Baptism Devotional and Testimonies

Well we encourage you to take out your Bible for the scripture reading today, which is found in the New Testament portion of your Bible, uh, Acts chapter two.

We're gonna read a couple of sections beginning in verse 22.

If you don't have a Bible, there's one in the pew, and the page for that, for a scripture reading is found uh on page 910.

Uh and as well, if uh we would like that Bible, if you don't have one, um, to be your Bible.

You put your name in it and take that home.

We love to give away Bibles to those who don't have them.

So Acts chapter 2, begin reading in verse 22.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

This is Peter speaking on the day of Pentecost to a great crowd.

Men of Israel, hear these words.

Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know.

This Jesus delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.

But God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it.

Then I'd like you to skip over to verse 36 and following.

Now, when they heard this, they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, Brothers, what shall we do?

And Peter said to them, Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

For the promise is for you and for your children, and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.

And with many other words he bore witness and continued to exhort them, saying, Save yourselves from this crooked generation.

So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.

This is the word of God.

Well, it's a great pleasure today to be observing the baptism of six individuals from our church family here.

And so for the next few minutes, we're going to have a kind of meditation on the meaning of baptism, why we do it, what it means.

And so I'd like to spend a few moments on that and as well give a kind of exhortation both to those of us who are here as well as those who are the candidates for baptism.

I'd like to begin by thinking with you about baptism.

When we turn to scriptures to find out what the meaning of baptism is, we learn that Jesus himself established baptism as a symbolic act of initiation into the Christian faith.

You can see this really clearly in a passage such as Matthew 28, which we know as the Great Commission, one of the last words the Lord gave to his church.

He told them, he said, Go therefore into the world and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.

And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age.

So until the end of the age, Jesus said, baptism was something to follow after one's being made a disciple, and it was to precede something of being taught all that Jesus had commanded him.

At the same time, Scripture also makes clear that baptism isn't any kind of prerequisite to being in a right relationship with the Lord.

Even though it's closely associated with one's conversion in the New Testament, it's not any kind of prerequisite.

In fact, it is a symbolic way of identifying ourselves with a person in the work of Jesus.

So I'd like to say a few things about this.

That in the Bible, when you do a survey, and I'd encourage this sometime, look up baptism and roll through the book of Acts and see how baptism functioned in the early church.

And what you'll find is it happened almost always right on the heels of conversion.

It was associated very closely with one's coming to faith in Jesus Christ.

In fact, it was so much associated with that that baptism itself kind of took on the kind of uh way of describing one's whole conversion.

You could describe it just by talking about one's baptism, almost in the same way that we describe uh the the uh the United States by talking about Washington.

Um it had that kind of association.

And you can see something of that in the passage that I read where Peter tells this crowd to repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of their sins.

He doesn't mean their baptism is needed for that, he means that uh it is so uh a part of the ceremony, the coming to Christ, that um it was a way of describing one's whole conversion and coming uh to the Lord Himself.

One of the things that baptism does is it demonstrates something.

And in Scripture, the Lord is for our benefit is very big on symbols.

You've heard this a lot here.

But I'm amazed at how often in the Bible, Old and New Testament, the Lord uses symbols as a way of kind of reaching and speaking to our soul beyond the words that he gives us as well.

He gives us words and often symbols to add a kind of richness and depth to those words.

So, one, for example, if you think of in the Old Testament when God wants to reveal his name, um, his kind of personal name, if you will, a name that's going to probably more dramatic than any other name, going to just speak of his character, uh, his name Yahweh, which means I am.

I have the power of being within myself.

I am who I am.

I'm not dependent on anyone else or anything else.

I hold all the power in the universe.

I hold it, I have it.

Nothing is outside of me that I need it.

He not only says that, but he demonstrated it to Moses.

He says that in the form of a fire in a burning bush.

And the fire wasn't burning the bush like we think of it, it's consuming it.

The uh text actually says that Moses was really curious about this.

He went over and looked, and behold, the bush was not being burned up.

Because the fire had its own energy, and it wasn't needing wood to be consumed, it had the power of being in itself.

And so God demonstrates with a symbol something he'd given with words as well.

You can see the same kind of thing in many places of Scripture, and I think you can see it in your own life.

I heard this week uh someone had told me how, giving a kind of testimony to me of how a number of years ago they had really come to realize how idolatrous many of their hobbies were, that they were just running and doing hobbies, and they and uh it had become an idol in many ways for them personally.

And they and he said that you know, every time I went by my shop and saw those unfinished hobbies, it was a symbolic, powerful word to me, kind of a kind of a parable of what I was really doing in life.

And um so the Lord very often uses symbols in scripture and even through the Holy Spirit speaking to our heart in life.

So this ceremonial act, this symbolism, really has its core in Jesus.

First of all, we have water here.

In ancient times, water was used for cleansing, so there's a cleansing element here.

But the main thing that's being shown here is the identification of those being baptized with Jesus in his death, burial, and resurrection.

We read in the passage this morning these amazing words.

Peter said that God raised Jesus from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by death.

As the spotless Lamb of God, as the God man Jesus Christ, it was impossible for death to keep hold of him because he entered death not due to anything in his own.

He didn't deserve death, he entered death on our behalf as a great high priest carrying our sins upon his shoulder, and he conquered death, he overcame death, he satisfied the justice of God's wrath upon him, he satisfied it completely, and God showed this vindication of his servant, successful in this saving operation, by raising him up dramatically from the dead.

And as these candidates are being baptized this morning, there is a demonstration that they too, as they have put their faith in him, they too have overcome their own death in his death.

Death will have no sting for them as they trust in him.

His death, his burial, his resurrection is their death, burial, and resurrection.

They get the benefits of that by being united to him in this cleansing union.

So there's a beautiful picture being presented in baptism.

A couple of things about the need of baptism.

Even though it's not a prerequisite to salvation, baptism is important.

It's an important act of obedience.

It's often the first step of obedience.

The Great Commission puts this forward pretty clearly.

And in our day it might, it's still difficult, but it's not as difficult as it really could be.

And many believers around the world enter into this and really demonstrate for us one of the important things about baptism.

Because baptism is also a way of publicly showing your loyalty to Jesus Christ, the crucified, maligned, um, son of God, and in the world's eye is a loser.

And we're showing our alignment with him as he's the winner of all winners.

And um I would like to just think with me about other parts of the world.

What it's like to be a believer in the Middle East, for example.

I heard just this week of someone who was converted from that area, and they are very afraid of it being known that they're a believer, because it has huge ramifications for the welfare and even life of their family.

Will they be slaughtered?

Will they be killed?

Maybe.

And so this person is just is really um feeling the weight of the pressure of going public and saying, I put my loyalty with Jesus unashamedly.

I've known other Christians here, internationals from other parts of the world, who um in their country, being a Christian means you get passed over for the best jobs or any kind of decent paying job that you could support your family and your relatives with.

And so, in much of the world, um there is at stake, really, in baptism, um, a kind of uh unashamedness and allegiance showing that um baptism is meant to show us.

And finally, another need uh is I think it just puts a good stake in the ground.

For those of you who are married, when you get married, you have a ceremony, and you count the years back to that ceremony, and there's all kinds of symbolic things in that ceremony to remind you of that day.

And so it is with baptism.

This is a great ceremonial time, and even though all of our candidates aren't brand new Christians, some are, and this is a great stake in the ground to remember in the days ahead, uh, the time that you came to faith in Christ and that you demonstrated this publicly with a great ceremonial proclamation of the gospel.

Well, I'd like to finish up with a few words of encouragement.

First to the congregation.

I know there are some of you here in this congregation today who find yourselves in the same place that the hearers of the scripture I read this morning were.

You're not in Christ.

You're maybe unsure about Christ, but you're not in him.

And please hear the word of the Lord.

Peter called out in his day to save yourselves from this corrupt generation.

There is a judgment coming, the Lord is coming back, and as a part of this corrupt generation, your own corruptness, you're going to stand before him and give an account.

And the scriptures said that it was impossible for Jesus to be held under the slavery of death because he conquered it.

But the scriptures also say that it will be impossible for you outside of Christ and for me, if we're outside of Christ, to be released from the penalty of death without Jesus.

There will be no freeing from death apart from him.

So come to Jesus today.

Come to him in faith.

He's not looking for anyone to come with a list of works, he's looking for you to come in repentance and just owning your sin and coming and trusting in his work on your behalf to be made clean.

And finally, I'd like to give an exhortation to our candidates here.

You guys have been very courageous.

You've initiated this on your own.

And I'd like you to think of with me of the great cottonwood trees and the oak trees that line the Red River.

Because I think in many ways they symbolize something of maturity that is stunning.

And that's a kind of maturity that the Lord calls you to.

At our baptism, typically is a time, but not always, but at our time, it's a time of beginning.

And your faith is young.

It's like a sapling.

But you're going to have to cultivate and tend that faith to maturity where God intends it to go.

And so we'd like to encourage you to give the utmost care in the years ahead to tending to your faith and to doing so in a community of faithful Christians, in the community of a church where your faith can be supported and strengthened.

Now that you're aligning yourself with the Lord in a public kind of way, you can expect the darkness to be opposed to you in even stronger ways.

The evil one will seek to unsettle you and trip you up in ways you will never dream all your life.

His assaults will be unending on you.

You will need each other, but most importantly, you will need to depend on the Lord as much in your walk as you did at your conversion.

You'll need to be completely open with him and dependent on his grace and his love.

Never stop singing the gospel to your soul.

Always remember this day when you threw yourself on the work of Christ for your acceptance.

You will hear the voice in your soul all your life of an accusation that you have messed up.

You aren't worthy.

You don't measure up.

But the gospel says in Christ you do, because he measures up.

Every morning, sing.

It's time to sing the gospel to your soul, and may you do it.

And may the Lord keep you strong and steadfast in your Christian walk.

Amen.

Well, I'm going to pray for us, and then each of the candidates are going to come up and they're going to uh give their uh testimonies here live, and then we'll have uh the baptism of three of them who weren't baptized in the first service.

Will you join me in prayer?

And those of you who are being baptized, will you come forward?

Our Lord, we we do thank you for the wonderful gospel.

We thank you for who you are, for your power that relieves us of all boasting.

Thank you for Jesus, for his death, burial, and resurrection.

Thank you for his victory as the great last Adam who conquered where the first Adam miserably failed us.

Thank you that we can be united to him by just believing and trusting and not by a long list of do's and don'ts that we can never do.

So Lord bless, we pray, uh, the remainder of this time and these baptisms.

In your name, we ask it.

Amen.

So I'm going to be sure to remind you to be sure to be sure to introduce yourselves as you're to give your testimony.

Good morning.

My name is Pam Galloway.

I grew up not far from here in Roseau, Minnesota.

My husband Jim and I, along with our three children, came to Grand Forks and began attending Faith E-Free 19 years ago.

Our last little chick has now flown the coop, and Jim and I are adjusting to an empty nest.

This is my testimony of Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, the ruler of the kings of the earth.

I have loved God as long as I can remember.

As a small child, I was drawn to him and knew that he loved me.

I understood that he was a good and powerful Father who created all things, heard my prayers, and wanted me to obey him.

I had always gone to church and Sunday school, but when a friend invited me to a children's rally at her church, it was a revelation to me that I couldn't get to heaven by being good.

It was only by believing that Jesus died for my sins and took the punishment I deserved that I would be reconciled to God and have eternal life.

Without hesitation, I went forward and received Jesus as my Savior.

Since that time I can say that God has never left me or forsaken me.

In my college years I wandered far from him and realized the depth of my capacity to sin.

But the Lord was always near, and when I turned back to him, he received me with open arms.

I have learned that although God forgives sin, he does not necessarily remove the consequences of our sin.

But in his tender mercy, he can use even severe consequences for our good.

Redemption is God's nature, and he lovingly restores our broken pasts.

Transformative for a 13-year-old.

And if you grew up in that tradition, you can say this is most certainly true.

God has been prompting me for some time now to be baptized as a believer.

Today I take that step in obedience, knowing that my salvation was long ago secured by Jesus Christ.

I am here to testify that God's grace is extravagant and his mercy never fails.

From Isaiah 61, verse 10.

Isaiah 61:10

I delight greatly in the Lord.

My soul rejoices in my God, for he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of righteousness.

I know I sin a lot every single day, and because of that, I deserve to go to hell and be separated from God forever.

But I believe that Jesus paid the ultimate sacrifice by dying on the cross to pay for all of my sins, even the ones I haven't committed yet.

I know God will always forgive me if I am sincerely sorry and ask him for forgiveness.

And when I die, I will get to spend eternity with him in heaven.

I don't really remember a specific moment that I could say I became a Christian.

Since I grew up in a Christian home, I've learned about Jesus and salvation for as long as I can remember.

So it has been a gradual learning process until all the things I've been taught have become my own beliefs.

I want to love God with all my heart, mind, soul, and strength, and I want others to see Jesus and me by the way that I live.

My name is Sam Linus.

Um I've been in church since I was real little, and I always knew that I was a sinner, and I did it every day, and I also knew that I could never redeem myself by myself.

I didn't really understand what it meant to trust in Christ then, but I now know that it means that I have to have a found the firm foundation in him and commit myself to him, and I'm ready to declare that to the ends of the earth and back.

I want I am a believer in Christ, and I want everybody to know that.

Knowing more about God's word and what he calls me to be showed me how much I fall short of the mark and how I can even remotely do this on my own.

To trust in Jesus alone and what he did for me on the cross, making me clean in God's eyes, really shows me how much he really loves me, and that he alone can cleanse my heart of all the evil I have done.

Knowing this, I know I will never be able to go to heaven no matter how much good I do.

It's only through Jesus that I will go to heaven.

With all he has done for me and realizing just how immense his love is for me, it makes me want to follow him and work more to become more Christ-like in my life.

The one of the ways I can follow him is through baptism.

I want to be baptized because Jesus Himself was baptized.

Jesus also told his disciples to go out and baptize at the end of Matthew.

Being baptized is also a way of making a statement that I trust in Jesus alone, who died on the cross for my sins and rose from the dead, allowing me to go to heaven.

In essence, being baptized is just one of the ways I can make my faith more personal and work towards becoming more Christ-like.

The thought of God has never been a new concept to me as I was raised in a Christian home and regularly attended church.

I also attended a Christian school where I was taught in a godly environment.

When I was younger, my teachers would ask if anyone wanted to accept Jesus into their hearts, but I never quite grasped the concept of what that truly meant.

Sometime in the fourth grade, I don't exactly remember when or where, I accepted Jesus into my heart, confessed my sins, and declared my need for God.

In the summer of eighth grade, while at Cooperstown Bible Camp, God opened my eyes to help me truly understand how sinful and undeserving I was of his gracious gift of Christ's death on the cross.

I rededicated my heart to him and realized that he and he alone was the only one worthy enough to rule over my life.

I believe that Jesus died on the cross because of my sins that put him there.

I wouldn't ever be able to consider living eternally with God a possibility without Jesus' bloodshed on the cross.

I want to get baptized because that is what God commanded us to do in Matthew 28, 16 through 20, and it represents our new life found in Christ.

One of my favorite passages about baptism is Romans 6.4, which says, 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.

Baptism is an outward declaration of an inward action.

I want people to know that I believe in the resurrected Jesus Christ, and I want to follow him in everything I do.

He should be the main focus in my life and nothing else.

So far through my life, I have learned that nothing I can do is perfect.

Like going through just one day without sinning, it's not possible.

I will always be a sinner and will always need Jesus as my savior.

A year or two ago, we watched this baby.

He came from an abusive home and had to go to foster care.

We prayed and prayed that someone would come and take him in, and eventually he went to a good home and is now living happily.

This showed me the power of prayer and what God could do with my life.

I mean, if he can save a little boy struggling for a home, then he can save me from my sins.

And finally, the reason I want to be baptized is so I can express my thankfulness for Christ, coming and dying in my place, to set up an Ebenezer of sorts for Jesus, declaring my love for him.