What Is the Point of Baptisms? | Life in the Spirit Week 7

Well, hey, I want to greet all of our campuses at the Oklahoma City campus, the Gravine campus, the Edmond campus. Those of you watching online, no matter where you're watching from, welcome. We're so honored and glad that you're with us today. I want to recap the season we've been going through as a church, and I want to go all the way back to the beginning of Lent. We entered into a 40 days of prayer and fasting, where we leaned into the rhythms and the calendar of Lent leading up to Easter, and that was an amazing season. First time for our church, and I'm so glad and proud of our church that leaned into this, and starting with worship night on Ash Wednesday. It was just an amazing experience. I hope it was for you. Leading all the way up to Palm Sunday, we had Rabbi Jason Sobel. We did a Seder. It was a fantastic weekend. Going straight into Holy Week, and for the first time in our church's history, we had a Good Friday service, and it was great. We talked about the silence of the cross, and it was a special time. Obviously, Easter last weekend was a great time. Thank you for those of you that were there, bringing your friends, bringing your family. We're hearing stories of people who brought their friends, the ones that they were praying for. I know a gentleman who is talking to somebody, one of his neighbors, that he wrote on there and is leading him to Jesus, and just so many great stories coming out of that. And so now what? Easter's over, and as a staff, many times we exhale, and it's over. But I want to just challenge us and wait that it's not over. It's not over. The season's not over, because there's one thing that's really left waiting before we just continue on with the rest of our year. So last weekend on Easter, at all of our campuses, we saw 114 people give their lives

to Jesus, and we celebrate that. Let's just take a minute and celebrate that. Can we give Jesus a hand for the 114 people that gave their lives to Jesus last weekend? Many of those came forward and got one of our Journeying with Jesus programs, and we're entering them into courses and classes. But there's something else that is left undone that we have to talk about today, and it's baptisms. So today we're doing baptisms, and in just a little while we're going to see at all of our campuses baptisms taking place, depending on which gathering you're at, and I'm excited about that. And so I wanted to just take a minute and do a teaching on this. One of my favorite things to do is to teach on things that I've never heard taught on before. So I've processed this and thought about it. I can honestly say that I don't think I've ever heard a dedicated time teaching on baptism, and it's almost embarrassing to say and to think. Now I will give myself a little disclaimer. My dad was a pastor for 22 years, and my dad goes to our church, and he's probably sitting on the front row going, wait, son, I preached on baptism and you were asleep under the pew. That's fair. That's possible. But I can honestly say that I don't think I've ever heard it taught on, and yet multiple times a year in our churches we do baptisms. Why do we do baptisms? What's the point? And that's kind of what I want to talk about, is what's the point of baptisms, and let's think about it. Let's learn from it as we enter into this today. Most people think of baptism as just this random moment. It's either before church or after church or it's during worship, and it's a picture,

it's a symbol. It's one of the things that we've just grown up thinking that we do. Some of us were baptized when we were a child. We don't even remember it. Some of us were baptized when we were five or eight, or some of us maybe have never been baptized. Or maybe you were baptized, but you don't really know why. You just did it because it's what you thought you were supposed to do. Let's talk about it for just a few minutes and unpack some things, and I want to take you to a couple of scriptures. First is in the book of Romans chapter 6, verse 3. It says, Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. Verse 5 says, For if we have become united with him in his likeness of his death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of his resurrection. And this is such great timing because we're coming off of Easter, where we've talked about with Good Friday and Silent Saturday and Resurrection Sunday, and this picture of baptism is referring back to the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. One more, let's read together in Colossians chapter 2, verse 9, it says this, it says, For in him all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form, and in him, him being Jesus Christ, you have been made complete. Remember we talked about last week that we are the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. It says, And he is the head over all rule and authority, and in him you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ.

Now listen to verse 12, it says, Having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead. So it's giving this picture of part of what baptism represents, is we are showing, even as a testimony, this death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, that in baptisms, when we go down into the water, we are being buried with Christ, and we are coming up in the newness of God, in the newness of Christ, in the deity of Christ, and the amazing things that God does in us through this time. And so baptism is a picture of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. And as I process and think through this, I had this thought that when we participate, whether we're the one being baptized, or if we're the one watching, right, we're the one that's there clapping and worshiping in the midst of baptism, that baptism is the first funeral that you attend where you witness death losing in real time. Like in that moment, we are watching people go down in the death and burial of their old sin nature, the old shame, the old things that we've carried. And as we go down into the grave, into the water, we raise, we are raised to new life in Christ. And we go to funerals and we see people die, and we know that death has been swallowed up in victory. Scripture tells us that it's a future hope that Christ will come and the dead in Christ will rise. But it's like baptism gives us the ability to watch death die as we are buried with Christ in baptism and raised to new life in Jesus Christ. And so there's two groups here today, all right? There's two groups. There's those of us in the room that have never been baptized. Some of you are getting baptized today, and I'm so excited for you. And then there's those of us who have been baptized. Maybe there's a third group. There might be a third group.

There might be some of you who would say, well, I've been baptized, but I don't remember it. Like my parents told me I was baptized. I've seen pictures of myself being baptized as a child. So maybe you've been baptized and you don't remember it, or maybe you were baptized and you didn't really fully comprehend what you were doing. I want to talk about this for just a little bit to those of you that are going to be baptized, okay? So those of you that have never been baptized, or maybe you were baptized, but you didn't really fully understand and comprehend what was happening. Really part of what's happening is you're stepping from a private to a public. Here's what I mean by that. When we give our lives to Jesus, the book of Romans says that we believe in our heart and we confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord and we're saved. That is really kind of a private moment. Like you can give your life to Jesus in your car, in your bedroom, in the privacy of your own home, in the privacy of just you and the Lord. And then when we are baptized, it becomes public. This is not a private decision anymore. It's a public declaration. And there's a few things about baptism that I want us to learn today. And some of you may be like, I already know all this, John. I've already heard all this. That's great. But we really need to understand what baptism is. One, so we know to do it. Two, so we understand what we're doing. And three, for those of us who have already been baptized, so we can know how to celebrate what God is doing in the people's lives that we're watching get baptized. So through baptism, let's just, they're all going to start with a B. You're going to love

this. All right. There's three of them. Through baptism, we belong. Okay. So the first thing, if you're taking notes, just write down, we belong. If you're watching in the chat right now, put in the chat, I belong, I belong. So what we're saying is in Galatians 3, verse 26, it says, for you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. Verse 27 says, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. So it's saying as a qualifier, it's saying for those of you who were baptized, okay, if you're baptized, you are clothed with Christ. with Christ. So remember last week on Easter, we talked about that we take a stand, that we can take a stand because we have been made right with God through Christ, and we can be seated because the Bible says that we've been seated with Christ in heavenly places, and then we can take a step. Well, many of us today are taking a step of faith in baptism. We are stepping forward with action. We've given our lives to Christ privately, and today we are publicly letting the world know that we're taking a step towards Christ in baptism. So they old us that we belong to Jesus, right? We don't belong to our past mistakes. We don't belong to our old identity. We are new. We are a new creation in Christ. I've got this jersey up in my attic. I should have got it for you, and I didn't. It's got this—it's a team that I was on, and if I turn it around to the back, it has my last name across it.

It says Chastine. And so what that says, it says that to everybody who's watching, they know that I am on this team. That was my high school, the Vikings, the fighting Vikings, right? So anybody who saw me wearing that jersey knows that John Chastine is on the Viking team, and I love this passage because it says, you have been clothed with Christ. And so when we give our lives to Jesus, when we're baptized in a new life, we're saying, I'm on team Jesus. If you want to know whose team I'm on, I am on team Jesus. So we have—we belong. When we are baptized, we now belong to Christ. Number two, through baptism, we bury. We bury. Okay, so the same passage we read in Colossians just a little bit ago. In verse 12, it says, having been buried in him in baptism. So I have been buried in Christ through or because I was baptized. It says, in which you were also raised up with him through faith. So when I'm baptized, I am buried. I go down into the grave, and the old me goes down into the grave, and I die to my flesh, and I pick up my cross, and I follow Jesus. So when I go under the water, the old life becomes buried. My old sin nature, my old identity, my old labels all goes down. We bury it. We bury it. This idea of burying is really this idea of turning. It's a turning point. Think about John the Baptizer. When John the Baptizer came to prepare the way for Jesus, he had really two messages. Mark's gospel and Luke's gospel say that John the Baptist appeared preaching a baptism of repentance.

So there was this tie between repentance and baptism. So when we are baptized, we turn. Repenting means to turn and go in the opposite direction. So baptism is directly tied to repentance. Behold, the old is gone, and the new creation has arrived. The new creation is here. In Acts 2.38, it says this. It says, Peter said to them, repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sin, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. So again, it's tying the component of repentance to baptism. There's a direct correlation because we're burying the old. We're burying the sin nature. And last but not least, number three is we begin. We begin. This is the good news. That we go down, we bury our old sin nature, and the good news is that it's a new beginning as we come up out of the water. We are a new creation in Christ. Romans 6.4 says, therefore, we have buried with him through baptism in death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. 2 Corinthians 5.17 says, therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature. The old things have passed away. Behold, the new things have come. So those of you that are getting baptized today, we cannot be more excited for you. As you begin today, you are preaching a sermon. As you walk into the waters today, as you die to the old you and you rise to new life, the new beginning, without saying a single word, you are preaching a message in that room that we all get to witness. This is not the end.

This is not the end. It's the beginning of your journey. And this is not the end of this message. This is the beginning of this message. And at your campus, your campus pastor is going to come up and share another word with you, and I'm so grateful to partner with them and to pass the baton to them for them to bring a finishing word. So there at the OKC campus, Pastor Adam Frederick is going to help me. There at the Edmond campus, Pastor Cameron Hobrick is going to help me. There at Gravevine, Pastor Wade Smith is going to help me. So there at your campus, come on, can you make some noise for your campus pastor? Show them some love and welcome them to the stage right now. Good morning, Victory Church. Man, what a cool word Pastor John has for us for baptism. And we're so excited for you guys. We're so happy to be here, part of that. Kind of what I wanted to kind of talk to you is those of us in the room who have experienced baptism of our own and kind of what our role is as a spectator. The first thing I should do is clear up the fact that you're not a spectator, you're a witness. I love what Pastor John said earlier. He said, this is the first funeral that you will get to see you'll witness death and lose in real time. This is both the womb and the tomb, right? We're seeing the old buried and the new life begin. And so there's a role that you and I get to play if we've been baptized before as a church. And it's not just, oh man, we went to church and it was baptized, it was powerful, it's really good,

it's awesome, we're gonna do all of those things for sure. But there's more, there's a little bit more. And so today I just wanna encourage you with a few thoughts. First of all, our role is to remember, say we remember. Now think back to your moment. Mine was late March, many years ago. My family was baptized together. It marked me, even as a young man, I wasn't fully sure what that looked like, but I knew something was different. And it began a journey in my life. Of course, that's led me here. And you think about that time that you had, remember what you were like before Christ? Yeah, okay. Remember what life is like after you found out who Jesus was and how much he loved you and what he's done. And that moment in your life is marked. And when we see baptisms and we celebrate with these ladies and gentlemen here and children here today, we can remember what it was like for us. I think back to, in this line of work, I get to do plenty of weddings and plenty of funerals. And whenever we do a wedding, or I automatically am taken back to the moment of the commitment that I made to my wife. And it makes me appreciate her more. And it makes me hug her a little bit tighter because it's romantic and it's all good.

And I think, oh man, I'm so blessed to have my wife in my life. It makes me remember and cherish that a little bit more. And when we are in funerals, we hear words about the people that have passed and the impact that they made on the people around them. And we go home and we hug our kids a little tighter. And maybe we're a little bit nicer at family reunions, depending on your family. It changes us. And it should, when we remember those key events in our life. And this is a key event in a life that we remember. Let's look at Romans chapter six, starting at verse three. It says, or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized in Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death? Therefore, we have been buried with him through baptism into death, so that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the father, so we too may walk in the newness of life. Remember what things were like. I loved how the Old Testament parallels the New Testament so much. And I think about our journeys as believers and I see that mapped out in the children of Israel when they were in bondage and slavery in Egypt and God sends Moses and delivers them. And they have this moment of salvation as they go.

And I see our parallel in that. That's our journey. We were bondage in the sin, we were locked up and God sent Jesus for us. And in Deuteronomy 5.15, we see Deuteronomy reminding them. It says, and you shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt and the Lord your God brought you out of there by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. We should remember what Jesus has done for us. This is a time that we can look back and rejoice and be thankful for what God has done in our life as we celebrate the newness life of what's going on today. Which brings us to our second thing we need to remember is we need to rejoice. Ah, what a good time. Let me read this. This is Luke 15, starting at verse three. It says, and so he told them this parable saying, what man among you, if he has a hundred sheep and has lost one of them? of them does not leave the other 99 in the open pasture and go after the one that is lost until he finds it. And when he has found it, he puts it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors saying to them, rejoice with me because I have found my sheep that was lost.

I tell you that in the same way, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than the 99 righteous people who have no need of repentance. Let me tell you that heaven celebrates when one sinner comes to know Jesus. Today, we have a plethora of blue shirts over there. It's worth a party, guys. It is worth celebrating, amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. The church is for the one and heaven celebrates. And as the church, we have to celebrate. We need to rejoice. We need to take this moment and say, man, this is what Jesus came to do is to bring new life to all of us. And today, ladies and gentlemen, we rejoice with you. We're so excited for you as well. And finally, the third thing that we need to do is that we need to respond. What does that mean? Respond. I think of it like this.

I have a grandson. He's two. The moment that he, we counted the days down. I'll just be honest with you. But from the moment that my daughter said that she was pregnant, my wife and I were like this, okay, we're doing math, right? We're waiting. We're waiting. We got the phone call early in the morning. We jumped in the car. We drove to Tulsa as fast as we could because we wanted to be there at the moment. Now, this kid came out, and I gotta tell you, it was the best, I mean, I wasn't there when that happened, but seeing him for the first time was the greatest thing ever, right? And so as a grandfather, I looked at this little baby and all I wanted to do was walk alongside him. All I wanted to do was take him by the hand and show him stuff and play with him on the playground and teach him how to fish and watch him play with his trucks and get my hands dirty in the sand with him. We can't get enough of this kid, right? Church, we've got a whole bunch of kids that are stepping into a brand new life, that are brand new to the family, and here's what we need to be doing. We need to be looking at them and going, man, this is a new step for them.

I want to walk alongside of them. I want to pray for them. I want to encourage them. I want to take them under my wing and disciple them and show them what I know. As a church, this is how we respond. Is that we're not, oh, great, you're baptized. Good to see you. See you next time. I'm glad you're here. It's, man, come on, let me walk with you. Let me hang out with you. Let me take you by the hand. Come to my circle. Spend some time with me. Let me give you what I got. We're not expecting things. We want to respond and give. This is also a great time to examine ourselves. 2 Corinthians 13 says, examine yourself. And as we hear this powerful word from Pastor John about what baptism means, and the confession that you're making, you are belonging, you are bearing the old and you're beginning a new walk in Christ. You may be here today and you may say, I've never done that. You may be here today and you may say, I've never asked Jesus to be my Lord.

I've never started that journey. When we see somebody else making a monumental mark in their life and changing from who they were to who they're become, we should take pause. We should ask ourselves some questions. How is my walk with Jesus? As I'm on fire as I was the day after I got out of the water, have I drifted? Do I need to refocus? Do I need to make that commitment for the first time? If you'll bow your heads and close your eyes, I want to give you an opportunity to respond. If you're here today, and you've never asked Jesus to be the Lord of your life, and you want to start your journey with Jesus by following him today, and you'd like for me to pray for you, I just want you to slip your hand up really high, because I want to pray for you. I see you right there. I see you right there. I see you right there. Anywhere else? There's back there. Yeah. I see you. Yeah. Yeah. Amen. Amen. Amen. The journey starts with a decision. See, we don't earn salvation. It's a gift. We just get to receive it. Anywhere else?

Anywhere else? I see you. When everybody say this prayer out loud for me, say, Father, thank you for sending your son Jesus to die for me right now. I ask forgiveness of all of my sin, and I invite Jesus to come into my life, to be my Lord, to be my Savior. Thank you, God, for loving me. Amen. Give God, Jesus, a great big hand. We had several people raise your hand, and I'm so proud of you. I'm so excited for you. I want to tell you a story. This story is found in Acts chapter eight. Starts at verse 35. It says, then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning from this scripture, he preached Jesus to him. As they went along the road, they came to some water, and the eunuch said, look, water, what prevents me from being baptized? And he ordered that the chariots stop, and they both went down into the water, Philip as well as the eunuch, and he baptized him. When they came up from the water, the spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away, and it was the eunuch no longer saw him, but went on his way rejoicing. If you made a decision to serve Jesus, or maybe you've already made that commitment to make Jesus Lord of your life, but you've never been baptized, I would simply say to you this, look, there's water. I would ask everybody to stand up just real quick for me. Stand up for me. If you made a decision, and you said, today's the day, I want to follow Jesus, I want to shake your hand, I want to meet you down front here, and I want to give you an opportunity. If you want to get baptized today, we've got clothes, we've got t-shirts, we've got

water, and we got time. If you're here today, and you made that decision, you said, today's the day, you prayed that prayer, or maybe you didn't raise your hand, but you prayed that prayer and you meant it, today's the day that you choose to follow Jesus, I want to mark that today. I'd like for you to invite you right down here on the count of three, one, two, three, come on down. Don't be afraid. Come on down. Come on down. Yes. Come on down. Come on down. Yeah. Amen. Amen. Amen. Come on down here. Yeah. Yeah. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.

Amen. Amen. Amen. Anybody else? Come on over here, this is Pastor Roland, how are you doing? We're going to give you a book, and we're going to give you an opportunity. We're so proud of you guys. Thanks for doing this. This is the beginning. This isn't a finish line. This is a starting point, and we want to walk with you through that. We want to put some resources in your hand. We want to know who you are. We want to pray with you. And we want to spend a little time getting to know you and try to help you on the next step. Amen. Amen. If you guys go with Pastor Yolanda, she's gonna get you taken care of. Come on, give him a great big hand. God bless you guys. We're so grateful that you joined us today. At Victory, we pray big prayers to a big God and we expect big results. If you would like to receive prayer, you can submit a prayer request by visiting victory.church slash pray. If this message or any of our messages have impacted your life

and you would like to partner with us through giving, you can do so at victory.church slash give. Thank you again for joining us. At Victory Church, we live life to the full. At Victory Church, we live life to the full.