Saturday 2021.11.13
Shabbat Shalom.
On this Sabbath Day, in the New Testament, I read chapters 14 to 16 of the Acts of the Apostles.
Acts chapter 16 contains an account of the baptism of the jail-keeper at Philippi after Paul and Silas were set free from the city jail by the hand of God Almighty through an earthquake.
From the beginning of the ministry of John the Baptist, people have been called to show their repentance from sin and their faith in God by going through baptism, in those days typically in the waters of a river. This practice of baptism (or mikveh in Hebrew) is described by the Apostle Peter in 1 Peter 3:21 as ". . . not the washing off of bodily dirt, but the promise made to God from a good conscience".
One can say that baptism is something one must do outwardly to make a promise to God from a good conscience inwardly. In other words, baptism is an outward demonstration of inward repentance from sin.
In Acts chapter 16 we read, similarly, in the account of the Philippian jail-keeper who asked Paul and Silas, "What must I do to get salvation?", the jail-keeper was baptised immediately after he put his faith in the Lord Iesus (Acts 15:30 - 34).
- Acts 16:30 - 34 BBE Bible in Basic English
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30 And took them out and said, Sirs,
what have I to do to get salvation?
31 And they said, Have faith in the Lord Jesus, and you and your family will have salvation.
32 And they gave the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house.
33 And that same hour of the night, he took them, and when he had given attention to their wounds, he and all his family had baptism straight away.
34 And he took them into his house and gave them food, and he was full of joy, having faith in God with all his family.
From the above passage, we learn that there were three things that the jail-keeper had in his life on the day of his salvation:
- he had faith in the Lord Iesus (v 31)
- he had baptism (v 33)
- he had fulness of joy (v34)
Brothers and Sisters in the Lord Iesus, let us likewise hold fast to these three things that we have in our lives: we have faith in our Lord Iesus, we have gone through the waters of baptism, and we now have the fulness of joy that comes from the Spirit of God.
