THE CARDINAL CHURCH ORDINANCES: BAPTISM

THE CARDINAL CHURCH ORDINANCES: BAPTISM   Acts 9:17-19 April 19, 2009 Given by: Pastor Rich Bersett [Index of Past Messages] Introduction One of the most dramatic stories in the Bible is the conversion of Saul, later to be named Paul. He’s a Type-A, goal-oriented tiger if ever there was one, and the events surrounding his conversion were dramatic. The risen Lord Jesus meets him on the road to Damascus, a town where Christians are strong and growing in number. He’s going there to arrest them because He’s certain that these Christians are blasphemers and they’re bent on destroying Judaism. At a rest area, Saul is knocked off his donkey and stricken blind. All he can see for the moment is a bright light—brighter than he’s ever seen before. The only thing he can compare it to is the glory of God. Then the voice. “Saul, why do you persecute me?” The voice identifies Himself as Jesus, and he instructs Saul to go into the city, and there he’ll be told what to do. His traveling companions are dumb-founded—they hear the voice, see the light, but understand nothing. Frightened and confused they pick up their partner and help him into the city. Acts 9 tells us he was blind for three days, and he didn’t eat or drink anything. The Lord commissions a disciple named Ananias to go to a certain house to locate one Saul of Tarsus. He assures Ananias that Saul has already dreamed about a man named Ananias who would come and place his hands on him to restore his sight. Ananias balks, and can you blame him? He’s heard all about Saul of Tarsus, the Christian-killer. It’s one thing to try to avoid Saul of Tarsus, to outwit him so he doesn’t catch you worshiping or obeying Jesus, but God was asking him to go meet with him and pray for his healing! But the Lord says again, “Go! This man is my chosen instrument to carry my name before the Gentiles and their kings and before the people of Israel. I will show him how much he must suffer for my name.” So the frightened disciple goes to the house and meets Saul. I’m thinking this Christian was pretty grateful that Saul was blind and helpless at this point. As instructed, he comes over to Saul, carefully puts his hand on his shoulder and says, “Brother Saul, the Lord—Jesus, who appeared to you on the road as you were coming here—has sent me so that you may see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” And then I imagine Ananias thought, “Okay, here’s where I die as a martyr!” While he is speaking, Saul is experiencing something he can hardly believe. It felt to him likes scales falling off his eyes, and then he began to see again. The next line at verse 18 reads like this, very simply and straightforwardly, He got up and was baptized, and after taking some food, he regained his strength. HE GOT UP AND WAS BAPTIZED – that little independent clause stood out to me when I read it again a couple weeks ago. It’s simplicity and just the starkness of the way Luke wrote that almost knocked me off my donkey. He got up and was baptized! Where is the instruction? Where’s the four steps to salvation and the “God has a wonderful plan for your life” tract? Is that all there is to the story of one of the most profound conversions in all of history? I want to hear his sinner’s prayer, I want him to walk the aisle at First Community Church of Damascus. Come on, Paul, how about some detail! Let’s hear your testimony—give us a few tears. Tell us all about how it felt to be blind, then healed. What’s it like to go from persecutor to preacher? Are you still friends with Ananias? Who told you about Jesus, and baptism? Please, Dr. Luke, could you not squeeze in one more paragraph to tell us all about the day Saul got saved? Then the next day I was reading in Acts and I got to the 22nd chapter. Remember, where Saul—now Paul—has been arrested, and he asks permission to give his defense before the Jews who brought the charges against him? Well, in the middle of that speech, which wasn’t so much a defense as it was another opportunity to preach the gospel… In the middle of his speech, he fills in a little of the detail on the Damascus experience. I persecuted the followers of this Way to their death, arresting both men and women and throwing them into prison, as also the high priest and all the council can testify. I even obtained letters from them to their brothers in Damascus, and went there to bring these people as prisoners to Jerusalem to be punished. About noon as I came near Damascus, suddenly a bright light from heaven flashed around me. I fell to the ground and heard a voice say to me, “Saul, Saul, Why do you persecute me?” “Who are you, Lord?” I asked. “I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you are persecuting” he replied. My companions saw the light, but they did not understand the voice of him who was speaking to me. “What shall I do, Lord?” I asked. “Get up,” the Lord said, “and go into Damascus. There you will be told all that you have been assigned to do.” My companions led me by the hand into Damascus, because the brilliance of the light had blinded me. A man named Ananias came to see me. He was a devout observer of the law and highly respected by all the Jews living there. He stood beside me and said, ‘Brother Saul, receive your sight!’ And at that very moment I was able to see him. Then he said, ‘The God of our fathers has chosen you to know his will and to see the Righteous One and to hear words from his mouth. You will be his witness to all men of what you have seen and heard. And now what are you waiting for? Get up, be baptized and wash your sins away, calling on his name.’” There it was again! All of a sudden, Saul is expected to be baptized. No catechism, no doctrine class, nothing! Just submit to baptism. It sort of reminds you of the Ethiopian Eunuch who met up with Philip in Acts 8, by God’s special arrangement. He’s riding in the chariot with this African man, teaching him all about Jesus out of the book of Isaiah, when the man sees a lake. He says, “Look! Water! Can I get baptized, too? Philip is perfectly willing. Some manuscripts say that he asked him if he believed with all his heart, he said he did, so they pulled over, Philip baptized him. And when the eunuch came up out of the water Philip was gone! The continent of Africa was soon introduced to Jesus! A pastor related a story about baptism which in his denomination is practiced by immersion—as we do. The usual declaration as one is lowered into the water, was “I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.” One day he happened to be walking by the bathroom at home and overheard his four-year old daughter instructing her two-year old brother how to baptize. She held a doll suspended over the toilet as she recited these sanctified words, “I baptize you in the name of the Father and the Son, and in the hole you go!” I guess we’re working our way backward in the book of Acts, but it makes me think of the day of Pentecost, the day the church was actually born. Peter, emboldened by the Holy Spirit who has fallen on him and the other disciples in a powerful way, stands up and opportunistically preaches the gospel to all the stunned witnesses of the miraculous signs of God. They don’t even wait for him to finish. They’re convicted in their hearts and cut Peter off right in the middle of his sermon. “Wait a minute! We understand! You had us at Joel 2! What should we do? We’re ready to trust in Christ—just tell us what to do!” Without even stopping to think, the first thing out of his mouth was “REPENT AND BE BAPTIZED, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” Now, Peter probably said that because fresh in his hearing were the almost final words of Jesus to him and the disciples: Go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit…” Of course, who can forget that awesome story in Acts 10, where the very first Gentile converts come to faith in Jesus. It’s a spiritual surprise attack, though. Once again, Peter is the one preaching about Jesus. He’s going along, and all of a sudden, all of a sudden all heaven breaks loose. Poor Peter! He never gets to finish a sermon! The Spirit of God has fallen on these Gentiles and their entire household, and they’re carrying on just like the earliest disciples did at Pentecost. How does Peter react? Let’s get to some water and get these people baptized. Hunh! The first thing out of his mouth. You see, it looks like the whole notion of getting saved, becoming a Christ-follower through faith, is so intimately and dynamically connected to baptism that the early church—the guys who ought to remember best—just preached it as being important. Paul and Silas had an interesting run-in with a jailer in Philippi. The Lord broke them out of jail, and in the process the jailer, who’d been listening to their testimony and singing all night. When the earthquake happened, this jailer knew exactly who was responsible and he fell on his knees, trembling, and asked, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” They said what they always said, “Believe on the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, both you and your household.” Acts 16:32 goes on: “Then they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all the others in his house. At that hour of the night the jailer took them and washed their wounds; then immediately he and all his family were baptized.” That’s how Matthew remembered it and recorded it in his gospel. The text included in the final chapter of Mark’s Gospel puts it this way: “Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.” Now that is the way to build a theology, isn’t it? Just read the Word of God, listen to what Jesus said to His church, watch what His church did almost instinctively when people were converted, and draw some very clear conclusions. All through the church’s history, from the most conservative believers to even the heretics, baptism has always been held in the highest esteem, and has been considered one of the universally important ordinances of the church. It was in the first century, and has continued to be, at least among those who trust in the words of Scripture, the defining event—the initiation rite—of the faith. That’s why we teach everyone interested in giving their lives to Christ in full commitment, those who want to receive the gift of eternal life through salvation in Jesus, to be baptized. I know that baptism has fallen on hard times in recent years. A lot of people think it is just an old relic, a meaningless tradition, a dusty old rite of the church that has no meaning any more. They say, it’s just not important—just believe and you’ll be fine. If this is your reasoning, and perhaps your personal rationale for not ever having been baptized, I urge you to read again the sixth chapter of Romans, the third chapter of Galatians, the third chapter of 1 Peter and the sixth chapter of John. Just read God’s Word and let it speak to your heart. If you are a Christian, and you have experience the unequaled thrill of having lowered your body into the watery grave of Christian baptism, joining Christ in His atoning death for you, then rising from that symbolic tomb a new man or woman, to walk in newness of life. I know you relish that defining moment of faith and obedience. Don’t minimize it, don’t forget it, don’t leave it out when you teach others all things whatsoever He has commanded you. Never sell short what the Lord has so emphasized. Now, in the words of scripture, I encourage you. Rise, now and be baptized, and wash your sins away, calling on his name. Be baptized in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Believe and be baptized and you will be saved. Repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of your sins and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit All of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. This water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also—not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a good conscience toward God. It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Close with commitment and prayer. Prayer and anointing with oil for Joni Barner.     [Back to Top]