John K. Jenkins Sr - Baptism

Oh glory to Your name, Almighty God! You 're worthy to be praised, and worthy to be glorified and honored. We just worship You, Father; we give You the glory, the honor, and the praise. Thank You for Your loving kindness toward us, for the mercies You 've expressed, and for the gifts You bestow upon us day by day. You 're worthy of our praise and our adoration, and we unapologetically give You glory and thanks, expressing our gratitude for all that You 've done. For every door that You 've opened and every prayer that You 've already answered, we pray for one another in this seat, asking You, Heavenly Father, to work miracles in the lives of Your sons and daughters-not just for the people in this building, but for our brothers and sisters around the world. We pray that You would speak to them now, anoint our time together in Your word, and speak to us, God. Convict us, convert us, and conform us to Your will. We pray, Father, that You would save somebody, reclaim, restore, and bring about the change in our lives that You desire. We give You the glory, the honor, and the thanks. Build a hedge around this place, is my prayer. Rebuke every distracting spirit, Father, and let the name of the Lord Jesus receive all of the glory and honor. We give You thanks in Jesus' name, and everybody said, «Amen.»

You can be seated. Today is part three of our series, which is a sub-series. If you’re a guest with us, our theme this year is «Doing Life Together,» and we’ve taken it from Acts 2:42. It talks about how the early church continued in the apostles' doctrine, fellowship, breaking of bread, and in prayer. Those four things they did, and we try to incorporate that into the lives of our church. We 're starting off by looking at the apostles' doctrines, or the teachings of the apostles. They did what the apostles taught, and we are doing a sub-series discussing what the apostles taught. This sub-series is from Hebrews 6, so turn your Bibles to Hebrews 6. Verses 1 and 2 talk about the foundational principles. The title of this message today is «Foundational Principles, Part 3: Baptisms.» I want to talk about baptism-it’s an important topic, a very significant thing to discuss. There 's a lot of misunderstanding, mis- teachings, and misconceptions surrounding baptism, what it is, who gets baptized, and what baptism means. I want to spend today talking about baptism.

Now, let’s look at Hebrews 6. Let 's read these first two verses quickly. Hebrews 6: 1 — 2 says, «Therefore, leaving the discussion of the elementary principles of Christ, let us go on to perfection» (which means maturity), «not laying again the foundation of…» and then it begins to list these six things. We’ve talked about the first two: repentance from dead works is number one, and faith toward God is number two. Verse two mentions the doctrines of baptisms, of laying on of hands, resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgments-those are the next four that we’re going to discuss. This outlines what I’ll be preaching about over the next four weeks.

I want you to notice when it talks about baptisms, it has an " S» at the end. The doctrine of baptisms -notice the " S.» This indicates there are more than one type of baptism. In fact, there are five baptisms in the Bible. I’m only going to talk about one today; I’ll discuss the other four in Bible study. Look at your neighbor and say, «If you want the other four, you’ve got to come to Bible study!» Go ahead, look back at your neighbor and say, «I guess I won’t be getting those other four!» All of them are important, and all of them have significant meanings. I wish I could discuss all five today because they are very important to your personal lives, but today I 'll focus on one, which is water baptism. That 's why I want to talk about water baptism.

I have four points today that I want to dive into regarding how to relate to water baptism. When I was a kid, my mother took me to the First Baptist Church of Glen Arden, where I joined the Sunbeam Choir. I sang in the Sunbeam Choir at the First Baptist Church of Glen Arden, and sometimes the Sunbeams would sing on the fourth Sunday, which was Communion Sunday when we served communion in the morning. All of my friends were taking communion, dipping their tongues in the cup and everything, and I wanted to know what communion tasted like. So, I asked my mother if I could take communion. She said, «No, not until you join the church.» So, I joined the church so I could taste communion. When I joined the church, I got baptized. I stepped into the water; it was cold -it chilled my body, but not my soul.

What I didn’t know then, but know now, is the purpose of baptism and what it means. I want to talk to you all about it. Some of you have joined the church, but you’ve never been baptized. Some of you are saved but have never been baptized because you think it’s optional.

Point number one: baptism is not an option; it’s a command from Christ. It’s a command; it’s not a suggestion.