You can return in your Bibles
to 1 Peter chapter 3. This message is entitled, Gospel
Baptism. Gospel Baptism. I was moved to preach on that
subject because in the last couple of weeks, a couple of the young
people associated with our congregation, asked me about that. What does baptism mean? And it occurred to me, seeing
as I got these questions, that maybe I had not spoken clearly
of them. or they would know the answers
that they were looking for. When I came here, first came
here, we often spoke of it, not devoting entire messages to it
or anything like that, but the background that the folks, new
folks came from made it necessary to do some
preaching on the subject. And actually, the more important
issue that we dealt with was, when does a person have a warrant
to be baptized? The struggles that many of this
congregation had as to whether or not they had truly been saved. It was something I had never
experienced, to be honest with you. I don't mean hadn't experienced
it myself. As I went out preaching around,
particularly down the southeast where I came from, as I've mentioned
to you before, everybody down there has been saved, some of
them two and three times, you know? So, you know, you don't
find people wondering or asking the question, do I have a warrant,
do I have the right to be baptized? In fact, they will be baptized
as a badge of honor. and something that they can boast
in. But when I came here, things were different. And so we spoke
often about what it meant and who should be baptized. And as I was preparing, actually,
as I wrote to the ones who asked me about this, it occurred to me that Preaching
on baptism, on gospel baptism, preaching on gospel baptism,
it is not a matter of contentious debate. Now there may be a time
when you address specifically the form or the mode of baptism
and who its proper recipients are as you're trying to deal
with what you believe to be erroneous views of it. But baptism is about
the same thing everything else in Scripture is about. It's about
Christ. Preaching about baptism should
not be looked upon, or hearing a message about baptism should
not be looked upon as, well, here's some detail of our way
of worship that we've got to get settled and get out of the
way so that we can move on to something else. Baptism is a
symbolic representation of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. You'll not find anywhere in scripture
that it gives a detailed, what we might call theological description
of baptism. It's just kind of in there along
with the preaching of the gospel. Maybe we could turn down the
volume just a little bit. At least I'm hearing some feedback.
But if we approach baptism correctly,
what we're going to be doing is preaching the gospel. And
that's always a good thing. And the truth is, if we preach
the gospel correctly, baptism's going to be part of that preaching. Now, we could say as a theological
statement in answer to the question, what is baptism? Baptism is a
ceremony commanded by the Lord Jesus Christ in which those who
profess to believe in Him are immersed in water to publicly
confess that they are trusting Him as their Lord and Savior. I remember one of the points
that Brother Mahan made, since we didn't use that invitation
system, which is popular in nearly all of the United States, you
know, in evangelicalism, where at the end of a sermon, they
try to get people to make professions of faith. And they'll say, you
know, you shouldn't just believe, you need to come up here and
publicly profess Christ. And Henry pointed out, he said,
well, no, baptism is our profession. It is our confession of Christ. So, you know, we didn't do that
invitation thing. It's just when, generally speaking,
if a person, that the Lord had opened their eyes to the truth,
and they believed the gospel, And having heard what the scriptures
say about baptism, they would simply approach Henry or what
and say, I want to confess Christ in baptism, and it would be arranged.
So baptism, at least from its outward manifestation, it's a
confession of Christ. But when we look in I Peter chapter
three, we find out how closely it is aligned with the gospel
that we preach, the gospel that we believe. Baptism flows quite naturally
out of the essence of the gospel of God's grace in Christ. In verse 18, we find out the
most fundamental truth of the gospel of Christ. Look at verse
18. It says, For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous
for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death
in the body, but made alive by the Spirit. This is simply a declaration
of the fundamental mechanism by which sinners are made right
with God. Every major point of theology
is referenced in that statement. For Christ, Christ It's good
that the first word in a declaration of the gospel is Christ. Why?
He is the gospel. Who is he? Well, he is God in
human flesh. Now, the problem that the gospel
solves, and this is important to know, what problem was the
gospel designed to solve, to fix? Well, he says that Christ
died once for all, et cetera, to bring you to God. Now, that
implies this problem. We have been separated from God,
separated from him. Now, keep in mind who this letter
was initially addressed to. Jewish believers. Now that doesn't
mean we Gentiles don't gain benefit from it. But I want you to imagine this
now. Imagine you being a, you were a Jew in the first century.
You'd been raised in that religion of the Old Testament, in that
form of religion in the Old Testament, and you'd been one of those faithful
Jews. You'd gone to the temple when
it was right to go to the temple, and you'd observed the feasts
and offered the sacrifices and done all of that. And then along
comes a man that says to you, you are separated from God. See, that was one of the problems
the Jews had. They didn't understand that despite the fact they were
Jews, despite the fact that they had many advantages the Gentiles
didn't have. They had the scriptures. They had the truth of God. They
had the temple and all that the temple taught. They had all of
these things. They had these advantages, but
for all those advantages, they were as separated from God as
any Gentile was. And we come into this world separated
from God. And there's nothing any natural
human being can do to fix that problem. Now our parents, And
I tell you, I'm thankful I had parents that believed God. And
because they believed God, they taught me about the things of
God. So I didn't grow up ignorant of the truth of God. Because
I had good parents, they put the effort, time and effort,
into teaching me what's right and wrong in terms of morals.
I've often said, you know, if I... ever went to counseling
with a bunch of psychological problems, the counselor would
say to me, now I want you to understand, all your problems,
that's on you. You had great parents, you can't
blame it on them. Because people so often want to say, well, it's
because of the way I was raised. I can't blame anything on the
way I was raised. It's good, but you know what?
For all that my parents did for me, they could not bring me to
God. Couldn't do it. much as they
would have liked to do it. They couldn't do it. That requires
something far beyond the abilities of any natural human being. When our Lord came into the world,
what separated us from God? It was our sin. Well, when our
Lord came into the world, they were told, you shall call his
name Jesus for he shall save his people from their sins. It was their sins that separated
them from God, so to bring them from God, he's got to deliver
them from their sin. Now, I know that I cannot deliver
anybody from sin. I know that not only because
the scriptures teach that, I know that I can't even deliver me
from sin, much less would I ever be able to do that work for you.
I can't deliver myself from the power it has over me. I can't
deliver myself from its presence within my nature and in my mind. I can't do that. And I certainly
can't deliver myself from the punishment that my sins deserve. I can't deliver myself from sin,
and therefore I can't bring myself near to God. Somebody's gonna
have to do that for me if it's gonna happen at all. Well, it's
the Lord Jesus Christ who did that. And the only way to remove
our sin from us so that we can be brought near to God is for
someone else to pay the penalty of our sin. For someone to remove
the offense of our sin. Remember this, sin's not just
breaking a rule. You know, if you get pulled over,
say the speed limit was 45 and you were pushing it and doing
60 or so, you know, most policemen will give you some room up to
10 miles an hour before they'll pull you over. Well, you really
went over and the policeman pulls you over and he writes you a ticket. Now,
in all likelihood, the policeman himself is not offended that
you were going that fast. He doesn't feel as though you
have wronged Him. Rather, there is a law that stands
outside of you and outside of the policeman. It's a speed limit
law. And He pulled you over because
you broke that law. And he writes you a ticket, and
there's nothing personal. He's not saying, I'm going to
get you for that. No, this is the way the law is
written. But our sins, while indeed they break the law, it's
more than that. They are offensive to God himself. For you see, the law is not external
to God. In fact, the law, as it's described
or laid out there under the old covenant, that's a very limited,
very limited expression of the character of God. You know, and
I give you an example. In fact, our Lord pointed this
out. He said those laws, you know, they're all concerning
external things, but God is personally honest. personally good, personally
right, that is, within Him, that's His very nature. Consequently,
even our inward thoughts and desires and inclinations are
an offense to Him. When we break the law in action,
when we just think the way we normally think, all of this is
personally offensive to Him, and when He reacts, He's not
punishing because He said, well, you know, I can't do anything
about this, the law says this, you know, and I've got to punish
you. No. When he punishes the wicked,
he's doing exactly what it is in his heart to do. Because the
actions and the conduct and the attitude and the frame of mind
and the way of thinking of the wicked is utterly offensive to
him. Now we know what this is like.
People offend us, don't they? They do things which it might
not even be against the law, strictly speaking, but we count
it to be wrong, and it's so contrary to our own nature and our own
way of doing things. We're mad at them. We don't want
anything to do with them, and if we could, we would exact some
kind of penalty from them. Just kind of give you an example.
Let someone disrespect your children in front of you. Now, there's
not a law in the United States of America that says you can't
disrespect somebody's children if you want to. But there's a
mom and dad law. You just don't do that. And if someone does that with
one of your children, even if you would have to agree that
what they said about them maybe was true, still, The fact that
they disrespected your child is personally offensive to you.
It creates a barrier between you and them, and it's a barrier
that something has to be done about to restore fellowship. Well, our sin is such a personal
offense against God. Now, this penalty that's required
to be paid is death, but it can't be just any death. If it was,
when we died, we would be free of all our sin and just go on
to heaven. But our death won't get the work done. And that's
why it says Christ died for our sins, the righteous, in place
of the unrighteous. Our Lord Jesus Christ, several
things about him that were necessary for anyone to be our substitute
in the presence of God and make atonement, pay redemption, and
bring us to God. Not just anybody could do that.
It had to be a human. You know, the sacrifices of Israel,
their lambs and bullocks and goats and all that, they were
required by the law, but they couldn't put away sin. Couldn't
do it. Why? Because it wasn't human
blood. Human sin requires human blood. Now, we say blood. The
reason that, you know, it says without the shedding of blood,
there's no remission of sin. You know, under the law, it told,
there was a law that says that they were to, you know, drain
the blood from the animals that they were going to eat. They
were never to eat the blood. And the reason was the life of the
animal is in the blood. And so whenever it talks about
blood being shed, what it's talking about is a life being taken,
a life being poured out. In fact, when this is described
of our Lord in Isaiah 53, it speaks of his soul being poured
out unto death. So it's not as though blood as
some chemical configuration somehow or another pleases God. It's the shedding of blood means
the giving up of life. So our Lord, in order to save
us, he had to be a human being. Only human beings can stand in
the place of other human beings. He had to be alive with a human
kind of life, that that human life might be sacrificed in our
behalf. But while a substitute must be
human, to qualify as a substitute in order to satisfy God. The
only one who can satisfy God is God. You know, the angels, who've
never sinned, nonetheless have not satisfied
God. That is, even they can't say,
it is finished. They can say, so far, so good.
So far, I have not done anything to create a barrier between me
and God. But so long as they exist, they
are still under an obligation to obey God in every aspect. So they're always under examination,
always susceptible to falling. Angels can't satisfy. Only God can satisfy because
only God can completely, absolutely, infinitely fulfill righteousness. What did our Lord say to John
the Baptist when John the Baptist resists resisted baptizing the
Lord Jesus. Our Lord said, it behooves us. That's the old English word.
It's necessary that we fulfill all righteousness. Only an infinite God can do an
infinite work of righteousness. So our Lord Jesus Christ is a
combination of, if that's the right way to put it, we don't
have words really to describe the person of Christ, because
no matter what we say, it's going to either, well, it's going to
take away something from his divinity, because we can't describe
God. with human words, but the best
we can do is this. He's the God-man, he is, you
know, Brother Henry used to say it this way, he's as much God
as if he weren't man, and he's as much man as if he weren't
God. And you say, that doesn't fit, that doesn't make sense,
doesn't have to. We're talking about bringing
in the incomprehensible God and joining it with flesh, joining
it with this creation. The Lord Jesus is called the
image of the invisible God. Well, if something's invisible,
how can you have an image of it? That doesn't make any sense. Well, it does when you realize
that it is this revelation of the invisible God in the person
of one who can be seen. He was a human. that he might
perform human righteousness. He was a human so that he could
die. God can't die, but a human can. He was righteous. I almost hate using the word righteous
about anything that we do. You know, I understand that,
you know, when we use the word righteous, righteous always has
reference to a law. a standard. And so we might say,
well, someone's a righteous man, and we mean, well, by human standards,
they're righteous. But in this business of our relationship
with God, the standard is not human righteousness. The standard
is not just the best that humans can do. The standard is this,
God himself. I often heard it said, God doesn't
require that we do the best we can. He requires that we do the
best He can. The Lord Jesus did that. He was able to express divine
righteousness even in His humanity. He always did the things that
pleased the Father. It was His very sustenance to
do the will of God who sent Him. He didn't know sin. He didn't
think sin. He didn't desire sin. We think we do pretty good if
we resist temptation. And yeah, I mean, we should do
that. But understand, when we resist temptation, what we're
doing is confessing we were tempted. And the reason that we were tempted,
that is the reason we were made to desire the sinful act, is
because we're sinful people. I've often thought of our Lord
and the way he conducted himself among people. And you know, we've
seen so much scandal arise among well-known preachers in the last
30 or 40 years, and all of it generally centers around sexual
immorality of one point or another. And I think of our Lord. He had women
who were devoted to him. He met with women privately,
the woman at the well. And I don't want to be crude
or anything like that, but thinking of this in a way to exalt our
Lord. If there was anyone who was an
easy mark, it would have been that woman at the well. I mean,
she'd already had five husbands and was living with a man that
wasn't her husband. Our Lord never even thought in
that direction. He could not be tempted that
way because he was perfect in every regard, the spotless Lamb
of God. Our Lord said one time, the prince
of this world has come and he has found nothing in me. The
prince of this world, he was referring to the devil. And the
devil had come, and the devil had done everything he could
to make Christ commit sin. Because the devil understood
this. If Christ sins, then he cannot save anybody. The devil was able to come to
Adam and find a place of weakness and leverage that. to make Adam
sin. Well, here comes what Paul calls
the last Adam, the second Adam. Going to be ahead of a new race,
a spiritual race. And the devil comes to him and
says, if I can take him out, then the whole thing falls apart.
He said, he found nothing in me. How hard does a devil have
to look to find something in you? He'd have to turn his face away
from me to not find something in me. Is that the way it is
with you? It's a piece of cake for the
devil to come to us and work things so as to leverage
the sin that's within us and cause us to fall into sin and
then leverage our natural legalism and cause us to find a way to
repair our sin by works of our own hands. Oh, the devil's got
a lot to work with. He had nothing to work with in
Christ. Couldn't get it done. But our Lord Jesus did not simply
die. He died a full and complete death,
and then He raised from the dead. Now the resurrection of Jesus
is the proof that his death was sufficient to take away the sin
that he bore. And the gospel logic of that
follows along this way. The wages of sin is death. Death is for sinful people. That's
why everybody dies. Death's for sinful people. Well,
our Lord was in himself sinless, Then the sins of God's people
were laid on him. He bore them in the presence
of God. God poured out upon him all the
wrath that arises from the personal offense that our sin brought
against God. All of it was poured out on him.
And because he wasn't just man, he's the God-man, because he
was a perfect man and a perfect God, joined into one perfect
person, because of the greatness of his person, he was able to
absorb within himself, within a span of a few hours, all the
wrath that an infinite God can visit against sin. You realize he's the only one.
who has ever been able to say, it is finished. God pours out His wrath, and
at a point, God, the judge of all, says, okay, I'm done. That's
all the wrath. There's a scripture in the Old
Testament where the Lord says, there is no wrath in me. Why? He poured it all out. on the
Lord Jesus Christ. And when God was done pouring
it out, our Lord had borne it all. And he said, it's finished. They put his body in the tomb
as a signal that indeed he had died. But he could not stay there. The grave could not hold him. Why? The grave is for the sinful. But by his death, our Lord had
put away the sin that he bore. Sin was no longer on him. Therefore,
death had no hold, no mastery, no dominion over him. And He
came out of that grave as proof that indeed He had put away all
the sins that He bore. Now look at verses 19 and 20.
It says that our Lord Jesus was made alive by the Spirit, and
then verse 19 says, through whom also He went and preached to
the spirits in prison who disobeyed long ago when God waited patiently
in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. And people, you know, when they
look at a phrase like that, they love to come up with something
mysterious. Oh, when the Lord Jesus Christ died, they put him
in the grave. He went into the region of the
dead and he went and he preached to those people that had been
alive in Noah's day. And it all sounds, I mean, people
can get really caught up in that stuff. While our, you know, this
example, while our Lord was in the tomb, he actually went down
into Hades and preached to those who rebelled against God in the
days of Noah. Well, here's a big question. Why? And why just then? Why didn't he go and preach to
those who rebelled in Sodom and Gomorrah? to those who rebelled
in the land of, well, at Kadesh Barnea and wouldn't go into the
promised land. They were all there too. Why
just them? We'd understand what was meant
if we added a word. Now, Peter didn't have to add
this word because of the way he phrased it in Greek. They
would have understood what he meant by this. But here, let
me just paraphrase it for you. It says, And he was made alive
by the Spirit, through whom also in times past he went and preached
to the spirits who are now in prison. How did the Lord preach
to people in the days of Noah? Well, it says that it was through
the Spirit that he did so. Well, the Spirit was upon Noah. that day. Noah's called a preacher
of righteousness, and Noah preached to the people of his generation.
He told them what had been revealed so far about the way of salvation. He told them that they were being
sinful. He told them it was a righteous
God. and that righteousness is required. And we have not delivered
the righteousness that was required. And judgment is coming. And He
taught them that the only way to escape that judgment was inside
that ark. And when Noah was preaching to
the rebels of his day, that was our Lord Jesus preaching to them
through the Spirit. Now why did He Why would Peter
even bring that up? Well, because he wants to take
us back to the days of Noah. For they had the gospel preached
to them in their day, just like we do. And he takes us back to
that time because the events of Noah's flood serve to show
us why baptism is the way it is. So let's look here. He preached to those spirits
way back yonder. They disobeyed God when God waited
patiently in the days of Noah. And think about this, brethren,
our Lord is waiting patiently, isn't He? This world deserves to be annihilated
right now. And if He annihilated it right
now, we couldn't say, oh, you should have waited. The only
reason the world exists is because God is long-suffering. And Peter
says He's long-suffering toward us, that is towards His people,
not willing that any of them should perish. Some of the Lord's
chosen have not yet even been born. much less have they heard
the gospel and believed it to the saving of their soul. So
the world is being spared. God has been long suffering with
this rebellious world as God's people are being born and called
out from the world. It says here he was patient while
the ark was being built. And we see there God's patience
with all the nations leading up until the time of Christ,
because that ark pictured Christ. It said, God waited patiently
in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. Now look
here. In it, only a few people, eight
in all, were saved through water. Now what he's done now is set
up water as a picture of divine judgment. That's what the flood
of Noah, that's what the water was. It was the physical manifestation
of the wrath and judgment of God. Water is what took away
the lives of all the people living in Noah's day. So when it says
that eight were saved through water, it's as though he were
saying eight were saved through judgment. Now, it's important
to notice they were saved through judgment, not from judgment. Do you realize that the gospel
of the Lord Jesus Christ does not save anyone from judgment?
It saves God's people through judgment. And I don't mean by
means of judgment. Just like that ark, it was built
before the wrath fell. The wrath fell. There were eight
souls in there. And that ark floated on the water. That ark went through that time
of judgment, that full year of judgment. And the judgment subsided. The ark landed, and the people
on the inside came out dry. They had been saved through the
judgment. Now, our Lord is our ark. He did not remove judgment. He
bore the judgment, and we were in Him. Every one of God's elect
were in Him. Just like Noah and his family
was in that ark, we were in Christ. Christ went through the judgment
with us on the inside. And we were saved through the
judgment. Now, I said this was about gospel
baptism. Having said all that, look at
verse 21. And this water symbolizes baptism
that now saves you also, not the removal of dirt from the
body, but the pledge of a good conscience toward God. It saves
you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven
and is at God's right hand with angels, authorities, and powers
in submission to him. Now, the act of being baptized
has never saved anybody. And the lack of that ceremony
has never condemned anybody. And how do we know that? Because
there's nothing that can be done in the flesh which affects us
in the spirit. So when he says baptism now saves
you, he's saying what baptism symbolizes
is what saves you. And he implies that, he said,
this water, meaning the water of the flood of Noah. It pictures for us the same thing
the waters of baptism symbolize. What's that? Judgment. Some people think that baptism's
a picture of being washed, but baptism is not picturing a bath,
it's picturing a death. That's why Paul says we are buried
with him in baptism. Not we're washed by him in baptism,
we're buried. When we immerse someone in water,
what we're doing is picturing them being buried They have died. They have come. The judgment
of God surrounds them. But even more directly, it's
not so much picturing that the judgment of God surrounds them.
They are everyone who's baptized according to this gospel baptism.
They are picturing the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus
Christ, who himself went into judgment, went into death, was
buried. and raised again. And our connection
to that, and the only reason that we call baptism a confession,
is that when we are being baptized, we are saying, when Christ went
into the judgment of God, bore the judgment of God, and then
by the resurrection of the dead was brought out of judgment,
I was in Him, just like Noah was in that ark. Our translation says it's the
baptism's the pledge of a good conscience towards God. Maybe
that word can be translated pledge, but the word actually simply
means answer, an answer. It can be used actually for the
question or the answer. It's the demand for an answer
or the answer that's given. And one of the places that this
word is used is in a court of law. And if a person is accused
of a crime, They're given the opportunity to give an answer
to the accusation, are they not? You know, in our courts, you
go there, well, you've been charged with murder in the first degree. How do you plead? What's your
answer to that charge? Now, if a man didn't do it, if
he was not guilty, That means he has a good conscience before
the law about murder, doesn't it? I didn't do this. So what's
the answer to a charge of murder for a person who didn't commit
the murder? Not guilty. Not guilty. Well, here we are. We are guilty,
aren't we? We have done the things that
we've been charged with. And yet, baptism, when a person
is baptized, inasmuch as they are illustrating the gospel by
that baptism, what they are saying is, my conscience before God
and His law is clear. I have a good conscience. I have
no sin in the sight of God. But not because I never did sin.
But because my Lord died for me, he bore the penalty of my
sin such that it put it away, and he was raised from the dead,
and thanks be to God, I died with him. And I raised with him. And our
text goes on to say that our Lord not only raised, he'd gone
into heaven and sits at the right hand of God. And Paul says, we
are seated in the heavenly places with him. Baptism is not just some ritual
to be observed as a rite of passage when someone comes a certain
age. It's not an illustration of being washed from our sins.
It is an illustration that we stand confident with a clear
conscience before God because our Lord died, was buried, and
rose again. And when he did, we were in him,
and we were saved through judgment. To me, baptism is such a wonderful representation
of the gospel of Christ, for it is a picture of Christ. It shows us what He did and how
that affects us. We don't glory in our baptism. We differ from the churches around
us in the way we practice it, but it's not like we're saying,
well, we get a better place in heaven than the rest of you do
because we did baptism right now. You know why this way of
baptism is so important? Because this way of baptism reveals
Christ, not me. This way of baptism declares
what Christ has done, not what I've done or promised to do.
It's all about Him. Now the question remains, and
I can see how young people as they're growing up in this church
and they've heard the, heard us talk about baptism,
generally when Young people start, they reach their teenage years,
they start thinking of more than just the world that's going on
around them. And they wonder, well, should I be baptized? Well, here's a real simple answer. When our Lord gave what is called
the Great Commission, he says, as you're going into the world,
disciple all nations. baptizing them in the name of
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them
to observe all things which I have commanded you." Well, we know
what it is to disciple a person. It means to bring them under
the discipline of someone, make them a follower of someone. And so what the Lord said to
the disciples, you go out among the nations, You preach the gospel,
you tell them the truth of Christ. Some of them are gonna believe.
Those who believe, they're disciples. And that was actually the word
that was used to describe believers first, disciples, long before
they were ever called Christians. They were called disciples. And
they baptized disciples. Well, you may ask, should I be
baptized? Well, are you a disciple of the
Lord Jesus Christ? Have you heard of him? Do you
know who he is? Do you know what he did? Do you
know the significance of what he did? And do you see in his
death, burial, and resurrection the salvation of your soul? Do you believe him? Do you trust
him? At Ethiopian Uni, Philip preached
the gospel to him, and evidently some mention of baptism was made.
And that eunuch said, well, what's to prevent me from being baptized?
And I love that wonderful answer that Philip gave him. Do you
believe? Do you believe? He said, yes,
I do. Said, stop the chariot, here's some water. And he baptized
him. Don't make it more complicated
than this. Do you believe Jesus Christ? Do you believe that through His
death, burial, and resurrection, your sins have been put away
and you have a clear conscience before God? Then say so. Confess it. It always proves to be a blessing
to those who, because they believe, confess him like that. And I
remember so often in the early days, people struggled and struggled
and struggled over whether they have a warrant to believe, do
they have a warrant to be baptized. And I would tell them Do you
believe? Well, yes, I believe. I said,
well, that's the only question they ever asked. And when finally
they would just, even if they were full of doubts or whatever,
from what faith they had, they went forward, they confessed
Christ and what he had done for them in the waters of baptism.
And when they did, so much of all of that doubt and all that
inner turmoil vanished. Why? Because of the water? No. No. I'll just give you a little
illustration, I think, of the psychological effect it has on
us like that. The day of my wedding, the first
time I saw Bonnie, I fell in love with her. I thought, this
is for sure the one for me. I chased her all over Cedarville,
literally all over Cedarville campus. Got her to say yes. And then the day came. Getting married's a big life
change, isn't it? And it's so important because there's really
no legitimate way to get out of it. And I remember thinking,
I mean, I suppose every man wonders, maybe not, but I did, boy, am
I doing the right thing here? Until the doors opened in the
back and she walked in. Until she came there and in front
of everybody we traded our I do's. I've never questioned that since
then. I've never wondered, was this
the right thing? And the one who publicly confesses
Christ and the way Christ said to do it, I'm not saying it saves
him, no. But it has this effect. It cuts ties with all that legalism
of the past. It settles the issue in the mind
as well as in the heart. And the baptized one goes forth
with better confidence than he had before. Well, I hope that's
helpful to anybody that might want to know about it. And the
thing is, like I said, if you preach If you preach baptism,
as it should be, what you've done is preach the gospel. And
I know that that's going to be an enjoyment.