do with that. I can talk about a lot of other things. Sometimes I don't get Jesus in there. But that's the thought. While we're going, we have an opportunity to share God's Word. Share the Gospel. Tell people about Christ. After they come to Jesus Christ, they're going to be baptized. That's the second part of that command. The third part is what we call discipling. It's funny because we play a word, right? So what we call discipling is what Jesus says to teach. That is to teach them what Christ said. Teach them what the Word of God says to help them grow in their faith. And so those three commands or those three instructions are there. And it is a lifetime of learning and growing. Eventually you get to a point where you should be able to grow on your own. You should be able to do and understand things on your own. Be able to find the answers on your own. But in the beginning, we have to teach others. So we're going to make disciples. Go back to that thought. Go and make disciples. What is a disciple? What is a follower of Christ? How do we become a follower of Christ? Now, I believe it is important what church you go to. And I'm not promoting any one denomination or anything like that. But whatever church you need to go to needs to be preaching and teaching the Word of God. No matter what name tag is on the outside. It doesn't matter what the name is. I saw a church down at home. What was the name of that church? It was like the First Baptist, Seventh-day Adventist. It was about this long. It had every name of every kind of weird denomination down there in it. Down in southern Missouri. I don't even know if they still exist. So it doesn't matter what name is on the outside of the church. You have independent churches. You have Baptist churches. I mean, you go down the list. You have all kinds of churches. You have some that are unaffiliated with anything. And the thing is, what are they preaching? What are they teaching? Are they teaching the Word of God? Did you hear about the latest movie? Are they teaching the Word of God? Or are they stuck in some political or social issue? Now, I realize that sometimes when we preach the Word of God, politics, we don't preach politics. Some people say, well, that's a political issue. Well, it's not. It's a biblical issue. Politics has stolen it from us. So there. But so we do run into some of that, or some social issues. Again, when you're preaching, social issues do come into it. But it's biblical. Are they sticking with the biblical text? Are they teaching what the Bible teaches about these issues? Unfortunately, there are many churches today that are not teaching God's Word in its entirety. They pick and they choose different passages, or they skip the Bible completely. I remember, even when I was little, that was a couple years ago. I was a kid. I went to Sunday school with one of my cousins. And I remember the Sunday school lesson literally was on who saw the movie, whatever the movie was. I don't remember. It was like I said, that was 50 years ago. And so whatever it was, and that's the whole lesson. They never did get to any application, nothing. They just talked about who saw the movie. I had no clue because I didn't see the movie, so I was kind of lost anyway. But there was no, I don't remember any spiritual application. I don't remember anything. They didn't bring around anything biblical whatsoever. Unfortunately, there are many churches today that are not teaching the Word of God in its entirety. And they go under a variety of names and denominational flavors. Secondly, going to a particular church or any church at all does not make you a Christian or a follower of Christ. I remember, and this is dumb, but I remember way back when somebody saying, yeah, going to church doesn't make you a Christian anymore than going to McDonald's makes you a Happy Meal. Okay? It's just, that's just the way it is. We can go to church all day long. It doesn't make us a Christian. It doesn't make us a follower of Christ. I know many who faithfully go to church on Sunday. They're there on Sunday morning, and their outward appearance is that, while they're there, is that a very holy, religious person. They might sit on the front row. They might sing really loud. They might give lots of money and make a big show out of it. They do all of these things, and it looks really good. Okay, it looks like they're really, really into the thing. But then they leave the church on Sunday morning, and they leave all of that at the door as they're walking out. And that outward appearance disappears in the following Christ, the first thing on their minds, Monday through the next Saturday. And then Sunday comes, and they put on those religious clothes again and walk back in the door. Now, Christianity is a religion. Okay? I mean, in the terminology, if you look, it's a religion. But being a Christian is not. And let me explain what I mean by that. The word religion has many definitions. There are many religions in the world today. Not all of them are preaching and teaching God's word. Some of them are even very cultic. Some of them are satanic. Some of them are occultic. But they're still part of the classification of religion. Not all of them even pretend to be of Christian orientation. You talk about Muslims. You talk about Buddhists. You talk about Sikhs. Well, Sikhs would kind of maybe come along that line a little bit more. But so you're talking about different groups that are not even Christian oriented, but they still fall into this category of being a religion. Being a true Christian means we have a real living relationship with God. What do I mean by that? Okay, this relationship begins with salvation. So how do we obtain salvation? We start a relationship with Christ. I believe the Bible teaches us, first of all, that we are all sinners. We've all fallen short of the glory of God. In fact, Romans 3.23 says we're all in sin if we're short of the glory of God. Okay, what that means is, and we have to be honest with ourselves, we've all sinned. We've all done things that displease God. We've all done things that go against the character of God. And we can talk a lot about that. I'm going to just kind of leave it at that. Realizing that we have all sinned. Romans 6.23 tells us there's a punishment, there's a payment for our sin. Romans 6.23 says the wages of sin is death. I didn't stop there. It goes on to say, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. I want to go back to the first part. The wages of sin is death. Death comes in two forms. It comes in physical death. It also comes as a second death, the scripture calls it in Revelation. I think four places in Revelation talks about the second death. And that is that eternal separation and punishment from God. So we have sin. We've earned that wage. We've earned the punishment. That's the interesting part of that. And we, again, can talk about that in a while. God's not saying, you know, I'm mean, I'm going to do this to you. But you've earned what you are going to get from your sins. It's like we're working a job. We earn money. We expect to get paid. So if we sin, we expect to get paid for that sin. And that payment is death. Now, we have a problem. It talks about Ephesians 4, I'm sorry, Ephesians 2, verse 8 and 9 says, For by grace you have been saved through faith in God. Now let me tell you something. The gift of God is not of worse. Let's see what it involves. See, our problem is this. According to that verse, we can't do anything to save ourselves. For by grace you have been saved through faith. That and that are not up to ourselves. And then it goes on again. The gift of God is not of worse. Let's see what it involves. So we can try and make ourselves better. We can try and figure ourselves out. We can try and do these things. But Isaiah tells us all our righteousness are as filthy rats. All the good works we do in our own power and our own strength do not impress God. Why? Because we still have that wage of sin to be paid. But how do we take care of that? See, God sent Christ to come. Jesus died on the cross for our sins so that we could have eternal life. We don't have to work. That's the best part of it. Christ did everything we need to do. He didn't work, but he died on the cross. And so Acts 16.31, Paul and Silas were in prison. They were talking to the Philippian jailer after the earthquake came. The chains fell off. They were standing there talking to the Philippian jailer. He said, what do I have to do to be saved? And in Acts 16.31, we read, so they said, Believe with the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved and your household. My favorite passage to go to in the world, because I think it wraps it all up in a nutshell, is John 3.16. It says, For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. See, go back and look at that verse. God loved the world. That's all of us. That he gave his only begotten Son, gave Christ. That whoever believes in him should not perish, should not have that second death, but have instead eternal life with him. It is a gift and we need to accept the gift. I've used this illustration a ton of times with these kids. And some of you have heard it before. But how do you know it's ours? How do you make this salvation applicable in our lives? What's this gift mean? And I don't have any kids to pick on except Malachi this morning. He's heard it a million times. But I'll pick on Malachi anyway. Let's say Malachi is my favorite grandson, but I've got like how many? Six, I think. But Malachi is here, so I'll pick on him. And let's say just for no reason it's because I want to give him a brand new Lamborghini car. A real one. Steve says he wants to be adopted as a grandson. So I'm going by the car and it's this beautiful car, brand new, 2026. I'm already a year ahead. And it's like this cheery red. It's all new and shiny. So I have it and I have the keys and I say to Malachi, I'm going to give you this car. All you have to do is accept it. It's a gift. No strings attached. No nothing whatsoever. And Malachi says, well, that's really nice. What do I have to do for it? I say, nothing. You just accept it and it's yours. So he can say, well, you know, that's really a nice gift. Let me think about it. Or he might say, and I might lay the keys on the table and say, all you have to do is take it and it's yours. And he says, well, that's nice. And he walks off and he goes and gets on his old scooter and goes chunking down the road again, right? Okay. What happened is a gift is. Not until he accepts it, not until he picks up the keys, not until he takes it as his own, is the gift his. Same thing with Christ. When we accept it by faith, his finished work on the cross for us, then that gift becomes real in our life. In the same way, we have to accept any other gift. There's no strings attached. There's no, there's nothing we can do for it. It's a total gift for us that God gave to us. And that is eternal life. What about good works? Well, good works are good things that we do in life. Okay. And there is, there's good, they're good. And there's nothing wrong with them. In fact, the Bible tells us that after we're saved, there's good works that we need to be doing for others. In fact, the Bible tells us that as we come to Christ and we become a new creature, we are created to do good works. We are created to do good things for other people. We are created to do the works that God has for us to do. However, it also tells us that good works won't save us. Titus 3.5 says, Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us through the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Spirit. We talked about it in Ephesians 2.8 and 9. For by grace you have been saved through faith in that not of yourselves. It is a gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. You see, the work for salvation was all complete when Christ died on the cross for our sins. Before he died, he cried out, It is finished. And he gave up his life for us and he bought our salvation. I have discovered that this is very hard for many to accept. We think or we feel like we have to do something to make ourselves better before God. We need to clean ourselves up. We need to pay for our own sins in some way. We need to impress God in some way and show him how good we are before we can come to him. The truth of the matter is, we are all sinners. And there is nothing we can do to impress God. There is nothing we can do, there is nothing we have in our lives that is going to clean us up good enough to get to God. That's why Christ died on the cross. Because we are all sinners. We are all dirty. And Christ came to clean us up. Again, it's hard for many to accept. All God wants us to do is accept the work that was done on our behalf and receive that gift of salvation. This morning, we need to ask ourselves a question. Do we have a religion or a relationship? My second point, and I'm buzzing through it pretty quick. The commands. And we mentioned earlier that the way we're breaking down our text today, there's three parts to the command to make the disciples. Three parts are to go, to baptize, and to teach. We are going to look at only one today, obviously. We're going to look at baptism. Now the question is, why do we baptize the way we do? Some churches sprinkle. Some churches baptize infants. Some churches baptize, believe it or not, and I haven't seen this in person, but I know of them, they baptize three times either back, you know, three times facing up, or some even baptize three times facing down. But they all have their symbolism. Some poor. I forgot that. And it all is symbolic. There's a reason that every church baptizes the way they church. They do what they do if you dig into their church theology. So why do we do what we do? First of all, proclamation. For those of us who are older, remember when you fell in love and you began a relationship with that special person. I always think of Bambi when he gets Twitter paid. You know, and the owl goes, whoo! And they all just kind of float off down. Okay, you remember that. So some of us are old enough to remember falling in love. Some of us may have forgotten, I don't know. But you remember that relation. You wanted to tell everybody, and then you did the same thing. Whether you wanted to admit it or not, you did the same thing. You were in love and everything was wonderful, and you weren't ashamed of it. You proclaimed it to everybody, and you were going to marry this woman. And you did silly things. And that was the way we did it. The same is true when we actually meet and start a relationship with Christ. We discover His love, and we want to proclaim it to everyone. We are not ashamed. We want everyone to know, whether they understand or they don't understand, whether they think you're crazy or they don't think you're crazy, whether they're excited or they're not excited, we still want to proclaim it, because Christ has become that love in our lives. And one way to proclaim or tell the world is by following the Lord in believers' baptism. The second reason we baptize the way we do, proclamation and identification. Again, remember that someone special. When you fell in love, that someone special, and eventually you knew you wanted them for your spouse. Man, what did you do to identify that this was going to be your bride-to-be? Remember that ring. I remember our first ring. I saved to save to scratch to scratch. I didn't have much money, and I paid all $200 for it. That was expensive to me. It took me months to pay that thing off. But I did it. You know? And that doesn't sound like a lot of money anymore, does it? But boy, then, that was a lot of money. It stayed in the layaway forever. I couldn't wait to get it out. And you know, I'll tell this story. I shouldn't. I actually never asked Peg to marry me. I surprised her. She knew the ring was there, because she picked it out and put it on the layaway. But I paid it off early, and I had it with me. And I don't remember. She was getting ready to go home, and I said, oh, by the way. And I pulled out the ring box, and I opened it up. And she went, oh! And she grabbed it. Wow. So that was art. Will you marry me? And that was her yes. That was it right there. Really romantic, wasn't it? But that ring became the outward indication of your love for that young lady, then. She is yours, so everybody else, just back off. And when all your friends found out, they were also excited for you. Or they had pity on you. One of the two. I don't know. No, they were actually excited for you. Ladies, you likewise were excited to be identified with him. Now, I don't know today what you think, but then you were excited to be identified with him. I'm being silly, OK? That ring made your hand so light, you couldn't keep it down. It floated. It was his hand, actually. It floated everywhere. And you made sure everybody saw it. Why? Because you were going to get married. That was your date, Marie. And you were identified with that guy. He gave you this ring. Oh, what? And when all your friends found out, they were so excited. Likewise, baptism is an outward identification that we are Christ. So first of all, we're proclaiming that we're Christ. Secondly, we're identifying that we are Christ. And we are unashamedly publicly declaring that Christ is mine and I am his. And the third thing, then, is symbolism. The word baptize, baptismal in the Greek, means to immerse or dip. It's also actually used for dyeing clothes. Remember the old tie-dye? Where you take the shirt, tie it in knots, and dip it. OK, you baptize the shirt that way. And that's what it means. That's what it's used for. Dip the neck shirt in, I think it was bleach. But anyway, so that's what it was. That's what this word baptism actually means. And so it's symbolic of something. Romans 6, 3, and 4 says, Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ, Christ Jesus, were baptized into his death? Therefore, we were buried with him through baptism into death. And just as Christ also was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we should also walk in newness of life. See, Jesus died, he was buried, and he rose again the third day. And this is the gospel message. 1 Corinthians 15, 1-4 says, Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, which you also receive and in which you stand, by which also you are saved. If you hold fast that which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day, according to the scriptures. Water baptism, the way we baptize, reminds us of this truth. It symbolizes his death, and his death is symbolized by going down under the water. His burial being under the water, and his resurrection coming back up out of the water. There are some who teach and believe that baptism is a part of our salvation, not just a symbolism. Some teach you have to be baptized in order to go to heaven, and the apostle Paul counters that argument 1 Corinthians 1-17. He says, For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ be made of no effect. Notice, it is Christ did not send me to baptize. If baptism were a part of salvation, I believe Paul would have also proclaimed the necessity of being baptized. Instead of saying, you must be baptized, he said, Christ didn't send me to baptize. I am not here to baptize you, I am here to tell you about the gospel of Christ. Instead of preaching baptism, he points back to the cross of Christ, lest the cross of Christ be made of no effect. Lastly, it is for obedience. If for no other reason, it is a simple test of obedience. Make disciples, baptize. It is the next step after salvation. For many, this step of obedience is a huge, huge, huge struggle in their lives. They may have many excuses or many reasons for not doing it. And I can mention a few, but I am not going to. Yet, in the Great Commission, it is the second thing Christ says we need to do. Be baptized. It comes after salvation. As we close, I want to ask you a couple of questions. First of all, do you have a relationship with Christ, or do you just have a religion called Christian? Do you just go through the rituals with no relation? Have you received this gift of salvation? I don't care what church you go to. I don't care anything about that. The most important question in your life is, have you received this gift of salvation? If not, that is the place you need to start in your relationship. If so, are you being obedient in His Word? Have you followed that salvation decision with believing in baptism? Are there other areas in your life where you know you're not doing what God desires for you to do? How has God spoken to you today, and how will you respond? Let's close in a word of prayer. Father, give me thank you for this great day that you've given to us. We thank you for the opportunity of being here. We thank you for those who have gathered. And again, Father, we ask for those who couldn't be here today, wherever they're traveling or not feeling well, or whatever the case is, that you would be with them, that you would watch over them. Father, we thank you for Adam and his testimony of salvation. We thank you for Adam and his willingness to follow you and believe in his baptism. As we move forward in his service, may it be a blessing to him as well as an encouragement and blessing to all of us. And, Father, may we follow the Great Commission. May we be willing to go into all the world to make disciples and baptize and teach and obey what you want us to do. Father, we thank you for your blessings. We thank you for your mercy and your love and your grace. We thank you for your salvation. And I just ask that you would be with us now again through the rest of this service. And we thank you and grant you in Christ's name. Amen. All right. It is a great privilege to be able to participate in this. And Adam is excited about it. And, again, I'm very excited that he came. And without any prompting from me whatsoever, he came and said, I want to be baptized. And so we talked. We talked pretty extensively about it. And I'm convinced that he totally understands. And so, again, I'm very excited. Adam, have you accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal Savior? Yes. Jesus is the only way to heaven. He is the only Savior who heard my prayers. And why would you want to be baptized? I want to show my obedience to God and show what He has done in my life to pull me out of my life of sin. So Adam, upon confession of your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation, it is now my pleasure to baptize you in His arms. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.