Last night, Wednesday August 27th, the YouthRoom was very intense. The youth are settling down now that school has started back. There are some serious things going on in the lives of our youth. And therefore hearing from God’s Word is exactly what we all were needing last night.
We looked at Mark 1:4-15. I spent a little bit of time explaining that true saving faith is a two-sided coin. John the Baptist, Jesus, and all preachers in the Bible preach that one is saved by believing and repenting. Just like a penny has Abraham Lincoln on one side and the Lincoln monument on the other, true faith has faith & repentance. If a penny only has one of those sides, something is wrong & its not a real penny. If someone has only faith, or only repentance, without the other, something is wrong & its not a real faith.
Verses 9 & 10 say that Jesus was baptized and that “he came up out of the water”. I took just a few minutes to explain baptism. Baptism is a transliteration. It wasnt translated into english. The reason being is that it means immersion. Essential to being baptized is going completely under the water. The water must cover all of you.
Well, John said he baptized with water, and that Jesus would baptize with the Holy Spirit. We spent a lot of time discussing this and trying to sort out the different types of baptism.
I reminded the Youth of John 16:7 where Jesus tells the disciples that it is to their advantage that He go away. After dying for our sins and coming back to life, he left earth and ascended to heaven. After that, the Father sent the Holy Spirit to come and live inside His people. This happens at the moment someone gets saved. Whenever someone truly embraces the 2-sided coin of faith and repentance, God makes them new and fills them with His spirit (that is salvation and that is Spirit baptism). After someone has been saved, they are then to be baptized in water as an outward sign of what has happened in their lives. Just as Christ died on the cross, was buried, and rose again, so they have died to self and sin, been buried, and risen again to newness of life in Jesus empowered by the indwelling Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit didn’t come to live in people until Pentecost in Acts 2. So there were some people who actually got water baptized before they had the Spirit. They believed, John the Baptist baptized them, but they need the Spirit. Once Christ left, He sent it to them.
I asked the youth frankly, did they have either of those baptisms.
One youth raised his hand and told us he wanted to repent and be saved and be filled with the Holy Spirit. Three more raised their hands and told us they want to be baptized.
Praise the Lord!