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Eugene Prewitt

After a Deeper Baptism

Today we're going to study about life after baptism.

We had a study back in November about baptism and some of you were there, but there's a lot of you that weren't there so I want to give a brief recap about what we learned in November and then we're going to go forward.

In November we studied about what does baptism mean and how are we ready for baptism.

Today we're aiming for how do you live a life after baptism?

What we found in November is that Jesus never intended to trick anyone into becoming a Christian.

That is, he never intended that he would say, Come be a Christian, and then you'd come and decide to be a Christian, and then suddenly you'd learn that you need to deny yourself.

Or you'd suddenly learn that now you're going to have to put away your adulterous relationship.

God never intended that you would be tricked into a commitment to change your life.

Rather, he intended that you would know up front what the terms are, what's expected of you, and that you would choose of your own free will to trade all of your old life for Jesus.

Understanding that that means giving up parts of your old life.

I mean every part of your old life that doesn't harmonize with Jesus.

That, if you say it another way, means that before baptism, when we looked in the Bible, There was a requirement that people reform their life you might remember this from your own reading of the Bible that people came to John the Baptist to be baptized And John began preaching about how when the world ends, Jesus will gather his faithful like wheat into a garner.

And then he said, what's he going to do with the rest?

He said he's going to burn them with unquenchable fire.

And that made people wonder, what am I going to do?

And if John the Baptist had been like some ministers today who don't understand, he would have said, be baptized.

You know, He did communicate that, but first he said, bring forth fruits appropriate for repentance.

And then they began to ask him specifically.

He said, don't do violence to any person.

We're talking to military personnel whose job is to do violence to persons.

But Jesus told the soldiers that they would have to come up to the level of the 10 Commandments, even though it would be very difficult in their situation.

Then Jesus, excuse me, then John the Baptist was asked by the publicans.

The publicans said, what should we do to be baptized?

Now you should know for publicans that would be very difficult.

Because the arrangement with the Roman government was that the publicans would gather all the taxes that were due, plus gather whatever else they could manage and would live off whatever else they could manage to gather.

In other words, the deal with Roman government was that you live off what you steal from the people.

And what did John the Baptist tell the publicans?

In other words, though it's very inconvenient for your life, if you're going to be baptized, you're going to have to come up to the requirements of the 10 Commandments, however difficult that is.

Was John inviting them to count the cost?

And then he was speaking to very poor people.

But we could delude ourselves into thinking we're poor.

Arkansas is wealthy compared to the rest of the world.

Do you all understand what I'm communicating with that?

John the Baptist was speaking to people who were so poor that when they were putting on a feast for their Savior, they gave him bread and fish.

And when Jesus fed 5, 000 people, you know what he fed them?

And when the disciples made a meal for him, you know what they fed him?

Do you understand about the diet of this area?

And this is what John the Baptist said to the poor people.

I don't want to preach that sermon again.

So, what I want to tell you is that if you want to hear that sermon and you have internet access at audioverse.org, that website, you can find that sermon.

Audioverse is a website that has hundreds of sermons and this particular 1 is called a deeper baptism.

It's there, you can find it, you can listen to it.

Or to get a transcript of the ideas that were in that sermon, BibleDoc.org has an article called Baptism, the Cost of the Covenant.

1 is the sermon I preached, 1 the article I wrote, but it's the same material.

Then in that sermon we talked about baptism.

It's a symbol of entering into a covenant relationship with God.

So when you're baptized, you're baptized in the name of the Father and Son and Holy Spirit.

You're covenanting to be God's person, but God is also covenanting with you.

You're not agreeing to keep His requirements by your own willpower.

If you made that agreement, it wouldn't matter how honest you were, you wouldn't manage.

That covenant is a symbol, that baptism is a symbol of our dependence upon God's power to live the life He wants us to live.

And that's why you go down, That represents your old life is dying.

That's why you go down all the way, because your whole old life is dying, as opposed to what might happen in a sprinkling situation.

And that's why you come back up, because you are gonna live in a new way of living.

And in Romans 6 you can find that whole process described, and it's emphasized there about the holy living of the new Christian life.

If you want to be baptized, at least the Bible way, you can't go to a river and go for a swim and baptize yourself.

Jesus said it like this, he said, whoever will confess me before men, I will confess that person before my angels which are in heaven.

Which of course is a more significant confession.

Why does God want us to confess before men?

It's because the devil is always trying to trick people into making them think that they could never be a Christian.

And when men see another man, in this case this afternoon a woman, when they see a woman give her life to God and make that commitment, it really weakens that temptation of the devil and they begin to realize that they could be a Christian too.

There's power in the confession that God wants us to make in baptism.

But none of this really is the point of my sermon today.

This was the point of a sermon a long time ago, and today we're going to study about how to live after baptism.

Turn with me in your Bibles to 1 Corinthians chapter 10 and we're going to look at verse 1.

1 Corinthians chapter 10 and we're going to look at verse 1.

These first 5 verses are kind of obscure.

That is, when we read them, our mind might wander to something else because we don't understand them.

I hope this morning that they'll become easy to understand verses for us and our mind will never wander again when we're reading them.

1 Corinthians 10 verse 1 says, Moreover brethren, I would not have you to be ignorant.

So did God intend that these passages would be obscure to us?

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After a Deeper Baptism

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