This podcast is a repost, was originally published on July 10, 2017.

Series: Significance of Water Baptism
In the olden days, the first century church, when they started preaching the Gospel, they did not just preach about people filling up the new comers card or a welcome card or sign up to indicate that ‘ I believe in Jesus ‘, that’s not how they did conversions. Mark 16:16 says ‘ Whoever believes and is baptized, will be saved.. ‘

Then, they were added to the church. – The way that people of the churches add people to the church is by filling a form or by doing a membership process etc. – But in the first century church, the way that people were added to the church was through baptism.

Question: Is baptism really necessary ? How important is baptism in our belief system ? Is baptism something to do just with our external and nothing to do with the internal, our hearts ?
Answer: Mark 16:16. ‘ Anyone who believes and is baptized, will be saved but anyone who refuses to believe, will be condemned ‘.

This scripture links our salvation to the fact that we are baptized.

Though baptism is an external act, an external expression, the bible puts the weight on baptism for internal belief, to tell us that our faith without the works is absolutely dead. That there’s no point of us believing in Jesus if we’re not being willing to take baptism and not being willing to take an extra step and getting baptized.

Those of us already baptized, inspect our hearts, did we take baptism after putting your belief system in Jesus ? There are some people that teach ‘infant baptism’, some that teach ‘adult baptism’. We don’t teach either of them, we teach the ‘Believer’s baptism’. Bible says ‘ Those who believe and is baptized, will be saved ‘, not those who are baptized in adulthood or those who are baptized as soon as possible.

The primary purpose of baptism is to acknowledge your faith, it’s to put your faith into action by declaring it out loud for everyone to know and hear and to testify to what God has done in your heart. It’ll be a shame if what God has done in your heart and life is not being expressed or shared with other people. The biblical way to express in front of whole church is to get baptized.

What are your fears in getting baptized ? What is the reason or reasons that keeps you from getting baptized ? Are you doubtful whether you completely believe in Jesus yet or not ? Are you doubtful of your allegiance to God and His Kingdom and His Word ? Are you doubtful of your faith in Jesus ?

If so then you’re allowed to wait, if you’re not yet sure you want to live for Jesus the rest of your life, then you can wait. Like marriage, people wait before getting married because there might be slight uncertainty, slight doubt etc. But when there is that certainty ‘ that no matter what happens I’m going to be spending the rest of my life with this person, nobody waits to get married, they go for it, because they know that that’s the person to spend to the rest of their lives with.

This is exactly the whole concept of baptism too, that when you are sure that you are going to follow Jesus the rest of your life, that you believe in Him, His word, His promises, His desire, His heart for you, then you say that you love God and want to be in Him the rest of your life, doesn’t matter what it takes or how good it sounds or bad it looks that you are just going to be following Him for the rest of your life and to testify your decision to follow Him by getting baptized.

We hope that through this week as we study the topic of baptism, that many will desire to get baptized and serve Jesus wholeheartedly. We hope that you were encouraged by this word.
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