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Grace Baptist Church of Danville

February 16, 2014

 

“Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.”

 

Daily Readings for the Week of February 16-23, 2014

Sunday                Numbers 15-16                               Thursday       Numbers 27-29

            Monday                      Numbers 17-19                               Friday             Numbers 30-32

            Tuesday                    Numbers 20-22                               Saturday                    Numbers 33-35

            Wednesday  Numbers 23-26                               Sunday                      Numbers 36-Deut. 1

 

Charlie Meadows will confess Christ in believer’s baptism this morning. As he does, may God the Holy Spirit give us grace to enter into this blessed ordinance of our Lord with him, renewing in our souls the commitment to Christ, his Gospel, and his Church we professed to God and the world in our own baptism. — Oh, may the God of all grace give us grace to walk with him in the newness of life day by day!

            If God has given you faith in his dear Son, his word to you is “arise and be baptized,” confessing your sin, confessing your faith in the finished work of Christ as your sin-atoning Substitute, and confessing consecration of your very life to the Son of God, who loved you and gave himself for you.

 

Happy Birthday!  Jerry Sadler-20th      Charlie Meadows-22nd

 

Nursery Duty this Week

Today: Pam Wood (AM)  — Sherri Warta (PM)  — Tuesday: Mindy Peterson

 

Buried with Christ Don Fortner

(Tune: #10 — O God, Our Help in Ages Past —CM)

 

 

1.    Obedient to Your Holy Word,

While faith on Christ relies,

A ransomed sinner comes, dear Lord,

In faith to be baptized.

 

2.    This soul, like ours, is stained and dyed,

Pollution dwells within;

But sprinkling blood by You applied,

Has made us pure and clean.

 

3.    Buried with Christ, Your saints confess,

In this symbolic grave,

That we were crucified with Christ,

Who died our souls to save.

 

4.    Up rising in new life by grace,

With Christ our risen Lord,

To God and men we here confess,

“I now belong to God!”

 

 

Our Lord’s Baptism

 

Then cometh Jesus from Galilee to Jordan unto John, to be baptized of him.”                                                                                                            Matthew 3:13-17)

 

Our Lord Jesus spent the first thirty years of his life on this earth in obscurity. But the time had come for him to embark upon his public ministry and prophetic office. He did so by coming from Galilee to Jordan to be baptized by John the Baptist. As the Jewish priests of the Old Testament, when they entered the priestly office, consecrated themselves to God by being washed with water (Exodus 29:4), so our great High Priest began the great work which he came into the world to accomplish by consecrating himself to God in public baptism. Being baptized by John the Baptist, our Lord Jesus here sits before us an example of obedience to God, which he later commanded all his disciples to follow.

 

An Honored Ordinance

Do any imagine that baptism is an insignificant thing? Do any dare assert that this ordinance of Christ is a “non-essential”? The Son of God did not look upon it as such. The journey from Nazareth to Jerusalem took three days. Yet, our Savior took that long journey so that he might be baptized by John the Baptist. I take it from such an example that this ordinance of Divine worship is not to be lightly esteemed. If Christ our Lord, the Head of the Church, honored the ordinance of baptism by submitting to it, surely all who profess to follow him must do the same.

 

A Simple Picture

Baptism is a picture of redemption; but baptism is not redemption. Baptism is a picture of the remission of sins; but baptism is not the remission of sins. Baptism is a picture of salvation; but baptism is not salvation.

      We are redeemed by the blood of Christ. We are born again by the Spirit of God. We are saved by the grace of God. Baptism pictures and confesses these blessings of grace. But baptism has absolutely no redeeming, saving merit and efficacy!

 

Righteousness Fulfilled

Why did the Lord Jesus insist upon being baptized by John? He had no sins to confess. He had no transgressions of which to repent. He had no iniquities to be washed away. Yet, he told John that it was necessary for him to be baptized “to fulfil all righteousness.” But what did his baptism have to do with the fulfillment of all righteousness?

      We know that our blessed Savior fulfilled all the righteous requirements of God’s holy law for us as our Representative, freeing us from its curse and condemnation by his obedience unto death (Romans 5:18-21). And he fulfilled all the will of God as the God-man, our Mediator, by which we are forever sanctified (Hebrews 10:5-14).

      By his baptism, our Savior symbolically fulfilled all righteousness and established as a standing ordinance in his Church that by which believing men and women publicly confess the fulfillment of all righteousness by him. By his baptism, the Lord Jesus symbolically demonstrated how he would fulfil all righteousness as our sin-atoning Substitute. And by our baptism, we confess the same.

      “The baptism of Christ,” wrote C. H. Spurgeon, “was the picture, the type, the symbol of the work, which he afterwards accomplished. He was immersed in suffering; he died, and was buried in the tomb; he rose again from the grave; and all that is set forth in the outward symbol of his baptism in the River Jordan.”

 

Believer’s Baptism

Believer’s baptism symbolically fulfills “all righteousness.” It is an ordinance full of meaning. It is to be reverently observed by all who follow Christ. If our Lord himself submitted to it, we cannot follow him and refuse to submit to it. I quote Spurgeon again. — “Shall I refuse to follow my Lord? Shall I think that there is nothing in an ordinance of which he said, ‘Thus it becometh us to fulfill all righteousness’?”

      When the Lord Jesus was made sin for us, he was slain under the wrath of God, and buried. When he had put away sin, he rose from the dead because he had accomplished our justification. When believers follow Christ into the watery grave, we publicly acknowledge that our only hope before God is that which he accomplished for us in his death and resurrection as our Substitute. Rising up out of the watery grave, we symbolically avow our allegiance to Christ, walking with him in the newness of life, in hope of the resurrection (Romans 6:4-6).

 

Immersion Only

And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water: and, lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him.” — While I fully recognize that many oppose our insistence upon baptism as an ordinance for believers only, and upon the fact that baptism can only be performed by immersion, it would be treasonous of me not to declare the obvious from this portion of Holy Scripture. Baptism is immersion. Immersion is not “the Baptists’ mode of baptism.” Immersion is baptism. “Sprinkling” is sprinkling. And “pouring” is pouring. Baptism is immersion. Sprinkling is something you do with water. Pouring is something you do with water. Baptism is something done in water.

      “Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water.” — There is absolutely no reason for Matthew to make that statement except to show us that baptism must be performed by immersion. Without immersion, there is no baptism.

      Baptism is always represented in the Scriptures as a burial (Romans 6:3-6; Colossians 2:12; 1 Corinthians 15:1, 29). When you bury a corpse in the earth, you do not throw a few grains of sand in its face. You put it beneath the ground. And a man is not buried in baptism by sprinkling a few drops of water in his face. He must be immersed in water. Any alternation of the baptismal mode is a perversion of the ordinance and a denial of what it represents — The Gospel of redemption and righteousness by Christ alone.

 

 

The Grace Bulletin

 

February 16, 2014

 

Grace Baptist Church of Danville

2734 Old Stanford Road-Danville, Kentucky 40422-9438

Telephone (859) 236-8235 - E-Mail don@donfortner.com

 

Donald S. Fortner, Pastor

 

Schedule of Regular Services

 

Sunday

10:00 A.M. Bible Classes

10:30 A.M. Morning Worship Service

6:30   P.M. Evening Worship Service

 

Tuesday

7:30 P.M. Mid-Week Worship Service

 

Television Broadcasts in Danville

 

Channel 6 - Sunday Morning 7:45 A.M.

Channel 6 - Wednesday Evening 6:00 P.M.

Channel 6 - Friday Evening 7:00 P.M.

 

Television Broadcasts in Harrodsburg

Channel 6 - Sunday Afternoon 3:00 P.M.

Channel 6 - Friday Evening 6:00 P.M.

 

Web Pages

http://www.DonFortner.com

http://www.FreegraceRadio.com

http://www.Grace-eBooks.com

 

 

 

Don Fortner

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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