June 30, 2013

Always in Third Place (Acts 2:36-41)

Preacher: Bryce Morgan Series: Baptism Topic: Acts Scripture: Acts 2:36–2:41

Always in Third Place

Acts 2:37-41

June 30th, 2013

(One Lord: So Great a Salvation)

 

I. Bad News at Pentecost

Just try to picture the scene. Jerusalem. It's about 50 days after Jesus’ death. Undoubtedly that awful event is still resonant in the minds of many. But the streets and markets and temple court are bustling with activity. The city is crowded because there are Jews from all over the Roman world who have returned to Jerusalem to celebrate the ancient Feast of Weeks. Some have come from the Empire's capital. Some from the western deserts of North Africa. Some from the east, from ancient Persia.

But suddenly, their commerce and worship is disturbed by a group of Galileans from northern Israel. These men and women, well over a hundred of them, begin to attract a crowd, not simply because they are loudly and passionately praising God, but because, mysteriously, the tourists in the crowd are hearing the language of their adopted home countries being spoken by these Galileans.

But just as some in the crowd try to write this group off as a bunch of babbling drunks, a man named Peter, who is apparently their spokesman, stands, and clearly and soberly declares the meaning of this strange event.

He declares that what the crowd is witnessing is the fulfillment of prophetic promises. This explosion of praise in a multitude of languages is evidence of God’s Spirit, poured out in accordance with the promise of God’s coming Messiah.

Peter goes on to declare that the Messiah, the king that all of them had been waiting for, the deliverer of Israel, had been among them, and had even proven himself through signs and wonders. And yet the people rejected him. They gave him over to the Romans and condemned him to crucifixion.

But incredibly, gloriously, this Messiah, this Jesus of Nazareth, could not be defeated, even by death. He had been rescued from death, by God, according to the ancient promises. And this same Jesus, who just weeks earlier had been rejected by the people, was now raised up to and reigning at the right hand of God.

Can you imagine, what the people must have thought after hearing this? Can you imagine what they must have felt if they accepted this as true? They had rejected God’s anointed; their only hope of rescue. They approved of His shameful death. So what could they do at this point? What hope was there now?

What I’ve just described is more than simply a summary of the events recorded in Acts 2:1-36. At its core, it is a summary of the human predicament, of your condition; my condition. Each of us is or was in this same spot; not geographically, but spiritually; not chronologically, but internally. Each of us is culpable. We’re guilty. It was our sin that sent Him to the cross. And like these Jews, we too now stand under God’s judgment.

And so the question that begins our passage this morning is a question that we too must ask.

 

II. Good News at Pentecost (Acts 2:37-41)

Listen as the story continues on:

Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?” 38 And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.” 40 And with many other words he bore witness and continued to exhort them, saying, “Save yourselves from this crooked generation.” 41 So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.

Even though this celebration of the Feast of Weeks (also called Pentecost) began with some extremely bad news, here was good news. Even though the people had rejected God’s anointed king, there was an offer of forgiveness. Even more than that, there was an offer of new life through the Spirit of God. They could be made right with God. In light of the offense, this was an amazing turn of events.

 

III. Repent and Be What?

But how could the people experience God's mercy in this way? Peter mentions two initial steps. First he mentions repentance, that sorrow for one’s sins, that turning of the heart and mind, that inner rejection of the kind of life that leads us away from God. As is clear, the people were ready to do just that.

But notice the second of these initial steps. Now if we were to look to the ministry of Jesus, Jesus, according to Mark 1:15, was declaring “repent and believe”. In Paul’s ministry, according to Acts 20:21, he taught similarly about repentance and faith. But when we listen to Peter, what do we hear? We hear “repent and be baptized”.

Baptized? Baptized? That word is not even translated into English; it's only been converted into English letters, straight from the Greek. Baptize! If the key to our reconciliation to God comes, as we see here, through these same two steps, we desperately need to understand what it means to be baptized.

Now even though all of us have some ideas about baptism, we need to go straight to God’s word; we need to make sure that our ideas are in line with God’s truth.

Well, for the Jews who were standing there listening to Peter, baptism would have been a familiar idea, but a strange request. For the Jews, baptism referred to various ceremonial washings that originally priests took part in, in obedience to the law. But in Jesus’ time, Gentiles had to go through such washings as a part of their conversion to Judaism.

But only a few years before this, in the Jordan river, a man name John had come preaching repentance to the people, and practicing a ceremonial washing in preparation for the coming Messiah. For John, this washing was a symbol or repentance, and hundreds, maybe thousands, came to acknowledge their sins.

But now Peter was asking these Jews , all of them, to take this step. But notice the difference between these other washings and what Peter is talking about. Peter calls them to be baptized “in the name of Jesus Christ”, that is, of Jesus the Messiah. What the crowd would have understood is that Peter was asking them to renounce their old lives and to identify themselves publicly with this Jesus. And the result, as we see from the remainder of v. 38, would be forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit.

But wait a minute. How does this square with the “repent and believe” message Jesus and Paul were proclaiming? Has Peter simply replaced faith with baptism? Is this ritual of baptism therefore required for our redemption and reconciliation to God? And if so, doesn’t this mean part of our deliverance based on a human work?

Well, I think we can answer these questions by simply asking, “WHY does God call us to be baptized?” It’s clear from this passage and from many other parts of the New Testament that baptism is a crucial part of the work of Christ in this world. Jesus told His followers in Matthew 28 that baptism was part of the work of making disciples. It’s always there. But why?

 

Reason #1: A Demonstration of Saving Faith

Well, I think the first way the Bible answers that question helps us understand the connection between baptism and faith. As we see here, baptism is a demonstration of saving faith. It is not saving faith, but it is an expression of such faith.

If we think about what Peter is calling them to do here, we can see that even though faith is not explicitly mentioned, it is at the very heart of his appeal. To repent requires faith, doesn't it? It means we trust that God’s way is right and ours is not.

Furthermore, verse 41 tells us that the people were only baptized after they had first “received” His word. The word “received” here is simply a synonym for trust; they believed what he was telling them. And because they did, they were willing to identify themselves with Jesus by being baptized in His name. There are nine episodes in the book of Acts that involve baptism, and in all of them, personal faith in the gospel always comes first.

So as Scripture makes abundantly clear, what restores us to God is not baptism per se, it is the faith that should lead us to baptism, that genuine belief that Jesus is “both Lord and Messiah” as verse 36 makes clear.

Peter touches on this in his first letter when he compares baptism to Noah's ark, both examples of deliverance from God's judgment though water. Peter writes, Baptism, which corresponds to this [to the ark], now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body [that is, not the actual water part] but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ...(I Peter 3:21) Peter's talking here about saving faith, a faith demonstrated in the act of baptism.

But why does God even call us to such a demonstration? Well, I believe He does so in order to reveal the genuineness of our faith. Remember what Jesus said in Matthew 10:32, “Everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven…”

If you tell me that you are my friend, but are unwilling to be seen in public with me, I will naturally have doubts about the sincerity of your friendship. Baptism is an act that calls us to publicly identify ourselves with Jesus, to “acknowledge [him] before men”. Scripture doesn’t call us to go the front of the church. God’s word doesn’t call us to pray with a counselor. The Bible does not call us to sign a card. God calls us to be baptized. If you believe, then you are called to demonstrate that faith through baptism.

You see like so many of the sports teams I was on during P.E. in school, baptism always comes in third place. Throughout the book of Acts, we see the same pattern in response to the gospel message, the Good News about Jesus. First comes repentance, then comes faith, then comes baptism.

 

Reason #2: A Representation of Saving Grace

But why baptism? Why this kind of ritual? Why water? Well, those questions bring us to the second reason God’s word gives us about why baptism?

Just as baptism is a demonstration of saving faith, it is also a representation of saving grace. What do I mean? Well, it’s important that we understand that there are two baptisms that Scripture talks about in regard to the follower of Jesus.

The first is the water baptism that we’ve been looking at this morning. The second is the inward spiritual baptism that water baptism represents outwardly. You see, in our public identification with Jesus Christ, we are painting a picture of how we have been inwardly identified with Christ through faith. You may remember that both John the Baptizer and Jesus spoke about being baptized, not with water, but with the Holy Spirit (Mark 1:8; Acts 1:5).

That's the spiritual baptism all of us experience through faith. Therefore, in several ways, water baptism is an outward representation of what happens to us inwardly when we are baptized by the Holy Spirit. Let’s look at how the Apostle Paul describes the different ways in which baptism represents God’s inner work of grace.

FIRST, baptism is being buried in and raised out of water as a picture of our identification, through God’s Spirit, with Christ’s death and resurrection.

Listen to what the Apostle Paul tells us in Romans 6 about the spiritual baptism that one experiences when they trust in Jesus Christ as Lord:

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus [remember Peter’s call, to “be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ”?-- all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus] were baptized into his death? 4 We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

It's very clear here that Paul is speaking about an inner baptism by God’s Spirit that causes us our old self to die with Christ in His death, to be crucified and buried with Him. But it also causes us to know the power of His resurrection, so that we can walk in newness of life according to a new self.

But what is interesting is that here, and also in Colossians 2:12, Paul specifically mentions the word “buried” in reference to this spiritual baptism. In fact, this idea of being buried with Jesus is only used in connection with baptism (unlike “died with him” or “raised with him”).

I think Paul's use of the word “buried” corresponds to what is outwardly represented in water baptism. I believe Scripture and the earliest church traditions argue strongly for baptism by immersion. So when we are put under the water, we are illustrating our burial with Jesus. And when we are brought out of the water, we provide others with a picture of our resurrection with Christ. The 19th century preacher Charles Spurgeon put it this way:

Now, by being buried with Christ in baptism, we set our seal to the fact that the death of Christ was on our behalf, and that we were in him, and died in him, and, in token of our belief, we consent to the watery grave, and yield ourselves to be buried according to his command.

The inner reality is represented by the outer act. But there’s another reality pictured here.

The SECOND thing we learn from God’s word is that baptism is being washed with water as a picture of being washed of sin by God’s Spirit.

Listen to how Paul describes this reality in Titus chapter 3:

But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, 5 he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, 6 whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior,

Do you see how Paul uses the image of water here? Our bodies are washed because our hearts are first washed by God’s Spirit. Ephesians 5:26 talks about a washing by the “word”. When we trust in who Jesus is, in the message of the cross, we are cleansed of all our sins. We are, as Paul puts it here, we are regenerated or recreated; we are renewed.

There are some caves down by Tucson that I’ve explored in the past and to access many parts of this cave system, you have to get down on you belly and crawl through some pretty narrow passages. Now you know you’re getting dirty when you’re doing this, but it’s not until you finish and you walk back into the light, that you realize that you have become completely brown, every inch of you. You’re filthy.

So because of this reality, we have to bring very large containers full of water and each of us helps the others by creating a roadside shower. It’s amazing to see the rapid transformation as the water washes over a person’s body and clothes and washes away the dirt. When we come into the light of Christ, and others watch the water fall off our bodies in baptism, they are seeing a beautiful picture of our sins, our offenses against God, all of them, falling away from us because of Christ.

Now THIRD and finally, we also learn that baptism is a rite of initiation into the local church as a picture of our being joined to the body of Christ by one Spirit.

Paul describes this spiritual truth for us in I Corinthians 12. He writes: For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink [another water metaphor] of one Spirit. (v. 13)

Here we learn that the inward baptism that occurs through the Holy Spirit, not only puts to death our old self and washes away our sin, it not only renews us according to Christ’s resurrection, but it also grafts us into, it makes us one with, the people of God.

In Acts 2:41 we see a connection between baptism, and the fact that 3000 people were said to be “added” to the church. You see, for this Jewish audience, baptism would have reminded them of that washing which Gentile converts to Judaism had to go through in order to be initiated into Israel. But in this case, as we see from I Corinthians 12, we could say this initiation represents the incredible reality that we have been spiritually grafted into the body of Christ, the church.

No matter who you are or where you’ve come from, through faith in the gospel, we are united with one another in Christ. So when we walk out of the water, and walk into the midst of others who have also been transformed by grace, we are illustrating the connection that has been made by the Spirit of God. Baptism is a powerful reminder of our new beginning in a new community.

So...three pictures, one baptism. Think about everything it communicates.

 

VI. The Greatest Sermon…

Combined with a verbal profession of trust in Jesus Christ, God desires to, and does use, the symbolism of baptism to preach, what I believe, is one the greatest sermons that can ever be preached. It is a living sermon through which we are reminded of how the grace of God and the Spirit of God has worked in a person's life.

So why are we talking about baptism? Because on an upcoming Sunday, very soon, there will be an opportunity to baptized. And if you have not been baptized in accordance with what we've seen this morning, I hope you will seriously consider the call that God has issued, and is issuing through His word.

God calls us to turn and trust. He calls us to admit that we’ve rebelled against Him by living a me-centered life in a God-centered universe; that we deserve judgment, and that we cannot save ourselves. And so He also us to come to trust in Jesus Christ as our only hope, to come and find grace and forgiveness and renewal.

And if we have truly done that, if there has been repentance and trust, then we need to testify publicly of that response by responding to God’s call to be baptized.

No one else can make that decision for you, because baptism always comes third.

Other churches, other church traditions baptize children and adults for different reasons, reasons that do not correspond to the personal expression or demonstration of saving faith we've talked about this morning. It is not a personal acknowledgment of faith in Jesus before others.

We also struggle in the church when we treat baptism as a kind of spiritual option only for the spiritually mature, that is, when we make it something we choose to do at just the right time. I've talked with plenty of people who have told me, “Well, I'm just not ready to baptized. I need to get some things worked out first. I don't feel like I'm quite there yet.”

But when you read through the book of Acts, you see that baptism is always an immediate step of faith whenever someone comes to Christ. Remember what we saw this morning: “Repent and be baptized.” There is wisdom in taking some time to talk what you believe and why you believe, and time to understand what baptism means. But the only requirement for baptism is genuine faith, not achieving a specific level of spiritual maturity.

If you have not personally and publicly responded to God's call, I urge you to do so in obedience to God. Come see me after the service this morning. I would love to talk with you about this important step.

And if you have been baptized as a personal expression of repentance and faith, then I pray that God will use this study to stir you and remind you of the amazing work He has done in you by His grace and His Spirit. Remember...remember how you acknowledged Jesus before others; remember what it means to die to that old you and walk in newness of life.

May God stir all of us this morning in light of His mercy and grace in Christ.