What Is Baptism? | What We Believe | Video 3

hi there my name is Ricky Hemi and I'm the lead pastor of South Valley Community Church in LaMore California we are putting together a series of videos about the doctrines of the Christian faith what we believe as a church and why we do things the way that we do them in video one we talked about the

difference between Orthodoxy and orthopraxy Orthodoxy is a fancy word for right thinking right belief right Doctrine orthopraxy is about your practice of the faith and and how you actually live out the faith and so in this video we're going to talk about one of the important things that we do as a church baptism what do we believe about

baptism and why do we practice baptism the way that we do well to answer that question I thought it'd be good to begin our time with a passage from Acts chapter 8 there's an interaction that happens between Philip an evangelist in the early church and and a God-fearing man from Ethiopia a unic this man

traveled up to Jerusalem to worship God and and he wanted to know the way to God and he's on his way back down to Africa he's a a powerful man a wealthy man he he works in the Queen's house and and God sends this evangelist to share the good news of Jesus with this man as he's

in his Chariot and so Philip opens up the book of Isaiah Isaiah 53 the the the passage about the suffering servant Jesus who would die in our place for our sins and he shares the gospel and the man responds to the gospel and puts faith in Jesus and is saved and so now

he wants to take the next step which is baptism and so this is what it says acts 8:36 as they were going along the road they came to some water and the unic said see here's water what prevents me from being baptized and he commanded the Chariot to stop and they both went down

into the water Phillip and the unic and he baptized him and when they came up out of the water the spirit of the Lord carried philli away and the unic saw him no more and the unic went on his way rejoicing this interaction with the Ethiopian unic teaches us seven crucial lessons about baptism lesson number one

is that Faith always precedes baptism here at South Valley we teach something called Believers baptism which means that you believe first and then you get baptized second and the reason you get believe you believe First is because we know that salvation is by grace alone through faith alone in Christ Jesus alone the Waters of baptism

don't save you they show that you have been saved so you believe first and you get baptized second which leads to point number two infants are are dedicated and Believers are baptized now you may have heard of something called ped baptism poed baptism is infant baptism child baptism you may wonder why here at South

Valley we do Believers baptism we don't actually baptize infants and and the reason why is because we believe that infants are too young to make a credible profession of faith and and furthermore if you were to study the scriptures you would see that there are examples of of infants being dedicated like Jesus was

dedicated by his parents or or Hannah dedicated Samuel at the temple but there's not a single example in all of scripture of a child being baptized and so what we want is a credible profession of Faith now we don't put an age on that that could be whatever age the parent believes is right but it has to be a

credible profession of faith my daughter was baptized at age seven my son is eight he has hasn't been baptized yet that's up to the parent but what we want is we want people to know what they are doing and we want them to First believe and understand who Jesus is before they enter the water Point number three

baptism is a command the reason baptism was important for the Ethiopian unich is because Jesus commanded it prior to ascending to Heaven Jesus said go and make disciples of all Nations baptizing them in the name of the father Son and Holy SP spirit that we we are commanded to be baptized as as an act of obedience when

when Peter preached his famous sermon at Pentecost in Acts chapter 2 the people responded and they're saying what shall shall we do and Peter says to them repent every one of you and be baptized and so baptism is a command number four baptism is an outward sign of an inward change now baptism is is

important because it demonstrates what already happened in your heart when you gave your life to Jesus you went from Death to life when you gave your life to Jesus you were born again to to you were you had a spiritual birth and when you enter the Waters of baptism it's a sign that you've been made new you've been

washed clean and and this sign is akin to a a wedding ring I like to compare it to a wedding ring when I do wedding ceremonies what we usually say as we exchange the Rings is with this ring I Thee Wed now this ring it doesn't have any power all right this this ring it

wasn't forged at at Mount Doom by Lord saong okay it's not you know one ring to rule them all this is just a regular ring but but when you put the ring on it's a symbol and a sign of the promises that you made an outward sign of an of an inward change you are now in Covenant

relationship with one another so the water here at LaMore it's not magical it's just regular water but when we enter that water we're showing that something has already happened in our hearts it's an outward sign of an inward change number five baptism demonstrates Union with Christ we get baptized because we say hey I belong to Jesus now

the Apostle Paul says this in Romans 6 do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death 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 might walk in newness of life we are saying we now belong to Jesus and identify with him number six we believe that baptism is by immersion I want you to notice that when Philip and the unic went to the water it says that they went down into the water and they came up out

of the water and and this is important because the the word baptism is the Greek term baptizo baptizo means to plunge something or to dip something or to immerse something into the water and so that's why here at South Valley we don't do sprinkling we we do immersion and on occasion we will do something called

pouring and we'll only do that when there is a medical reason somebody cannot get into the tub and so if you cannot do that then we will baptize You by pouring water on you drenching you in water in the name of the father and of the son and of the Holy Spirit but our

preferred method is is by immersion because that's what the word actually means and finally the last point that I want to share with you today is that baptism is often immediate what we often see in scripture like this story here is that somebody believes they get baptized immediately and that's why here at South

Valley on occasion we do spontaneous baptisms because we believe that there is a Biblical precedence for spontaneous baptisms Jesus was likely baptized spontaneously by John the Baptist the Baptist didn't know it was happening that day when Peter and gave his sermon at Pentecost and and called the people to repent and to be baptized that they

didn't come ready to be baptized that day but thousands gave their life to Jesus that moment that day and were baptized and so we commonly do spontaneous baptisms here at South Valley because baptism is immediate now it is our hope that you would first put your faith in Jesus for salvation and once you have done that once you have

trusted him and believe D upon his name it is our hope that you would take that next step and enter into the Waters of baptism and publicly declare before this Community of Faith that you have decided to follow Jesus because baptism tells the world that you now belong to him