More Than a Crowd
Week 3: Baptism
Pastor Rick Henderson June 28-29, 2026
Note: This manuscript isn’t a transcript of the sermon, but a planning guide showing what the speaker intends to say.
Most of us don’t really want to be alone. Some of us choose to be alone—after enough bad experiences with friendships, dating, even churches—but almost nobody wants a life of permanent isolation. We’re drawn to people because we need people.
And a lot of us love being part of a crowd. We’ll pay good money to be in one. Concerts, games—whether you’re a Swifty or a sports fan, you’ve probably paid to be packed into a room with thousands of strangers. But I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who only wants a crowd. Being unknown in a crowd might be a more severe loneliness than being alone.
We need people, but we need it to be more than proximity. That’s why we crafted this series called “More Than A Crowd.” Here’s the heartbeat behind it.
SERIES THESIS: A crowd shares a ROOM. A church shares an IDENTIY.
Our shared identity and our unbreakable unity don’t come from agreement. They don’t come from sharing a similar culture or church tradition. They don’t come from hovering around the same socio-economic levels, and they don’t come from sharing similar political viewpoints. Our unerasable identity and our unbreakable unity come by being included in Jesus by faith. That’s it and that’s enough. When we connect to Jesus, he connects us to his body, the church. We are bound to each other.
This series spotlights practices that remind us of and reinforce who we are.
Week 1 was communion. It’s the gospel made edible. Together, we reenact the story of salvation through the bread and the cup.
Last week was church membership. We don’t need church in general. We need a church in particular. The best kinds of relationships are those in which we share high levels of mutual trust and mutual expectation.
There are things you should expect from your church. One is that we will invest in your development for ministry and leadership. We believe that leadership is a destination of discipleship. If you have influence, you have leadership. This week I was talking to a woman who has a fire in her belly and a heart for people. She told me, “I know that God didn’t save me for nothing. I want God to use me, that’s why I signed up for the Global Leadership Summit. I want to grow as a leader.”
SLIDE: GLS
She had me fired up. This is a question for each of you. Does someone look to you for leadership? It could be in a classroom, at home, on a medical team, in business, or in church. If you can think of at least one person who looks to you for leadership, that is a sacred trust and responsibility. So, here’s my next question. What are you doing to intentionally invest in your leadership?
If you can’t point to anything, it’s not because you're dumb, and it’s not because you’re a bad leader. You’re probably busy. I think your church owes it to you to make it as easy as humanly possible to be developed. I think you ought to join us at this [pointing to screen]. Your leadership and the people who look to you for leadership are too important to put on cruise control.
Today, let’s talk about baptism.
ROMANS 6
Would you find this passage? It’s in the second half of the Bible, called the New Testament. It’s the sixth book: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, then Romans. This is probably my favorite description of baptism.
ROMANS 6:1-7 What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?
Paul responded to a question I’ve heard hundreds of times. If Jesus is forgiving and I get grace every time I sin, why not just keep sinning? It’s like insurance on a rental car. Don’t worry about the damage. It’s covered. What’s his answer?
By no means!
He’s not just forceful in his response. He’s reasonable. The reason that he points to is identity.
We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin—because anyone who has died has been set free from sin.
Baptism is a drama of IDENTITY.
I identify with the death of Jesus, and I identify with the resurrection of Jesus. Baptism declares, “I’m not who I was. I’m a brand-new person.” The best definition I’ve ever found for identity is—the story you tell yourself about yourself. Baptism is a powerful portrayal of a new story.
And yet, there are questions about baptism.
QUESTIONS:
- Why baptism?
Sure, there should be a way to celebrate people who follow Jesus. But why is it necessary for me to get sopping wet in front of you all? Think about the meaningful, public celebrations you’ve attended: a gender reveal party, a quinceañera, a wedding. Did you once think to yourself, “Do you know what would make this better? If they were soaking wet?” So why this?
- When should someone be baptized?
Should we or shouldn’t we baptize babies?
- How should someone be baptized?
Should we sprinkle, should we pour water, should we dunk folks like an Oreo cookie? There’s no avoiding the elephant in the room. Christians have divided over baptism—sometimes violently. Some of you have had awkward, tearful family conversations about baptism. It might be sacred. It might be profound. But it’s also complicated.
And yet, I can’t help but believe that clarity is possible. I can’t help but believe it’s possible to relieve the pressure on built-up angst, to relax and enjoy unbreakable unity, even if we don’t completely agree, even if our church experiences are very different. To find that, I want to take us on an unlikely journey that starts with sitting in my barber’s chair this week.
While I was getting this mug cleaned up, ESPN was on. They were talking about Brendon Sorsby. He’s a very talented college QB who was banned from playing college football because of gambling. He went to rehab for it. And he’s not allowed to play in the NFL this season either. Seems like a reasonable consequence. And yet, online gambling is a mounting problem. Companies are exploiting users for greed. Too many men are getting addicted and losing money they can’t afford to lose. Too many young men are addicted and losing money they can’t afford to lose.
This talking head on ESPN was a bit judgmental of Brendon Sorsby. And it ticked me off. ESPN started its own online betting service. Like many others, they are combining the addictive nature of a smartphone app with the addictive nature of gambling. They are happy to rake in millions from young men, whose brains are still developing, who are still developing impulse control—they’re happy to rake in millions even though it comes with wreckage. And I wanted to say to that guy, “Shut your hypocritical mouth.”
It’s just another example of too many examples of…I don’t even know what to call it. But it’s ugly. It’s systemic. It infects everything. What I’m trying to talk about is far bigger than gambling or hypocrisy. Do you have a mental bucket to put this in? Do you have a category for that never-ending drag where good things keep coming apart—sometimes into very bad things? It’s common. It’s everywhere. Whatever you believe—if you’re religious or irreligious—any framework that claims to make sense of life has to explain that.
Church people are ready to shout, “It’s sin.” They’re not wrong. But what if the story of the Bible—and the story of baptism—has even more depth than that? What if there’s more going on than the casual way we toss around the word “sin”? And if the word sin just means “breaking the rules” in your mind, that’s not what we’re talking about.
We’re trying to make sense of something you can find in every culture and every time period. There’s a malfunction in the human soul. If all the good and beautiful things in this world were a canvas, we can’t stop ourselves from smudging the paint. No one has clean hands. What is that, really?
To answer that, we need to travel from cover to cover through the Biblical story.
Land + Waters
When you read Genesis 1, the very beginning of the Bible, the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. It describes the creation process that comes next, by separating the waters from the land. If we don’t understand the culture and mindset from which the Bible was written, we’ll miss the interpretive key that unlocks everything that comes next. The waters represented chaos, disorder, and even death. That imagery starts at the top of the very first page.
God went on to create. What he created was good. The first people, the man and the woman, decided to trust themselves for moral wisdom instead of trusting God. That was the first pull of the thread, the good being unraveled. Genesis progresses by telling stories of chaos, disorder, and death flooding over humanity.
I can’t hit them all. This will be a speedy survey of a few.
Noah + Flood
Of course, there is the climactic account of Noah and the flood. Because of humanity’s bent to look inward, instead of upward, for moral wisdom, they were plunging ever deeper into moral chaos and disorder. Noah and the flood is the story of God responding to the flood of chaos with a flood of justice and judgment, and there was also grace. Life was preserved in an ark, that carried them safely through the chaos waters, placing them on a rock, on dry ground. Hold onto that. They were carried through the chaos waters, placed on the rock. Put that in your back pocket. That will be important later.
Baby Moses
When the Hebrew people were enslaved in Egypt, God raised up a man who would lead them to freedom. Because infant Hebrew boys were ordered to be killed by the Pharaoh, Moses was placed in a basket in the river to save him. The same word for Noah’s ark is the exact same word used to describe baby Moses’ basket. God again provides an ark of grace for salvation. And all of this points to Jesus; he is the ark of salvation who cannot be overcome by the chaos waters.
Think about the time that Jesus walked out on the water to the disciples, who were in their boat. For sure, that shows his divine power. But it’s hyperlinking back to key events and themes throughout the Biblical story. Jesus is the God-man; he’s unsinkable. He is the sovereign master over all things, even the chaos waters of disorder and death.
Parting of the Sea
Back to Genesis. Fast-forward to Moses now leading Israel. Pharoah, who is literal, but is also used as an archetype for sin and death has come with his army to kill and capture the Israelites. They have no escape. They’re backed up against the sea. And God parts the waters. They make their way through the waters, on dry ground, to salvation on the other side. After that they spent 40 years wandering through the desert.
When Jesus was baptized, he was hyperlinking back to that event. What did he do immediately after being baptized? He spent 40 days in the wilderness. Are you beginning to see how profoundly important themes trace from beginning to end?
Jonah
Jonah was a grumpy, calloused, angry prophet who refused to share God’s message because he didn’t want God to use him to bring grace to the people he hated. So, he tried to sail away. God brought a storm that resulted in him being thrown overboard into the sea. Three days and three nights, he was in the belly of a sea beast. Then vomited up onto dry land.
He was in the chaotic waters and was then rescued. Let’s read something Jesus said.
MATTHEW 12:39-40 “A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
The cross is Jesus plunging himself into the chaos waters of disorder and death and the resurrection is his emerging victorious over it. Water is not just water. This imagery continues all throughout the Bible.
Isaiah 17
The Old Testament prophet, Isaiah, used raging water to describe rebellious people and attacking armies. Over and over and over again, water is used as the dominant imagery for moral chaos, disorder, and death. It represents the unraveling of the good that God created.
We started on the first page of the Bible; now let’s go to the last.
REVELATION 21:1 Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.
Heaven is described as a place where there is no longer any sea. As if we’ve finally escaped the waters. And by now, I hope you can see this isn’t because God doesn’t like the beach. This imagery picks up on a theme that runs from cover to cover in the Bible: there is no moral chaos in heaven, no disorder of anything good, and no death. There is only life and life as it should be.
How does this relate to baptism? Hang with me. Let’s look at Jesus’ baptism.
MARK 1:9-10 At that time Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. Just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove.
This is a hyperlink to something that the prophet Isaiah wrote many years before.
ISAIAH 64:1 Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains would tremble before you!
When Jesus stepped into the waters for baptism, it brought all this imagery together. And it was an answer to the desperate prayer of Isaiah 64. God, would you please break the skies open and come down to us. Go read Isaiah 64. It’s a raw and honest prayer, begging to bring salvation. Jesus’ baptism was declaration that we is God, who has come to bring the rescue we need.
Earlier I told you to take the imagery of being placed on the rock, and put it in your back pocket. Take that out and let it frame how you see you this. This is the end of the Sermon on the Mount, the most famous, most important public teaching by Jesus.
MATTHEW 7:24-27 “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”
Jesus is salvation from the chaos that flows around us and through us. From the moral chaos that bubbles and churns in us, from all the ways the good things become tainted, infected, and disordered, from death—Jesus is the rock upon which we are safe.
At the cross, he plunged himself into the darkest depths. By his resurrection, he proved victorious over it all. He is the ark in which we are carried to safety. He is the rock upon which we are safe.
Would you look at baptism through all of what we’ve looked at today? Can you see the powerful significance of it. When someone goes down under the water, they are saying Jesus went down into the chaos waters for me. He is my ark. The only way I can travel safely through is to be in him.
When someone comes up out of the water, they are saying Jesus went all the way through and came out victorious. Because I’m in him, I’m safe too. I’m with Jesus. I’m in Jesus. And I identify with Jesus. I’m not just along for the ride. I don’t just have a ticket to the ark of salvation. I’m a brand-new person.
I’m redefined by the death of Jesus.
I’m redefined by the resurrection of Jesus.
He’s my rock and I stand on him, even when the chaos waters foam and rage.
That, my friends, is what baptism is all about. That is why our church practices baptism by immersion. We want to tell the story of our salvation and faith with the same imagery that the Bible uses. That’s why we only baptize people who have placed their faith in Jesus. Because baptism is a public declaration of a deeply personal story of rescue and transformation.
Do you know what it is to be rescued from the chaos waters? This is Robert’s story.
VIDEO: Robert’s Story
If you have experience rescue and new life in Jesus and you haven’t been baptized, the invitation is to be baptized and let’s publicly celebrate what he’s done in and for you.
If you haven’t trusted in Jesus, what are you trusting him? What’s keeping you from giving your trust to him right now?
Invitation and Prayer.