End Of Year Stuff

This Scripture is not hard to understand. If it had been then those 3,000 people spoken of in v. 41 would never have been baptized! To be cleansed of sin everybody needs to be baptized into Christ! It’s a command of God! It’s a command to be done in the name of the Godhead! Don’t ever argue about it, just do it!

Acts 22:16 Ananias said to Saul of Tarsus, "And now what are you waiting for? Get up, be baptized and wash your sins away, calling on his name." That is, calling on the name of Christ.

Obey Christ in baptism if you want to be clean. That’s an initial step that you need to take. An act of obedience you need to yield to. A command of Scripture to be obeyed.

Do we still to be cleaned up after we have been baptized? Yes, occasionally. The sad truth is: we don’t stay clean after we’ve been washed clean! We need a continual cleansing, a continual baptism of God’s gracious forgiveness!

I John 1:9 "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness."

For continual cleansing we need to confess our sins to the Lord and ask for mercy and forgiveness.

But what if we’ve been baptized and we’ve confessed our sins over and over and we still have a battle with certain things, certain sins? What are we to do?

Col. 3:5 "Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly (or sinful) nature..."

Some things just keep on giving us trouble. Some bad habits are hard to break. Some sins are hard to conquer. Some stains are deep and hard to clean. What can we do about them?

ILL.- I must make a confession. I HAVE A WART! I didn’t say "I am a wart." I said, "I have a wart."

I have wart on the inside of my middle finger of my left hand. And it keeps giving me trouble. Occasionally, it really irritates me. Know what I do about it? I take out my pocket knife and cut it off.

The only problem is this: IT KEEPS COMING BACK! So I just keep on cutting it off. And I think it has nearly decided to quit coming back. I’ve cut it off so many times that I think it thinks, "Hey! This old boy ain’t giving up, so I guess I’ll have to quit pestering him and die."

And this is exactly what we have to do with certain things that make us dirty in the Christian life. WE MUST KEEP CUTTING AWAY AT THEM! Keep on hacking at them. Keep on working at them. Keep on praying about them. Keep on fighting them. And eventually they will die.

End of year stuff. Clean up. Do whatever it takes to get clean: be baptized into Christ. Repent. Confess your sins to the Lord. Keep fighting the filth of the flesh.

II. SHAPE UP

Even though we may be "cleaned up" we still need to "shape up" the old bod. That generally means some kind of exercise program.

ILL.- One man said, "I always do my exercises regularly in the morning. As soon as I wake up I say sternly to myself, "Ready now. Up. Down. Up. Down!"

And after two strenuous minutes I tell myself, "Okay, boy, now try the other eyelid."

That’s about all the exercise some people get and about all some people want. Sometimes we don’t want to do much in order to shape up.