THE NEED TO BE BAPTIZED

THE TRUTH AND EXPERIENCE OF GOD’S SALVATION

Lesson Thirty Three

To Be Delivered Out Of Satan’s Kingdom and Transferred Into God’s Kingdom (1)

V. The Need to be Baptized

B. To be delivered out of Satan’s kingdom and transferred into the kingdom of God – John 3:5; Col. 1:13

1. The world is Satan’s kingdom – 1 John 5:19b

2. The world and its ruler (Satan) have been judged by the cross of Christ – John 12:31 (see footnotes on this verse)
[these two points may be illustrated by Israel’s slavery in Egypt (Exo. 1:11-14; 3:7,9), and by Pharaoh and his armies being drowned in the Red Sea (Exo. 14:26-28)]

Burden to Impart:

Baptism is not only a public testimony that we give before men of our repentance and faith in Christ, it is God’s way to deliver us from His enemy, Satan, and Satan’s evil kingdom of darkness. Baptism is the means by which we are transferred out of Satan’s authority of darkness into the kingdom of God (John 3:5; Col 1:13).

Memory Verse: “Who delivered us out of the authority of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of His love” (Colossians 1:13)

Facts to Teach:

1. We need to be saved from the world not only because it is crooked and perverted (Phil. 2: 15; Acts 2:40), but because it is the kingdom of God’s wicked enemy, Satan. Satan is the one who is behind the world, operating everything and everyone who is not saved (Eph. 2:2). The world system is Satan’s masterpiece, designed to keep men from God.

2. Because Satan is the one behind the world, who rules it, he is called the “ruler of this world” (John 12:31). Because Satan is the one who receives the glory and worship from the world he is called the “god of this age [world]” (2 Cor. 4:4).

3. This is the reason that, although God loves all the individual persons in the world and desires to save them, He has judged and condemned both the world as well as the ruler of the world (John 12:31).

4. By baptism we are “delivered...out of the authority of darkness [Satan’s world] and transferred...into the kingdom of the Son of His love [God’s kingdom] (Col. 1:13).

5. The Lord Jesus told Nicodemus that we must be “born of water and the Spirit” in order to enter the kingdom of God (John 3:5). We are born of water and the Spirit by believing and being baptized (Mark 16:16). Thus, God’s way to deliver us from the judged, Satan-ruled world is baptism. Baptism is also the means by which God transfers us into His kingdom, the kingdom of the Son of His love.

[If time allows, point 6 may also be shared as an illustration.]

6. An Old Testament type of this aspect of baptism is the crossing of the Red Sea by the children of Israel (1 Cor. 10:2). By crossing the Red Sea they were saved and separated from the slavery of Egypt as well as from their enemy, the pursuing armies of Egypt.