But today, as we gather together before we witness three baptisms, I wanna take some time to talk about baptism. And this is one of the classic passages of scripture that does so. It gives us key insights into baptism. And I wanna ask a question that the man who was baptized in this passage asked about himself. If you look in Acts chapter eight, in verse 36, This man that we're looking at today said this. They came to some water and this man, this Ethiopian eunuch said, see, here's water. What hinders me from being baptized? And that's the question I wanna ask you today. What hinders you? Now the word hinder is a word that we know, it's probably not a word we use a lot. A word that we might use instead would be prevent. or a phrase we might use is getting in the way, or holding you back, or stopping you from, but that's the question. What is getting in the way from you being baptized? If you were to stand before God today and ask him, God, do you want every person in the world to be baptized, what would he say? Yes, of course he does. And so the question is, for every person in the world, what is preventing you? What is keeping you back from being baptized? And that's a great question. I'm asking you, this man asked himself, and so maybe we should look at it this way. Ask yourself, like this man asked about himself, what is keeping me? So talk to yourself today. What is keeping me from getting baptized if I have not been baptized? That's the question before us. Now for centuries, churches have observed the command of Jesus Christ to baptize anyone who believes on him for salvation. as we observe communion or the Lord's table once a month and sometimes more than once a month. We also baptize new believers. These are two things that Jesus commands us to do. We call them ordinances. They are commands that he has ordained that has significance, that by doing them, we are instructed. Some people take the view that these ordinances do things to you. Special grace flows through the grapes, the grape juice and special grace and blessing flows through the bread that you eat or something comes out of heaven and into you when you get baptized and the Bible doesn't teach any of that. One of the things we're privileged to have here at Faith Baptist Church is a variety of people in the teaching profession. We have teachers in the public school, we have homeschool teachers, we have Christian school teachers, we have charter school teachers, we even have a charter school principal with us here today. Educators are at an advantage because they understand the real significance of ordinances. They understand what Jesus was doing. You see, Jesus was not a priest walking around doing ceremonies. He was not commanding ceremonies that did special supernatural things to people. Jesus was a teacher traveling around trying to explain spiritual things using object lessons in part. And when Jesus said, I want you to be baptized, he was giving us an action that he wanted us to do because it gave us a regular object lesson that continued to remind us about some things. putting something in front of our eyes that caused us to ask questions and remember certain ideas. The same thing with the Lord's table. Why do we periodically drink juice and eat bread and pray together when we do that? Not because anything happens to us, but because it's supposed to continue to remind us as an object lesson of certain key ideas that he wants us to continue to take seriously. That's why we baptize, so that we can obey him as our teacher and remember certain things and communicate certain things through doing so. Today, we do have the privilege of witnessing three very special baptisms. And let me just say, as the shepherd of this flock, of this spiritual congregation, I couldn't be more thrilled, I know that's bad English, with what God is doing. in the hearts of these three people. I've witnessed their decisions of faith. I've seen them taking forward steps in their Christian spiritual life. And whenever someone gets baptized, understanding it properly and biblically, it is not them doing something alone. It is them revealing that God has been working in their heart. And it should remind us of the invisible God at work in our hearts, moving us forward. And you're witnessing that today when you watch these baptisms. You're seeing God take people forward in steps of faith. But before we witness these special moments, let's turn and focus our attention to here in Acts chapter eight. Let's ask the question, have you been baptized the Bible way? And if not, what is hindering you from doing it? The simple point of the message, just to make it very clear, is that God would have you turn to Jesus Christ alone for salvation. And if you have done that, then God would have you get baptized. It's a very simple message. Let's take a look at some very important verses. Let's look in verse 27. Our first point today is that Bible Christianity is for everyone in the world. Verse 27, he arose and went, that's Philip, a man that was serving the Lord. Behold, a man of Ethiopia and eunuch of great authority under Candace, queen of the Ethiopians. who had the charge of all her treasure, and had come to Jerusalem to worship. Here's this man who is the focal point of this story, and he does something similar to the Samaritan lady that we saw in John chapter three last week. If you are a Jew, You would look at this and say, what? An Ethiopian? An Ethiopian government official? What is this? Because if you are a Jew, you think that Jesus is just for the Jews. And the blessing that he provides can only benefit others if they become Jews. But here you have someone, as in John three, you have a lady who was a Samaritan, only partially Jew, with some other mixed up ideas. And the Jews, as we saw, didn't have any dealings with people like that. And we talked about inappropriate social, racist, ethnic divisions that happen in society and can prevent us from talking to people about Jesus. Those things need to go away. Here you have a man who wasn't just not a Jew. He wasn't just partly Jew and he wasn't someone who was not a Jew at all but grew up in a Jewish community. Here is a man that the Bible calls an Ethiopian. And by mentioning this point, just like the Samaritan woman who was not really a Jew was mentioned in John three, we learn that Bible Christianity is for everyone in the world. It is for people from every nation. This is an important point. As you reflect on the history of world religions, If you've learned about this in school or in university, or you've given thought to this, or sat down to read books, or just kind of step back and observe that in a city like this, there are many religions, like there are many ethnicities. In the Queensborough of all places in the world, there's more diversity than anywhere else in the globe. And you would note, if you're a thinking person, that religion often associates itself with an ethnicity, or a country, or a nation, or a tribe, or a village, or a people group. And you could go down the line for most religions and associate it with a certain group of people. But Bible Christianity is not that way. It is a belief for every nation, for every people group, for every tongue, every tribe, and every nation. There is a verse in Revelation that says, before the throne of God will stand people from every nation in the world. That does not mean there are people from every religion in the world. It means there are people from every nation in the world through Jesus Christ. That is the way of Bible Christianity. What are we seeing here when we see that this is a man who is from Ethiopia? Being a man from Ethiopia, the first possibility is that he was from this nation of Ethiopia. And I'm sure the borders of that North African country were not exactly the same back at the beginning of the church age. 2,000 years ago as they are today. However, that's about the same area that it was at. Maybe it's saying that he was here. And of course, if you know your geography, Israel is about right here in the Middle East. Maybe he was from that nation. Another possibility that's very legitimate is that it's simply referring to him as an African or a North African person without specifying which country he was from. Just use that kind of person, a person from that ethnicity, that part of the globe. Both are possibilities by making this point, and it all really boils down to what the readers at that time would have been thinking, and both are possible ideas that they were thinking, but the point remains the same. He was not from Israel. He didn't even live in Israel. He had nothing about Israel in his system. This was a man from another part of the world, from another people group, and this was a man for whom Jesus Christ died. He was from a very disconnected culture when we think of the Bible, when we think of Judaism and Jesus Christ and so forth. He was also accustomed to a different set of religious beliefs or traditions. Sometimes people tell me when I give them a gospel pamphlet, a tract, a little piece of literature that speaks about Jesus Christ, or my business card inviting them to church, or something of this nature. Now, often I will have someone tell me, that's okay, save that for someone else who believes that, because I am, and they'll tell me what their religious background is. Do I say this to them? Oh, I'm sorry, that's not for you. That's not what I say. What I say is, oh, no, no, no, you misunderstand. That is for you. See, when I give people information about Jesus, it's not for people who believe about Jesus, it's for people who don't. It's for people who have other persuasions because Jesus is for every other person. That is not a reason to draw back, it's a reason to give out. Notice when this man spoke to Philip, Philip didn't say to him, oh, well, Philip, Or, oh, mister, whoever you are from Ethiopia, you know, you don't really need to take this seriously because you have your own religion, you know. That's not what he said. He said, this is for you. And he extended the offer of Jesus to this man who was from another part of the globe with an entirely different background. That's the way of Christianity. That's what Christianity is. Also notice that Christianity does not spread through force. It does not spread through all kinds of human means. It spreads from one person to another, sharing the love of Jesus in words. We're gonna look at that. You see, Bible Christianity is for every person in the world, even this man from North Africa. And it is not only for every person in the world, it is through the Word of God. Bible Christianity comes through the Word of God. This man, and this is remarkable, this man got his hands on a copy of the Word of God. You say so, what is so significant about that? Well, more than I can talk about today. Here you see a picture and what you notice is this scroll. You see this scroll here? That's, I don't know if that's a scroll of the book of Isaiah or not, that's what this man had. This man didn't have a little compact, you know, pretend leather, calfskin leather Bible that he carried around in his pocket or his robe or something. He didn't have a little glove compartment in his chariot that was just big enough to fit a little thin line Bible. That's not what he had. This man had a scroll that was large, probably like this, either with parchment or some kind of leather material. And to get to the pages, you'd have to roll strategically to get there. and these pieces would have been sewed together. It would have been very large, very cumbersome. In fact, these scrolls for the most part were only located in Jewish synagogues or in the temple, generally chained to a podium or to some kind of platform where people would read, rabbis would read. to the congregation when they were gathered together for worship. That's why churches often would meet at synagogues on the seventh day or the first day of the week, so that they can have access to the scriptures as well. These were not things that people carried around with them. They were very expensive. They weren't floating around. They were very cumbersome. And so that really raises the question, So how did this man from Ethiopia get all the way down to the middle of the desert coming from Jerusalem with a copy of the scroll of Isaiah? And how was it that he was standing in his chariot in the middle of the road, it seems, with this scroll open, reflecting on a certain section of the scroll? This is not a normal occurrence. You understand? The bottom line is this man got his hands on a copy of the Word of God. Now the Bible mentions that this man was employed by Candace, a queen. She was a ruler over the nation of Ethiopia or North Africa somehow, and he worked for her. He was a man of very high authority. He was a high government official, and he was responsible for the treasury. Now, was he assigned by this queen to take tax money and to go and buy this? Hopefully he didn't use tax money the wrong way to buy a personal copy of the Bible, but whatever this man was doing, he had power, he had resources, and somehow he used that to get his hands on a copy of scripture and he took it with him and he was reading it. This man did not know Jesus Christ as Savior yet. He did not have a personal relationship with him, but God was drawing him to himself and he was responding to that. May I ask you a question? Whether you know Jesus Christ as Savior today or not, when is the last time you paused and you stared at a portion of scripture and asked questions about it and dug into it? When? Sometimes we know Jesus Christ as Savior and we know more about what's happening on the sitcoms than we do about any verse of scripture recently. We don't pay attention to the Word of God like we should. No wonder we're so empty at times. This man got his hands on a copy of the Word of God. Let me say this, it is important for everyone in the world to know what the Bible says. Why is that? How does God reach out to the heart of a person and draw them into Bible Christianity? Here's how he does it. He uses your eyes and he uses his creation. Romans 1 in verse 20, notice what it says. Romans 1.20 says, for the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen. Look at that again. The invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen. Let me paraphrase that. God is spiritual. God is invisible. Yet we still all end up talking about him, right? Some of us believe that he's there, some of us don't. Some of us believe the right things about him, some of us don't, but we still end up talking about him. The invisible things of this invisible God, the fact of him, are clearly seen. How do you see an invisible God? How do you see visible argumentations for the reality of an invisible God? From the creation of the world. The things that are created in this world tell us that there is a God. They argue clearly. The best apologetics, the best defense, the best argument for God's existence and his power over us, his authority is the visible world. I had a man ask me in Jackson Heights one day in a community hangout area. I was hanging out and he was hanging out and we were hanging out for different reasons, but I walked up to him and I started talking to him. That's why I was hanging out and I talked to him and I said, do you believe in Jesus Christ? And he said, No, how can you prove there's a God? I said, okay, this might be overly simplistic, but look at that building right there. And we looked at a building, some cinder blocks stacked on top of each other with mortar and some paint on them and some light fixtures and a roof. And you have to get creative in Jackson Heights because there's not a lot of raw, natural creation there. And so I showed him all of that and I said, where did that come from? He said, I don't know, someone made it. I said, right, is it very amazing? Is it an amazing structure? Not really. But it was a structure put together in a very affordable but durable way so that there could be a store and they could make money. Now, look up a little higher. What do you see up there? Clouds, sun, stars. What does that tell you? Where did that come from? You know, there's a lot of discussion about that. One of the theories is that there was this big bang and, oh really? Has anyone suggested such a theory for this building right here? Look, we have so many crazy outlandish explanations for how this natural world came into existence, but none of them have any merit whatsoever when you stop and think about it. Your brain functions. It thinks thoughts. There's so many factors that you have to answer when you look at the natural creation. If there is zero chance that this building, which is very simple as a thing, I know it's a complex thing with the wires and the structure, and there's a lot of things that went into this building, but compared to any one of the things you see in the solar system, it is so simple. It's like a Lego kit compared to the Freedom Tower. There's no chance that this building happened by chance. And to say that the universe happened by chance is absolutely ridiculous. It argues, it's an object lesson for the existence of God. The kind of God you should bow to and say, whatever you tell me to do, I will do. My life is not an accident, I was made. The invisible things of God are clearly seen. But then when you notice that something is made by someone, you have to go another step. Notice Romans 10, 14 through 17. It ends by saying this, faith comes by hearing. So God draws people to him and he starts with their eyes. He gets us looking. He gets us looking at what he made. And we can begin to say, where did that come from? and we can stop thinking that, and we can start coming up with crazy ideas and say, I'm not really going there. Let me go over here, what they call science, and let me get into that. And we try to find ways to get rid of the possibility that there's a God who made all of it. You solve how a building can come into existence by accident first, then work on the universe. Try that. Isn't that logical? Isn't that reasonable? Look at a little rubber ball that you can buy in a quarter machine. Figure out how that can happen by chance first. Try that through the scientific method. And once you've solved that, then go to the larger problem. You start thinking these questions and you say, well, okay, if there is a God, what does he think? What was he thinking when he made this? What was he saying? And that's where we go next. You go from your eyes to your ears. You go from what you see to what you hear. That's the word of God. Psalm 19 lays this out in a poetic form very clearly, that the creation argues for the existence of God, but the written word of God changes our heart. Creation cannot lead a person to Jesus Christ, it can lead a person to the idea of God, and then when you start asking the right questions, and admitting what creation forces you to admit, then you can say so, What does he say? You all know what it's like, right? To go to an art museum or to walk into a third grade school and look on the hall wall after art class. Either one. You can look at a Van Gogh or you can look at a third grade child's watercolor and you ask the same question. What was he thinking? Right? Isn't that what you do? That's what an intelligent thinking person does when you look at art. You don't say, wow, how did that happen? Wow. Now, what are the chances of me just kind of taking paint and that happening? How did that painting happen? I mean, how? We don't even ask that question. We know it happened. It's there. We assume that someone made it. It says Van Gogh or it says, John Smith, his little boy in third grade. Whoever it was that made the picture, we're not trying to figure out if they're real or where they came from or these kind of things. When something exists, it was made. Am I right about that? Let's use our heads. The thing we ask is what were they thinking? Art is a form of expression. That's what creation is. It is God's expression of his ideas, of who he is. Art causes you to say, what were they thinking? What were they trying to say? A good artist is trying to communicate something, say something. Unfortunately, all the great artists of history have not done a very good job of giving us a manual that describes what they were trying to say. And so we spent entire university art classes talking about things we have no answers to. Well, experts say that this man had this kind of thought process and his psychology was on like kind of down this road. He's this kind of a person. And so he did art like this and it was this kind. But how do we know? I'll tell you exactly what God wants us to know. God through creation wants us to bow down and say, you are God. How do I get a relationship with you? How do I come into a relationship with you? Because right now, I don't have a relationship with you. Right now, there are severe problems in my life. I am the opposite of you right now, God. My desires, my lifestyle, my thoughts at the very least, I try to do good things, but the things I think are really bad. I don't think it's how you wanted it to be. How can I have this relationship with you? Because you are God. And then, you get to the word of God. And the word of God tells you what God wants you to know. This man from Ethiopia knew enough about the natural world that he was getting his hands on a copy of the word of God. And he was asking questions about what God said. Let me say this, by the way, many African religions, as well as many other religions on any other part of the globe often doesn't get past the natural world. They see the natural world, and they do a little better than scientists do in the Western world, and they start trying to create ideas of how this world wasn't created, and they start worshiping what they see in nature as gods, recognizing there's something bigger there. But they start worshiping creation, Romans 1 says, and they fall short of getting to the true God who made creation. Do you have anyone in your life who is scratching his or her head wondering what the Bible teaches? Wondering what life is all about? Wondering a little bit about the world? Is there anyone like that? Perhaps that's you. Perhaps you are still searching for the truth about Jesus and the God who made the world. Well, let me tell you what he wants you to think about that. Christianity begins when you turn to Jesus Christ alone for salvation. Christianity begins for you when you turn to Jesus Christ alone for salvation. And the fact is there's no way around it that Bible Christianity is exclusive. You say, what? I thought you said it was for everyone in the world. It is. It is exclusive for everyone in the world. How does that work? There's only one way. There's only one way to the one God, only one way. Jesus himself said in John's gospel, Jesus himself said, I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life. No one can come to the father except through me. He is not any other prophet. He is not any other religion. He is not any other person but himself. And if he said, I am the way, isn't it respectable for me to repeat what he said? Am I better than Jesus? Am I more authoritative than Jesus? Do I have more honor? Do I have more respect than Jesus that I can change what he said? That I can alter his words, that I can offer alternatives? Because if there are alternatives, then Jesus was telling a lie and should not be followed as a great teacher at all. He should be dismissed out of hand. Either Jesus was right or Jesus was wrong. Jesus said, I am the only way. And you can play as many word games as you want, because that does not fit into our modern secular worldview of inclusivism, of rationalism, of abstraction. It doesn't fit. But Jesus says, I am the way. And so to become born again, to have your relationship with the God who made the world restored, you have to turn away from other religions, traditions, and deities. There's no option besides that. As I mentioned before, this man from Ethiopia was raised on different ideas in a different culture with different religious traditions and spiritual beliefs. But to believe on Jesus Christ, he had to abandon all of those beliefs and exchange them for Jesus. There is one true God, and there are many other false gods that should not be trusted. Joshua chapter 24 verses 14 through 15 says this, now therefore fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and truth and put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the flood and in Egypt, and serve you the Lord. And if it seemed evil or a waste unto you to serve the Lord, we'll then choose you this day who you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But Joshua said, as for me and for my house, we are going to serve the Lord. other gods, other religious traditions. We have people in Faith Baptist Church, both members and visitors here today, who were raised on different religious traditions. But you have to forsake those traditions. You have to leave those religions to turn to Jesus Christ. Jesus does not compete with other gods. He does not coexist with them. He is God. and to ask Jesus to coexist with any other religion, any other belief system that he himself did not teach is disrespectful. It is dishonorable and it does not work. You must turn from other gods as this man would have had to do. Now I did some research this week to find out what did they believe in Ethiopia and North Africa in those days and I couldn't find a lot of information. Maybe you could do a little more digging yourself, but there are so many false religions today, maybe that doesn't even need to be done. Whatever is believed in the past, if it is not Jesus Christ, the Bible way must be forsaken. For some of us, we've had to make that choice and it's not been easy. Some of us have been actually physically persecuted and kicked out of families over this. But we said to ourselves, I must follow the God who made me. I must follow Jesus of the scriptures at all costs. And that's what this man had to do. Jesus himself taught that there were two ways, two roads. There is a broad road and a wide gate, and there is an inclusive, that's an inclusive road. Then there's a difficult and a narrow gate, which is an exclusive road. Notice what Jesus, again, himself said. Jesus himself said, In Matthew 7, 13 through 14, enter by the narrow gate, for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction. And there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate, difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it. You see this picture up here of the wide highway, the free-flowing road that goes off to destruction, and that little gate that goes up to Jesus Christ. We look at this every Sunday, this picture that was painted by one of the members' children years ago. It's a very appropriate illustration at this time. So many people go headlong to destruction and so few take the road to Jesus Christ. It doesn't sound right. No, it doesn't sound right. and it reveals a problem in all of us. Here's the question. Look at the world, look at America right now. Do you think that the majority of people generally produces the right answers to things? Do you think that's actually true? Do you think that if the majority of a country band together, they're usually right? Do things get better or do things get worse when you ask the majority for their opinion? The majority of the world does not want Jesus. The majority of the world rejects him out of hand. Why? Because he forces them to focus on their need. They have to admit if they will accept him that they are a sinner, that they are wrong, that they have to change their ways. And we don't like that. I don't like that. No one likes that. There are two ways. He said you have to turn from these things to Jesus Christ alone. To Jesus Christ alone. He didn't say you have your own set of beliefs, you have your own religion, your own traditions, your own faith, where you come from. Just stick to that. All faiths lead to God anyway. No, that's not what he said. He told this man, Acts 8, verse 37, you can see it with your own eyes, that this man must believe what the Bible taught with all of his heart. All of his heart, isn't that what it says? What does that mean? That he is believing nothing else but that. It is a wholehearted belief. Those who are married here today, What if you told your spouse, I love you with part of my heart? Well, what kind of love is that? Or what if a wife says to her husband, I trust you a little bit. What does that mean? A husband wants 100% trust and a wife needs 100% love. You don't believe on Jesus a little bit. You don't believe on Jesus and something else. And you don't squeeze Jesus into your system. You believe Jesus alone with all of your heart. That's what he said to this man. Believe what? That Jesus Christ is the son of God. What does that mean? By calling him the son of God, he means not that he was something less than God. He means that he is the embodiment of everything that God is. He means that whatever you must have as an attribute or a quality to be called God, Jesus has all of those qualities. And if you have all the qualities of what it means to be God, what does that make you? God. He was the one who had all of the attributes of God, which means he was God. Jesus is God. I'm glad my savior is not just a man, but he is God. I can trust a savior like that. I can trust no other. There's not another man in the Bible, no matter how good or bad he was that I can trust, but Jesus, because he is the son of God. He's the embodiment of everything that God is. He is God. But he's also Jesus Christ. What does that mean? It means he is the Messiah. It means he was a deliverer who was a man as well. He has all the attributes of being a man. He was the God man. He was both. And because he was man, he could properly die. And why did he die? He died as my substitute, taking the penalty of my sins in my place. He died for me. He died the death that I should die so that I did not have to die it. He rose again from that dead and conquered my sin. This is what this man was reading about in Isaiah. He read in Isaiah 53, six through seven. You could follow along if you want in Acts chapter eight. In verse 32, I'm gonna read from Isaiah. All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, afflicted, he did not open his mouth. He's brought like a lamb to the slaughter and as a sheep before his shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth. Here's the verse in Isaiah though, right before those two verses. This is what the man would have just read before Philip came. Jesus was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon him and with his stripes we are healed. Jesus as God and man took my place. Isaiah 53, five. He was wounded for my transgressions. Here's what this means. To believe on Jesus Christ the Bible way, you must believe that you need to be delivered from your sins. Nothing else can do it. Jesus alone as God and man can. And that by believing on him alone, he takes your place and restores your relationship with God forever. It's believing on him for that. What does it mean to believe? It means to rely. It means to turn from everything else you're depending on to trust in Jesus. I remember when I was a little boy standing on the side of a swimming pool and my father was in the pool and he said to me, son, jump and I'll catch you. Jump and I'll catch you. You won't hurt yourself. You won't drown. And I was so afraid of doing that. I was so used to holding on to things. Let me ask you a question, would it have been wise to hedge my bets and to hold on to the safety bar and jump? Would that be a good idea? That'd actually be a very bad idea, right? What would happen to me? I would hurt myself because I would fall back and slam against the side of that pole. The only thing you can do when it comes to Jesus is either decide to stay on the side or jump and let him catch you completely. When it comes to forgiving your sins and eternity in heaven, you either trust him 100% to do it or you don't. There is no other option. This man wanted to follow Jesus. He wanted Jesus to be his teacher. He wanted Jesus to be the one that told him what to do. He wanted Jesus to be the one, not some African prophet or some African tradition or some African way or idol or system. He said, no, as an Ethiopian, I want Jesus. I want to be a follower of Jesus. I want to line up with Jesus. What prevents me from doing that? And Philip said, if you believe with all your heart. And the man said, I believe that Jesus is the son of God. So what did he do next? He was baptized and that's why we're gathered here together today. Notice that Philip questioned this man in a way to bring out the genuineness of his faith. It's great for a man to wanna be baptized, but you don't just baptize a person, you wanna make sure that they are inwardly a child of God. You question. And I like what Philip did, he said, you must believe with all of your heart. And notice, he didn't give him words to say. He let the man say what he believed. And the man in his own words was specific. He didn't say, what should I say? No, he said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God. And that's important. And I want you to know, you'll hear the testimonies today for each baptism, but each person that is baptized today has provided a clear, personally worded statement of faith in Jesus Christ. They have studied a thorough discipleship lesson. with someone in this church who is mature, who knows Christ, has walked as Christ, they've been through the scriptures together with them, and they have articulated their own inner faith in Jesus Christ for themselves, as this man did. But notice, to be baptized, he first had to be converted. He first had to be converted. Before Philip would baptize the man, he had to believe the truth about Jesus in his heart. Baptism does not save you. That's what you do after you've trusted Jesus. Of course, there is a man in scripture, we know him as the thief on the cross, right? The thief on the cross was a man who hung on the cross and before he died, he believed on Jesus. Did this man have a chance to be baptized? No. And Jesus in his own words said, today, you'll be with me in paradise. Baptism does not take you to heaven, folks. Believing on Jesus Christ does. But after you believe on Jesus Christ, if you can get baptized, I don't think any one of us are hanging on a cross, you need to get baptized. There's very few excuses that work. That one works, very few do. Receiving everlasting life occurs the moment you believe on Jesus Christ in your heart, not when you're baptized. By the way, if believing on Jesus with all of your heart is a prerequisite for salvation, then you should not be baptized if you are unable to make the choice, which is why babies should not be baptized because they can't make a choice like that and verbalize it. But a person who can make a choice and verbalize it clearly is a person who can be baptized. My father was sprinkled as a baby in the Methodist church. I think he was baptized somehow at age 12 as well, at a confirmation or something, and it wasn't until he turned 17 that he believed in his heart that Jesus was the Son of God. And then a couple of years after, he looked back and he realized, wow, I was baptized twice, but none of them were legitimate, because it wasn't saying anything about what God had done in my life. and he submitted himself to believer's baptism when he was, I think, about 19 or 20, I think it was. It's a voluntary step after conversion. You take the step after you believe on Jesus and you must do it. Why must you do it? You do it, number one, because it declares your faith in Jesus Christ publicly and clearly. It's like a marriage ceremony. The way you really wanna get married is the way of standing in front of people and before witnesses announcing your love for one another. And that's the way we like to declare our faith in Jesus Christ. When someone talks to me and they say, I don't wanna talk about religion, it's a private thing. I say, must not be very exciting. must not be very life-changing if you don't wanna talk about it. Can we talk about your favorite sports team? Sure, we can do that. See, that doesn't make sense. It's like someone saying, I don't wanna talk about my marriage, let's talk about something else. What? That should be the most exciting thing happening for you if you're married, right? But we understand that when you're married, it's not the ceremony that marries you. Many of you know the little secret, right? Usually the papers are signed right before the wedding happens. And it's the legal papers that marry you. but you go to the ceremony for a public testimony, and that's like baptism. It's a good illustration of that. You believe on Jesus in your heart, but then you stand before everybody to declare your faith, unashamed. And I do have to say that if you get saved and trust Christ as your Savior, but you are unwilling to get baptized, it raises very legitimate questions in all of our hearts. Like, are you really saved? if you don't want to tell everyone about it the way Jesus told you to? Do you really believe that Jesus is God if you won't obey him? It is a very good question. Because baptism also obeys Jesus as Lord. It obeys him as Lord if for no other reason this is why you should be baptized. It obeys Him as Lord. Matthew chapter 28 clearly teaches us that we are to go into all the world teaching all nations, see that emphasis? All nations, baptizing them, then teaching them everything else. Sometimes we have trouble obeying Jesus and everything else. And some of the testimonies you'll hear today, you'll hear that there's been a struggle obeying the Lord in different personal areas of Christian living. Well, why is that? I think in part, it's because they haven't taken the first step of obeying what is most clear, to get baptized. It is clear and simple obedience. And then everything else follows. Finally, let's talk about why we do it the way we do it. What is the way for baptism? By the way, let me read this too. Perhaps Jesus knew that a faith never publicly expressed had little chance of surviving. Certainly the church throughout history could not have survived unless believers had been willing to go public with their faith, even when it cost them their lives. And it's a good point. If you're unwilling to stand before people and be baptized, what kind of faith is that? If it's even faith. The mode for baptism, the mode is asking the question, how should a person be baptized? Well, we wanna get baptized the Bible way. There are three ways that people suggest for baptism, three modes. One of them is sprinkling, one of them is pouring water from a bowl or something, and the other is getting in the water and being immersed. Which is the correct way? Is it sprinkling, pouring, or immersing? And the answer is, it's immersing. And the Bible and in other ancient Greek documents that are not in the Bible, the word baptize consistently means to immerse. In fact, if our Bibles were straightforward in the translation, they would say immerse every time the word baptize is used, because that's what it means. It means to submerge. That's what it means. Then you have Jesus and John the Baptist baptizing in rivers, right? And then you see Acts chapter eight in our own story today that we're looking at, Philip and this man went down into the water and they came up out of the water. This is important, not just because the Bible says so, it's also important because it's an important object lesson. In Romans it says, no you not, that so many of us as were I changed baptized to immerse. We're immersed into Jesus Christ at salvation. That's this passage is what it's talking about in Romans six. We're immersed into his death. Therefore we are buried with him by immersion into death. That like as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. When a person is baptized, they go under the water And it's a reminder, it's the object lesson that we identify with the death of Jesus because that was our death that he died. And we raised again, we're reminded that when he rose from the dead, I was given new life. It speaks of my identity, my union with Christ. My old life of enslavement to sin and guilt from sin died with him. And when he rose again three days later, my new life of freedom from sin and forgiveness from the guilt of sin rose with him. This means that the new life I have can be victorious over sin. Baptism by immersion reminds us of that. So today, I have to ask you, have you been baptized? What is hindering you from obeying Jesus and doing it? Friend, have you turned to Jesus Christ alone for salvation? If you have not, that is in the way and you must do it. You say, well, I've already been baptized, I just haven't believed on Jesus for salvation. then it was an invalid baptism. You must believe on Jesus Christ, as Philip told this man. And if you have been baptized, and if you have trusted in Jesus Christ as your Savior, have you been baptized biblically? Some will be doing this today. And if you need to take this step, having already trusted in Jesus, I encourage you, talk to me, And I'll be very glad to get you started down the road of preparing for that and demonstrating your faith publicly and moving on to obey everything else that Jesus commanded. By the way, if you say you have trusted Jesus Christ as your Savior, but you have not been baptized, I do ask the question, did you trust Jesus Christ as your Savior? Because it remains a question. It really does. You must be prepared to declare your faith to remove that doubt. Then last, you say, well, I've been saved and I've been baptized, so I have an application for you as well. We haven't talked much about Philip, but have you ever recently? spoken to somebody about how to trust Christ as Savior? Have you ever recently taught somebody to get baptized? Has anyone ever been baptized here because of your ministry to them? That's all the other things that follow baptism. So to those getting baptized today, I say this, I charge you and everyone else in the room who's been baptized, this is not the culmination, this is the beginning. And God is looking to you, no matter what your age, to be an individual who will now go and tell others and lead them to obedience to Jesus Christ.