|
FromDream2RealityNow liked a video
(2 weeks ago)
http://www.gty.org/resources/sermons/...
One of the strange paradoxes in the church is that the world is full of baptized non-Christians, millions o...
more
http://www.gty.org/resources/sermons/...
One of the strange paradoxes in the church is that the world is full of baptized non-Christians, millions of them all over the planet, baptized non-Christians. While at the same time, the church is full of non-baptized Christians, like some of you. What a strange paradox that is. And it raises the issue of baptism and what it is and why people are so confused about it. We here at Grace Community Church understand baptism biblically. We understand its method, we understand its meaning. We have even through the years put baptisms on the radio, which no other ministry that I know of has ever done. We have, through the years, in the early days of our Shepherds Conference has taken one of the nights of Shepherds Conference to do baptisms. We had a baptism last week at the conclusion of the Truth Matters Conference. And essentially, just about every single Sunday night through the year right here we have testimonies of people being baptized. We understand what believer's baptism is from Scripture.
But there's a world of people who don't get it, who don't understand it. And there are people who don't know that it is important and who don't think the methodology is important, or even the time when a person is baptized. There are folks who are just plain confused about baptism, what is its method, and what is its meaning, and in particular, what about the baptizing of infants, which is how you get a world full of non-Christians who have been baptized as infants.
The church in recent years has become kind of media oriented. Many people come to Christ by listening to Christian radio, Christian television, going to some kind of big event, some kind of meeting, some kind of what is called a crusade or something like that. In situations like that they would hear nothing about nor have any opportunity for baptism, true believer's baptism. These people typically float around and maybe go a little bit here and a little there from church to church and baptism never becomes an issue for them. Many churches are so designed to be pragmatic and baptism isn't really a very pragmatic thing to introduce into people's lives. And so it just gets left behind. Pragmatism has been the death of the sacraments, we might say. But what concerns me is that we need to understand baptism because it is in Scripture a command...a command. The Great Commission is very clear at the end of the gospel of Matthew in chapter 28, you know these words. "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit." All nations need to hear the gospel and those that believe need to be baptized.
Peter in the first sermon on the Day of Pentecost in Acts 2 says, "Repent and be baptized." On that day there were thousands of people, three thousand baptized, thousands more day after day after day in the early days of the church as it began to grow. It is clear in Scripture that Baptism is a requirement, it is a command, both to the individual believer and to the church. Still its confusion is widespread, hence millions of baptized non-Christians and perhaps millions of unbaptized Christians.
So I want to talk about baptism from the biblical viewpoint. I don't want you to be ignorant of this issue and you won't be after we have covered what we're going to cover tonight and perhaps a little bit next week. You're going to have to face the reality that this is a command and you are called to be obedient. You cannot be indifferent to it because it is a command. You could be defiant, unwilling, and it is very possible that you could be completely disinterested because you're not willing at all to confess Christ openly and publicly.
But for those who are genuinely believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, we need to understand what the Bible says about baptism. Much confusion over baptism has come from this phenomena called paedo-baptism, or baby baptism.
Where did this come from? And to get a proper separation from all that is untrue about baptism, to place yourself in the category of knowing what it really is so that you can be obedient to it, we need to talk a little bit about infant baptism. For those of you who are former Roman Catholics, you were probably baptized as a baby. For those of you who were raised by Presbyterian parents, or Lutheran parents, or Episcopalian parents, or Anglican parents, or Methodist parents and we can go pretty much down the line until we get to the Baptists, you were probably baptized as a baby, or there's a good possibility that your parents believed in that...
less
|
|
|
|
http://www.gty.org/resources/sermons/...
Mark 11, open your Bible to Mark's gospel and we're going to be looking at verses 22 to 25...verses 22 to 2...
more
http://www.gty.org/resources/sermons/...
Mark 11, open your Bible to Mark's gospel and we're going to be looking at verses 22 to 25...verses 22 to 25 in Mark chapter 11.
We know we're in the Passion Week of Christ. He has entered into the city of Jerusalem on Monday. On Tuesday He came in and attacked and assaulted the temple. And by the time we come to our text in verse 22, it is Wednesday...Wednesday. On the next day, Thursday will be the Passover meal, on Friday the crucifixion, on Sunday the resurrection. So these are the last days of our Lord's life and ministry.
Now the subject of our verses, verses 22 to 25, and we'll actually back up to verse 20 so we get the flow, the subject here is prayer...prayer. And you might think that this is a kind of an odd place to do a lesson on prayer. It might seem to you that there could be other more pertinent things to talk about, given what is coming with the Lord dying, rising, ascending, and all that's bound up in that. But this lesson is absolutely critical and it's critical at this juncture.
Now nothing that our Lord says here is new. Everything He says here He has said somewhere else, probably many times not recorded. In the 24/7 three year experience of these disciples with Jesus, He repeated these things over and over again. This is very familiar. But it's also familiar to us because the things we're going to be reading are also elsewhere previously in the gospel accounts.
Why now? Why a lesson on prayer? Well it's really pretty simple if you just think about it. For three years, the disciples had lived in the presence of God Himself, God in human flesh. Anything they needed, He provided. It would seem to me that though they were raised to pray, synagogue life was full of prayers, though they were no doubt taught as children to play, the Jews prayed cycles of prayers all day every day, prayer would have been a very, very formidable part of their upbringing and their... certainly their adult life would have followed the way they had been raised. But it seems to me that when they were with Jesus, it had a diminishing effect on their prayer life for the simple reason that why would you go to God hoping to be heard when you could grab Jesus by the arm and know you were heard? And everything that they needed came directly from His hand. When they needed protection, He provided that. When they needed direction, He provided that. When they needed food, He provided that. When they needed wisdom, He provided that...
less
|
|
