Do We Need To Be Baptized?
by
Rev. Peggy Tsangaris
Recently the question about baptism's roll in the born again Christian's life came up. It got me to thinking about what part baptism does plays in the believer's life. As I began to meditate on this, the story of Cornelius and Naaman began to rise up in my spirit, and this sermon was born.
In Acts 10 we learn about a man named Cornelius, who was a devout man. V. 2 says he feared God along with his household, and that he was a giver who prayed constantly. V 5-6. tells us he heard what God had to say to him. And in V 8 he obeyed the word of the Lord. The Bible does not tell us how Cornelius became a devout man. But we do know that Acts 10 took place after the resurrection of Jesus.
Luke 23:11 tells us that Herod and his soldiers dealt with Jesus in Jerusalem. Herod was the tetrarch of Judea but usually lived in Caesarea (see Acts 12:29), and this is where Cornelius was stationed. So there is a distinct possibility that Cornelius went to Jerusalem with Herod at the time of the crucifixion of Jesus. Matthew 27:54 tells us that there was a centurion at the cross. "Now, when the centurion, and they that were with him, watching Jesus, saw the earthquake, and those things that were done, they feared greatly, saying, Truly this was the Son of God." So his heart now was already being prepared by God. All he needed to hear was about the resurrection.
Peter had the vision from God about clean and unclean things, and taking other Jews with him, goes with the servants that Cornelius has sent to Joppa, and at the command of the Lord, to preach to Cornelius' household. While he is still preaching, the Holy Spirit falls on all assembled there from Cornelius' household, and the apostles then baptized them in water.
Now let us turn to the Old Testament. In 2 Kings 5, we have the story about Naaman who was the second most powerful man in the Syrian kingdom. He was highly trusted by his King as God had used Naaman to bring victory over the Syrian enemies. You might ask, "What does this have to do with the body of Christ today." It is a type and shadow for us, and we can learn a great deal from Naaman, and what happened to him.
Naaman was a leper. Leprosy is a disease which eats away and destroys tissue until you die. The best definition I have heard is this: Leprosy is equivalent to or likened to the sin in our lives that is allowed to go unchecked until it becomes visible to all as it eats away at us.Romans 6:23 tells us that the wages of sin is death. So Naaman was literally a dead man that was still alive. That is a good definition of those outside God's covenant.
Naaman's wife had a Jewish maid who told her mistress about a prophet in Israel who could heal Naaman. So Naaman and the king of Syria thought that the prophet who could heal had to be the most important man in the kingdom of Israel. The king of Syria wrote a letter to the king of Israel asking him to heal Naaman. Naaman carried the letter along with a large amount of gold and silver, and costly garments as payment for the healing. That was a huge seed indeed. The king of Israel, however became very upset when he read the letter asking him, the king, to heal Naaman, and he rent his clothing. Elisha heard about the rending and sent a messenger to the king and told him, "Send him to me" (V 8).
Naaman had to pack up his entourage again and travel more miles to get to the prophet. He was tired, dusty, and dirty and more travel did not appeal to him. Therefore, he was not in a good humor when he finally arrived at the prophet's home. Then, to make matters worse, the prophet did not go out to greet him, but sent out a lowly servant to one of his, Naaman's, great importance and rank. The servant told him to go and take seven baths in that dirty Jordan river he'd been following for miles.
Why didn't Elisha go out and receive Naaman when he arrived at his home there at the end of Naaman's journey? I believe that Elisha deliberately stayed away because he knew that Naaman, being a non-covenant man, would try to give Elisha the glory for a healing that God wanted to do. But only God can heal, and only God gets the glory for it; and Naaman needed to learn that God was the healer, not the prophet.
Elisha knew that all he needed to do was speak the word in faith, believing it, and God would answer. All Naaman had to do was obey that word. But Naaman became offended when approached by a servant. After all, he was an important man who told his servants what to do, not the other way around. V 11 "...I thought, he will surely come out to me, and stand, and call on the name of the Lord his God, and strike his hand over the place, and recover the leper." All he wanted to do was to pay a price and receive a healing. But now Naamam, is told that he has to do something in faith, and so he turned away in anger. "That river is dirty and muddy. The rivers in Syria are much cleaner than this one. Why can I not go there to 'wash and be clean?'" Naaman wanted to know.
God was not interested or impressed by Naaman's importance or his imperfections. He wanted Naaman's heart, and God knew the seed that was required to get his heart. Go wash. To do that bidding, three things were required of Naaman. He had to repent of his anger at Elisha, then he had to humble himself to the words of a servant, and lastly he had to obey that word. Thank God for faithful servants who are not "Yes" men. They got in his face and told him if the prophet told him to do some great thing, that he would have done it without questioning it. So why is it so difficult to wash and be clean.
So, what does this Old Testament story have to do with us today! Water baptism primarily does not deal with our spirit or physical bodies. It does deal with the attitudes of the minds of men. Jesus had to deal with His own mind, and He did it in the garden. The disciples slept through all the prayer time, in the garden, so that no man could say, "I prayed and helped Jesus go to the cross." Jesus' heart and Spirit knew that He had to go to the cross and it didn't protest as it was already settled. His body hadn't felt the nails yet, so it didn't protest. But His mind knew what was coming. The battle was to bring His mind into subjection to His Spirit.
That battle, the one for the renewing of our mind and its subjection to our spirit, goes on today in each one of us. "... In His (Jesus') human body, He was put to death, but He was made alive in the spirit, in which He went and preached to the spirits in prison [the souls of those] who long before in the days of Noah had been disobedient, when God's patience waited during the building of the ark in which a few [people], actually eight in number were saved through water. And baptism, which is a figure [of their deliverance] does now also save you [from inward questioning and fears], not by the removing of body filth [bathing], but by providing you with] the answer of a good and clear conscience (inward cleanness and peace) before God [because you are demonstrating what you believe to be yours] through the resurrection of Jesus Christ" (1 Peter 3:18b-21 Amp. Bible).
"[Thus you were circumcised when] you were buried with Him in [your] baptism, in which you were also raised with Him [into a new life] through [your] faith in the working in God [as displayed] when He raised Him up from the dead" (Col. 2:12 Amp. Bible). Read Romans 6 as well as it ends with, "...for the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal like through Christ Jesus our Lord." Sin is in the mind. The sin nature of man is in the mind of man and water baptism helps deal with that nature.
I remember in the summer of 1998, we had church on the beach under a huge tent that could seat 1500-1700 people. We had a full service under the open tent right out in the middle of Clearwater beach. Following the service, there was a baptismal service in the Gulf of Mexico. That Sunday, Pastor Rodney told us about an Islamic man who had converted to Christianity. As a child, he had been required to memorize long passages of scripture from the Koran. Now that he was a Christian, he found that all those scriptures would intrude into his mind every time he tried to meditate on the Word of God. This went on for several years. One Sunday, he decided to be water baptized. As he came up out of the water and began to praise the Lord, he realized that all those scriptures from the Koran, had been erased from his mind and he could no longer recall them.
I had a similar experience that summer at church on the beach. I had been having problems with thoughts and mental images that would rise up uncalled into my mind. I asked the Lord to erase them from my mind when I was baptized. When I came up out of the water, they were gone, totally. I cannot recall them to this day.
Do I believe that water baptism is important? Yes I do. It buries the old man you were before salvation. It does not bring about salvation but is the result of salvation. Just as Jesus was resurrected from the grave, so are you as you come out of the waters of baptism. It is a public statement of a personal change of direction in your life.
