Requirements #5: Discipleship Baptism Part 3

Driving home: The physical, visual, and tangible ordinances instituted by Christ are intended to illustrate and reinforce the spiritual, invisible, and non-materialist, material realities set forth in the saving truth of Christ.

The principle of ordinances illustrating spiritual realities is compared to ballast in a ship's hold, helping believers navigate turbulent waters of differing opinions on baptism and the Lord's Supper.

But if you do it, then it will act like a ballast in your hole as you try to sail through some rather turbulent waters in terms of all of the various opinions and perspectives on the subject of baptism and the Lord's Supper. Here's the principle. The physical, visual, and tangible ordinances instituted by Christ are intended to illustrate and reinforce the spiritual, invisible, and non-materialist, material realities set forth in the saving truth of Christ. Now, let me break that down.

7:50 - 8:27 Read in full sermon

Driving home: The physical, visual, and tangible ordinances instituted by Christ are intended to illustrate and reinforce the spiritual, invisible, and non-materialist, material realities set forth in the saving truth of Christ.

Martin uses the analogy of invisible, vital commodities on a shelf, made visible through a mirror, to explain how physical ordinances like baptism and the Lord's Supper make the invisible, spiritual realities of the gospel tangible and understandable.

Let me try to illustrate it this way. Suppose I had some commodities here on the shelf in the pulpit. And I told you they are wonderful things. They are wonderful things.

10:32 - 10:45 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: The second significance is identification, specifically with Christ's death, burial, and resurrection. Baptism outwardly declares the inward reality of union with Christ, where…

His wife's change of name upon marriage is used as a personal illustration of identification through union, explaining how Marilyn K. Hart became Marilyn K. Martin, just as believers are identified with Christ through union with Him.

And here I struggle because it's really identification through union. The most significant function of the phrase in the New Testament epistles, particularly the epistles of Paul, is the phrase, in Christ, in him, which means union with him. And trying to illustrate identification by union, I didn't ask my wife's permission to do this. I usually do if I'm going to use her in an illustration.

33:29 - 33:52 Read in full sermon

The point: Do not rely on external rituals like infant baptism to commit to biblical parental duties; conversion is the true instinct for godly parenting.

Examples of consecrating oneself to the piano or an environmental cause are used to define consecration as devoting oneself entirely to someone or something, setting the stage for understanding consecration to Christ in baptism.

Now thirdly and most briefly, baptism is not only to symbolize purification, secondly, identification, but consecration. To consecrate oneself is to devote oneself entirely to someone or something. We might say of someone at age eight, he consecrated himself to the piano. What do we mean by that?

50:53 - 51:22 Read in full sermon

The point: Do not rely on external rituals like infant baptism to commit to biblical parental duties; conversion is the true instinct for godly parenting.

He contrasts the idea of needing water on a child's forehead for parental dedication with the natural instinct of converted parents to dedicate their children to God and nurture them biblically, arguing that baptism is for the believer's consecration, not a parent's.

And there weren't a lot of people gathered around in the wee hours of the morning when Paul baptized the Philippian jailer in his household. So I'm not prepared to say baptism must be as a fixed rule, an open, public thing. No, but it does become a formal, visible, and ordinarily a public or open declaration that I am constrained by the grace of God to give myself entirely to Jesus Christ. It is not a consecration of your children to God and of yourself to seek to set a godly example and to nurture them and to catechize them and to pray for them. God have mercy if you need to put water on your...

52:15 - 53:30 Read in full sermon

The point: Count the cost of discipleship, understanding that following Christ may involve social ostracization, loneliness, and pain, and be prepared to prioritize Christ above all else.

Jesus' parables of the king going to war and the man building a tower are used to illustrate the importance of 'counting the cost' of discipleship before making a commitment, emphasizing that consecration involves understanding the sacrifices required.

You know what passages I wrote down and said you go home and you read and pray over the passages. These are the ones that I'm quoting to you now. Count the cost. Jesus went on to say the king who goes out to war without thinking of the logistics of the number of his soldiers against the number of the soldiers in the other army and the man who builds without calculating do I have enough to finish is like the person who says oh yeah I'm for Jesus.

61:29 - 61:58 Read in full sermon

The point: Do not be reluctant to share with the elders what God has done in your soul, even if you are young and waiting for God's time for baptism.

The analogy of a young man in puberty wanting to get a wife immediately to avoid fornication is used to illustrate that while the desire for baptism may be present, discretion regarding age and maturity is sometimes appropriate, just as marriage has its proper time.

of the second generation and I'm not fully aware of it but I do know this when I read my Bible I don't see anyone called a disciple who was not a non-minor I don't see anyone described as being added to the church who could not be called a young man a young woman God knows I don't feel I have the last answer but I do have my Bible and I want to be shown from my Bible and if you are in that category where all that we preached of the spiritual realities of the Lord you've done that for me Lord Jesus I am yours you may be six, seven, eight, ten twelve years old don't trouble yourself that the Lor...

68:47 - 70:16 Read in full sermon