Many years ago when I was a young Christian, I met another young Believer whose parents had been missionaries in Africa. She could tell story after story that made me wish I could stay up all night listening. A particular story involved her own coming to understand why Jesus came to earth from heaven. One night before bed she told her parents that she wanted to receive Jesus as her Savior. Can you imagine the joy her mom and dad must have felt?
The next day, as the happy news spread of her coming to Christ, plans began for her baptism. Baptism in this small village in Africa was a huge event. The men set up tables while the women laid it with dishes of delicious food for the celebration. When all was ready, the church assembled, and with neighbors who were not yet Christians invited, my friend’s father stood and beckoned silence. All became quiet as he read from Scripture why Jesus came to die for the sins of the world. He explained that coming to Christ was a personal choice; one that lasted for eternity. Then my friend came forward. She shared her own testimony. Then she and her father waded into the river where he baptized her before the watching crowd. She told me that when she came up out of the water, the people began to sing praises to the Lord. It remainded one of her happiest memories.
After many years, her family felt it time to say good-by to Africa and return to the USA. My friend enrolled in a Christian college. While there she visited several churches before finding one she felt was right for her. One Sunday morning at the end of the service she walked forward to proclaim that she wanted to join the church. What followed left her confused and somewhat taken aback. In short, she was told she had to be re-baptized because she was baptized in a river and not in a church. Are you laughing or simply in quiet shock?
The above story came back to memory as I was reading this week in the New Testament book of Mark 7:5-13. In this passage Jesus encountered a group of religious people following their own rules rather than what God had commanded. Jesus said to them, These people honor me with their lips but their hearts are far from me……You ignore God’s law and substitute your own tradition (NLT). Where the baptism of my friend was concerned, well-meaning, but misunderstood commands of God were in play. We know it’s not the location of a baptistry in a building that validates a person’s baptism. This group of people were forgetting that church isn’t a building; it’s the body of Christ. They were seeing with physical eyes while forgetting spiritual eyesight available to them through the Holy Spirit. Do we forget such things today?
Our arch enemy, Satan, takes evil glee in whispering dissension into the hearts of God’s people, tempting them to focus on outward appearances just as they did in the Old Testament time of Samuel. God said to Samuel, when he thought he had found the next king of Israel, Don’t judge by his appearance or height, for I have rejected him. The LORD doesn’t see things the way you see them. People judge by outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart (I Samuel 16:7 NLT).
Let us be careful in our treatment and judgement of one another. Let us pray often that our minds of understanding see clearly the ways of God, not replacing what God has said with man’s traditions. Instead, let us pray blessings on each other, asking that hearts are always open to the leading of the Holy Spriit. Such a genuine and loving prayer manages to keep all our hearts open. Then we see people and situations as God sees them; we look past the outward and view the the heart instead.