The Transformative Power of Baptism: Declaring War on Darkness

Well, what a great day. It’s a day where the Lord has come. And when the Lord comes, he comes in judgment and he comes. And salvation and baptism is a day of the Lord. It’s a day where the old person that was is put to death and buried in the waters, and the new person is raised to life.

And so what you’re going to witness is that the victory of Jesus Christ and bringing people into the fullness of his covenant, the fullness of his kingdom. And with that, I’m going to read a little bit about baptism. From what you might consider to be a strange passage. This might raise a few questions, but I’m always here to answer them, at fellowship.

Okay. So if you want to go to First Peter chapter three, let’s read this. First Peter chapter three, starting in verse 18. I’m going to only go for 10 or 15 minutes. If I go too long, we won’t have enough time to baptize people, so don’t worry. But there’s going to be some clear things in this passage that the Lord wants to put on your heart and that he wants to invite us all into.

So if you can just close your eyes even or just focus and let the Word of God touch you, I believe there’s power in the Scripture. Amen. There’s power in the Scripture to cut our hearts. There’s power in the Scripture to bring hope. We’re in a series right now called The Overcoming Church. We’re not in a series called The Church That’s Going to lose, or the church that’s going to fail, or the church that’s going to survive, or the church that is going to get bailed out at the end.

We’re in a series called The Overcoming Church, and that’s because we are in Christ who overcame Satan, hell, sin, guilt, the curse, overcame addiction, overcame anything in your life, that is holding you in bondage. So we are an overcoming church and that is through him, like I said, and our mission as an overcoming church is to colonize the earth for heaven.

One scholar I’ve been reading said to Heaven is the earth. That’s what you’re called to do. You can’t do that from a place of bondage and slavery. You can’t do that from a place of, oh, yeah, I believe in Jesus. But I’m still, you know, a piece of, a piece of junk. And, I can never do anything right.

Other people have to do it. I don’t compare. We can’t do it from that place. God’s will was never that. You live in that place. His will was to fill you with His Holy Spirit and power. That you would be his witness. By the way, if anyone can go to this thing, the preacher in the park or prays in the park, what a great opportunity to talk to someone about Jesus, right?

People hear them singing the worship songs. You just walk up to someone and say, what is that about over there? And you just pretend like you don’t know. And then, then you just talk to them about it, you know, offer to pray for them. It’s a good it’s a good thing. All right, well, let’s, let’s come to the word of God.

And I believe that he has something for us today. First Peter 3:18. I’m going to go all the way down into chapter four. So let’s buckle up here. For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, so that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit in which he went, and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey.

When God’s patience waited in the days of Noah while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons were brought safely through water baptism, which corresponds to this. Getting in an ark and being saved from death. Baptism corresponds to this. Baptism now saves you not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him, having Satan under his feet, since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same way of thinking, for whoever

has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, so as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh, no longer for human passions, but for the will of God. For the time that is past suffices for doing what the Gentiles want to do. Living in sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry. With respect to this, they are surprised when you do not join them in the same flood of debauchery, and they malign you.

They make fun of you. Do you see the flood there? There’s a flood of evil. There’s a flood in the world. Okay? And he says the time that’s passed before you join Christ, before you repent, the time that’s passed is enough for doing those things. The time that’s passed is enough to live for the world, for riches, for pleasures, for respect, for Facebook likes, for whatever it is.

The time that’s passed is enough for living for those things. God has a new life for you. God has a new world for you. What happened when Noah went in the ark? Okay, he went into the ark. The waters went over the ark, and then the waters lifted the ark. The waters lifted the ark. It says that it came to rest on the mountains of Ararat.

So not only did the death of Christ bring him into the depths of the earth, but then through his burial and his resurrection, he went to the heights. He ascended to the throne with all authority is being subjected to him, ruling from the mountain of God. This is your path as a disciple of Jesus, you join him through faith.

You get buried with him in the waters of baptism. You get raised to newness of life. And it says in Ephesians 2:6 that you get seated with Christ in heavenly places. You end up on the mountain of God. And what do you do there? All well, you sing songs and you say, oh, it’s so great to be saved.

Too bad for all those other people. I hope not. Okay. From there, from the mountaintop, you go down the mountain in humility and you recolonize the earth. You repopulate it with the gospel. You bring cultural renewal and transformation to your job, to your school, to your family. You colonize the earth for heaven, just like Noah did after the flood.

Because he came out to a new earth, to a new calling, and he was the one appointed by God to have a authority on that new earth. So this is what we’re saying, by the way, did you see here that he proclaimed victory over the spirits in prison? Now, this might be one of the questions you have for me.

And, you know, there is some debate on this, but during the times that the Old Testament and New Testament were written, every Jew believed this referred to evil spirits who corrupted the earth in Genesis six. And it said, they did such a good job in Genesis 6:5. In Noah’s day it said, the only thought of man’s heart was only evil.

Continually. That’s a pretty bad statement. Okay, so even the worst person on earth today, you probably couldn’t say that the last bit shred of every thought is only evil all the time. And that was what God said about the world of that day, that it was so under the thumb of the kingdom of darkness that there was no solution.

There was no solution but death and rebirth. So here’s one of the simple points I want you to see when we believe the gospel, when we come to Jesus, it’s not a self-help program. You’re not seeing people up here that are going to commit to, ten principles to a better life. And I’m going to try harder. God’s solution for you.

And I’m stealing from Derek Prince here. His solution isn’t to fix you, but to kill you. Okay, so he’s like, he’s not like, hey, you know, if you really get in touch with yourself and you figure out everything your mom did to you when you were a kid, that was bad. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t mock any of this stuff, because, I mean, some of it can help you, but it’s not God’s plan to figure out how to fix yourself.

You can’t. You got to die and be buried and be raised. Well, how can I do that? Because God was willing to do it. Jesus came as the representative of mankind, just as Adam totally represented mankind. Jesus came as the second Adam. He totally represented you. He died in your place. He took your sin on himself. He took the curse on himself.

He took whatever hook Satan had in you and said, put that hook in me so that she can be free so that he can be free. Then he buried it. While he was down there in the underworld, he proclaimed victory over the spirits in prison, and then he rose victorious on the third day. 40 days after that, he came on the clouds of heaven and took his seat on the throne, according to Daniel chapter seven.

And from there he will reign from heaven until every enemy is put under his feet, and the last enemy to be destroyed will be death. First Corinthians 15 he will reign, and he will win. And what you say today in baptism is, I renounce the losing side, I renounce Satan, I renounce the domain of darkness. I renounce my sin.

The time that’s passed is enough for all that. I renounce that because it’sNot going to win in the end. I renounce that, and I swear a loyalty oath to Jesus Christ. I enter covenant publicly with him. I take his name on me. In Revelation 14, it says, the name of God is written across the foreheads of the 144,000 drawn from every tribe.

His name will be put on you as you come to him in faith. That’s what you’re going to see in baptism today. As people are going to enter covenant with God, they’re going to take the name of God. They’re going to be raised to newness of life and authority and power, and they are going to declare war on the kingdom of darkness.

This baptism is spiritual warfare. Baptism is a declaration of war on Satan. Yes, it’s a public announcement that we are going to go take territory from the Prince of Darkness because it doesn’t belong to him. So that’s what these people are signing up for. They might not have known that. I don’t know if they’re listening, but they knew it.

They knew a lot about it because they took a baptism class, which is a great thing to do. But the essence of it is you just say, man, I’ve had enough. I’ve had enough of sin. I’ve had enough of shame. I’ve had enough of self-help. Jesus, can you save me? He says, yeah. Jesus, can you raise me?

Yes, I can, but first, I have to kill you. You have to let him do that to you. You have to trust yourself into his hands. If you die with him and you’re buried with him, you will certainly be raised with him. He’s a faithful Savior. Let me pray for us. Then we’re going to welcome the candidates out here.

And they are going to join the Dominion, the Kingdom, the onset, the advance, the victory march of Jesus Christ. All right. Thank you, God, so much. Thank you that you would open this way for us to live victoriously, to be totally cleansed of our sin, to have our sin cut away from us and buried. And we’ll never go back to it.ather, thank you so much for your grace, and I pray your blessing today over every candidate. And may your name be glorified today. In Jesus name, Amen.