Adoniram Judson was born in 1788, and grew up in Massachusetts when the United States was still a new country. He graduated valedictorian of his class at Brown University, and wrote 2 books, one on grammar, and one on math. But not long afterwards, Judson was saved, and felt God calling him to go overseas on mission, so off he sailed to India with his wife Ann, two of the first missionaries ever sent from the United States!

But during the voyage, an extraordinary thing happened. Judson was translating the Bible from the original Greek language it was written in, into the language of the people he was going to minister to. But as he translated the scriptures, he saw that the meaning of the Greek New Testament word for baptism, and the clear practice of New Testament Christianity, was baptism was by immersion — dipping a person under water. So in one of the most courageous acts of conviction in religious history, Judson wrote back to the mission agency that was supporting him, and told them that he had to resign, because the group that sent him believed in baptism by sprinkling, and that was no longer his belief. When he arrived in India, Judson found Baptist missionary William Carey who baptized him and his wife by immersion. But now he and Ann were stranded, without any support, on the other side of the world! Ann wrote back to a friend, “We feel that we are alone in the world, with no real friend but each other, no one on whom we can depend but God.” But their hearts were at peace, because they knew they were right before God — and the Lord blessed his conviction, and He used Adoniram Judson in an amazing way. Judson translated the Bible into the language of Burma, and he ended up starting 100 churches with 8000 believers there before his death! 

Sadly, most of us today have never heard of Adoniram Judson. We don’t know his story; and we don’t have his convictions. But we would do well to rediscover both his story and his convictions! He had strong beliefs about baptism, but he got them primarily through his study of scripture, supplemented by what he read in church history. Baptism is one of the most important Christian practices; it is one of our two ordinances (the other being the Lord’s Supper), and it is our “initiation” into the Christian Church. In our passage for today in Matthew 3:13-17, we see the baptism of Someone much greater than Adoniram Judson. God shows us several things about baptism here in the example of the baptism of Jesus:

I. THE MEANING OF BAPTISM
:13 “To be baptized by him.”

A. The Method.

What does this mean when it says that Jesus came to be “baptized”? Many of us have heard this word “baptism” so many times, but what does it really MEAN? We often think of it as a “religious” word that describes a particular religious ritual; but the original Greek Bible word actually has a very simple meaning.

The Greek word “bapto” means “to dip.” The classic Greek writer Homer used the word of “dipping” an axe head in water. The word was used frequently of the process of dipping cloth in the dye to give it the desired color. This word was used in several Greek historical accounts of ships sinking, or of a person drowning. In every one of these cases, the word pictures someone or some thing going entirely under water.
— In the Greek translations of the Old Testament, baptizo is used to translate how Naaman the leper “dipped” himself 7 times in the Jordan River, and came out healed of his leprosy.
— In the New Testament, Moises Silva’s New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology and Exegesis (NIDNTTE for short! 😉 which is THE best Greek lexicon today, says the word “bapto” “always has the physical meaning ‘to dip.’”

So there is really no debate among scholars as to the meaning of the word “baptizo”: it means, “to dip”; to be immersed; to go under the water.

So why is there confusion about this today? It is because of teachings and traditions that developed hundreds and thousands of years AFTER Christianity began. 

The gospel, the central message of Christianity, is really very simple:

— God loves us and He wants us to spend eternity in glory with Him.

— But we all sinned, and fall short of His glory. If God hadn’t done something for us, none of us would ever have gotten to go to heaven.

— So God came to earth in the Person of Jesus Christ, and died on the cross to pay for our sins. He rose from the dead, as God’s way of saying that of all the religions and religious leaders, “This is My Beloved Son” and the one true way to God.

— So we can be forgiven of our sins, and given heaven as a gift, when we repent of our sins, and put our faith in Jesus as our Lord & Savior. “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” We are saved from our sins when we put our faith in Jesus. It is that simple. Many of you know that and have experienced it. 

But about 300 years after Christ was on earth, many in the church begun to veer away from simple salvation by faith alone; and they began trusting in the baptism itself to save them. Because of that, many of them would wait until they were very old to be baptized, because they believed that then all the sins they committed in their lives would be washed away. Well it was hard to take someone who was on their death bed and immerse them in water, so they sprinkled them on their bed instead. This became a common practice. Then they began worrying about their children: well, if baptism saves us, how can our kids be saved if they haven’t been baptized? So they began sprinkling their children too. So over time sprinkling became the custom of many churches, but this practice did not come from the scriptures, or from the practice of the early church.

So for hundreds of years, these churches practiced “sprinkling” instead of Biblical baptism. So when they translated the Bible, they didn’t want to translate the word “baptizo” to mean “dip” — which is exactly what it means — because they weren’t doing it!  They basically said, “If we translate that as ‘dip’ or ‘immerse’; it would cause an upheaval in the church!” So what they did instead of translating the word, was “transliterate” it instead: which means you just take the English letters that make the sound of that Greek word, and use that. The Greek word is “baptizo”, so they just “transliterated” it and made this new word “baptize”, which is what we have used ever since. But the word really means “dip;” it means “immerse.” It means to go under the water. Significantly, even theologians who today advocate sprinkling for “baptism” freely admit that the original word means to be dipped under the water!

Adoniram Judson wrote: “Though I read extensively on the subject, I could not find that any learned (person) had ever been able to produce an instance, from any Greek writer, in which it had meant sprinkling, or anything but immersion.” (Judson, p. 108).

And of course that is what we see Jesus do here. The Bible says He came to be “baptized” — “immersed, dipped under the water” by John. Several things here in this text support that meaning:
— First of all, they baptized Him at the Jordan River, where there was plenty of water to immerse a person. They didn’t do it by roadside, out of a pot they sprinkled people with; it was at the river where they could be immersed, because that is what baptism IS!
— In fact, John 3:23 spells this out even more clearly. It says that after Jesus began His ministry, “John also was baptizing at Aenon near Salim, because there was much water there.” Now, why would you need “much water”? Because you were going to immerse, or dip, the person under the water.
— And then :16 here in Matthew 3 tells us that after He was baptized, “Jesus came up immediately from the water.” So He had been IN the water, immersed — because that’s what baptism IS: being immersed in water!

In his famous sermon on baptism, Adoniram Judson says that it is surely interesting to note that every branch of the Greek Church baptizes by immersion. Judson said, “The Greek people certainly understand their own language, better than any foreigners” — and they all baptize by immersion! (Judson, p. 22) because they know what the word means! 

Judson didn’t want to give up his mission support by changing his views on Baptism, but he was the valedictorian at Brown University; he was a scholar. He studied this. And he wrote of his research: “Never, by any Christians, in any age, was sprinkling or pouring allowed in common cases, until the Council of Ravenna, assembled by the pope, in the year 1311.” (This is one thousand three hundred years after the time of Christ!) He wrote: “(Sprinkling) was not, however, admitted into England till the middle of the 16th century, and not sanctioned until the middle of the 17th, when the Westminster assembly, influenced by Dr. Lightfoot, decided that ‘the dipping of the person is water, is not necessary …”. So almost 1700 years after Christian baptism had been instituted, a group decides that you don’t have to be immersed to be baptized! Judson’s conscience couldn’t go along with changing what had been Christian practice for almost 2000 years. (This applies to a lot of things, too, by the way. When you start coming up with “new” interpretations and practices that contradict what the church has been teaching for 2000 years, you can be pretty sure those new beliefs and practices are WRONG!)

And Judson was correct. Those who had changed the Christian practice to sprinkling, were wrong. Baptism is clearly, both in scripture and in early church faith & practice, the dipping of a believer in water after they have followed Jesus as their Lord & Savior.

And while these verses in Matthew don’t give us a complete treatise on every aspect of baptism, we DO see some hints regarding several other important truths about baptism here:

B. The Symbol

As important as we have seen that baptism is, baptism does NOT save a person. Baptism is a symbol, that pictures, by the washing of water, that the blood of Jesus washes away of the sins of our soul.

John had said earlier in :11, “As for me, I baptize you with water for repentance … (but he said) HE will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”  When you repent of your sins and put your faith in Jesus as your Savior, God sends His Holy Spirit into your life, and you are baptized in the Holy Spirit. I Corinthians 12:13 says, “For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body.” When you are saved, the Spirit of God Himself comes into your life and makes you new. But John was saying here, this water baptism doesn’t do that; this is just a symbol; this is just a picture of what Jesus will do when He comes. HE will do the “real thing.” Baptism, though important, is just symbolic of that.

And that’s what Christian baptism is. It is a symbolic dipping of a person in water. Baptism is an outward act that pictures an inward reality. Jesus saves you on the inside; in your heart. Baptism pictures that, on the outside. 

Baptism is like a wedding ring. A wedding ring is also a symbol, of a person’s commitment to another person as long as they both shall live. Like baptism, a wedding ring is an outward symbol, of an inward commitment. And again like baptism, the symbol itself does not make you married. Some unmarried people may wear a wedding ring (for various reasons) but just wearing that ring doesn’t make them married. And many of us are married, but don’t wear a wedding ring — because it doesn’t fit, or it was lost, or whatever. But that doesn’t mean you’re not married, because you don’t have the ring. The ring itself doesn’t make you married or unmarried. The ring is just an important symbol of the inward commitment, which is what really matters. 

Baptism is very much like that wedding ring. Baptism is an important outward symbol of an inward heart commitment to Jesus Christ, because of what He did for you. As important as we believe that baptism is — “baptism” is in our NAME as Baptists! — we also believe it’s not so important that it saves you. It’s a symbol of what saves you. But we don’t put our trust in it. Our trust for salvation is in JESUS, not baptism. If someone asks you: “Are you going to heaven?”, NEVER say, “Oh, yes, I have been baptized.” There will be millions of people who have been baptized, who will be in hell. Just being dipped in water never saved anyone. It’s just a symbol. You have to have the inner reality that the outward symbol of baptism represents: that Jesus Christ has saved you, and you have God’s Holy Spirit present in your heart.

C. The Triune God

It’s significant that the Bible says here that as soon as Jesus was baptized, He went up from the water, and the Spirit of God descended upon Him as a dove, and then the voice of God the Father cried out from the heavens: “This is My Beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”

So here we see the Trinity: Jesus in the water, the Spirit coming down from heaven, the Father in heaven saying, “This is My Beloved Son.” The “Trinity” means there is One God who exists eternally as Three Distinct Persons: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. We see this again later, in Matthew 28:18-20, when Jesus gives the command for all of His disciples to be baptized, He commands us to be baptized “in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”

So the Bible specifically links the Trinity with baptism: At Jesus’ baptism, the Trinity was present. When He gave the Great Commission to make disciples and baptize, He said baptize in the name of the Trinity. This is understandable, because the Trinity is no “minor doctrine”; it’s at the heart of Christian belief. Each Person of the Trinity has a part in our salvation. I Peter 1:2 says You are “chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, by the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to obey Jesus Christ and be sprinkled with His blood.” Peter says God the Father chose you in His foreknowledge; God the Son shed His blood on the cross for you, and God the Holy Spirit does the actual work of making you “born again” and building His holiness into your life. Each person of the Trinity is at work in you when you are saved, so Jesus commands us to be baptized in the Name of this Triune God: Father, Son & Holy Spirit. That’s why when we lower a person into the water for baptism we say, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” It’s not just some “Baptist Tradition” we’re following; it’s the scriptural command of Jesus. 

So Matthew 3 teaches us quite a bit about baptism: that it is by immersion in water, of a person who is committing their heart to Jesus, in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. The question is: Have YOU done that? Have you followed Christ as your Lord & Savior? If you haven’t, you should do that before you leave this place today! It’s the most important thing you can do in your life!  And if you have done it, make sure you been scripturally baptized: immersed in water in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as an outward symbol of your inward commitment to Him? If you haven’t, that is your next step of obedience. And we’ll gladly keep this baptistry up and baptize YOU next week!  

II. THE OBEDIENCE OF BAPTISM

Notice the commitment Jesus exhibited towards baptism here. When Jesus came to John the Baptist to be baptized, :14 says that John actually tried to STOP Him, saying: “I have need to be baptized by You, and do You come to me?” John was saying, Jesus, YOU don’t need to be baptized!

But notice how committed Jesus was to it. He didn’t say that He was a sinner, and needed to be baptized for His sins, because He didn’t. But He was committed to be baptized, because He came to represent US. Hebrews 2 says “He had to be made like His brethren in all things” to be our representative on the cross. So Jesus did what WE have to do: He submitted Himself to baptism.

This is a really good point: if any of us is “too proud” to be baptized: we need to look at the example of Jesus. He was the Son of God! Philippians 2 says He was “equal with God,” who totally humbled Himself to go from the glory of heaven to become a flesh & blood man — and then He humbled Himself even more by being baptized, when by all standards He really didn’t “need” to. And yet He also knew that in a way He did “need” to; so that He could represent us as our Savior; so that He could fulfill all righteousness. So Jesus humbled Himself and submitted Himself to be baptized, by one of the men that HIS hands made! Jesus was an example of humility in baptism.

Sometimes we have to humble ourselves in baptism. I’ve shared before my wife Cheryl’s testimony, how when she was about 6 years old, she came forward with a bunch of other kids in her church during an emotional revival meeting, and made a “profession of faith” and was baptized. But when she was in high school, she truly asked the Lord to save her, which is what she considers to be her real salvation experience. So some years later, after we were married, I was preaching in our first church in Oklahoma City, and Cheryl was convicted that since she was really saved in high school, after her baptism as a child, that she really needed to be scripturally baptized, AFTER her real profession of faith. But can you imagine how she felt? SHE WAS THE PASTOR’S WIFE! She was sitting up in the choir, right behind me. She was gonna have to get down out of the choir, in front of everyone, and come tell me she needed to be baptized. It had to be a humbling experience. But you know what: Jesus humbled Himself for us. And He calls us to humble ourselves, and follow in His steps in baptism. Someone might say:
— Pastor, I’m 60 years old, and I’m set in my ways, and that would just be really humbling for me to do that.
— Or, you might say, pastor, I’m a teenager, and all my friends will see me; that would be really hard to do.
We’ve all got our excuses. But the truth is this: if you won’t humble yourself and follow Jesus in baptism, how much confidence can you have that you are really following Him at all? No, baptism does NOT save you, but it does say a lot about whether you are willing to obey Jesus and follow His example.

Some people argue against being baptized by saying: “Well, I don’t have to be baptized to be saved. The thief on the cross wasn’t baptized. You can be saved and not be baptized.” That’s true, but listen:

— In the early church, baptism was considered to be a person’s “profession of faith.”
— Baptism is the first act of obedience that Jesus Christ commands you to make, as your Lord.

When you are saved, you are saying, I have been disobeying the Lord, but now I am turning from my rebellion against Christ, and I commit to obey Jesus as my Lord from this day forward. The basic Christian confession, Philippians 2 tells us, is “Jesus is Lord.” This Jesus whom you claim is now your LORD is the One who gave the Great Commission to all His followers, to be BAPTIZED. But you, who SAY you are now supposedly “following Jesus Christ as your Lord”, are not going to do the VERY FIRST THING He commanded you to do??!! Can you see why not being baptized might call into question whether you are really saved? Can you say He’s really your “Lord,” when you haven’t done the first thing He asked you to do? Like Jesus said in Luke 6:46, “Why do you call Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ but do not do what I say?”

I guarantee you, the thief on the cross (whom everybody talks about not being baptized) if he had the opportunity, he would have GLADLY have come right down off of that cross to follow Jesus in baptism. It wasn’t that he WOULDN’T be baptized; it was that he COULDN’T be baptized. But if he could have, he would have gladly followed Christ in baptism. And you should too, if He has really saved you.

No, baptism doesn’t save you. But it is the symbol of your commitment to Jesus as the Lord & Savior of your life. There is something about baptism that “nails down” your commitment to Jesus publicly. Baptism is like your “wedding ring” to Jesus. Baptism is your “coming out party” for Jesus; it’s when you “cross the line” and take a public stand for Him.

Some time ago I heard a testimony from a Christian in Africa, where the Muslims are persecuting Christians for their faith in Jesus. They said: The Muslims don’t really mind that much if you just “say” you believe in Jesus; that’s no big deal. But when you get baptized, that’s when they start to persecute you. Because that’s when they consider that you have really “crossed the line” to take a stand for Him. Some of you here today have never crossed that line. And Jesus is calling you to take that stand for him, today. 

CONCLUSION:
At the end of Adoniram Judson’s historic sermon on baptism, which he preached just after he landed in India and just before he himself was baptized by William Carey, he said :
“To believe in Christ is necessary to salvation; and to be baptized is the instituted method of professing our belief. It is, therefore, not only an infinitely important question to all men, whether they believe in Christ; but it is also a very important question to all Christians, whether they have been baptized.” (Judson, p. 95). 

Judson went on to say, “If you love Christ, you cannot consider this question unimportant.”  Do you hear that? “If you love Christ, you cannot consider this question unimportant.”  Jesus said, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.” And His first commandment for you as His disciple, is to follow Him in baptism. 

INVITATION:

— The most important question for you today is, have you ever made the commitment to Jesus Christ as your Lord & Savior. If you haven’t, you need to do it right now! …

— But then the next question is: if you are truly a follower of Jesus, have you been baptized, the way the New Testament describes: after your profession of faith, by being fully dipped into the water, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as a symbol of what He has done in your life?