Theological term
Baptism
8 sermons · All terms
The Conversion of Lydia
Acts 16:6–15 presents the Macedonian call and the conversion of Lydia as twin demonstrations of divine sovereignty in the advance of the gospel. The Holy Spirit's redirection of Paul's itinerary, the night vision, and the sovereign opening of Lydia's heart at the Philippian riverside together show that gospel missions proceeds by God's appointment, not human initiative or chance. Lydia's conversion illustrates the full ordo of grace: effectual calling, forgiveness in Christ's blood, and the imputation of his righteousness received by faith alone — all confirmed outwardly in her immediate baptism and hospitality. The sermon presses the church to embrace both the means of gospel preaching and confidence in God's sovereign grace as the only ground of missionary hope.
Testimony, confession, and baptism: Hans
A baptismal service in which a new believer makes public profession of faith through immersion, grounded in the 1689 London Baptist Confession's teaching on baptism as a sign of union with Christ through his death and resurrection. The candidate recounts a providential journey from Eastern mysticism and Stoic philosophy to Scripture, tracing his conversion to a sermon on Matthew 24:15 and the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD as the demonstration of God's simultaneous justice and mercy. The confession of faith is administered through four credal questions, after which the candidate is baptized as a public declaration of a grace already received.
Who Are the Sons of God?
Galatians 3:26–29 declares that all who believe in Christ are sons of God through faith — not through ethnic descent from Abraham, physical circumcision, or adherence to the Mosaic law. This sermon works through the status, redemptive ground, sign, and unity of that sonship, demonstrating from Matthew 3, John 8, Romans 2 and 9, and Ephesians 2 that children of God are defined by union with Christ rather than by nationality, social condition, or sex. The threefold negation of Galatians 3:28 directly demolishes the Judaizing confidence in Israelite birth, free status, and maleness, and points instead to the covenant of grace in which all believers are equally heirs of the promise. The sermon closes with a call to rest in the alien righteousness of Christ as the sole ground of adopted sonship.
Baptism service
A baptism service in which three candidates — one raised in the congregation from birth, and a married couple — publicly profess repentance toward God and faith in Jesus Christ alone and are baptized by immersion. Each candidate gives a brief testimony of conversion: one through Isaiah 55 and the finished work of Christ on the cross, another through a sermon on Mark 5:36 following years of grief over a father's death. The service rehearses the 1689 LBCF paragraphs on the significance, proper subjects, outward element, and mode of baptism, anchoring the visible ordinance in the gospel it pictures.
Ask FGBC #2: Is Pouring or Sprinkling Sufficient for Baptism?
The proper mode of Christian baptism — immersion, sprinkling, or pouring — is examined through the lens of Scripture, Baptist confession, and the symbolism of Romans 6. The discussion distinguishes between the validity of baptism (requiring a credible profession of faith) and the propriety of its mode, arguing that the Greek term baptizō, the baptismal accounts in the Gospels and Acts, and the death-burial-resurrection imagery of Romans 6 all converge on full immersion as the biblically warranted mode. Sprinkling and pouring, while practiced in paedo-baptist traditions, fail to embody the confessional standard of 'due administration' and obscure the visible word that baptism is meant to declare.
The Good Fight of Faith
The Christian life is not ease but warfare, and 1 Timothy 6:11–12 summons every believer to flee wickedness, pursue righteousness, fight the good fight of faith, and maintain steadfast perseverance. The sermon is careful to frame these imperatives not as conditions for acceptance with God but as the necessary marks of one already conquered by sovereign grace and effectually called. Paul's martial language is grounded in the objective content of the faith once delivered to the saints and in the subjective grip the believer must not release. The passage receives its sharpest application at a baptism service, where the public confession of Tabea and Benjamin illustrates that the effectual call comes by the same sovereign grace whether a person is seized dramatically on a road to Damascus or nurtured quietly in the home of a Eunice and a Lois.
The Practice of the Early Church
Acts 2:41–47 describes the irreducible practices of the early church — the apostles' doctrine, fellowship, the breaking of bread, and prayer — and this sermon argues that those practices are not merely historical description but prescription for the church in every age. The gospel that created the church (sovereign grace working through proclamation to bring dead sinners to faith and repentance) also defines what the church does when it gathers. The sermon presses both the unconverted (to seek the Lord Jesus Christ in whom alone there is forgiveness and an imputed righteousness) and the congregation (to continue steadfastly in the ordained means of grace rather than chasing experience, ecstasy, or entertainment).
The Baptisms of Jesus
Christian baptism is grounded not merely in ecclesiastical command or apostolic precedent, but in the two baptisms of Christ himself: his water baptism in Matthew 3, where he publicly undertook to 'fulfill all righteousness' through perfect active obedience to the law, and the baptism of divine wrath he endured at Calvary — the cup of God's fury poured out upon him as the substitute for his people. Justification rests on both the doing and the dying of the Redeemer: his active obedience provides the righteousness sinners lack, and his passive obedience absorbs the condemnation they deserve. Those who go into the baptismal waters go not on the basis of their own achievement but because Christ was overwhelmed in their place, and they are called from that point forward to follow the Lamb wherever he goes — into service, suffering, and fidelity to his Word.