06 Baptism in Water - Part 2

We talked in Salvation sessions about some of the fruitful practices that we can have in our lives as Christians. But we might still have some unfruitful practices that are operational in our lives. One of the pictures of baptism is of the Israelites being baptized into the Red Sea.

Being cut off from the unfruitful practices that they practiced in Egypt. In 1 Corinthians 10:1 it says, "For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud and passed through the sea and were baptized into Moses in the cloud and the sea."

So what I see in these verses is that Israel was delivered from their captivity. Their slavery under Pharaoh. After the Passover, they left Pharaoh and the captivity. A couple of days later Pharaoh decided to take them captive again. And so they came to this point on the edge of the sea where Moses put his staff in the sea and the sea opened up.

And the Israelites went through and then Pharaoh followed after. The sea closed in and Israel's enemies were destroyed. Destroyed by God. But sometimes, as Christians coming out of Egypt, we can still have some of the practices of Egypt. And still even maybe practice some of the practices of Egypt.

Discernment in Christian Growth

And God is not happy with that. In our growth as Christians, God will make us aware. He will teach us discernment on the things that we should be involved with and the things that we shouldn't be involved with. Hebrews 5:14 speaks about discernment: "But solid food is for the mature, for those who have the powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil."

Sometimes solid food is hard to digest. It's hard to understand, it's hard to get the nutrients out of it. That is for the mature. And we have to train ourselves in discernment. To find out: what is good and what is evil? Because in the world there is good and evil. And so most of us as Christians would say that sacrificing babies in occultic practices to a pagan god is evil.

But then there are some practices which are not as easy to discern. Like some of the new age practices. Like acupuncture, yoga, herbalism, just to mention three. I believe that as we learn to renounce—and to renounce is deeper than repentance. Repentance is to change our mind about something and to turn away from it.

Renunciation is to stop the flow of something that we might be involved with. And the Bible says in Hosea that My people perish because of a lack of knowledge. A tyre that has perished battles to hold the air. Sometimes we might battle to hold the presence of the Lord in our hearts because we're still busy with things that we're not aware of are actually evil.

Three Principles for Discerning Good and Evil

So what I want to help us with today is, I want to talk about how to discern if something is evil or good. I've got three principles that I would like to speak about. The first principle is: in what realm is this practice operational?

The second principle is: with what level of faith or trust do you engage with the practice? And the third level is: what is the context that this practice is taking place in? And now I'm going to explain those three principles. What is the realm that this practice is taking place in?

The Physical Realm and the Spiritual Realm

And when God made the earth, He made the earth—a physical realm. He created it and He put us as men and women over the physical realm. He said it was good and He blessed it and He put it under man's dominion. But there's also a spiritual realm.

And in the spiritual realm, you get two parts. You get God and His angels, and you get the devil and his demons. The Bible says if you get involved with the devil and the demons, in that spiritual realm, it's called occult and hidden knowledge.

And we shouldn't, as Christians, get involved in that. We should get involved in the spiritual realm with God and His angels, and the Holy Spirit, and all the gifts that the Holy Spirit has for us. But the devil has a counterfeit for the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

When the Holy Spirit brings healing, the devil's got a counterfeit. When the Holy Spirit brings prophecy, the devil's got a counterfeit. And when we get involved in the counterfeit, then we are walking on unstable ground. So the physical is open for our use by God, because it's been blessed by God.

Herbs, Medicine, and the Physical Use of Creation

It's been put under our authority. And so I know this is unclear now. So let's use an example. Is it all right to use herbs or should you use just normal, allopathic medicine? You get acetylsalicylic acid from the bark of a willow tree.

It's aspirin. You take aspirin for headaches. How many of you have taken aspirin? Is it all right to use that bark? To maybe boil it up and to use the herbs? Or is that wrong? It's fine, because it's physical. Personally, I would prefer to take the tablet, because I know how much is in there.

I know the dosage, and I know that the storage conditions have been right. But if you want to go and chew on the bark of a willow tree, go for it. There's nothing evil about it. It's still in the concept of good and evil.

Acupuncture, Dry Needling, and Spiritual Counterfeits

But now, what about acupuncture and dry needling? Because if you go to a physiotherapist they'll apply dry needling to you. They'll take an acupuncture needle and they'll put it into a spasm that you might have in your shoulder or in your leg. Is that evil or is that good?

Is acupuncture evil or good? And so let's examine this under this realm concept. Is it physical or is it not? And so when a physiotherapist puts a needle into a spasm, what happens is that the needle enters in, it breaks the cell membranes.

That releases chemotactic factors called interleukin prostaglandins and antihistamines. It causes blood to flow to that area, and it causes the myosin and actin fibers to release. And the spasm releases, and then my shoulder is better. It's a little bit more complex than that, but that's kind of like the idea how it works.

Is that physical or is that spiritual? It's physical. We know the mechanism of action. We know how it works and we know why it works. Acupuncture, on the other hand, works with meridians or energy channels. And if we cut open your body, we don't find those channels there.

And needles get inserted at acupuncture points. And the philosophy of the practice is, that if you're sick, there's an imbalance between your yin and your yang. Your good and your evil, the good and the bad. And so we insert the needle into that point, and that causes a balancing of the energies.

And that makes you better. Now, is that a Christian concept or not? No, it's not a Christian concept, because as Christians, we are to be good, but we are to resist evil. And so that's not a Christian concept. And also when we go look closer, where they insert the needles, there's nothing physiologically or anatomically there.

It works. But just because it works doesn't mean it's right. And just because everyone is doing it also doesn't mean it's right. Because everyone shouted for Jesus to be crucified. Also the energy that this philosophy speaks about is not the energy that we get in the power plug.

It's another form of energy. It's a spiritual energy, but it's not the energy that's physical. It's the energy that's spiritual. So if you had to then judge acupuncture and dry needling on that basis, would we say that acupuncture is evil or good? Well, I would have to say according to that, it seems like it's evil.

Yoga, Pilates, and the Importance of Context

And that's where we need to learn to discern. The same maybe with yoga practice. The difference between yoga and Pilates. They often do the same type of movements in the exercise. But in yoga, they are doing poses for or towards a certain god.

And God is a jealous God. And so, do you think that if God is a jealous God, that He would mind that I'm worshipping another god? Yes, He would. If my wife went to supper with another man, and there were candles and flowers, I would be really upset.

And so, yoga is a spiritual practice, where Pilates is a physical exercise practice. Also, the context of it is different. So it depends. Who do you do the yoga with? What are their philosophies? What are their belief systems? And also the person that presents the yoga, they are like the worship leader.

What are they into? What do they believe? And I think that also makes a difference. So I'm not saying that everyone that practices yoga is going to get demonized. I think this is where we need to discern. And we have the Spirit of the Lord with us.

The Second Principle: Faith and Trust

And so I'm not sharing this with you to make rules. I'm trying to give you principles that you yourself can decide, whether something is good or whether something is evil. We've skipped over the second principle, which is the principle of faith. And maybe I can use an example in this.

Let's use the example of karate. Let's say me and my family got attacked one night, and we got tied up, and we got put in a room. And we got ransacked, all our stuff got stolen, and that's obviously a terrifying experience. And now I've got fear in my heart and now I've decided, well, I'm going to go and protect myself.

I'm going to make sure that the next time that this happens, that I'm going to be ready. So I decided, well, I'm going to go do karate. I'm going to learn from these guys how to defend myself. In this scenario I am attaching myself to that philosophy of fighting.

This is different from a person that's just going there for exercise. The level of trust that you put in the practice matters. And so you get the difference in the analogy there. For some people it's just exercise, and for some people it's more than exercise.

Idolatry and Looking to Something Else for Protection

That can be an idol. When we're ascribing a function of God to something else. God's my protector. If I am going to look for another system or god or value, to fulfill that need within me, then I would say that becomes idolatrous. And then you could open a door to the enemy.

Baptism, Repentance, and Renouncing Old Strongholds

So for me and my household, we won't get involved in mixed martial arts and karate and Eastern fighting systems. But I'm not saying it's good or bad. I think that's where we have to discern whether it's evil or good. Why did we speak about this in baptism?

Because I believe that as the Holy Spirit leads us, He will reveal these things to us. When we go into the waters of baptism, there will be things that we need to renounce from. There's some stuff that we need to stop. We need to repent.

And when we go into the water of baptism, those things die with us. And we get raised to a newness of life. And so it's almost like we can use baptism as a deliverance experience. If we go into it with faith and understanding.

Testimony: Baptism After Eastern Mysticism

And that's baptism. Hi everybody, my name is Julie, and I'd love to share a testimony today of my baptism. I got born again back in 1982. I got born again out of a place of experiencing Eastern mysticism. I'd been involved in Eastern mysticism, from probably the age of 16.

And I'd actually gotten into it through doing yoga. And I had my first out-of-body experience or spiritual experience during a yoga class. On ending that class, I went to the yoga teacher. I told her of the experience that I had had.

It was a sense of leaving my body and she was so excited about it. She then gave me a whole lot of books to read and a whole lot of things to explore. That opened a door of my life to Eastern mysticism and to the demonic, actually.

Even when I got saved, I never went through a process of deliverance or anything like it. I did get saved and I got baptized. But not having a full understanding of what I'd been involved in and the implications of that in my life into the future.

Backsliding, Divorce, and Returning to the Lord

Because I wasn't well discipled and because of life circumstances, I landed up serving the Lord, but not wholeheartedly. Then I started a career and I got involved with some folks who were operating in Eastern mysticism. So, I got latched onto that again. And I realized, looking back now, it was a search for truth.

It was a search for the real. Over a 10-year period, I had walked with the Lord and backslidden. So when I came back to the Lord, 10 years later, I actually made a recommitment to the Lord. I realized that my life was in quite a mess.

And I'd been through a major traumatic divorce. I just had this incredible realization of just my need for Jesus. But for authentic Christianity. An authentic walk with the Lord. I'd been connected with some amazing people in a church in Port Elizabeth. And I had a friend who really explained baptism to me after I made this recommitment to the Lord.

Freedom From Smoking, Marijuana, and Occult Gifts

I realized that there were some things in my life that I was still battling with. I just couldn't get breakthrough in. I was still smoking cigarettes and I was desperately trying to not. It was something I was struggling with. I couldn't get breakthrough.

I struggled to sleep. I'd been smoking marijuana, many times in a week, to actually just get sleep. I was also struggling with asthma. When I got divorced I literally developed chronic asthma overnight. I was using asthma medication every day. I was really struggling.

As I was walking with the Lord, Ash, this friend of mine, approached me and said, "I feel like in baptism you could find freedom from these things." And then just explained to me the incredible thing of dying. When you enter into the waters of baptism, you are dying and you are being raised up again in new life.

All those things being washed away. One of the things I struggled a lot with was, through Eastern mysticism, I had developed some gifts. The Bible says that the devil masquerades as an angel of light. Even in my Christian walk, there were some things that I would know about people or situations. It would almost be like those out-of-body experiences that I spoke about earlier. It was still there and I was struggling to define whether it was God or if it wasn't God. And so this was also one of the things I was bringing to the Lord at my baptism.

And the day that I got baptized I was so full of faith. In my heart I just thought, this is it. All the stuff's going to die in the water. As I go down, it's going to be over and I'm going to come out like a new creation.

And I want to say it was almost naive faith, but it was so beautiful because it was a childlike faith. We had experienced this salvation experience, but there were these incredible hindrances in my walk of the Lord that I just wanted to throw off.

I wanted to be free. And so the day that I got baptized, I remembered so clearly. When I went down into that water and when I came back out, I literally felt like stuff had been left behind. Like that had been drowned in this pool that I'd been baptized in.

And from that day, I never smoked another cigarette. I never ever used marijuana again. I had this incredible silence in my head. There were no external voices. And to be honest, it almost felt like I got born again, again, through my baptism. Such a powerful experience.

Baptism as Spiritual Cleansing and Lasting Freedom

It was just an incredible sense of, "Oh my goodness, Lord, You are so faithful." And I know maybe for some of you watching this, maybe that hasn't been your experience. Maybe it won't be your experience, but I want to say, have an expectation of what the waters of baptism can actually do.

It's an act of obedience, but it also is way greater than that. It's actually a spiritual thing that happens when we enter into those waters and when we come out. We are raised to life in Christ. Like a cleanness, like a freshness, that happens to us.

And then obviously there's a walking forward from that. And I could have fallen again, back into smoking cigarettes or whatever. But the freedom was so strong and was so real that I couldn't. I just couldn't go back. I knew that I couldn't. And I wanna say I've walked in freedom in these things since 1992.

I've walked in absolute freedom in all these areas. I'm so grateful and I'm so thankful that I was obedient, first of all, and I was baptized. This act that we do is greater than we can ever imagine it is. So I want to encourage you, if you haven't been baptized, just go for it.

Be baptized today. We've talked about discerning between good and evil practices. And maybe there's some areas in your life that you have some questions about, or some areas that you might even want to renounce or repent of. We're going to create a time with your facilitators where you can do that now.