Two Baptisms and Thanksgiving
Please stand as we read our newest memory Scripture together …
Isaiah 9:6
“For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the government shall be upon His shoulder. And His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.”
And our memory refresher verses for today are …
Romans 10:9-10 (NLT)
“If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.
“For it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is by confessing with your mouth that you are saved.”
Please open your Bibles to Matthew 3:1-12
Before we read today’s Scripture I was wondering if anyone in the congregation has grown spiritually this past year and would like to tell us about it?
Has anyone come to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ this past year?
Has anyone come to the place where the Lord has enabled you to let go of something from your past?
Has anyone found freedom from something that had been holding them back spiritually in the past?
Has anyone found a new boldness in Christ and the ability to tell others about what He has done for you?
Has anyone found a deeper love for the Word of God?
Has anyone come to sense the presence of the Lord in worship more than in the past?
This is why we’re here. We are not here for entertainment or personal success.
We are here to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior.
We are here to learn how to glorify the King of Glory and to be useful in His kingdom here on earth. Not for us but for Him!
Today we’ll be talking about Two Baptisms and Thanksgiving
What does that mean? Well, let’s check it out in Matthew 3:1-12
Matthew 3:11 NIV
“I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me comes One who … will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”
John the Baptist said … I baptize you with water for repentance …
The amplified Bible says it this way, “As for me, I baptize you with water because of [your] repentance [that is, because you are willing to change your inner self - your old way of thinking, regret your sin and live a changed life] …”
This baptism doesn’t save you, instead it is a way of stating to the world that you HAVE been saved!
Baptism does not save you.
Baptism does not give you a ticket into heaven and if you think it does all it will do is get you wet.
Conversely, not being baptized does not send you to hell.
We are not saved by grace through faith AND a ritual. We are saved by God’s grace through faith and the ritual of baptism is proclaiming to the world what has happened in our lives.
All born again Christians SHOULD be baptized but just think about how many people in German concentration camps in WWII gave their lives to Jesus but never were able to be baptized before they were exterminated.
Do you believe they were all immediately relegated to eternal destruction?
Baptism is a wonderful thing.
Baptism can be an action filled with the grace of God.
Baptism can also be a meaningless ritual depending on the condition of the heart of the one being baptized.
Let me give you an example from the Old Testament …
In the Old Testament ritual sacrifices for sin could be meaningful to the giver and to the Lord.
Or, in the Old Testament ritual sacrifices for sin could be an empty gesture and disgusting to the Lord!
Just listen to this from Malachi chapter 1 where the LORD is speaking to the temple priests and to those who bring animals for sacrifice that they just want to get rid of …
Malachi 1:10-14 NIV
“Oh, that one of you would shut the temple doors, so that you would not light useless fires on My altar! I am not pleased with you,” says the LORD Almighty, “and I will accept no offering from your hands. My name will be great among the nations, from where the sun rises to where it sets. In every place incense and pure offerings will be brought to Me, because My name will be great among the nations,” says the LORD Almighty.
“But you profane it by saying, ‘The LORD’s table is defiled,’ and, ‘Its food is contemptible.’ And you say, ‘What a burden!’ and you sniff at it contemptuously,” says the LORD Almighty.
“When you bring injured, lame or diseased animals and offer them as sacrifices, should I accept them from your hands?” says the LORD. “Cursed is the cheat who has an acceptable male in his flock and vows to give it, but then sacrifices a blemished animal to the LORD. For I Am a great King,” says the LORD Almighty, “and My name is to be feared among the nations.”
Well, you might be asking, “What on earth does that have to do with baptism?”
It has to do with the condition of your heart when you come to be baptized!
In the same way that a person bringing a crippled animal for a sacrifice is displeasing to the Lord, if a person comes for baptism with a heart that is still spiritually blind or lame will the Lord be pleased?
Listen to these words from the ritual for baptism in the Manual of The Church of The Nazarene …
Do you acknowledge Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, and do you realize that He saves you now?
Response: I do.
Will you obey God’s holy will and keep His commandments, walking in them all the days of your life?
Response: I will.
These are vows just as binding as marriage vows.
They are being said before the Lord Himself and before witnesses.
Sometimes people will confess to the first one and hold back on the second one.
Sure, they will say, “I do” and “I will” to the questions but their lives will say, “I think I’m saved” and “I’ll try to keep some of the commandments as long as they don’t interfere with my life.”
Ivan the great had 500 soldiers who were his personal guard. A marriage was arranged for him to be wed to the daughter of the king of Greece but he would have to join the Orthodox Church first. His loyal soldiers wanted to join the church as well but professional soldiers could not be baptized in the Greek Orthodox Church. So, five hundred priests were gathered and simultaneously all five hundred were baptized with their sword arms sticking up out of the water.
Ivan the Great and his soldiers all learned the words of the faith in order to be baptized but it never got to their hearts.
Ivan was baptized strictly for political purposes.
His soldiers were baptized only out of loyalty for their king.
Were they saved by this baptism? No.
The baptism that is pleasing to the Lord, though, is a very serious thing.
True baptism is a declaration of intent to faithfully follow Jesus the rest of your life.
No, if’s, and’s or but’s … I am Yours Lord and You are mine.
But, how do we get there? We get there through the second baptism … “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit …”
We all know about AA, right, or better yet Celebrate Recovery which is a Biblically based adaptation of AA.
If an alcoholic goes to Celebrate Recovery (CR) thinking that sitting around in a circle and revealing his problems to other alcoholics will allow him to control his drinking he will find no help at all.
But if an alcoholic goes to CR with a full commitment to engage with the Lord Himself, with the Word of God and with other followers of Jesus in order to end his slavery to alcohol he will have victory as long as he remains faithful.
The same goes for baptism. If you enter into it expecting it to change you it won’t.
But, if you go into it fully committed to following Jesus all the days of your life it will strengthen you by the grace of God.
Now, you don’t need to know everything there is to know about the Bible or how to live a Christian life in order to be baptized.
All you need is to know Jesus as your Savior and to desire to follow Him for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health all the days of your life.
OK. Now before we baptize Cassie I want to explain why baptism is so important.
In The Church of The Nazarene we recognize two Biblical sacraments; baptism and communion. What do both of these sacraments have in common?
They both bring our minds to the sacrifice of Christ on our behalf.
Jesus gave His life for us, was dead and buried and was raised to new life on the third day. In baptism we remember Jesus’ death for us and that it was His death and resurrection that made eternal life possible for us.
So, in baptism we are in a physical way confessing and testifying that we have died to our own sinful selves and have been raised to new life by trusting in Jesus.
The same goes for communion where we take the bread and the juice which are emblems of Christ’s broken body and blood and we take them into ourselves in remembrance of His death on our behalf.
In Matthew 3:11 we read …
“I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me comes One who … will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”
When we read this verse we tend to get the order mixed up.
In reality, first we receive the Holy Spirit in the gift of salvation.
This is an initial baptism of the Holy Spirit
And then, after that we are baptized in water as a witness to what has taken place in our hearts; we are telling the whole world that we have been saved.
Out of that flows Thanksgiving for a new life in Jesus Christ.
This is real Thanksgiving … a new life in Christ!
We will be having our church Thanksgiving dinner after the baptism today and on Thursday many of us will be celebrating a Thanksgiving of all that the Lord has blessed us with.
Romans 6:17-18 says,
“Thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you have come to obey from your heart the pattern of teaching that has now claimed your allegiance. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.”
And that is what we are celebrating today with the baptism of Cassie …
Next week we will be talking more about the baptism with the Holy Spirit and what it means in our Spiritual walk.
