THE BLESSINGS OF BAPTISM
I Cor. 10:1-4 "Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant, how that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea; And were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea; And did all eat the same spiritual meat; And did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ."
Can you imagine the gratitude the people of Israel felt when they had passed through the waters of the Red Sea? They had been spared the awful judgment of God upon their families by the Passover Lamb, freed from the terrible slavery of Egypt, plucked from the grasp of Pharaoh's army by the mighty hand of God and placed safely on their way to the Promised Land. With Pharaoh's army behind, the mountains on either side, they were led and protected by the Spirit of God before and behind them as they went down into the waters of the Red Sea. They were immersed there with the waters on each side and the Spirit of God hovering over them. They then passed safely through to the other side and their enemies were destroyed before their very eyes! What a blessing!
I am sure some here shared my experience of being saved for a number of years before experiencing the blessing of being scripturally immersed. The inexpressible joy of simply obeying the command of Christ. The immeasurable satisfaction of merely following in His footsteps into the waters of baptism. The privilege and pleasure of imitating His example in obeying the Will of the Father and fulfilling all righteousness in His Name. I look back to that blessed day of a new beginning, a first step in my outward public walk in a new life in Christ, as the beginning of many great and glorious blessings that have been bestowed upon me in my walk with Him.
My personal testimony about the blessings of baptism begins when I was saved at the age of fifteen in an old-fashioned revival meeting in a sprinkling church. As might be expected, I was sprinkled in our rural church on the first Sunday following my conversion. After all, my family had been associated with that group as far back as our ancestry could be easily traced on my father's side. Although there were two sprinkling churches in our immediate rural community, there was no Baptist church of any sort close by. I do recall some of my teenage friends going to a nearby lake on Sunday afternoons to enjoy the fun and spectacle, as they viewed it, of some silly Baptist preacher immersing people.
Nearly twelve years after I had been saved God, through a number of unusual events and circumstances, that in retrospect I clearly recognize as God's gracious and providential guidance, He moved us to another state and placed me in an area with perhaps the greatest number of true Bible believing Baptist churches per capita of any location in the world. God then strategically and graciously caused me to become a work mate and friend of a member of one of these church. He, in turn, invited me to attend a Baptist church for the very first time in my life.
I was very intrigued and impressed by the simplicity of the approach these people took to the scriptures and by their claim that they strictly followed the New Testament as their only rule of faith and practice. Not too many weeks passed before I was privileged to personally witness my first immersion in Saline River. The setting was idyllic. A small rural river outside Benton, Arkansas, some 30 kilometres South of Little Rock. The Holy Spirit began to work in my heart about scriptural baptism. I resisted His overtures for sometime. The pastor of that small rural church was very patient with me. He and his flock showed great Christian love and acceptance toward me and my family. We felt we had found a spiritual home among these simple Bible-believing people of God.
Since I have always been an avid reader, I intently read a number of tracts and booklets and even two books the pastor shared with me about how to correctly study the Bible and the truth about the ordinances and the New Testament Church. Since I had been trained and was working in the disciplines of science and math, I tended to approach everything analytically and objectively. I can recall reading these materials and listening to the teaching and preaching in the church with the intent of finding any possible flaws and fallacies in the logic and teaching.
In so doing I effectively delayed the glorious blessings associated with baptism and fellowship in one of the Lord's churches for nearly a year. But I will never forget that wonderful day, when through the mercy and grace of God, at that same idyllic setting on the Saline river my wife and I were buried in a watery grave and raised to walk in a new life before all the world! I am sure those who have passed through the waters of scriptural baptism can also look back with me and thank and praise the Lord for His goodness and greatness.
The blessings of scriptural immersion are far too many to enumerate in one message, but we will touch on a few of them as we seek to find in the scriptures some of THE BLESSINGS OF BAPTISM:
BAPTISM SYMBOLIZES THE BLESSING OF SALVATION. Let us emphasize at the outset that as Paul told the church at Corinth, as well as other churches, baptism is figurative. The scriptures do not teach that baptism has any saving power or regenerational merit. Even though many denominational churches teach that christening, confirmation and other forms of so-called baptism, are necessary to place one into their churches and thereby into the kingdom of God, there is no scriptural basis or evidence for this. Baptismal regeneration is not only not taught and established in the scriptures, but the doctrine is the antithesis of all the great doctrines of grace that form the basis of our forgiveness and eternal salvation in Christ. The teaching negates the grace and love of God and makes salvation dependent upon man and his man-made false liturgies, institutions and organizations. But even though this is so, we need to know that this does not diminish the importance of the act of baptism nor the essential nature of the doctrines and teachings baptism symbolises.
Baptism does symbolically save us. I fear the fact that a number of our contemporary so-called denominations present baptism as necessary for salvation and regeneration may have caused God's preachers and people to soft peddle the importance of baptism and its immediate with salvation. Our Savior unequivocally said, "And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned." (Mark 16:15-16) This statement is as true and as important as any other statement in the Bible. It is obvious that our Savior in giving His threefold commission was focusing first of all upon true heart belief as the only criteria for salvation and unbelief or rejection as the only basis for condemnation. "He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God." (John 3:18) The fact that our Saviour said that the only thing that would condemn a person and separate him from God forever was unbelief, does not diminish the importance of following the Lord in baptism after one has truly repented of sin and placed an absolute faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. This is to be done in loving obedience; because one has been saved not in order to be saved.
In case someone missed the full import of our Savior's words, the Holy Spirit had Peter to confirm the principle in one of his letters, "The like figure whereunto [even] baptism doth also now save us (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God,) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ:" (I Peter 3:21) Here we are not only told that the act of baptism, as it is portrayed before the world, figuratively saves us, but we are given further insight into just how this is to be symbolically portrayed and understood. It is to be seen as the immediate response of a sinner saved by grace to his wonderful new state of being completely cleansed from his sin and his standing in the righteousness of Christ; eternally justified before God by the blood of Christ.
In case someone misses the full significance of Peter's words, the Holy Spirit had Paul to speak directly to the same subject of how baptism symbolically saves us. In giving his testimony to a Roman ruler, Paul recounted the occasion and meaning of his own baptism by Ananias in these words, "And now why tarriest thou? arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins, calling on the name of the Lord." (Acts 22:16) Again it would seem that the baptismal regenerationists may have caused God's preachers and people to avoid this scripture and by doing so fail to really emphasize the real urgency and immediacy that surrounds the act of baptism as far as obedience to the will of God and the proper way and place of acceptable service is concerned. It appears Paul may have been gently chided by Ananias for what might have appeared to be a bit of hesitancy and delay and then he is urged to immediately and figuratively wash away his sins. Sins that could never be washed away be a mere immersion in water or through the efforts of any man or organization. The sins that the blood of Christ had eradicated some three days before on the road to Damascus. He was to personally do this symbolically in the eyes of the world by submitting to scriptural baptism. Obviously, Ananias' words were directly from the Holy Spirit of God and can be taken at face value as being the very Words of God.
Baptism is not only a symbol of our salvation but is a symbol of the gospel that saves us as well. In his letter to the assembly at Rome, Paul is careful to explain the mechanics of the mater, "Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also [in the likeness] of [his] resurrection:" (Ro. 6:3-5) Paul makes it clear that the purity of the gospel is to be guarded and maintained by this beautiful symbolic ordinance constantly being portrayed before God's people and the world every time a true believer is immersed into one of the Lord's New Testament churches.
Through the centuries obedient believers have paid a great price for the privilege of simply participating in this symbolic death, burial and resurrection of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. By doing so, they and their assemblies of scripturally immersed believers, have been used by God to faithfully maintain the true message and focus of the gospel. It is not coincidentally, but obviously purposed and providential, that the symbolic portrait that presents the reality was designed by the Master Painter to preserve the purity of the gospel message throughout the ages. It is a matter or record in real Church history that the deaths of the vast majority of the millions of true martyrs for Christ related to their refusal to accept the pseudo-baptism of established false churches and their insistence upon rebaptizing those who had received such counterfeit baptism. As students of such history know, this fact gave rise in the early centuries to the name, Ana-Baptist. This name was gladly accepted by our antecedents in the Baptist faith; even though such branding often brought suffering and death for the cause of Christ.
BAPTISM ALSO SYMBOLIZES THE BLESSINGS OF SEPARATION. By baptism we clearly symbolically save (or separate) ourselves from the world and its ways. When Peter arose on Pentecost to announce the good news to those who had crucified our Savior, he was quick to point out to them that they were to save or separate themselves from their former false religion and from the world around them. He made it clear that baptism for (in relation to) the remission of sins was part and parcel of this act of real separation. "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. For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, [even] as many as the Lord our God shall call. And with many other words did he testify and exhort, saying, Save yourselves from this untoward generation." (Acts 2:38-40)
God is and has always been a God of separation. The baptism of Israel in the Red Sea illustrates this. Their passing through the waters not only saved them from the vengeful wrath of Pharaoh and his terrible army, but separated them as well from all the idolatry and evils of that terrible land. Just as surely, our baptism symbolizes our effective separation from the religious systems and the evils of this present world. When Paul told the church at Rome that they were to emerge from the waters of baptism to walk in a new life before the Lord, surely he spoke of a life that was to be radically different from their previous life. He contrasts the two life styles and patterns in the verses that follow and urges them to yield themselves to the control of the Spirit of God rather than the lusts of the flesh that previously controlled them. (See Romans 6:12 etc.)
When a fish is caught he is removed from the sea. We who are saved openly proclaim by our baptism that by the power of God we are being extricated from the sinful entanglements of this world. That we have been transformed by the power of God and that henceforth we will be conformed to the will of God by the spiritual renewing of our mind as we study His Word and follow the leadership of His Spirit. (See Romans 12:1-3) All this and much more is portrayed by the simple symbolic act of baptism. What a great blessing it is to have been led out of the darkness of this evil world into His marvelous light. What a great thing it is to have been separated from sin's eternal penalty and to be daily being separated from its power over us and to know that we will ultimately be separated from sin's very presence!
BAPTISM SYMBOLIZES THE BLESSINGS OF SANCTIFICATION. In the Old Testament all sacrifices being offered to symbolically portray the sacrifice of the coming Lamb of God had to be symbolically cleansed and set aside wholly and solely for such holy service. Priests who were to offer these sacrifices and render correct and acceptable service before the altar of God, also had to be symbolically cleansed before they could be set aside for such holy service.
Salvation qualifies us as far as true spiritual cleansing is concerned, but baptism symbolically sets us aside solely as vessels fit for the Masters use. It is only after scriptural baptism that we can fully accept our responsibility, both individually and collectively, to be vessels that bear around in our body the glorious gospel of Christ. "If a man therefore purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honour, sanctified, and meet for the master's use, [and] prepared unto every good work." (II Tim. 2:21) (See also II Cor. 6:14-17)
His threefold commission has been given to all true assemblies of immersed believers in every age.
These assemblies are to be separated and sanctified as God's chosen instruments of carrying out His mission; through the propagation of the gospel and the replication of New Testament Churches throughout the ages. It is in and through these separated and sanctified assemblies that God desires to glorify His Son Jesus.. "That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish." (Eph. 5:26-27)
BAPTISM SYMBOLIZES THE SACRED SERVICE WE ARE TO RENDER UNTO GOD. When Jesus approached John at the River Jordan and asked to be immersed, John pointed out that he did not deserve the honor of immersing the Lamb of God who would take away the sin of the world; the very Son of God. Jesus did not dispute John's reasoning nor his conclusion. Instead, he pointed out that it must be done. He was beginning His public walk and ministry upon the earth as the only begotten Son of the Father and as the long awaited Messiah and Kinsman Redeemer of Israel. He would be walking and ministering in the world for the sole purpose of fulfilling God's eternal purpose and plan and doing the Father's will.
Our Savior was not prepared to begin this ministry of sacred service without first submitting Himself to the scriptural immersion that would symbolically set Him aside for this purpose and then show the way for every child of God who would follow in His footsteps. An immersion that would clearly and graphically portray His coming death on the cross and resurrection from the grave. The very first example of the great commission being placed into effect after the ascension of Jesus confirms that Peter, the apostles and the members of that first assembly of immersed believers understood and followed this pattern of sacred service established by our Savior at the Jordan River. "Then they that gladly received his word were baptized: and the same day there were added [unto them] about three thousand souls. And they continued stedfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayer. (Acts 2:41-42) All subsequent similar recorded events in the Book of Acts confirm this clear pattern. (See Ethopian Eunich, Acts 8, Paul's Conversion, Acts 9, Cornelius' household, Acts 10, Philippian Jailer's household, Acts 16)
When Paul speaks of the new life and new walk that is to begin when a Christian immerges from that sacred water grave, he is extending and emphasizing the pattern our Savior established. "Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life." (Ro.6:4) Both Paul and John said that we are to walk, even as He walked in this world. That this walk and our sacred service to the Lord is supposed to be in tandem with Christ and our fellow baptized believers in the local church is self evident.
Paul speaking to those baptized believers in the church at Corinth made this amply clear. "For we are labourers together with God: ye are God's husbandry, [ye are] God's building." (I Cor. 3:9) He also made to clear to the baptized believers in the assembly of the saints at Ephesus that if a child of God wishes to glorify God with acceptable sacred service it is to be done in the local Church of Jesus Christ. "Unto him [be] glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen." (Eph. 3:21)
With all the blessings of baptism so clearly taught in the Word of God, every born again believer should be anxious and fervent to emulate the example of our Savior, the apostles and the believers in the first century. Have you received the great blessing attached to scriptural baptism?
