Baptism is a very part of the
Christian faith in the sense that it is a declaration that
you have become a Christian and Jesus Christ is your Lord and
Savior. If you find out you're a sinner,
and you are, and you come to know Jesus Christ and place your
trust in Him alone as your sin bearer and that He paid your
debt on the tree of the cross and you trust Him and trust Him
alone, then you need to say to everybody in the waters of baptism,
I am a Christian, Jesus died for me, was buried for me, and
rose again for me. If I had in my wallet a picture
of Miss Pam, I don't have any pictures by the way, so in my
wallet, but if I had one and held it up and I said, this is
Ms. Pam, you would say, not really,
that's a picture of Ms. Pam. So baptism is a type of
picture that Christ died in your stead, room and place that he
was buried and that he arose again and you're trusting him
and him alone for your salvation. Philip was in a great revival
meeting And the Holy Spirit came to him, actually an angel, a
messenger of the Lord came to him and said, I want you to go,
leave the city and go into a deserted place. which seems kind of strange,
wouldn't it? You would think that God would
want him to stay there where all the people were and a great
awakening was going on. But now he said, I want you to
go into the desert. The same spirit that called him
to leave the city is the spirit that led the Ethiopian eunuch
riding his chariot out of the city. I want you to see this.
It's a beautiful picture. Here comes a preacher. And here
comes the message of the gospel. And God is working at both ends
and bringing them together. They met up in the desert. Philip went to Isaiah 53 and
preached to the eunuch the gospel. The gospel of Jesus Christ is
the power of God, the dynamite of God unto salvation. And little people and big people
and crack using people and heroin using people and churchy people.
The only hope you have is in Jesus Christ. And as they went
on their way, they came to a certain water and the eunuch said, see
here is water. What does hinder me from being
immersed or baptized? I would just say this to you.
They didn't say, here's a cup of holy water. They didn't say,
here's a little water to sprinkle on your head. They came to a
lake, a lot of water. It takes quite a bit of water
to baptize people in a biblical way, because they must be put
under completely. Baptism is by immersion. It is. How are you going to picture
a death, burial, and resurrection by sprinkling water on someone's
head? Philip said, you want to be baptized,
huh? Verse 37 says, If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest.
Baptism is for believers. I'm talking about strong believers,
believers who believe with all of their heart that Jesus is
Lord and Christ and Savior and Redeemer and Propitiation and
Justifier. His name is wonderful, Counselor,
Mighty God, Prince of Peace. You're in love with Jesus Christ.
If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest And here's
what the eunuch said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son
of God. That's good enough for me. And
that was good enough for Philip. They both went down into the
water. I think that's a little proof
for immersion, to be baptized. You say, well, pastor, What difference
does it make whether you're sprinkled or immersed? Well, to some people
it doesn't make any difference, but to me it does because I want
the picture to be seen. And obviously God wanted you
to see that it's in the Christ who died and was buried and arose
again. And when you know that, you want
to be immersed in water. What I was going to say is I
couldn't swim. I still am not a very good swimmer
at all. But at that age, I was scared
to death of water. But I wanted to profess faith
in Christ more than my fear of the water. And you ought to be
baptized because you want to. Not because the church says you
have to be baptized to go to heaven. But you can't wait to
declare that Jesus Christ is your Lord and Savior, and that
your faith is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness. Amen? That's exactly right. And we've already covered what
immersion pictures, and also pictures not only Christ's death,
but it also says that you have died. You've died to self. That
you no longer want what you want. I think in Sophia's little note
to me after she came to know Christ, she was saying she didn't
want to sin anymore. Well, me neither. I think when
you come to know Christ, that's because the old you is that fleshly
thing that's in you. You don't like it. And you want
to live for Jesus. You don't want to smoke weed
anymore. You don't want to use crack anymore. You don't want
to use, because Christ has become everything to you.