- Symbols are used everywhere
- Psychology has found that people can respond to symbols as if they were the objects they represent.
Symbols give us a link to our past – monuments, the flag
- Road signs reminds us to do something
- Trophies Medals & ribbons reminds us of an accomplishment
- Birthday cake reminds us that we have gotten older
- Symbols involve the senses
- Symbols helps us to remember
- Like pictures of an event
- Keep the Passover – Coming out of Egypt
Exodus 12:14KJV
And this day shall be unto you for a memorial; and ye shall keep it a feast to the LORD throughout your generations; ye shall keep it a feast by an ordinance for ever.
- Weddings a beautiful testimony of two coming together
- Vows are given before witness
- Marriage means staying faithful for life
- In America, there is one divorce every 13 seconds
- That’s 6,646 divorces per day
- 46,523 divorce per week
- Average length of a marriage that ends in divorce is 8 yrs
- Coming to & growing In Christ is a wonderful to experience
- Hearing a persons testimony is encouraging
- Baptism testifies to the commitment
- Then the testimony is not affirmed in the living
- Now it is possible to get debaptised? For $4.50
- Web Site - Debaptized .com - Take your soul Back
- BBC News article - “Atheists call for 'debaptism'”
- In France, last year an elderly man is fighting to make a formal break with the Catholic Church. He's taken the church to court over its refusal to let him nullify his baptism
- Have no idea or relationship with Christ
- In order to become a Christian… you have to die.
• You have to die to the past.
• You have to die to your old way of life.
- Romans 6:2 says “…We DIED to sin; how can we live in it any longer?”
Colossians 3:3 (AV)
3 For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.
2 Timothy 2:11 (AV)
11 It is a faithful saying: For if we be dead with him, we shall also live with him:
- Baptism is a funeral
- Having died to self, being buried, and rising to a new way of life
- it’s a testimony of what has happened to me & how I live now
- I follow in obedience to the teaching of the word
Acts 2:38 (AV)
38 Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.
Matthew 28:19–20 (AV)
19 Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:
20 Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.
- The early days of the church Christians were despised & hated
- It mean persecution, being ostracized from your family
- Shunned by friends
- Charles Colson writes of Being Light In the Darkness
- He says that in many places in the world baptism requires immense courage
- If baptized in Nepal it meant imprisonment
- For Soviet or Chinese or Eastern bloc believers, it was like signing their own death warrant.
Christian Post- Reported this week on the National parks service requiring permits to baptize in their parks
- Congressman Jason Smith got the requirement resided
- Is the beginning of discrimination against Baptism
Side Note
- University of Michigan installed foot washing stations in the restrooms for Muslim
- Kansas City Airport has foot washing benches in their restrooms for Muslims
- Baptism is a lot like a wedding ring.
- Baptism is like wearing a military uniform
- It draws a mark on the ground between the past and the future
- From this day forward, I stand with God
- Communion brings back to remembrance what Christ has done
My commitment
- Let a man examine himself – Am I faithful
