Evangelical Mis-understanding of Baptism

 Below is a great video from a Lutheran teacher, examining why the New Testament leads us to a sacramental understanding of baptism, in which we believe that God actually offers saving grace through and with the outward sign of water. 

John Wesley is notoriously difficult on baptism.  In some places, such as his Treatise on Baptism, he clearly affirms regeneration and justification are given through baptism; in other places, such as his Notes on the New Testament, he seems only willing to affirm a more modest and symbolic view (the Notes seem to me to be more theologically modest and generic as a general rule). 
In still other places, such as his Sermon "The New Birth" he seems to be skirting the line between a view that holds to baptismal regeneration (for infants) and a view that focuses more on a conversion experience as the point of regeneration (for youth and adults).

What Wesley is trying to hold together is a sacramental and an evangelical view of baptism.  The Sacramental view holds that God really gives saving grace through baptism (as in Romans 6, Titus 3, 1 Peter 3, and John 3), and the evangelical view holds that we really receive God's saving grace through personal faith (as in Galatians 3 and Ephesians 2).  Wesleyan theology - following the Articles or Religion of the Church of England - holds these together by insisting that, while the grace is always given in baptism, it is not fully received until we have faith, which might not (from our point of view) happen until a conversion experience years after our baptism.  

The point is that baptism is an outward and objective declaration of God's promises to us, that we can return to again and again and reclaim throughout our lives - or each day as was Martin Luther's habit.

All of this will run counter to the view - common down here in the American "Bible belt" - that baptism is no more than a symbol of our own profession of faith in Jesus.
The video below examines the major New Testament texts (he doesn't even get into the many Old Testament texts) that show why this "baptism as merely symbolic of our profession" view is not drawn from the Bible, but rather presupposed and then imposed upon it.  He brings forward many of the same texts and arguments that I would use to make the case that Baptism not only symbolizes, but also effectually offers to us cleansing and renewing grace.