Sermon Study # 235 – WHY WATER BAPTISM? (part 2)
WHAT DOES “WATER BAPTISM” SYMBOLIZE?
1. REPENTANCE: turning from your old ways.
Illustrate: The word means a reversal. To reverse from the direction of sin. A reversal of sin… many Christians are just rewinding their sin… to repeat it again. Unlike rewinding a videotape.., God expects us not to repeat the sin.
A) Acts 19:4 Paul said, "John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance. He told the people to believe in the one coming after him, that is, in Jesus."
B) Mat 3:11a "I baptize you with water for repentance.
2. IDENTIFICATION: Identifying yourself with Christ.
Illustrate: Identifying yourself with a group – As a president of a NYC graffiti gang, in order to identify yourself with us you needed to be accepted by the quality or the quantity of your vandalism. Other gangs had an initiation of being beat down by member s of the gang… then you were able to identify yourself with them. In college, joining a fraternity meant I had to endure and do as the other members before me had done – in order to identify myself with them. Identifying yourself with Christ means the same – following the example of Christ – to endure and do as Christ has done.
A) 1 Cor. 12:13 For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body--whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free--and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.
B) Rom 6:3 Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?
C) Gal 3:27 for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.
3. CLEANSING: Symbolic display of forgiveness of sins.
A) Mark 1:4 And so John came, baptizing in the desert region and preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
B) Acts 22:16 And now what are you waiting for? Get up, be baptized and wash your sins away, calling on his name.’
4. CONFESSION: of death to sin and resurrection to a new life.
Illustrate: Dead flesh doesn’t sin.
A) Rom 6:4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. Rom 6:5 If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. Rom 6:6 For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin-- Rom 6:7 because anyone who has died has been freed from sin. Rom 6:8 Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. Rom 6:9 For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. Rom 6:10 The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.
B) Col 2:12 having been buried with him in baptism and raised with him through your faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead.
