Welcome to the Cross Power Church podcast.
You're listening to a service from our church in Campbell, TX.
We pray this message strengthens your faith and points you to the
cross. Now let's join the service.
Father God, we stand before your throne tonight.
Lord, we gather together in your house and we've worshiped you in
spirit, Lord, and we're going to worship you in truth.
And Lord, you see every situation, every need
represented here, every heart that is here.
You see that Lord, And we ask that you move upon those needs,
whether it's a broken heart, whether it's just a downward
spirit, Lord, you're able to lift up God where there's a
physical need, spiritual need, financial need, Father, whatever
it is, we look to you, Father, because you are our provider.
You are waymaker, Lord. You're everything that we need
and everything we have. And we ask that you anoint me
tonight, Lord, as I bring forth the word that I believe you've
given me and anoint us to receive it in Jesus name, Amen.
This is going to be basic. I like to do basics.
Y'all like basics? I like basics, basic stuff.
Well, I see it over here. We got a new baptistry, praise
God. And that's what I'm going to be
talking about is water baptism tonight.
I guess the Scripture I'm going to go from, I've got a lot of
Scripture, but the one that I'm going to start with is Hebrews 6
and 9, which may seem to be an odd place to start when you're
talking about water baptism, but you hopefully you'll follow me.
Give me just a second, it says. But beloved, we are confident of
better things concerning you. Yes.
Things that accompany salvation, though we speak in this manner
usually we read that and go, yeah, yeah, yeah.
OK. Accompany salvation da da, da,
but the word accompany here means to go along with or to go
together as an echo. When you have an EEEEE, you have
the 1st and then it just, there's things that follow
behind it that it, it just follows that it is we're talking
about not about salvation, but we're talking about what follows
salvation. And water baptism is one of
those things that follow salvation.
There's many things that accompany salvation.
We have forgiveness of sins. Praise God.
What we couldn't do for ourself, Jesus did for us.
We became new creatures in Christ.
We now have God's strength to overcome habits and hurts and
sin. We have unconditional love from
the Lord. We have God's protection when
we're doing just going about our everyday business.
God protects us because we're His, and we have His Word to
give us wisdom and to guide us as we go about our business and
just walking about our everyday life, much less our spiritual
life. He guides and directs us after
our salvation. He shows us what we should be
doing. And all of these things
accompany salvation or they go along with salvation.
Now, salvation is what God does in us, but it should not be
private. Your salvation should never be
private. And I've heard a lot about that.
But it it's your salvation is not well, it's just between me
and the Lord. No, no, that's not what he says
at all. It should be open.
Everybody who follows Jesus came out in public.
Does that come out? Remember, mind you, if anybody
comes out, people who come out that are not necessarily godly
people, well, if Christians should come out of the closet,
OK, I'm going to say that we, everybody that followed Jesus
came out in the Old Testament and New Testament that followed
Jesus. They followed him in public
places, OK? When people accepted Jesus as
their Savior, there was a next step of faith that accompanied
their salvation. You all know what it was.
It was water baptism. I mean, water baptism is not
salvation, but it is a symbol of your salvation.
It's an open profession of faith.
In Jesus's day, baptism was how the confession of faith was even
offered. It was in public.
They would preach out in public and with John that he would
preach the people and he would be standing in the middle of the
water and they would come in, in the water and he would baptize
them openly and publicly. Now what?
Where I've been going with this all day long around and around
is baptism. You know, where did that start?
Did John invent water baptism? No, he did not.
In fact, the the lack of the widespread criticism of John for
the act of the immersion of water and baptizing suggests
that the Jewish community was already familiar with the act of
immersion baptizing. It was a ritual.
Immersion is what they thought they had.
They may have questioned his authority to do it, but they
didn't question what he was doing.
John the Baptist did not invent the ritual of water baptism.
It was already a familiar practice with the Jews.
Baptism originated, That was hard for me to say, Originated
as a Jewish purification rite rooted in the Torah.
What? Just hang on.
And it was a common practice for centuries before the rise of
Christianity. Now Jewish people practiced
immersion. Baptism is what we know it, but
it was called a mikvah, MIKVEHA mikma, mikvah of purification
and conversion. Long before the 1st century in
the in Leviticus and in numbers, ritual washing with water was
required for priests. We know that because they would
wash themselves, they had to go wash themselves in the Laver,
the brazen Laver, they would before they went into the
Tabernacle, and they all had to be washed before they touch.
If they touched anything unclean like a dead animal, well, they
all had to be purified and they all had to be washed.
While immersion existed earlier during the Second Temple period.
Think about it, remember the first temple tore down, Second
temple tore down, it was rebuilt roughly around 516 before Christ
and they would wash in a pool of water.
They call that pool of water a mikvah and it was widely
recognized by all the Jewish people after the temple had been
built built it was necessary thing for all the people,
everyone to be immersed in a mikvah to before they could even
come into this temple. So water baptism was not new.
I don't know, maybe this is old hat to y'all I don't know.
But it was like I get this. I see.
But immersion in a big vog was also a formal ritual for
purification and specifically for converts entering into
Judaism. So for John the Baptist to
baptize, and nobody criticized him baptizing them.
They criticized the fact that he, who or who do you think you
are? You don't have the authority to
do that. But it wasn't the act of
baptizing that they were criticizing.
It was the fact that John, they didn't think he had the
authority. So according to I'm going to get
a little technical, the strong's lexicon, the word mikvah.
Hopefully this will make you excited and happy.
The word mikvah shares the same root as the word for hope or the
word to bind and the word to wait.
It's the concept of hoping, binding, and waiting on God.
So this gives us just a good mental picture of what it means
to align ourselves with God and wait upon Him.
We give ourselves and bind ourselves to His Word and to
Him. We line ourselves up with Him
and wait for Him in confidence and in truth after we've
experienced mikvah, baptism, immersion in water.
So we've aligned our ourselves up with the Word of God.
So baptizing wasn't just something new.
It was something that they were a well aware of.
And the Jews understood John's message of repentance from sin
and the corresponding outward act of purification.
So they didn't complain about it.
They didn't question the the bad.
Did you anybody ever think about that?
You know, I thought I got up this morning, back this morning
about 5:00 and the Lord goes, who told John how to baptize?
I'm going. I figured you did God, he said
look it up. OK, so I'm looking it up.
So John baptized, Jesus baptized, all of the disciples
baptized, they baptized all the new converts.
Baptizing wasn't just specific to want everybody, every
disciple that followed Jesus Christ baptized because he told
us he says go baptized, didn't he?
He told us to do that. So just as a little breakdown
and I don't have much more to give y'all but a little
breakdown. One, it was commanded by Jesus
water baptism, Matthew 28 and 19.
He says go ye therefore and teach all nations.
He said teach all nations baptizing them in the name of
the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost.
So that's what Matthew tells us to do, He says, or Jesus tells
us to do. He wrote it down what the Lord
told him. Go and teach and baptize.
The people need to know. They need to know about Jesus.
And then once they know about Jesus and accept him as their
Lord and Savior, then they're baptized.
Luke said it like this, and he said unto them, Go into all the
world and preach the gospel to every creature.
He that believes and is baptized shall be saved, but he that
believes not shall be damned. Wow.
It was spoken of by Peter after the Holy Ghost, after the Holy
Ghost had come upon Peter in Acts 2 and 38.
It says then Peter said unto them, repent and be baptized,
everyone of you in the name of the Jesus Christ for the
remissions of sin, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy
Ghost. So it's a prerequisite for
receiving the Holy Ghost. Sometimes just put a check mark
there, but Christian water baptism represents the death,
burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
That's what it's all about. Romans 6 two through 5 and I
know I'm going fast. So if you can get there, you can
get there. Romans 6 two through 5 says, God
forbid, how shall we that are dead and sin live any longer
therein? Know ye not that so many of us
were baptized into Jesus Christ, were baptized into his death,
therefore we're buried with him by baptism into death that all
that like, as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of
the Father, Even so we also should walk in newness of life.
For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his
death, we shall also be in the likeness of his resurrection.
In other words, the old man's dead and a new man now lives.
We have new life. New life is beginning because
you've accepted Jesus Christ, you've taken that public step of
being baptized. And he said now, just like the
likeness or example of Jesus's death, burial, and resurrection,
that's what it's all about now. A mikvah of living water
represents the bounty and the resources of the new life that
we can enjoy in God. Think about it.
Water baptism represents the resources of a new life that we
have in God. Those who put their hope in God,
choosing to align their lives with the Lord, will never dry
out, but we'll always have fresh life in them.
According to Jeremiah, He'll be like a tree planted by the
water, living water. We used to sing that song and we
used to teach that word, just like a tree planted like, I
mean, your roots are deep, your roots are in the water.
And that's what this is all about.
South, a mikvah is living. Water represents the bounty and
the resources of the new life that we're going to have in God.
That's what this is all about. Jeremiah went on Jeremiah 17,
verse 7. Blessed is the man who trusted
the Lord, and whose hope is the Lord.
For he shall be like a tree planted by the waters, which
spread out its roots by the river, and shall not fear when
heat comes, but its leaves will be green and will not be anxious
in the year of drought, nor will cease from yielding fruit.
They're not going to be anxious when it's dry, when it's a dry
season, when things aren't going just right.
We shouldn't be anxious and we shouldn't.
We'll never stop yielding fruit. Now, what is this talking about?
It's talking about giving people souls, talking about sharing
your fruit of the Lord with people who may be going through
a rough time, dry drought, but you don't have the drought.
You don't have to worry about the drought because you'll never
lose your fruit. You'll always be yielding fruit.
One more type of I got a couple more, but the flood was a type
of water baptism. We see that in first Peter 3
verse 18, it says for Christ also has once suffered for sins,
the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put
to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit, by
which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison,
which sometimes were disobedient.
When once the long-suffering of God waited in the day of Noah
while the ark was a preparing, he was Texas.
He had to be from Texas waiting in the day of Noah while the ark
was a preparing wherein few, that is 8 souls were saved by
water. The like figure wherein to even
baptism does also now save us, not the putting away of the
filth of the flesh. That's not what they're talking
about, but it's the answer of a good conscience towards God.
That's what he's talking about. Our, our water baptism is answer
of a good conscience towards God by the resurrection of Jesus
Christ. That's what we're doing when we
get into that water. And we say, you know, and the
preacher says, if you accepted Jesus Christ, you know, and I
baptize you in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy
Ghost and this and all I do, I do in the name of Jesus, you
know, so they baptize you and they dunk you.
What you're doing is you're saying I'm this old flesh is
dead. I'm no longer going to live like
I used to live. I have aligned myself up with
God. I'm aligning myself up with his
word, and I'm going to live like it.
And one more thing, one more time.
They did it in public. They weren't closet Christians.
They gave their life for Christ. That's what they did.
The next thing is baptism is compared to circumcision.
Wow. Colossians 28 start there.
Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain
deceit. After the tradition of men,
after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ, for
in him dwells all the fullness of the God head.
Vitally they're talking about Jesus, and you are complete in
Him, which is the head of all principality and power, that
right there will preach. In whom also you are circumcised
with the circumcisions made without hands, in putting off
the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of
Christ, buried with Him in baptism.
Wherein also you are raised with Him through the faith of God,
who has raised Him from the dead.
And you being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your
flesh has quickened together with him having given you all
forgiving you all trespasses. So water baptism, it's a
statement, folks. It's not just a casual, well,
I'm going to well, you get baptized.
I get baptized too. OK, well, we'll just do that.
You know, a lot of people do that nowadays.
A lot of people. Oh, we got, you know, let's it's
a statement. It's a serious statement.
And Genesis, God talks about the circumcision made without hands.
He talks about the circumcision in the flesh.
And we know that that circumcision in the flesh was
what? What was it?
It was a sign of what? We'll have Sunday school Sunday
morning. Circumcision was a sign of the
covenant. That was the first thing in
Genesis. Abraham says this is what it's
going to be like. Guys, I'm your God, you're my
people. Every male child, every boy,
every man, every servant, people you bought with your money,
people who are living there, born there.
All male children, no matter who they are, will be circumcised as
a sign of the covenant. And we just talked about water
baptism being a likeness of circumcision.
So here we go. I'm going to read this last
thing here. And the uncircumcised man child
whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised, that soul shall
be cut off from his people. He has broken my covenant.
So we need to think about it, don't we?
It's a serious matter with God. It's not just well, OK, I, I
feel good. I had an emotional moment.
I get real irritated with emotional moments.
I have an emotional moment. You go and cry and you weep and
then you go right back out and do exactly what you were doing
before. That's all you had.
You did not get saved. I'm just going to say that out.
You did not get saved just because you came down here and
cried. If your life doesn't show it,
the things that follow salvation, baptism is one of
them. There's a lot of things that
follow salvation, but water baptism is like circumcision.
It does a few things. Let me tell you what this does
or did. Circumcision did, and water
baptism does the same. It is done for cleanliness.
Circumcision made without hands is our heart.
Our hearts have been circumcised.
When you have given your heart to God, He changes that heart.
He gives you a new heart. He gives you a heart of flesh, a
heart that yearns for God, a heart that wants to know more
about Him, wants to be in His presence all the time.
That's a new heart. He's circumcised that heart.
He's cut off the the blood that Jesus cleanses us from all sins.
We have a new heart, so it's done.
Our flesh cannot contaminate our spirit.
That's what that's done for it keeps the flesh from
contaminating the seeds. Normal circumcision we die for.
To our flesh. Circumcision was done on the 8th
day after birth. Represents the new life and the
new beginning. 8 means new beginning.
There was a reason for that back in the day, in the ancient
times, because at 8 days old, that's when a child starts,
their blood starts clotting. So that's when they did the
circumcision. But it's also spiritually
speaking, it's a new beginning, it's a new life.
So this is what he's talking about here, Circumcision on the
8th day, a child would receive his father's name at
circumcision back in the ancient day.
That's very important. We are called Christians because
we belong to God, we belong to Jesus.
We are part of that family that we've woven together and we bind
together and we align ourselves up with the word of God.
And so we have come together and a child will receive his
father's name at circumcision. Well, what does that mean if a
child had not been circumcised? You've lived with the family all
your life. You know he was your daddy.
But time come, daddy dies, you get nothing.
You are considered a bastard child.
That's what you, if you did not ever get circumcised, that's
what you were considered. Now don't hit me and don't kill
me because we have examples of people not being baptized that
go to heaven. So that's a whole nother, whole
nother story. But that's what happened back in
the day. They did that.
So we'll receive our Father's name when we get baptized, OK.
The child received the rights to inherit his, his Father's
estate, and it was a sign mostly of the blood covenant.
Matthew 313. I know I'm flipping you back and
forth. This is very important.
After Jesus was baptized was the first public acknowledgement by
the Father of Jesus being his Son.
It says, Then came Jesus from Galilee to Jordan unto John to
be baptized of him. But John forbade him, saying, I
have need to be baptized of you, and cometh thou to me, you're
coming to me. And Jesus answered, saying to
him, Suffer it to be so now, for thus it becomes to us to fulfill
all righteousness. Then he suffered him let.
In other words, he let him suffered him means let he
suffered him, let Jesus he let him come into the water to be
baptized. And Jesus when he was baptized,
went up straight way out of the water, and the heavens opened up
to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and
lighting upon him, and a voice from heaven saying, This is my
beloved son, in whom I'm well pleased.
He received acknowledgement from his Father, God the Father, when
he was baptized. So it's a deep thing, folks.
It's a deep thing. It's not just a casual thing.
And I've got other examples. I'll just read you a couple
here. Acts 19, one through 6.
It says, Hey, this is Paul and Ephesus.
And he, Paul said to them, did you receive the Holy Spirit when
you believed? So they said unto him, We have
not much is heard where there be a Holy Spirit.
And he said to them, into what then were you baptized?
So he said into John's baptism. Then Paul said, John indeed
baptized with the baptism of repentance, saying to the people
that they should believe on him who would come after him, that
is on Christ Jesus. When they heard this, they were
baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus and when Paul had laid
hands on them, the Holy Spirit came upon them and they spake
with tongues and prophesied. Wow, when was the last time?
I truly I don't ever remember seeing this.
When some, my mom would tell me when somebody would go down in
that water and they would come up speaking in tongues.
When was the last time we saw that?
Maybe it's because we're taking it a little too casually.
Maybe we're doing it for a little bit of the wrong reason.
You are making a statement. I'm aligning myself up with God.
He is mine, I am his. I'm aligning myself, I'm
grouping myself, I'm binding myself together with brothers
and sisters of the Lord and we're waiting on hoping on his
return. And that's who we are.
I mean, that's what we're saying when we get baptized.
We're not just saying and you know, I'll do it if you do it
and come on, you know, and I know kids do that sometimes they
do that a lot, but that's OK. They can be baptized again.
We just saw it. They can be baptized again, you
know. So they baptized in the name of
Jesus. Philip went in Acts 8 Philip
went and baptized Samaritans, the the worst of the worst.
And Peter and John went down and prayed for them and then they
received the Holy Ghost man. Acts 9.
This was Paul after he, after he believed, it says immediately
there fell from his eyes something like scales.
He received his side at once and he arose and was baptized.
Paul was not a secret closet Christian.
He was beaten. He was whipped.
He was almost drowned. Anything you can imagine, Paul
went through it. Most of the letters we see in
the Bible were from Paul. He did it in prison.
He was not a closet Christian. We cannot just lay back and say,
I got baptized when I was five years old.
Really. Maybe you need to do it again.
Maybe you didn't understand exactly what you were doing.
It's an important thing that you do.
Gentiles were baptized and after they received the Holy Spirit in
Acts 10. The Gentiles, after they
received the Holy Spirit, then they were baptized in water.
Look it up, Acts 1044. Look it up.
And in Acts 18, then Crispus, the ruler of the synagogue,
believed on the Lord with all his household, and many of the
Corinthians hearing believed and were baptized.
Now the Lord spoke to Paul in a night by a vision.
Do not be afraid, but speak and do not keep silent.
Let me let that soak in. Do not keep silent.
Share your faith, teach your family, bringing them up in the
way that they should go. That's what the Lord tells us to
do. Don't hide it in the closet and
say, well, you make up your mind when you no, no, no, not at all.
But we are knit together. We are bound together in baptism
with Christ, lining up with his word, living my life as if I'm
not. I'm not who I used to be.
And trust me, I am not who I used to be, but I'm waiting.
I'm finding my brothers and I'm finding my sisters everywhere
and I'm aligning up with them and we're hoping waiting.
We have that blessed hope. All of this pertains to water
baptism. I was excited when I saw that
sitting in there. Thanks, Lord.
You know, all of that. It's a binding together.
The, the Jewish people didn't take it lightly.
They couldn't enter the, they could not enter the temple
unless they had been through a mitzvah, which was a pool of
water. They would go in, ritually go.
Actually what they did was they would go in one side, be
cleansed and go out the other side, coming in one way and
going out the other way. That's virtually what they did
back in the day ancient times. But it is the binding together
with the Lord sealing the deal. Maybe.
OK, I know this is not a this is a chew on it work message
tonight. Think about it.
Just think about it. It goes along with salvation
where the people go to heaven that were never baptized.
Thief on the cross is one of them.
Good example, thief on the cross.
People who have deathbed conversions, they go to heaven
without being baptized. But if you're alive and you're
awake and you're walking and you're talking and you have a
way of getting baptized, go baptized.
Philip baptized the eunuch in a mud puddle.
Is there any, what after he became aware of what it, the
word meant, after he, this was Old Testament.
He was reading the Old Testament and he says, who is he talking
about? Probably reading Isaiah.
Who is he talking about? And so Philip told him all about
it and he said, where can I get baptized?
There's a pool of water right over there.
Let's get do this. Let's do this.
It was important. It's an important thing to be
baptized, and I'm not talking sprinkled, I'm talking
immersion. OK, so that's all I have for
you. I hope you chew on it.
I hope you think about it, because we're probably going to
get active here real soon, I hope.
And if you've never been baptized, get baptized.
Take your father's name, get the right of inheritance because
that's what it stood for. If you have been baptized and
you were baptized and you're not really sure why you were
baptized, you just knew that somebody told you you need get
baptized this time. Line yourself up with God's
Word. Thanks for listening to the
Cross Powered Church podcast. May you know that true hope,
peace, and salvation can only be found in Jesus.
If you're near Campbell, TX, we would love for you to join us in
person. You can find service times at
crosspowerchurch.com.