Be Baptized Everyone Of You

Be Baptized Everyone Of You!

Acts 2:37-41 “Repent and be baptized everyone of you…”

Mark 16:16 “He who believes and is baptized will be saved;…”

Baptism is not a ritual to be performed but a dynamic that must be a present day and continuous reality. “…go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them…” Matthew 28:19-20

“Baptize”:– to immerse, to submerge, to bathe, to overwhelm, to pickle, to produce a permanent change. Not just getting wet. An identification and a union with Christ that results in a genuine change.

1 Peter 3:21 (MSG) “The waters of baptism do that for you, not by washing away dirt from your skin but by presenting you through Jesus’ resurrection before God with a clear conscience.”

Third world countries BAPTISM is a big deal!!!

India / Nepal / Brazil

Story

William P. Barker (Church Historion) tells of a machinist at Ford Motor Company in Detroit who became a Christian. He responded to the invitation and was baptized. As the Holy Spirit began renewing this man he became convicted of his need to make restitution for some parts and tools he had stolen from the company prior to becoming a Christian. So the next morning he brought all the tools and parts back to his employer. He explained how he had just been baptized and asked for his foreman’s forgiveness.

This was such an amazing turn of events that Mr. Ford, who was visiting a plant in Europe at the time, was cabled with the details of the matter and asked his response. Mr. Ford immediately returned a cable with his decision: “Dam up the Detroit River, and baptize the entire city.”

5 Imperatives Water Baptism 

1. A Personal Command To Be Obeyed

Matthew 3:13-17 “Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness.” 

2. A Promise To Receive The Holy Spirit 

Acts 2:38 “…and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

The way to the fullness of the Holy Spirit is opened up to the believer.

Paul Harvey said, “To my surprise, I found myself going forward. The preacher had said there was nothing magic in the water. Yet as I descended into the depths & rose again I knew something life changing had happened – a cleansing inside out. No longer did there seem to be two uncertain contradictory Paul Harvey’s, just one immensely happy one. I felt the fulfilling surge of the Holy Spirit in my life.” 

Paul Harvey went on, “The change this simple act made in my life is so immense as to be indescribable. Since totally yielding to Him in baptism, my heart can’t stop singing. Also, perhaps because baptism is such a public act & because one’s dignity gets as drenched as one’s body, I discovered a new unself-consciousness in talking about my beliefs.”

3. A Call To Identify With Jesus Christ 

Romans 6:3-7 

“Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? 4 Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. 5 For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection, 6 knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. 7 For he who has died has been freed from sin.”

Joshua 3:14-17 “…all the way to Adam…”

Every place the enemy says he has a legal right to attack you in has been dealt with!

He has no place in you. Cleansed from every generational issue!!!

4. A Circumcision To Be Performed 

a. Jesus Himself cutting away the carnal tendencies. 

Colossians 2:11-15

“11 In Him you were also circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the sins[a] of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, 12 buried with Him in baptism, in which you also were raised with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead. 13 And you, being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses, 14 having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. 15 Having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it.” 

b. The purpose of God is released.

Before Abram was circumcised he did not bring forth the promise!

God Comes to Him and changes His name to Abraham and Sarai to Sarah 

Breaths into the the 5 letter of the Hebrew alphabet … “HA”  “Hey” GRACE

Genesis 17:11 “and you shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between Me and you.”

Genesis 17:21 “But My covenant I will establish with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear to you at this set time next year.”

Genesis 21:2 “For Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age, at the set time of which God had spoken to him.”

5. A Freedom To Be Appropriated 

Free from bondage Free from accusation Free from oppression

Jesus caused an exodus and bringing you into FREEDOM.

1Corinthians 10:1-2

“Moreover, brethren, I do not want you to be unaware that all our fathers were under the cloud, all passed through the sea, 2 all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea,…”

Exodus 14:23-31

“And the Egyptians pursued and went after them into the midst of the sea, all Pharaoh’s horses, his chariots, and his horsemen. 

24 Now it came to pass, in the morning watch, that the LORD looked down upon the army of the Egyptians through the pillar of fire and cloud, and He troubled the army of the Egyptians. 25 And He took off[a] their chariot wheels, so that they drove them with difficulty; and the Egyptians said, “Let us flee from the face of Israel, for the LORD fights for them against the Egyptians.” 

26 Then the LORD said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand over the sea, that the waters may come back upon the Egyptians, on their chariots, and on their horsemen.” 27 And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and when the morning appeared, the sea returned to its full depth, while the Egyptians were fleeing into it. So the LORD overthrew the Egyptians in the midst of the sea. 28 Then the waters returned and covered the chariots, the horsemen, and all the army of Pharaoh that came into the sea after them. Not so much as one of them remained. 29 But the children of Israel had walked on dry land in the midst of the sea, and the waters were a wall to them on their right hand and on their left. 

30 So the LORD saved Israel that day out of the hand of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore. 31 Thus Israel saw the great work which the LORD had done in Egypt; so the people feared the LORD, and believed the LORD and His servant Moses.

See every enemy of your soul washed away in the waters  … Powerless against you ever again.

Story

Pat Summerall spent 50 years with the national Football League. He was drafted by the Detroit Lions in 1952 and played with the Chicago Cardinals and New York Giants until 1961. After his retirement from the game, he joined CBS as a broadcaster, and in 1993 switched to Fox. During his CBS years he and a fellow broadcaster partied hard off the field. “We raised Cain. I was the first guy at the bar and the last to leave.” Summerall was told that if he kept on drinking he was going to die. 

After checking himself into the Betty Ford Clinic, his counselor urged him to seek a better life through faith. At age 66, Pat Summerall was baptized. In USA Today he told a reporter that when the minister “leaned me back in the water, I never felt so helpless.” Summerall testified, “I knew I just became a Christian. I can’t tell you how great life has been since then.” 

There may have been a helpless feeling when the Israelites walked through the waters seeing the past coming after them. But when they came up out of the water and the waters rushed back – they had a brand new life in a new land and a new freedom.

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