THE BAPTISM THAT GOD COMMANDS

Dr. W. A. Criswell

Matthew 28:18-20

8-26-79        8:15 a.m.

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It is a joy for us to welcome you who are listening on radio, thousands and thousands of you.  So many of you listen to this service as you are on the way to church, or Sunday school, or as you are dressing for the worship hours of the day.  And there is nothing that our church does in the budget that we support that means more to us personally, the gladness with which we do it, than to pay for this radio and at 10:50 the television time, that we might share God’s good news with you.  I hope you will listen very carefully to the sermon today.  It arises out of many, many questions that have been asked concerning the doctrine of baptism.

Just as a great background text from whence the title of the sermon comes, The Baptism That God Commands; the Great Commission that closes the First Gospel reads like this, “Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All authority, all power, is given unto Me in heaven and in earth” [Matthew 28:18].  Isn’t that a remarkable statement?  Doesn’t lie in the U.N., doesn’t lie with the communists; it’s in the hands of Jesus.  “All authority, power, is given unto Me in heaven and in earth.  Go ye,” on the basis of it, “and make disciples of all nations,” converting them, winning them to Christ, soulwinning, “baptizing them in the name of the triune God:  Teaching them to observe the things I have commanded you.  And if you will do it, I will work with you, march by your side, pilgrim with you on the glory road, even unto the end of the age” [Matthew 28:18-20].

A new dispensation began with a Baptist preacher.  And because of the unusual message that he brought and the unusual rite that he instituted [Matthew 3:1-6], in the first chapter of the Gospel of John, they sent a committee down from Jerusalem to talk to him on the banks of the Jordan River [John 1:19].  And they asked him, “Who are you and where did you come from?  And what is the authority that lies back of your message?”  And he replied, “I am a voice crying in the wilderness, Make ready the way of the Lord” [John 1:19-23].  The characterization, the self-characterization, the self-description of that first Baptist preacher ought to be the self characterization and the self description of every preacher that follows after.

I am a voice, I am an echo, I do not originate the message; it’s not something from me, born in my heart or born in my head.  It is a message that I read from the holy, infallible, inerrant Word of God [2 Peter 1:20].  I don’t invent it.  I’m just a voice.  I’m just an echo.  Every minister ought to be like that.  He’s not delivering what he thinks, or his message, or his persuasion, but he stands in the sacred pulpit to deliver what God says.  He is an ambassador and a messenger from the courts of heaven.

You have a traumatic incidence like that in the United Nations in the last week.  Andrew Young, appointed because he’s black, hoping to ameliorate some of the relations that we have with the third emerging world, Andrew Young was sent by the president and the government of the United States to the United Nations in order to be an ambassador for our people, our country.  He’s not to deliver what he thinks.  He’s not to say a persuasion that comes to his heart.  He is to deliver the message of his government.  And the trauma developed because instead of delivering the message of the government that he represents, from whence he is an ambassador, instead of delivering the message of the government that he represents, he delivered his own message.  And, of course, that creates chaos in governmental circles.

A minister is exactly like that.  He is not to stand in the pulpit to deliver his message, what he thinks, his persuasions.  What he needs to do is to remember he is an ambassador.  He is a messenger from heaven, and he is to deliver what God says.  He’s a voice, he’s an echo, crying in the wilderness of this world.

So delivering God’s message, what God says, we turn to this unusual beginning of a new dispensation, a new testament, a new covenant, a new approach that God is making with the lost of humanity.  Now how does that new dispensation, that new covenant, that new testament, that new day, how does it begin?  It begins with a man; “There was a man sent from God, whose name was John” [John 1:6].  That’s the way God does everything.  God’s answers to any situation will always be a man.  It will be an Abraham, or a Samuel, or a David, or an Isaiah.  It will be a John.

Now his name is given of God; the Lord gave this man his name.  An angel came from heaven, Gabriel, and announced to aged Zacharias that he and his aged wife Elizabeth should have a son, and they would name him John [Luke 1:11-13].  So because Zacharias doubted the word of the Lord—he’s an old man and his wife is an old woman [Luke 1:18]—the angel Gabriel said, “Your tongue will be shut up without speech until what I say comes to pass” [Luke 1:19-20].

And in the providence of life and in the passing of time, the little child was born [Luke 1:57]—a miracle.  And when all of the people gathered round for that ordinance and ceremony of naming the child of circumcision, why, they said, “We will name him Zacharias, Junior; a beautiful name, Zacharias, Junior.”  And Elizabeth said, “No, his name is John.  That is his name.”  And they said, “Nobody in your family and its generations ever called by that name.”  So they indicated to the dumb, unable-to-speak priest Zacharias, “What is his name?”  And Zacharias wrote, “His name is John” [Luke 1:59-63].  And immediately his tongue was loosed, and he praised God [Luke 1:64].  That’s the way the dispensation of the Christian faith began.  It began in a child, in a man named John.

God gave him another name; he was called “the Baptist”: by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and by the Holy Word that I hold in my hand, he is presented to us as in Mark, as in Matthew, as in Luke as “the Baptist” [Matthew 3:1].  And that’s a remarkable name.  I want to show you how remarkable it is.  In the whole Bible, the word “Christian” is used three times, three times!  But the word, “Baptist” is used fourteen times.

The new dispensation, the new era, the New Testament, the new covenant begins with a Baptist preacher whose name is John, and he is a part of that dispensation [Matthew 3:1-3].  Luke 16:16, our Lord says that “the law and the prophets were until John.”  He belongs in our era, in our covenant, in our testament.

When John came and was exhibited to the people, God hid him away until the hour when the new dispensation, the new testament should begin.  When John came, he came with a new rite.  The world had never seen it before.  He came with a new ordinance.  He came with the ordinance of baptizing [Matthew 3:1-6].  And I repeat, the world had never seen it before.  There is no such a thing as “a baptizing,” a New Testament baptizing in the Old Testament.  They never saw it.  It is not in the Apocrypha, the four hundred years between Malachi and Matthew.  It is not in Philo, the great Jewish philosopher who was a contemporary with Jesus.  And it is not in Josephus, the marvelous Jewish historian who was a contemporary of the apostle Paul.

The world never saw it before.  The Jews had many washings.  They washed their pots and they washed their pans, ceremonially.  And sometimes they’d wash themselves all over, but always the Jew did it himself.  He washed his head, or he washed his hands, or he washed himself all over.  But the first time the world ever saw a man take another man and wash him was when John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea, and on the banks of the Jordan River called the people to a preparation for a new testament, a new covenant, a new dispensation [Matthew 3:1,5-6,11].

And he had a sign and a rite that accompanied it.  He baptized his converts in the Jordan River, and that’s why the committee that came from Jerusalem asked him, saying, “Are you the Christ?”

And John said, “No.”

“Are you the Messiah?”

“No.”  [John 1:19-20].

“Well, are you Elijah?”

And he said, “No.” [John 1:21].

“Well, are you that Prophet?” referring to the promise of Moses that God would raise up somebody like him when Moses was taken way [Deuteronomy 18:15].  “Are you that great Prophet we are looking for?”

And he replied, “No.” [John 1:21].

Then they asked him, “Where did you get this new ordinance then?  Why do you baptize with this new, new ceremony that we have never seen before?  If you are not the Christ, and if you are not Elijah, and if you are not the Prophet, where did you get this ordinance?” [John 1:22, 25].

And John says God sent him to do it.  It originated in heaven.  The Lord thought it out, and the Lord God sent His great announcer of the new dispensation, the new testament with this new rite of baptism [John 1:31-33].

Now our second avowal; the first one is John the Baptist introduces the new dispensation, the new covenant, the new day, then new testament.  He does it with a man named John [Matthew 3:1-3].  Now the second: the sign and the symbol of the new covenant, the new dispensation, the new day, the new gospel, the good news, the sign of that covenant is a rite, a ceremony, a baptism.

Mark speaks of it like this:

John did baptize in the wilderness, and preach the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins.

And there went out unto him all the land of Judea, and they of Jerusalem, and were all baptized of him in the Jordan River, confessing their sins.

[Mark 1:4-5]

Did you catch that unusual verse?  “John did baptize in the wilderness, in the Jordan River,” and he, “preached the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins.”  It’s a sign.  It’s a symbol.  It’s a new thing that God has done, and its rite and its ceremony represents the thing itself.  It is not the thing itself.  He preached the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins [Mark 1:4].  It’s not the thing itself.  It is a symbol and a sign of the thing itself.

It’s like a wedding band; a wedding band is not the marriage, it is the symbol of it.  It’s like a flag; the flag is not the nation, it is a symbol of it.  It’s like the sacramentum—the sacramentum was not the Roman soldier, the sacramentum was the oath of allegiance that the soldier made to his emperor.  And that’s where you get the word “sacrament,” twisted now, to where we can’t use it.  But a sacramentum was the oath of allegiance to the Roman emperor.  Baptism is a sacramentum; it is an avowal of our loyalty, faith in, love for, service in behalf of the Lord Jesus Christ, our great King and Emperor in heaven.

The sign and the symbol of a new day, the new covenant, the new dispensation; it carried with it a sign and a symbol—it is the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins.  It is a sign of a change, of a new birth [John 3:3, 7], of a new life, of a new commitment, a new love, a new loyalty, a new dedication.  That’s the sign of it.  Now when anyone experiences the new birth, he experiences this new love and loyalty to Christ.  The first thing, the first thing that he wants to do is, “I want to be baptized.”  That’s the sign of it.  That’s the symbol of it [Acts 2:38].

“I want to be baptized.  My loyalty now is to Christ, and He commands me to be baptized” [Matthew 28:19].  That’s the first thing.  That’s the first happy response, a union of obedience of someone who has found the Lord as his Savior, “I want to be baptized.”

Isn’t that true?  That’s universally true.  When Philip was seated by the side of the treasurer of Ethiopia, and out of the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah won that man to the Lord [Acts 8:26-35], as they went on their way they came to a certain water, and the eunuch said, “See, here is water.  What hinders me to be baptized?  I want to be baptized” [Acts 8:36]. It’s the first thing that comes to the heart of a child of God, “The Lord has commanded it, and I’m one of His soldiers.  I’m one of His followers.  I’m one of His disciples, and I want to be baptized.”  Always, that’s the first thing of a happily converted people, “I want to be baptized.”  And Philip, to be sure, said to him, “If you believe, if you have trusted in the Lord with all your heart, you may.”  And the eunuch answered, “I believe.  I have accepted the Lord as my Savior” [Acts 8:37].

And they went down into the water, both Philip and the eunuch, and he baptized him.  And when they were come up out of the water: the Spirit of God took away Philip, and the eunuch went on his way rejoicing [Acts 8:38-39].  The first thing, the first thing, “I want to be baptized.”  It’s a sign and a symbol of the change in the man’s heart, that he’s been converted, born again [John 3:3, 7].  He’s a follower of the Lamb [Matthew 3:15].

Now sweet people, that’s where my confusion comes in.  When a man comes down the aisle or out there in a filling station, in a house, or in a home, and he says, “I accept the Lord as my Savior; I believe in Him.  I’ve trusted Him as my Lord, and I’ve been born again.  I’m a new man.  I’m a new creation.  I’m a Christian now, but I don’t want to be baptized.”  I don’t understand.  I cannot understand.  There is no thing like that in the Bible.  That’s why I cannot understand.  There is no unbaptized believer in the Bible.  It is unknown in the Word of God.  There is no such thing and that’s why I can’t understand.

This man says, “I’ve been saved.  I’ve been born again.  I’ve trusted the Lord as my Savior, but I’m not going to be baptized.  I don’t want to be baptized.”  I don’t understand it.  Look, when a man is hungry, you don’t have to persuade him to eat.  He’s starving to death; he wants to eat.  When a man is dying of thirst, you don’t have to argue with him about drinking water; he wants to drink water, “I’m dying of thirst.”  If a man were freezing to death, you wouldn’t have to argue with him, “Come to the fire and warm your soul.”  He wants to be warm, he’s freezing to death.  When a man is converted, when he’s saved, immediately there’s a wanting on the inside of him, “I want to be baptized just like God said in His Book” [Matthew 28:19].  And when there is not that wanting, I can’t understand how the man has accepted the Lord and refuses the first great commandment of the blessed Jesus [Matthew 28:19].  I don’t understand it.  Seems to me when a man is changed, that’s the way he’s changed.  He’s changed toward the Lord.

Have you been reading in these last several months?  Have you been reading about that man who was the publisher of a pornographic magazine?  Name of the magazine is Hustler.  Well, he said he was changed, he was converted, he was born again.  He had an “experience” of conversion, that’s what he said.  Well, immediately, I would have thought, he would have quit publishing his pornographic magazine; I would have thought that.  You know what he did?  What the fellow said in effect was this, “Heretofore, I’ve been publishing porno for the glory of carnal flesh.  But now I’m going to publish porno for the glory of God.”

Does that make sense to you?  Why, it is ridiculous!  It is unthinkable!  It is unbelievable!  This man, stand here before the whole world and say, “I’ve found the Lord, I’ve been converted, I’m a Christian now and Hustler magazine is going to be dedicated to Jesus.”  It is unthinkable!  I just don’t understand it.  And I can’t get my head to understand the other either.  “I have been saved.  I’ve been marvelously converted, I’ve been changed, I’ve found the Lord as my Savior, but I’m not going to be baptized,” which is the first great commandment to a Christian, believing, being a disciple, then being baptized in the name of the triune God [Matthew 28:19].  I don’t understand it.  It seems to me the sign of it according to the Word of God, the symbol of it according to the Word of God is, “I want to be baptized” [Acts 8:35-38].  That’s the way it is in the Bible.  I never invented that.  That doesn’t come from me.  I’m just a voice and an echo.

Now may I point out briefly one other thing about this ordinance, holy and from heaven?  Isn’t it a strange thing, inherently in it is evangelism and soulwinning? Did you know there is one word that the Bible uses to sum up the whole ministry of John, and that one word is baptizing? [Mark 1:4]. Baptizing; it sums up the whole ministry of John.  Baptizing; I haven’t time to go through the passages.

Did you know there is a like word that sums up the whole ministry of Christ?  Baptizing; He baptized [John 3:22,26]. He and His disciples baptized their converts [John 4:1,2].

Did you know there is a link between evangelism and baptism in the Great Commission?  That is my text this morning, “Go ye therefore, and make disciples,” make converts, make Christians of all the people, “baptizing them” [Matthew 28:19].  The two go together, the convert and the baptizing.

And when you read the life of the apostles and their ministries, it was that.  “Men and brethren, what shall we do?” they cried to Simon Peter on the day of Pentecost.  “What shall we do?  What shall we do?” [Acts 2:37].  And Simon replied, “Repent—turn—and be baptized every one of you…because of the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” [Acts 2:38].  The two went together, and always the two will be together.  “See, here is water; what doth hinder me to be baptized?  I have been saved” [Acts 8:36-37].  Or, “Look, the Spirit has fallen upon these heathen in the household of Cornelius.  Who can prevent water, that these should be baptized, even as we were at Pentecost?” [Acts 10:44-47]  The first time the gospel was preached in Europe, Lydia, a business woman from Thyatira, Lydia was baptized [Acts 16:14-15], and that same night the Philippian jailer was baptized [Acts 16:30- 33].  Always the two go together.

My brethren, may I say something that sounds harsh?  But I can’t help but make the observation as I look at modern Christianity and the Bible Christianity that I read about. Do you ever hear that today—evangelism and baptism connected like that?  Do you ever hear it?  Today we have separated it.  We’ll have a great crusade, not a word to say about baptizing.  You’ll have a great revival and not a word said about baptism; not a word.  Is that the way it is in the New Testament?  My brother, in the New Testament it was both in the same breath.  The soul-winning, baptizing preacher of God, that’s the way it was in the New Testament.  Man, they’ll have thousands, and thousands, and thousands, and thousands of these people who respond in a great crusade and maybe two of them be baptized.  It’s a different kind of evangelism.

Look at the oddity of this.  Here’s a paper and it says about a minister, it says about a minister, “Reverend John Smith has been pastor of,” let’s say Centerville, “Reverend John Smith, pastor of Centerville, has been baptizing his converts for ten years.”  Did you ever read that?  Have you ever read, “Reverend John Doe has been pastor of Pumpkin Center, and he’s been baptizing his converts for eight years?”  Did you ever read anything like that?  You never will in the world, no.  We have separated the two, but it’s not separated in God’s Book.  Always the revival carried with it baptism.  Always the conversion carried with it baptism.  They were synonymous.  They were in the same breath, making disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit [Matthew 28:19].  That’s the Bible, that’s the Book.  And I say there is something inherently evangelistic in the ordinance of baptism.

As you know, I’d been preaching ten years before I ever was in a baptistery.  I baptized my converts in stock ponds out in West Texas, then in creeks and rivers in Central Texas and in Kentucky and over there on the other side of the river.  So when I read this story, I could just live through every syllable of it: a sweet wife was wonderfully converted, beautifully saved.  And her husband, big and burly, was as cruel and as brutal and as unbelieving as he was gargantuan.  So when he heard that his wife had been saved and was going to be baptized, he said, “She’ll never be baptized.  I will whip with a blacksnake, with a rawhide bullwhip!  I’ll beat him to death!”  What he said, what he said:  a blacksnake, that’s what we call if a man was driving a team and he had maybe two mules, or two horses, and maybe four, or maybe six of them.  He sits there in the wagon seat, and he has a blacksnake.  He has a long bullwhip, a rawhide whip.  And he snaps it, and it makes a roar when you snap the thing, and it can tear up the flesh.  It can tear up the hide.  That’s what he’s talking about.

So the day came for the baptizing and the people were there from the ends of the earth, not only to see the baptizing on that Sunday afternoon, but also to see the whipper, to see the preacher as he’s lashed with the blacksnake.  Well, they brought it to the preacher, “You better delay.  You better wait.”  No, he was a man of God.  “No, I’ll be right there, and I’ll be baptizing my converts just according to the Book.”

So the Sunday afternoon came, and I have been to Sunday afternoon baptisms for years.  The people on that side of the river or this side of the river, people on that side of the creek or that side of the creek, just throngs of them, on a Sunday afternoon, baptizing.  And he did what I’ve done countless times; stand out in the middle of the river or stand out in the middle of the creek, open the Book and preach to all those people on both banks.  And pray and make an invitation, and then we’d sing a song.  Usually we’d sing “Happy Day.”

Happy day,

When Jesus washed

My sins away!

He taught me how

To watch and pray

And live rejoicing every day

Happy day,

Happy day,

When Jesus washed,

My sins away!

[“O Happy Day,” Phillip Doddridge]

Almost always we’d sing that song as the candidates would be led out into the middle of the river.

Well, this day, this day, there the throngs were, and there the candidates were, and there was that sweet wife dressed in white.  And there he was with the bullwhip, the blacksnake in his hand.  So the preacher went out into the water, and the candidates went out in the water, and among them, that precious wife, robed in white.  And when time came for her to be baptized, all of the eyes were on that big, brutal man with a bullwhip in his hand!  When she was baptized, he just stood there.  And as she walked up to the bank, the bullwhip dropped out of his hand!  He walked over there and kissed her, and put a robe around her, and carried her to the carriage, and came back to the preacher, and before all of that throng, he said, “Sir, I want to be baptized too!”  And the preacher called the people in conference, I’ve done it on the banks of the river, called the church in conference, “Let the man make his confession of faith.”

“I have changed.  I’ve been saved!  I have found the Lord, and I want to be baptized.”  They received him.  There before all of those eyes, he follows the Lord in beautiful baptism.  It’s a sermon, it’s a sign, it’s a symbol.  It’s an evangelism in itself, “I want to be baptized.  I have found the Lord.”  That’s God!  That’s the way the Lord did it.  And when we follow the Lord, that’s what we do; “I have been saved.  I have found Jesus, and I want to be baptized.”

And that’s our message and invitation from heaven to you.  I want my godly men to come up here with me and turn around and face you.  Where are these deacons who love Jesus?  I want you to come up here and face our people.  I want you to come up here and face our people.  That’s the way.  Come down here and face our people.  God bless you and give you every heavenly benedictory remembrance.  We’re here praying for you, loving you, asking God to bless you, and it’s only the Holy Spirit of Christ that can put in your heart this wonderful response.  God bless you.  Now let’s all stand together.  Not one of us leaving, not one of us moving except toward the Lord, down here, down here.

Wonderful Savior, You have given us such a beautiful way to walk, such a glory road in which to pilgrimage, and it begins in a confession of faith and a sign of that obedience, “I want to be baptized.”  And our Lord today as we pray, as we stand in Thy presence, may God sanctify the word that has been preached with a harvest, “I want to be baptized.  I want to accept Jesus as my Savior.  I want to put my life in this dear church.  Pastor, the whole family of us are coming.”  May God bless and speed in the way as we wait, as we pray, and as we sing this hymn of appeal.  Down out of that balcony, make it now, do it now while we make this appeal.