You are listening to the Passion City Church DC podcast to learn more about

Passion City Church including our gathering times in Atlanta and Washington DC

visit us online at passioncitychurch.com. Today's talk comes from Pastor Ben Stewart.

This is Baptism Sunday folks. Yes, yes, some of you are already excited. You're

like, man, that's great. And others of you, if I can be honest, you clapped

lightly because you're like, yeah, I don't know what that means. And it's okay.

So I'm going to get out of the way in a moment. But I just wanted to to answer a

question for you of what is this and why is it a thing worth celebrating? What

is Baptism exactly? Because if it's a symbol, symbols are only meaningful if

you understand what they represent. If you don't, then it's just confusing to

watch. But if you understand what a symbol means, suddenly you grab the meaning

and it can become meaningful to us, all of us. And it's interesting when you look

in the New Testament, the New Testament stretches its arms wide to wrap in a

bunch of different pictures, images, metaphors to help us understand what's

happening in this sacrament. We call Baptism a sacrament. It means a sacred moment,

a holy moment, an important moment. And many of us understand, hey, I think it

is important, but I don't understand fully what's going on with this. And there's

all kinds of different images, the Bible grabs. It grabs the idea of a

rescue from condemnation. First Peter talks about that. And he grabs the

imagery of Noah being rescued in that ark across the waters. First Peter 3 says,

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 his eight persons were

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