Norm Webb Jr - What Does the Bible Teach About Baptism

2:28AM Aug 29, 2024

Speakers:

Norm Webb Jr.

Keywords:

baptism

water

god

naaman

sin

dividing line

baptized

life

chapter

saved

peter

salvation

verse

talks

bondage

noah

cleansing

elisha

world

death

Dihydrogen Monoxide. Over the years, it has killed millions of people. It has been responsible for the death of millions. It is caused death by inhalation. It causes tissue damage in its solid state. It has caused third degree burns in its gaseous and liquid state. It causes soil erosion, it causes metal corrosion, and it has cost billions of dollars in damages over the years. You can, it is used in animal research. Is used in abortion clinics. It is used in nuclear plants and chemical warfare. It is even utilized in torturous military operations and is even used in performance enhancements for athletes, you will find it in, you'll find it in acid rain. You'll find it in brain tumors. You'll find it in pharmaceuticals from big pharma. You'll find it in industrial solvents. You'll find it in cleaning solvents, and then we take it and we put it in baby food. A survey was done a number of years ago about this dihydrogen monoxide, DHMO, and it was asked, Should this be banned? Should the government ban this? 86% in the survey said it should have been banned, 86% and yet it's used today. Now, if you remember your ninth grade physical science, or you remember anything from 11th grade chemistry, or you've you've heard this illustration before, or you're any good at Latin, then you know that what I've just described is water, H2O as we understand it, two part hydrogen, dihydrogen, one part oxygen. It was given in a survey by a ninth grader for a science experiment. And he was looking at what is the gullibility of people, and he asked his ninth grade class out of 50 people, 43 of the class said they should be banned. You and I know, though, that water, even though all those things I may have mentioned are true, even though it may have, over the years, killed millions of people, you and I know it's essential for life. It is absolutely essential for life. We don't live without water. It is as essential to us as the air we breathe. When we look for life on other planets, the first thing we look for is water, because life as we know it can't survive without it.

Now, when we look to the scriptures, we read a lot about water. Water is mentioned 649, times within the scriptures and in many different contexts. And what we see is that God has used water a lot in connection with salvation in different contexts. And so tonight, what I'd like to talk with you about is water, but then also, how does it connect to salvation and baptism? I appreciate being here tonight. I appreciate being here with you. I appreciate the invitation from Kenny, although he decided just not to show up at all, even though he told me he would. But it's really good to be with you and I, and look forward to meeting some of you, and some of you've been friends for a long time and but it's really good to be here this evening. I appreciate the series of lessons that you all have had. There's lots of questions, and there's lots of questions that surround baptism. When we look at the controversy through the years about baptism, and it goes not just in the last couple of 100 years, it goes way back a couple of millennia that there's been debate and controversy and conversation about what is the role of baptism in in our relationship with God. And so, there's questions about, is it essential to be baptized in order to be saved, or is it simply a manifestation of our faith, not required, but nevertheless good as it demonstrates our faith to God? Is it for infants, or is it just for adults? Is it requires immersion? Is that what baptism is? Or can you sprinkle and it be considered baptism? Is something special about the water? Is it sanctimonious? Or is it just water? Is it just a symbol? Those are just a few of the questions. Is it baptismal regeneration? Is that something that God has has talked about? is there such thing as water salvation? Is Baptism essential? Or is it just important?

Nevertheless, there is some clear connection between water and our relationship with God in the scriptures, and we can see that even from the passage that we saw there in First Peter, chapter three and verse 18, where Peter says this ,First Peter, chapter three, verse 18, he says, "For Christ also died for sins once for all the just for the unjust, so that he might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the Spirit, in which also he went and made proclamation to the spirits now in prison who were once disobedient when the patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah during the construction of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through the water. Corresponding to that baptism now saves you, not the removal of dirt from the flesh, but an appeal to God for a good conscience to the resurrection of Jesus Christ." Obviously, there's some connection here. I mean, Peter's pretty clear. Baptism now saves you. So, I want to talk with you about that tonight, and I want to talk with you about baptism, but the first thing I want to do is talk with you about water and how God has used water throughout the centuries and throughout the millennia to accomplish His will. And I think what we'll eventually do is we'll come and see the role that baptism plays in all of that.

When we start out, we start in the beginning. And in the beginning it says, "God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was formless and void and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters." And the implication is the waters were already there. God had already created water. And we go on and we see that, "Then God said, Let the waters abound in abundance of living creatures." And life is found in the water. In First Peter, chapter three and verse five, Peter writes, "for when they maintained this," speaking of those who would like to say that Christ isn't coming, "it escapes their notice that by the word of God, the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed of water and out of water." Water was already there. It was already in existence, and God was creating everything else, that everything else, of His creation, was part of that water. And so, water is this essentiality in life. And what we discover is water is this amazing chemical compound that has all these incredible attributes about it. A.O. Schnabel, in one of his books, he says, "Every drop of water contains colonies of life." Over a 60 hour period of a protozoa spore will produce over 55 million descendants in a single drop of water. That's mind blowing. In a single drop of water, that much life. Water is required to control the temperature of the earth to make it habitable for humans. Without water, we burn up. Without water, we freeze to death. Water is able to control it. It's the thermostat. You might say, of the world. 70% of our body is made up of water. I mean, the answer is, without water, we die. Water is this amazing chemical compound. It has this stickiness to it that's very fascinating and I'm not a chemist, and I'm not a scientist, but my understanding has a stickiness to it, that that is essential for its movement through our bodies, but not just through our bodies. It's that stickiness of water that enables water to get from the roots of a tree all the way to the top. It is this amazing creation of God. And so I think we could say that water is the dividing line between life and death. It's the dividing line between life and death.

But you know what? We don't have to stay in Genesis chapter one. Let's move on through the Bible and see how else God has used water over time. Now, in Genesis chapter six, I know we're all pretty familiar with this story, and we find that God looks upon the world and he sees that the evil of hearts of men are or the hearts of men and the imagination of the hearts of men are evil continually. And so God says He is going to destroy the world. And we see that in Genesis, chapter six and verse five to 13. But we see Noah finds favor. He finds grace in the eyes of the Lord, and He gives no instruction on building this ark and getting his family into it. And then we see the flood comes and it cleanses the earth. It cleanses the earth. God cleansed the world with water. Now that's not a new story to any of this, but here's what's fascinating to me, and that passage that we read in First Peter, chapter three and verse 20, it's interesting what Peter says saved Noah and his family. Because when you and I think about how Noah was saved, we think Noah was saved by God, right? We think Noah was saved by the Ark because he got him and his three sons and their wives and his wife, and he got them all into the ark, and they were saved in the ark, by the ark. You know what? That's not what First Peter, chapter three, verse 20, says. It says they were saved by water. How? Well, because water cleansed the Earth. It provided a new beginning that allowed Noah and his family to exit and enter to a world where the hearts of men were not evil continually. Now. How long did it take for Noah to mess that up? Well, it didn't take very long. Sin entered the world again and and we see the continued collapse of all of that. But nevertheless, God used water to cleanse the earth, and water became the dividing line between the filth of the old world and the cleansing of the new. That's how God used water and provided salvation to Noah and his family. I can't imagine what that world was like in that day and time. I know we look at our world, and we look at the things that are going on, and we look at the seemingly progress of evil as it marches along and makes more and more challenges to us as Christians in this world. But I'll tell you, it was nothing, what we experience today is nothing, compared to what Noah and his family experience on a daily basis. And so water cleansed the world and provided for a family to start over and have a new beginning in this new world. It was the dividing line between the old, the filth of the old world, and the cleansing of the new.

But let's move on. Let's go on into Exodus, into the book of Exodus, and we find the nation of Israel is in bondage. They're in bondage to the Egyptians. And you know that story that God rains the plagues down upon the nation of Israel. And finally, Pharaoh says, Get out. Take all your people and go and take all your oxen and take all your sheep and take all your goods and go, get out of my country. And so, Moses does. He picks up all of Israel, and Israel follows him out. And they're on their way, and they get to the Red Sea, and Pharaoh has changed his mind, and now they have the most powerful army in the world bearing down upon this nation of slaves. And they cry out to Moses, what do we do? Why have we left Egypt? And Moses says, Be still and see the power of God. And he raises his staff, and the waters part, and they cross. And if you think about how that crossing would have looked, they would have had the waters on each side of them, and they would have the cloud. Remember that cloud that God led them with? The cloud that would have been over them and in a sense, immersed and they walk across that land to the other side. But here's what I think is really important to understand, is that not only did God deliver Israel from their bondage, he did more than just geographically move them out of the country they were in bondage in and into another place. God destroyed the captors. You know the rest of the story, the Egyptians attempt to follow, and God brings the walls of water in a collapse, and all the Egyptian military is destroyed. God did more than just get them out of their slavery. He destroyed their enslavers. He destroyed their destroyers. He took captive their captor, the captors, and he led them out of their bondage. It's interesting to note in First Corinthians, chapter 10, verses one and two, how Paul talks about this and he's using this in the context of really not being like the Israelites after all of this happened. But he talks about what they were able to experience and what they were able to see. And he says, "For I do not want you to be unaware brethren, that our fathers were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses, in the cloud and in the sea." Water for the nation of Israel, was the dividing line between captivity and freedom, bondage and liberty, being slaves and being free.

Well, let's go on through the Bible in Second Kings chapter five, if you want to turn your Bibles to Second Kings chapter five, and you read there at the beginning of a man by the name of Naaman. And Naaman is introduced to us with all these accolades. He is a great military leader in Syria, and he's, he's known for his integrity, and he's very well respected. And he's a powerful man. And then it says, "But Naaman had leprosy." Boy, that changes everything, doesn't it? All this power in such a mighty nation, but here you are cursed with this disease, and this disease has a lot of similarity to what we see in sin. Leprosy caused separation from others. It caused deterioration of the body. It was painful, it was contagious, it was incurable, and could eventually bring about death. Look at all those same words and ask if sin doesn't have the same capability. But Naaman had leprosy, and you'll recall that there was a handmaiden there that was for his wife, and she said, I wish my master could meet the prophet in Israel. And Naaman hears this, and he goes to the king of Israel, and he says, Hey, this prophet in Israel, supposedly is able, to he didn't even say that. He says, I'm here to be healed. And the king says, What do you have? You come to start a war with me? I can't heal you. And Elisha hears about it. And Elisha sends His servant, Gehazi, and says, Hey, come to me. And he goes, and he sees Elisha, but Elisha doesn't come out to him. Instead, Gehazi comes out and says, I want you to go, or Elisha wants you to go, dip seven times in the Jordan. And Naaman gets all worked up. And he wanted Elisha to come out and wave his hands over him and do all of these wonderful things to heal him of his leprosy. And instead, he says, just, just go dip seven times in the Jordan. And Naomi gets all worked up over that. And it's Naaman servants that actually say, Look, if he asked you to do something hard, you would have done it, but all he's asked you to do is go over to the Jordan. And Naaman is all upset because he thinks the Jordan's a horrible, nasty, terrible river. But they say, hey, it's, look, it's just this easy. And you got to ask the question, what if Naaman hadn't? What if Naaman hadn't dipped in the Jordan? Well, Naaman would have died a leper, but what we discover is that he does. Naaman thought God planned for His healing was ridiculous, and the healing was done, but it wasn't done by the water in the Jordan. It was done by God's power. But the requirement was go dip in the Jordan seven times, and he does, and he comes up, and his skin is like the flesh of a newborn baby. And water becomes the dividing line between sickness and health. God uses water to be the dividing line between sickness and health.

Now, let's go into John chapter nine. John chapter nine, and we see there that Jesus has left the temple because the Pharisees and religious leaders have tried to seize Him and stone him at the end of John chapter eight. And so he leaves the temple area, and as he's leaving, he encounters a blind man. And his apostles asked, Is this man blind because of what he did or because of what something his parents did? And Jesus says, No, he's not blind because of any of that. He's blind because God is going to use this opportunity to bring glory to Him. And we see there in John chapter nine that Jesus speaks to the blind man. And in John chapter nine, he says to him, he spat on the ground in verse six, "and made clay of the spittle and applied the clay to his eyes and said to him, go wash in the pool of Siloam." And the blind man goes. Now, we read that part where the blind man goes and washes in the pool of Siloam, and we just read right by that. But you need to understand something. If I close my eyes and try to walk from here to the back of the room, there's a pretty good chance I'm going to trip over one of these pews. The distance from the temple area to the pool of shalom was about 200 yards. That wasn't an easy distance to travel for a blind man. He could have thought, well, this is pretty ridiculous. How in the world is this going to work? I don't even, haven't even seen the man who's healed me or has applied this to my eyes, but the man goes anyway. Because what if he hadn't? Well, he would have died blind. But he makes it all the way to the pool of Siloam, and he washes in the pool of Siloam, pretty similar to what Elisha asked Naaman to do, and he receives his sight. Water was the dividing line between blindness and sight.

So, how does God use water through the centuries? Through the millennia? Well, what we see is that God used water as the dividing line between life and death. It was the dividing line between bondage and freedom. It was the dividing line between sickness and health. It was the dividing line between blindness and sight. So, when we go to the New Testament, what do we discover? Well, we find that baptism is described as this dividing line between life and death. In Colossians chapter two and verse 11, it says, "in Him, you are also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands and the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with Him through faith and the working of God, who raised him from the dead. When you were dead in your transgression and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions, having canceled out the certificate of debt, consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us, and he's taken out of the way, having nailed it to the cross." And so what does he say here? Well, he says God has used baptism in a way where it represents you rising to walk in newness of life. You've buried this old man, that's talked about in Ephesians, Chapter Four in Romans six, which we'll come back to in a moment. You've buried that old man, that man of sin, and you rise to walk in newness of life. You now have life. You were dead in your transgressions, is what he says here. But now you're alive. I think that's pretty important to understand, and I think that's also why it's important that we see over and over in scriptures, where we see the New Testament writers saying, Don't go back to sin. Don't go back to sin, because when you go back to sin, you dig up that which is dead. And I don't know about you, but we don't typically dig up dead things, do we? My friend Steve Klein, he talks about a time in his life, when he was a child, that he walked over to his, some of his neighbors, you know, some of the other kids in the neighborhood. He walked over there, and they were digging in the yard, and he said, What are you guys doing? And they said, Well, we're digging up our dead dog. Who does that? We don't go digging up that which is dead. And what God is saying is, don't return to sin. You've buried the old man. The old man is dead. Through the waters of baptism, you've been raised up to walk in newness of life. And so baptism becomes the dividing line between life and death. That's how it's described here.

We see it's the dividing line between filth and cleansing. In First Peter, chapter three, verse 20 and 21 again, we look at this passage, again, speaking of that world who were once disobedient when the patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah during the construction yard, "in which a few, that is eight persons, were brought safely through the water, corresponding to that baptism now saves you not the removal of dirt from the flesh, but an appeal to God for a good conscience." And what we see is just as that old world was cleansed of the sin that corrupted it in the same way, baptism fills this role. And no, it's not a it's not an outward cleansing. Peter makes it pretty clear here, but it is a cleansing of conscience. It is a removal of guilt. It is God saying, I'm not holding against you all the sins of the past, those have been cleansed. All that filth that held you back, all that baggage that weighed you down, it's gone. I remember we had gone to Mexico to do some work with some of the churches down there and and we were on our way back, and we had to fly from Tuxtla into Mexico City. And in Mexico City, though, we had to go get our baggage and then get back to the gate to fly into the United States. And so me and Basilio Munoz are running, and his two sons, Isaac and Oscar. We're running through the airport. We get our baggage, we sent the ladies on, and we've grabbed our baggage, and I've got, I don't know why I've got three suitcases. It wasn't like we had to take that much clothes to Mexico, but I've got three suitcases, and I'm running through the Mexico City Airport. We're dodging people left and right. I've never been so happy to put down baggage and hand it away. And that's what God does when we're cleansed by the blood of Jesus. He cleanses us of that guilt and our conscience can be free from that. It's the dividing line between filth and cleansing.

Baptism is described as the dividing line between bondage and liberty. In Romans, chapter six and verse three, he says, "Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ, Jesus been baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead to the glory of the Father, so we, too, my walk in newness of life." Now we just talked about that from Colossians chapter three, didn't we? "For if we become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this that our old self was crucified with Him in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin." Now, if you go on reading in Romans, chapter six, Paul begins to use that analogy, and he says don't let yourself be used as an instrument of sin, but rather an instrument of righteousness. No longer be a slave to sin, but rather be a slave to righteousness to God. You're no longer in this bondage of this guilt and death. You're no longer under this wrath of God, because you've come through the waters of baptism, representing the blood of Jesus Christ, and you rise to walk in newness of life. And you're no longer enslaved in Egypt, but rather, you've been delivered. But here's the great thing about this. We read in the book of Hebrews that God has taken our captor, Satan, and he has destroyed him. He has destroyed death, and he has destroyed Satan's power over us. Baptism is connected, and it becomes the dividing line between bondage and freedom.

We also see that it's the dividing line between disease and purity. You recall in Acts chapter 22 that Paul is recalling his own conversion and how he was blind, and Ananias came to him and and he removed scales from his eyes, and he says, "Arise and be baptized and wash away your sins, calling on the name of the Lord." In John, chapter three, verse three through five, Jesus talks to Nicodemus there, and he says, "unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God." And the concept is, is you idea being born, being born again in a new way, like a child starting over. And baptism there is described between the dividing line between disease and purity.

And so when we look at the scriptures, and we look at how God has used water to bring about salvation, a lot of different instances, and then we see God speaking of baptism in all these contexts in which he talks about the same thing, we discover that water baptism is this dividing line between life and death and filth and cleansing and slavery and liberty and disease and purity. Baptism is the difference between sin and salvation. But let's go on, and let's see more about what the Bible says about baptism. And I don't think I'm breaking new ground with anybody here. Maybe I am, but I think most of us are pretty familiar with these sort of situations. But how can we talk to our neighbors about this? Well, it's interesting that when we look to the conversions in the scriptures, that we see some commonality in all of those. Sure, in every situation, they heard the gospel, they heard about Jesus Christ, they were called upon to believe in Him, to put their faith in Him, to trust him. They were called upon to change their lives. We see that in Acts, chapter two, verse 41 through 47 on that day of Pentecost, where Peter gets up and he preaches the gospel to them and says this one named Jesus has come and you've crucified him. You've used the hands of the Romans to do it, but you have crucified Him. But He is resurrected, and he is ascended, but you crucified your Messiah, and they cried out to Peter, Peter, what do we need to do? What do we need to be, to be saved? We've just crucified the Son of God. I don't know if you've ever put yourself in the shoes of a Jew standing and listening to that, they would have been shaking. Peter, what do we do? Do we need to climb to the top of Mount Hermon? Do we need to sacrifice 1000 lambs? No. He says, You need to repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of your sins, and you shall receive the Holy Spirit, you and all of your generations beyond. And so Peter says this, this is it. This is what you need to do. You need to be baptized, believing in Jesus, turning from your sin.

We see the similar situation in the Ethiopian talking with, I mean, Philip talking with the Ethiopian. And he preaches to him from Isaiah 53 and they come, and they're passing by water, and he says, What hinders me from being baptized? Where in the world of the Philippian come up, or the Ethiopian, come up with the idea that he needed to be baptized? Well, obviously Philip included that in his preaching of Jesus to him. And he recognized the need for that, and so they stopped the chariot, and they go down into the water, and he he immerses him, he baptizes him. And the Ethiopian goes on his way rejoicing. In Acts Chapter 16, we see the Philippian jailer, and he takes and he cleanses the the wounds that have been brought upon Paul and Silas because of their beating, they've been placed in prison, and there's this earthquake, and they release him. And Paul says, Do not harm yourself, because the Philippian jailer is about to kill himself. And he says, Don't do that, The Philippian jailer falls upon his knees and said, What must I do to be saved? And Paul says, You need to believe in Jesus. And then he tells him about Jesus, and somewhere in that sermon, he says, You need to be baptized, because it was "him and all his household that were baptized, and then they rejoiced together." There's a commonality in every conversion in the scriptures to Christianity, two commonalities, actually. One of them was the urgency. We have to do this right now. We can't wait till next week. We can't wait till next month. We can't even wait till tomorrow. We've got to do it right now. Why? Well, because we recognize baptism to be the dividing line between sin and salvation, between life and death, between liberty and bondage, between filth and cleansing, between sickness and healing. We've got to do it right now. All of them were like that, and in all of them, we also see they went on their way rejoicing after their baptism, because they knew they were cleansed. Why? Because baptism was the dividing line between sin and salvation. The conversions show us that.

Now, you know, a lot of times we get into the semantics of Acts chapter two and verse 38 when he says, Repent and be baptized for the remission of sins, unto the remission of sins. And there's a big debate about that Greek word "eis". And what does that really mean? And of course, those who are opposed to baptism as part of salvation is wanting to say, Well, it means unto salvation. And the fact of the matter is the Greek can go either way. And so Okay, let's take Acts chapter 2:38, just for a moment, out of the picture, and let's look at all the other things that Jesus says And God says about, and the Bible says, about baptism. What's the conclusion you got to make? Well, I'm baptized for the remission of sins. It's not an argument over a Greek word. It's the compound evidence that God has made this dividing line between sin and salvation, these waters of baptism.

Real quick, because my time is slipping, and I'm not used to ending Wednesday at 10 after seven, usually we're just getting started where I'm at. What are we saved by? Well, I don't have time to read all of these passages, but if you were to go through them, you would discover that every single one of these passages talks about, we're saved by something. We are saved by God. We are saved by Jesus. We're saved by the Holy Spirit, we're saved by the gospel, we're saved by grace. We're saved by faith and belief and trust. We're saved by repentance and confession, and we're saved by the blood of Jesus. We're saved by the works in which we do. You're justified by your works, not by faith alone. We're saved by hope in Jesus Christ and baptism now saves you. All of those passages directly connect the individual or object to our salvation. So here's my question, which one of these can you take out? Which one of these can you take out and still be saved? Well, can we remove God from the picture? Well, no. Well, how about Jesus? No, can't do that. Well, how about we remove the blood of Jesus from this picture and we can still be saved. Nope. He had to be crucified to become the atonement, the propitiation, the substitution for the wrath of God that we were to endure. Can't do that. Well, can we remove confession? Well, it's no. I mean, Romans, chapter 10 tells us you believe in the Lord and confess with your mouth. You know, we look at all these others and we say, well, we can't remove any of those. But then somebody comes along and says, Yeah, but we can remove baptism. I don't quite understand that. Which one can you take out? I don't think you can take out any of them. I think all of those are part of God's plan and process to bring us salvation.

Now, there's other ways we can look at this. God says the one who's baptized Mark 16:16, will be saved. He says he'll receive forgiveness of sins. He says his sins will be washed away. He says he arises to walk in newness of life that the one who's baptized puts on Christ. We put on Christ through baptism. We have new clothes provided to us when we rise to walk out of the waters of baptism. And if we had time, we'd go through all of these and we would demonstrate that. But God has indicated, baptism has that role, that the one who's baptized, all these things happen. Now, let's make something clear. There's nothing about the water that can cleanse one from sin. Matter of fact, Peter says that in the passage in which we started with, "it's not the removal of dirt from the flesh." We understand that there's nothing sanctimonious about the water. Maybe you've heard about the little boy that was looking into a baptistry and his mom said, Hey, be careful, you know, don't fall in and he said, No, I'm not going to fall in there. There's, all the dirty sins are in there. There's nothing sanctimonious about the water. We understand that. But we understand that this is the process in which God has asked us to go through and why would I want to neglect that? The act of baptism by itself does not procure the forgiveness of sins. I think that's important to understand. I fear maybe through the ages, that we have emphasized baptism, sometimes, to the point where we have de-emphasized a lot of these other really important things in our relationship with God. And that's really important to understand, because baptism has no effect without things like trusting in God and in his way, even when it seems strange or difficult or hard. There's this necessity to make correction in our life. There's this honesty with ourselves that we are in sin, and we need to recognize that and confess that. There's this recognition that I put my faith and my trust in My Lord and my Savior, Jesus Christ. These are all part of this relationship. There is this communication between God speaking to us in His Word and us speaking to him in prayer. There is all of these things that are part of this relationship. And so let's not overemphasize baptism to the point that we forget about all these other things, but it's still part of it. And so we have to understand this, baptism is our appeal to God to cleanse our conscience of sin. Hebrews 10, verse 22, "Let's approach God with a sincere heart and full assurance of our faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water. Baptism now saves you, not the removal of dirt from the flesh, but an appeal to God for a good conscience through the resurrection of Jesus Christ." I'll end with this. It's not about appealing to God through the sinners prayer to be saved. It is through baptism that we appeal to God to cleanse our conscience. Thanks for your your great attention tonight. I really appreciate it. Hope it has been helpful to you. If you want any of these slides or all of the presentation, I'm sure they have them in the back. Thank you.