11.25.18 Sermon

An expository message on baptism —a subject Danny Cox notes carries very different meanings across the many church backgrounds represented in any room. Working from the Greek baptizo ("to dip, plunge, immerse") and Romans 6, the teaching frames baptism as immersion that identifies the believer with the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. Walking through Acts—Pentecost, the Ethiopian official, Lydia, the Philippian jailer—it argues that in the New Testament there was no such thing as an unbaptized believer, and that belief was the single prerequisite. The harder questions are handled pastorally: infant baptism, the thief on the cross, and whether re-baptism is needed. The call, drawn from Acts 22:16, is direct—"what are you waiting for?"—with baptism pictured as the public "wedding day" of a life joined to Christ.