The Pillars

Pat Taylor

Really, this is just a refresher. Most of the people here don't have a problem with the message; you've been baptized. Let's look at it as another way to share.

Last time I focused on the necessity of baptism.

• Why it's important: because God said so.

Doesn't it seem that this is a fought-against topic? It seems to be the hardest point to get across to people. It's like in the garden of Eden. There was only one commandment; don't eat of the tree in the midst of the garden. So what did the devil do? He tried to get them to eat of the tree.

Today, if you walk down the street, you can't even say "hi" to people. They're so wired to their ipods or whatever that they're in their own little world.

Did you ever try to just think about nothing? You can't. You're going to have thoughts in your head. And if you're not saved, they'll be convicting thoughts.

So it's the devil's job to keep you distracted so that you don't hear God's thoughts toward you.

Most people try to put the meaning of their life into their job, their career. I've been on that path. When I was in junior-high school, a guy came to school and showed slides of a cross-country bicycle trip. So when I was nineteen years old, I bicycled across the country. I didn't take a camera, headset, music, or anything. For ten hours a day, I did nothing but think. There was a period of time in Wisconsin that God spoke to me. I believed in God at that point, but I didn't know which God. Is it Allah? Or the Hindu God? Or what? But God spoke to me and let me know that Jesus is God. So after that point I knew that my answers would be in Jesus.

There are over 2,000 registered denominations in the United States. That's two thousand groups of people who all believe something different. Everybody can't be right, because they're all different. I said all of that to say, let's study the word of God and see what it has to say. If baptism is a fundamental point of doctrine, let's look at the Bible and see what it has to say about it.

Jesus' Name

Why do we baptize in Jesus' name? A lot of people say it doesn't matter; we all know what it means when we say "... in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." All I have to say about people who baptize in the Trinitarian formula is, they must not understand what it means.

All the examples we have in the New Testament plainly show that baptism

So we know there's a name. If you baptize in the titles, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and it does say that, does it not?

So what's Jesus saying? He said, "All power is given unto me, in heaven and in earth." Now turn back to Zechariah. "There shall be one Lord, and his name one." Jesus is fulfilling the scripture.

Let's look at the other verses.

So are they saying the same thing? They are. People say there are contradictions between the gospels, but everybody is looking at the same event. They may not have used the same words, but they're saying the same things. So Luke understood what Jesus was saying, even though he paraphrased him. There are agreement among the gospels in this understanding.

So it was brought into question, "Whose name and by whose authority do you do these things?" So they told them, in the name of Jesus. Jesus is a name that brings division. If you want to bring division, use Jesus' name. If you want to be all flowery, they could have said, "In God's name," or "In the name of the Father of Lights," or some-such. But when they said, "In Jesus name", they were drawing a line in the sand. This is the guy they just crucified.

If you read just before that, when they raised the man from the dead, they raised him in the name of Jesus.

So he didn't say "in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost." He said, "in the name of Jesus." That was the name that caused division. They weren't shy about using the name of Jesus. So why wouldn't we use the name of Jesus in baptism?

They had a name for their God; they had a very sacred name that they understood. But here it talks about a name that was yet to be revealed. We know that in Matthew 28, Jesus didn't say, "Repeat after me..." He was talking about the name that had been revealed. And in the book of Acts, they didn't have any question as to what it meant.

Can you imagine? The entire Jewish faith is waiting for the coming of their messiah, and all of a sudden, they were faced with the fact that they're responsible for his death. Can you imagine? That's a pretty weighty thing. It says they were pricked in their hearts. That's their whole hope in life. That's the thing they were waiting for their whole lives for. And now they are hearing that they didn't recognize him, that they killed him. So when they say, "Men and brethren, what shall we do?" they didn't say it lightly.

That includes everybody I can think of. "All those..." Does that include me? Yes. Does it include you? Yes. People have put their life on the line to preach the name of Jesus.

So what is that name, the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost?

Jesus was in the garden praying, as a man in the flesh, to the Father. So he said, "I have manifested thy name." What name did he manifest? (manifest means "make known") What name did he manifest? Jesus. He didn't just pick a name. Joseph and Mary didn't just go to the Jewish Book Store and get a book of good Jewish baby names. They were given the name to name Jesus. It wasn't just pulled out of a hat. God told them what they were going to name their child. So Jesus manifested God's name to those who followed him.

So we know that the name that Jesus manifested was the name of the Father, and it was Jesus.

I don't think anybody here is confused about the name of the son, but here it is:

(sidebar: a lot of new versions say "as thy wife" as if Joseph and Mary were engaged but not married. Mary and Joseph were married. Otherwise, Mary would have been stoned, because it would have been very apparent that she had a child out of wedlock.)

So what is the name of the Holy Ghost?

Jesus was speaking, and he said the Holy Ghost would be sent "in my name."

Why wouldn't you baptize in the name of Jesus? It's the only name given whereby we must be saved.

For the next part, we'll cover why it's done with water.