PT-7 "Obedience" (Matt. 28:19-20a)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 11/10/2024 7:49 AM

 

My Worship Time                                                                                   Focus:  PT-7 “Obedience”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                             Reference:  Matthew 28:19-20a

 

            Message of the verses:  “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you;”

 

            In my last SD I was writing about baptism, but did not finish writing about it and so I begin this SD where John MacArthur continues his discussion on baptism.

 

            “The association was indisputably clear in Peter’s mind as he exhorted his unbelieving hearers at Pentecost:  ‘Repent, and let each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ’ (Acts 2:38).  The association was just as close in Paul’s mind, as witnessed in his great manifesto of Christian unity:  ‘There is one body and one Spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling:  one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all’ (Eph. 4:4-6).’

 

            “A person is saved by God’s grace alone working through his faith as a gift of God (Eph. 2:8).  But by God’s own declaration, the act of baptism is His divinely designated sign of the believer’s identification with His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.  Baptism is a divinely commanded act of faith and obedience.”

 

            “New converts need to be taught that they should be baptized as soon as possible, not to seal or confirm their salvation but to make public testimony to it in obedience to their newfound Lord.  The call to Christ not only is the call to salvation but also the call to obedience, the first public act of which should be baptism in His name.

 

            “Throughout the book of Acts, baptism is shown in the closest possible association with conversion.  The three thousand souls converted at Pentecost were immediately baptized (Acts 2:41).  As soon as the Ethiopian believed in Christ, he stopped his chariot so that he could be baptized (8:38).  As soon as Paul received back his sight after his conversion, he was baptized (9:18).  When Cornelius and his household were saved, Peter ‘ordered them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ’ (10:48).  As unbelievers in Corinth were being won to Jesus Christ, they were also being baptized (18:8).  When Paul found some disciples of John in Ephesus who had only been baptized for repentance, he told them about Jesus, the one for whom John was merely preparing the way, and when they believed ‘they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus’ (19:1-5).

 

            In the context of the Great Commission, baptism is synonymous with salvation, which is synonymous with becoming a disciple.  As already emphasized, discipleship is Christian life, not an optional, second level of it.”  There is more in his commentary on baptism which I will look at in the next SD, Lord willing.

 

            I just want to write about my life for a moment as it seems that things were a bit difference than some of the stories of those in the book of Acts.  When I was a child I was baptized in the Methodist church we were attending.  They sprinkle, which to me is not really baptism at all.  That was baptism number one. 

 

            When I became a believer in 1974 I was not really attending a church but had fellowship with a group of believers in a Bible study even leading it but not teaching it.  I remember that this Bible Study happened in a Christian book store of a new friend that I made shortly after becoming a believer.  I was then baptized in a swimming pool that was at our apartment complex.  Baptism number two.  I want to insert that the Lord used that Bible Study as I suppose over the time we were doing it that close to 50 people came and left it, as actually one of the people who attended it was a Catholic priest.

 

            I joined the Church in April of, I think 1978 where my wife had joined earlier.  The pastor came to our house and we talked as I had a lot of questions about the church, which he answered with what I thought was the right answers.  He did say that I needed to be baptized because the other two times were not Scripturally correct, so in April of that year I was baptized, baptism number three, and the correct one.

 

            Spiritual meaning for my life today:   I want to do things in my life that the Bible instructs me to do.

 

            My Steps of Faith for Today: I ask the Lord to bless our time in Sunday school this morning as I go about teaching from the book of Colossians.

 

11/10/2024 8:16 AM