A Divine Interruption...
Isaiah 7:14 - Messiah would be born of a virgin
Isaiah 9:6-7 - There would be a Son called God
Isaiah 35:4-6 - Messiah would perform miracles
Isaiah 40:1-5,9 - Messiah would be preceded by a messenger
Isaiah 49:6 - God’s salvation would reach the ends of the earth
- Realize that I am a SINNER (Romans 3:23)
- Recognize that Jesus Christ died on the cross for my SIN and rose from the dead to give me eternal LIFE. (1 Corinthians 15:3)
- Repent from my sin (Acts 3:19)
- Receive Jesus Christ as my LORD and Saviour (Philippians 2:11)
- Make it Personal through my profession (Romans 10:9-10)
- Take it Public by being baptized (Matthew 28:1-2)
- Daily yield my Will, allowing God to work in me and through me (Romans 8:29)
- What is baptism?
Baptism is a Visible, God-Chosen, God- Commanded Response to My Faith - Who is it for?
It is for people who have received Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.
Most Common Excuses for Not Getting Baptized
- I was baptized as a Baby.
- I’d Offend my parents / family.
- I need to wait until I am On track spiritually.
- I don’t like being in front of People.
- I need to Pray about it.
- What is its purpose?
It is the profession of faith. - When should a person be baptized?
It is to be done immediately upon belief.
Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
Hint: Highlight blanks above for answers!
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And we'll get to that next week.
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So what are we doing this week?
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Well, do you notice that sometimes the Lord initiates an interruption, right?
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Has that ever happened to anyone?
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That the Lord initiates an interruption in your life?
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And usually it's something urgent.
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So this week we're going to be having a little seminar called Baptism 101.
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This past week, as many of you know, Sammy and I drove out to Chicago for some additional training.
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I was with the preachers and Sammy was with the worship staff out at Big Harvest, or as we like to affectionately call it, the "mothership." And while we were out there, we were out there from, what was it, Monday morning?
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We got back like Thursday morning at like one something in the morning, at least that's when I got back and after dropping Sammy off.
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While I was out there, one of the harvest pastors that was teaching actually, Joel Anderson, he's the pastor of Harvest in Orlando.
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And during lunchtime, I leaned over to him and I said, "Could you cover something for me?" I said, "I need you to teach me how to write a sermon in two days." I write my own sermons and usually that takes all week. I didn't have all week. I said, "How do you write a sermon in two days?" and he said, "Well, what are you preaching on?" I said, "Well, I'm preaching on baptism." And he said, "I'll just give you my notes." Now, I'd be a fool to turn that down, right? So some of the things I'll be sharing with you in the beginning, I gleaned from Joel Anderson's notes and that's just in the first part so I'm thankful to him for that but I want you to turn to your Bibles. Baptism 101 we're first of all going to walk through a passage Acts chapter 8 in verse 25. If you do not is there anybody who does not have a Bible we will get you one. We have some out on the table anybody not have a Bible? All right we're good. If you ever need a Bible there's I'm out in that welcome table. Those are yours to keep. Acts chapter 8 and verse 25.
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Just as God interrupted the events on the earth to proclaim that salvation from sin is found through Jesus Christ, again we've interrupted our Colossians series and we're going to talk about the life-changing impact this message is going to make. We're just going to walk through this passage.
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Picking up in verse 25, it says, Now, when they had testified and spoken the word of the Lord, they returned to Jerusalem.
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Preaching the gospel.
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To many villages of the Samaritans.
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Underline in your Bible these three words testified, spoken and preaching, I underlined in mind, those three words are all talking about the same thing. It's sharing the good news of the gospel. But notice also in this verse who the message was for. It says it was for the Samaritans, and that's a significant thing when you see that in Scripture, because the Samaritans were the most hated people by the Jews. The Samaritans were considered a half-breed, so to speak, And there was a lot of, I guess you could say, racial animosity between the Jews and the Samaritans.
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And it was to many villages of the Samaritans that the gospel was going forth.
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So obviously great stuff was happening.
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And when you stop right there, you would say, "Well, they're just killing it.
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They're going through these villages and they're preaching the Word and they're seeing fruit.
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Not the time to rock the boat, right?" Well, look at verse 26.
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It says, "Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, 'Rise and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza. This is a desert place.'" So Luke, first of all, let's look at the end of the verse.
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He points out that this is a desert road.
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Any Robert Frost fans here?
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Just one?
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What are we, a bunch of barbarians?
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Robert Frost? The poet? Anyone?
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Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry I could not travel, but...
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Really? Nobody? You guys are looking at me like I'm... Okay, thank you!
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You're like, "I raised my hand, so he shuts up." Well, there were... I don't like Robert Frost either, I'm just kidding.
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It's nothing personal.
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It's just it took me like three years of my young life to memorize that poem.
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Well just like that poem, there were actually two main roads from Jerusalem to Gaza at this time and what Luke is pointing out here is this is the road that was less traveled.
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And you know the end of that poem right?
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that has made all of the difference, right?
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Well, the text doesn't say this, but sometimes you just wonder what was going through Philip's mind at this point.
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Philip, you're kicking things here in these Samaritan villages, and the gospel's going forth, and we're seeing fruit.
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I want you to go to this deserted place.
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And Philip goes, but honestly, could you imagine?
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He'd be like, "What, you want me to go where?
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You go the middle of nowhere, really.
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And that's what he was called to do, and that's what he did.
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Look at verse 27, and he rose and went.
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And there was an Ethiopian, a eunuch, a court official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of all her treasure.
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He had come to Jerusalem to worship.
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Again, this isn't really a primo evangelism spot, but this eunuch, there he was, on his way back from Jerusalem, which would have been a 500-mile trip.
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But get this, because he was a eunuch, he would not have been allowed to enter the temple area.
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It isn't that interesting that he'd make the trip to worship, to not be allowed in the temple area, so it's sort of as if he missed the religion, but he was interrupted by an invitation to a relationship. Look again, verse 28, "And he was returning, seated in his chariot, and he was reading the prophet Isaiah. And the Spirit said to Philip, 'Go over and join this chariot.' So Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, "Do you understand what you are reading?" And he said, "How can I unless someone guides me?" And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him. Now when I read this passage I always think the same thing. Like how lucky was that for Philip? Not lucky, but providential. How couple weeks about evangelism, right? What an evangelism opportunity! You see a guy just sitting there reading the Bible? He's like, "I don't understand what this is." Like, "Really? Well, let me sit down and share some things with you." But you notice that Philip started with a question. Notice he didn't say, "Do you like what you're reading? Are you enjoying that?" What did he ask him? "Do you understand?" Do you understand? The part of loving the Lord is loving the Lord with all our mind.
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And when we go to God's Word, we need to seek to understand what He is saying. That's exactly where Philip started, "Do you understand what you are reading?" So Philip's question is responded to with a question, "How can I, unless someone guides me?" He obviously didn't quite understand what he was reading.
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Verse 32, "Now the passage of Scripture that he was reading was this," and this is from Isaiah 53, "Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb before its shearer is silence, so he opens not his mouth.
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In his humiliation justice was denied him.
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Who can describe his generation, for his life is taken away from the earth?" Once again, that's quite a blessed spot to be meeting someone who's reading the Bible, right?
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You know, it wasn't as if the guy was stuck in a genealogy in Genesis or, you know, reading about the conquered lands in the book of Joshua.
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He was right smack dab in the middle of a passage about the coming Messiah, Jesus Christ.
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That has to be providential.
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I mean, wouldn't you agree with that?
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That has to be providential.
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Isaiah 53.
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Isaiah lives 700 years before Christ and he wrote 21 prophetic points that came to pass.
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Here are some of them.
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Here are some of them.
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Isaiah 7, 14 says the Messiah would be born of a virgin.
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Isaiah 9, verses 6 through 7 says that there would be a son called God.
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Isaiah 35, verses 4 through 6 says that the Messiah would perform miracles.
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Isaiah chapter 40 says the Messiah would be preceded by a messenger.
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Isaiah 49.6 says God's salvation would reach the ends of the earth.
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And when you get to Isaiah 53, that's all about the atoning ministry of Jesus Christ.
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That whole chapter.
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Interestingly, in a lot of very Orthodox Jewish services, Isaiah 53 is actually skipped when they read through Isaiah.
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Because for a lot of the mindset, it's we don't want to think of the Messiah.
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We know the Messiah is coming, but we don't want to think of a Messiah who would come and suffer.
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So one of the main evangelism tools that are used to reach out to Orthodox Jews is opening their own scriptures to Isaiah 53. And a lot of Orthodox Jews have never read that, have never heard it, and they think that Christians are reading to them out of the New Testament, when in fact it's in the Old Testament. So clearly describes the ministry of Jesus Christ 700 years before Jesus was on the scene. Look at verse 35 again back in Acts chapter 8.
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Verse 34, "The eunuch said to Philip, 'About whom, I ask you, does the prophet say this?
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About himself or about someone else?' Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with this scripture, he told him the good news about Jesus." So understand, that's what Philip did, was he just preached Jesus.
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We spent a lot of time the last couple of weeks talking about the urgency of getting the gospel out.
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And when you share the gospel with someone, does anybody remember what's the word?
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We need to be clear.
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Clear.
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How do you share the gospel?
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Clearly.
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And that flies in the face of a lot of evangelism methods today.
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Notice Philip didn't take the guy golfing for three years, hoping that he could kindle some kind of a friendship with him so someday, maybe in a few years, I can invite him to come to church with me and maybe hear the gospel.
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He didn't do that.
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He didn't hand him a gospel tract.
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He very clearly, I'm not against gospel tracts, but he just very clearly opened his mouth and said, "Well, let me tell you what the Bible says about Jesus Christ," and laid it out.
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Here's some things that Philip would have told him, preaching Jesus, jot this down on your outline, because that's what we're after here, too.
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And if you don't know who Jesus Christ is or what he's done, I got some fantastic news for you today.
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I got the best news you'll ever hear today.
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Here's what it means to preach Jesus, first of all, number one, realize that I am a sinner by nature.
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Romans 3.23 says, "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." It has to start there. It has to start there.
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It has to start with us acknowledging our need and our dependence.
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You can go to any religion in the world, go to any atheist in the world, any agnostic in the world.
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Do you know there's one thing that every single person in the world agrees on?
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And that's that we are messed up.
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Everybody will agree with that.
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That there is something wrong.
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Now, of course, there might be different ways we try to define that.
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A psychologist might define it one way, and a Buddhist might define it another way, and an atheist might define it another way.
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But as Christians, we know from the Word of God what's wrong.
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We are born dead spiritually.
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We are born with a sin nature.
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The first thing you need to do is realize that I am a sinner.
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Number two, recognize that Jesus Christ died on the cross for my sin and rose from the dead to give me eternal life.
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We're going to be talking all about the atoning work of Jesus Christ here in a few weeks as we get into Easter.
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But understand that Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, came to this earth about 2,000 years ago and laid down his life by being publicly executed on a cross.
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A humiliating, painful and slow death.
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The Bible tells us that while Jesus was hanging on the cross, God's wrath was being poured upon him.
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That's why Jesus cried out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" He felt the separation from his heavenly father in a way that I can't understand or explain fully to be honest with you.
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But in that moment, Jesus became sin because he knew no sin.
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If Jesus would have sinned and he was nailed to the cross, we could have just said, "Well, he got what was coming to him." But because he was perfect in being punished, there's a sense in which, whose punishment is he bearing?
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While the God-man, Jesus Christ, was bearing my sin and your sin while he was on the cross.
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God was pouring his wrath out on Christ.
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And then they laid him in a tomb.
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But you know the rest of the story, right?
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Three days later, Jesus Christ rose from the dead to prove that sin and Satan and death have all been defeated.
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He died for our sins and He rose to give us life.
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You have to understand that, we'll get more into this in a couple of weeks, Jesus Christ wasn't just some martyr.
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He wasn't just some eye of the tiger inspirational story.
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He laid down his life and rose from the dead so that we could be forgiven of our sins and have eternal life.
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Number three, repent from my sin.
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Repent from my sin.
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Repentance is part of this.
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Repentance is a word that's almost completely become quote unquote outdated in the church.
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Who talks about repentance?
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But I'd like you to show me anywhere in God's Word where He offers forgiveness without repentance.
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He doesn't do it.
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Step one is repent.
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What does repent mean?
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Literally, it means to change your mind.
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The Bible talks about how our minds are renewed in Christ.
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That's what repentance means.
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A lot of times we associate repentance with actions.
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But if that were the case, I could train a monkey how to repent.
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It's not just the action.
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Repentance is you change your mind, you let your mind be renewed and your actions follow.
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But over and over, Scripture says, "Repent, turn from your sin." Number four, receive Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.
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Believe Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.
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It's through believing on His name, believing that Jesus is who He said He is, Lord, and that He accomplished what He said He would accomplish.
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It's by faith receiving that, trusting in Him.
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For A, we would say we make it personal through my profession.
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Romans 10 says that if we confess with our mouths that Jesus is Lord and believe in our hearts that God raised Him from the dead, we will be saved.
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So that's the profession.
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4b) We take it public by being baptized.
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That was the very first sermon when we launched last October, wasn't it?
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Jesus said, "Go and" what?
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"Make disciples." Teaching them, baptizing them.
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But baptism is part of it.
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We'll talk a little bit more about that this morning.
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And then number five, "Daily yield my will." Or you could say, "Die to self." It's the same thing.
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Daily, I yield my will, allowing God to work in me and through me.
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That's what the Christian life is.
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It's every day.
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Yielding my will.
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Well, back to our text here.
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Verse 36, and as they were going along the road, they came to some water and the eunuch said, see, here is water.
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What prevents me from being baptized?
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Now, in the Greek, the word for baptism simply means to immerse.
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And it's a picture of the spiritual rebirth process.
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So we have to understand that because there's all kind of crazy views about what baptism is and what it isn't, what it does and what it doesn't do.
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And you see, baptism is like a wedding ring.
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Now, I have a wedding ring on.
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This thing doesn't make me married.
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Right.
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But it says that I have been married.
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It's a picture.
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If this was the thing that made me married.
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I could take my wedding ring off and set it down somewhere and some kid could come along and put it on and say, well, now I'm married to Aaron.
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And I'm like, good luck with that kid.
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But no, no, no, no, no, no.
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That's sorry.
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I tried to stop that before it came out.
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I really did.
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I'm sorry. Can we erase that from the from the file? Okay, thank you. We have an A+ editing team. Dan Thompson's giving me a thumbs up. And Alicia's gonna be like, "Oh no, you're not going to erase that." But understand that the wedding ring doesn't make me married. It means I have been married. And baptism is the same way.
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Baptism is the public profession of the personal decision to follow Jesus.
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Just as at my wedding, I announced before God and before man, I am dedicating my life in marriage to this person.
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Baptism is sort of that same idea.
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You're making a public announcement before God and before others that you are giving yourself to Jesus Christ.
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And just as there's a lot of pictures and symbolism in a wedding, right?
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You have the white wedding dress, And then you have the something borrowed, something new, something...
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What? I don't know how that goes, sorry.
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How does that go?
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Yeah, something old, something new, something borrowed, something...
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Robert Frost wrote that, right?
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Who?
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Baptism is the public profession of the personal decision to follow Jesus.
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And then pick up in verse 37, you're like, "Oh, my Bible doesn't have verse 37." And some of your Bibles, it might be footnoted at the bottom, because the Bibles you have in your hand were compiled from 20-some thousand manuscripts that have been found.
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Some manuscripts had that verse in it, some didn't.
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And it's really not a deal breaker verse by any stretch of the imagination.
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But we're just we're going to read it.
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Verse 37, "And Philip said, 'If you believe with all your heart, you may.' And he replied, 'I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.'" Back up to verse 38, "And he commanded the chariot to stop, And they both went down into the water, Philip and the eunuch, and he baptized him.
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So Philip explains Christ.
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The eunuch accepted Christ, and Philip looked for a response, just as God does.
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Understand that there is a sense of urgency.
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In this message that Philip gave to the eunuch, did you see the urgency?
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Look back at the text.
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He shares the gospel with them in verse 36, the eunuchs like there's water right here.
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He had to have sensed that urgency.
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He didn't say, when I get back home, you know, maybe I'll schedule something three months down the road or, you know, let me.
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They were still on the way.
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Water. Let's do this.
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I love that sense of urgency.
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Let's just do it. Let's get it done.
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Here's water. Let's do it now.
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Now, some of you have never made this step.
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But I want to encourage you as we look at some questions here.
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I want you to understand the baptism biblically.
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as step one. Baptism is step one.
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And you might say, can you support that biblically?
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Well, if you go on our website, I wrote a whole blog about this in order to keep this sermon under three hours.
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But I just sat down with my Bible and I went through the book of Acts and everywhere I saw baptized, I just wrote a little couple of sentence paraphrase of what was happening.
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And you see the same theme over and over and over.
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Somebody preaches the message of the gospel, the people who hear it believe in Jesus Christ, and then immediately They were baptized on the spot. Let's do this now In fact an unbaptized Christian is foreign to the New Testament, it's just foreign to the New Testament So when I ask you if you made this step you see I this is a yes or no You know some sermons when I see you know if I say, you know, are you loving your wife?
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Well, yeah, I think I am I kind of try to do a good job and you know Maybe you allot yourself some gray area. There's no gray area here. Have you been baptized? Yes or no?
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Have you been If yes, then I want you to pray for the people there's people in this room right now that need to take this step I want you to pray for them if you've been baptized as a believer.
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And if not, let's close by looking at four questions.
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Four questions we're going to answer.
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What is baptism?
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Who is it for?
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What is its purpose?
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And when should a person be baptized?
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What is baptism?
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What is baptism?
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Here's the best, succinct, biblical definition, taking the whole counsel of Scripture, of what baptism is.
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Baptism is a visible—write this down, this is important—baptism is a visible, God-chosen, God-commanded response to our faith.
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I'm going to say that again.
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is a visible, God-chosen, God-commanded response to our faith.
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Just breaking that down very quickly, it's visible first of all means we can see it.
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It means it's something that you can physically see.
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It's God-chosen meaning it's something that He came up with.
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Understand, it wasn't, you know, Martin Luther's idea or John Calvin's idea or John Wesley's idea or some church or some theologian from 300 years ago decided, "I got an idea.
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When somebody gives their life to Christ, we'll throw them in water." That wasn't a church's or a person's idea.
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It was God's idea.
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So it's visible, it's God chosen, it's God commanded.
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Again, look at that blog on the website.
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It's called "Baptism, What's Trending in Scripture?" you see it over what shall we do?
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What shall we repent and be baptized?
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It was step one.
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It was step one on the spot, visible God chosen, God commanded in that last phrase, it's a response to our faith.
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It's a response.
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Because.
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Of what Jesus Christ has done for me, I'm responding with this public announcement.
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So to speak.
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So that's what baptism is, who is it for?
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Let her be. It is for people who have received Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.
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Or you could jot down it is for those who have been born again.
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It is for those who have been born again.
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Once again, I would refer you to that blog.
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You don't see anywhere in Scripture where a baby is baptized, you just don't see it.
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You don't see it. You don't see the word baptism and baby in the same verse anywhere in the Bible.
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You just don't see it.
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It's only for people who, by faith, have received Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and been born again.
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When my son Owen was born, he was born five weeks early.
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He weighed 10 pounds.
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He was a 10 pound preemie.
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So, you know, I'm in the delivery room and I'm expecting this little bundle of joy.
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You know, the little bundle of joy?
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I'm expecting them to come and say, "Mr. Miller, here's your little bundle of joy." It wasn't like that.
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It was, "Congratulations, Mr. Miller.
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"It's a boy." And it was like the ribs on Fred Flintstone's car.
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It was just like, "Whoa, he's got a mustache." But I remember that first time I took him in my arms, I said, "Owen, are you ready to receive Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior right now?" And he didn't answer me.
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I tried the same thing with Cade when he was born, he didn't answer me.
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Well, obviously I'm goofing around, but you get the point.
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Babies can't do that.
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Babies can't accept Jesus Christ or reject Jesus Christ.
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Babies can't do that.
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Right?
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People ask me all the time, "Well, what about children?" And I just want to caution you parents, you know, that's a case-by-case thing, but we don't encourage very young children to be baptized.
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We encourage you to disciple them into, as much as they can, understanding what that means.
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Now, have I baptized kids?
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Yes.
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not without a lot of sitting down, talking through, praying through, talking to parents.
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That's been my main thing, sitting down with mom and dad saying, "Hey, I want to hear from you.
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Do you think your child's ready to be baptized?" But never a child very young, and even then, always after intense counseling.
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But we want to encourage kids especially, it should be an adult experience.
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Meaning, you know, when you get to that age that you remember it as an adult experience.
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12, 13.
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There's no magic number though.
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Again, it's a case by case thing, but we just really are on our guard for young children.
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Do you really understand what this means?
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Do you understand the implications of the gospel?
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Do I believe that people get saved very young?
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Absolutely.
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But again, just caution.
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on that. It's for people who've received Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. And you might say, "Well, what if I've been baptized?" Well, I would ask you, "Has it been since you believed?" I've had people come to me and say, "Well, you know, I was baptized like five years ago, but I realized I really didn't receive Christ. I just did it because it was like heat of the moment kind of thing, and I got excited, and it was a weepy service thing, and I just..." If you haven't been baptized as a believer, you should be baptized.
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Understand this, and I can't emphasize this enough, baptism does not save you.
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OK, baptism does not save you.
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And there are some churches that teach that baptism does.
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But I've had talks with people, unbelievable.
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But I've had talks with people who have said.
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you know, about baptism being the way that you're saved.
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And I've thrown out this scenario.
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Well, what if we were talking right now and you weren't a Christian and.
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I share the gospel with you and you prayed to receive Christ and we get in my car and we're driving on the way to get baptized and we're both killed in a car accident, what would happen?
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I've had people tell me, well, then I'd go to hell.
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Really?
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That's God, right?
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That's God up in heaven looking down, going, OK, he prayed to receive Christ.
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He's on the way. He's on the way. Oh, man, he was this close to coming to heaven.
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This close. That's unfortunate.
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Ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous, baptism does not save you.
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You are saved. By God's grace.
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And it is your faith, actually faith that God gives you.
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that enables you to reach out and grab hold of God's grace.
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That's what saves you.
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Baptism. As a response.
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OK, it's the expression that you have been saved.
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Like, well, Pastor Jeff, I haven't been baptized, but I really don't know.
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Well, here's some excuses, common excuses for not getting baptized.
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And let's just get these out of the way.
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Okay? Number one, I was baptized as a baby.
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Again, that doesn't mean anything. I'm sorry. I don't...
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I was baptized as a baby. It doesn't mean anything.
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And to be honest with you, I barely remember it.
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It doesn't mean anything. I'm sorry.
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You know, to have to... if that shatters a strongly held belief that you've carried with you, but it doesn't mean anything.
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Baptizing a baby is nothing more than giving it a bath.
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OK, so if you've been baptized as a baby, that doesn't really mean anything.
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I'd encourage you. You know, if you've given your life to Jesus Christ, if you've received him, you need to be baptized.
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Number two, common excuse for not getting baptized.
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I defend my parents, slash family.
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I defend them.
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I would never teach you to do anything to directly try to offend anyone.
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However, this is a clear commandment from the Lord.
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And I would hope that you could sit down with your family and say, "You know what?
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This is what I have to do and here's why." It could be an opportunity for you to witness.
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But we must obey God rather than men. Amen?
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Number three, the common excuse for not getting baptized.
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I need to wait until I'm on track spiritually.
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I need to wait until I'm on track spiritually.
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It's the mindset of, you know what, I've received Christ, but.
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I still got a lot of stuff I'm working on here and I don't I really feel like I got to get a lot of stuff together before I get baptized.
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If that's your mindset, you will never get baptized.
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Right? Because there's always going to be something, you know, what, almost 17 years later, God's still working on me.
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There's always going to be something.
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You know, it's as if we have the ability to polish ourselves up enough to present ourselves before God in baptism.
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You've completely missed the picture.
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That's not the picture of baptism.
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It's, "I believe in Christ, I'm yielding my will, I want him to live in me and through me, and I'm making that public profession." Number four, "I don't like being in front of people." I don't like being in front of people.
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Well, that is a real concern for some people.
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Some people get shy.
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You know, we've done private baptisms.
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And here, the Ethiopian eunuch, it wasn't like, you know, Philip's like, "Come on, we're going to drag you to church." But I would encourage you, especially considering our circumstances, we have a baptism service coming up that I'm going to talk more about here in a second.
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But we don't have the ability to have a baptistry in here right now.
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So that's why we need to take advantage of this opportunity that's before us.
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So you're going to be in front of some people who are going to be celebrating what Christ is doing in you.
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So I'd encourage you to empower over that.
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You know, nervousness, shyness.
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You're not going to be asked to give a sermon or anything like that.
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But we'll talk about that.
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Don't let that get in the way.
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Do not let that get in the way of your obedience to the Lord.
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For real.
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Number five common excuse for not getting baptized.
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People say, "I need to pray about it.
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I need to pray about it." This might sound shocking, but there are some things you don't need to pray about.
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For example, if I said, "You know, I should love my wife, but I'm going to pray about that." What would you say?
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Like, "Dude, God says love your wife, love your wife." Or if I got up here some Sunday and said, "You know, I was going to share a message with you from the Bible, but I don't know.
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I'm going to pray about that." Preach the word.
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Well, baptism is the same thing.
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If you've been born again, there's nothing to pray about.
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It's an act of obedience.
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to just do it. Right? There's really nothing to pray. God made it very clear, as we've seen in His Word. Two more questions. Letter C is the profession of faith. What is its purpose? It's the profession of faith. Biblically, when somebody gives their lives to Christ, the profession doesn't come from signing a card or walking an aisle or raising your hand.
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profession of faith, biblically, is baptism. Again, this is what God chose.
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Jot down Romans 6, verses 1 through 5, and you can read that when you get home.
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But baptism, God chose baptism for a reason. It's a picture that that water is like a liquid tomb. And when you go under the water, what you're saying is, "I'm dead.
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I'm dead.
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I'm being buried right now.
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This is my funeral.
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I'm dead.
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That's what you're saying by going under the water.
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And when you come up out of the water, what you're saying is, "I'm alive.
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Jeff Miller died.
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Now Jesus Christ is alive in me.
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I'm identifying with the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ." That's the picture of baptism.
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Then finally, when should a person be baptized?
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It is to be done immediately upon belief.
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Immediately upon belief.
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Again urgency.
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Urgency, we've talked about that.
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Urgency.
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And there are some people here that have been walking with the Lord for quite a while that might be saying, "You know, I haven't done this yet.
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I've been walking with the Lord for years and I haven't been baptized." You might be wondering, "Is there an expiration date?
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Like there's some kind of a six-month window after?" No, there's not.
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I would encourage you, now that you know what the Bible says, you can only act on what you know.
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So, when we say urgency, when we say immediately, we're saying we have an opportunity right around the corner this month, March 21st.
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Seize the opportunity.
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Again, the announcement's in your bulletin, but we're going to be just down the road a bit at Northway, the Wexford campus.
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I've met with the pastor there a couple of times, and they're having, it's a Wednesday night service, March 21st, and it's a night of just some worship music and baptism, and I found out about that, and again, that's why I met with him.
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I said, "Hey, I believe that there's some people "in this room that are ready to take that step.
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"They've given their lives to Christ, "but they have not been baptized." I said, "Can we get in on that?" And he said, "Absolutely." He said, "We would just be thrilled to have you guys come and be part of that with us.
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So we're really thankful to Northway for opening their doors for us that way.
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And I want to encourage you, if you've not taken this step, after we close, if we can get ready to, for our closing song.
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But as we close the service, I'm going to be just hanging out up front here.
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Maybe there's somebody sitting here You're saying, "You know, I'm giving my life to Jesus Christ today." Or maybe there's somebody sitting here saying, "You know, I have given my life to Jesus Christ, but I haven't taken that step of being baptized.
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I'm going to be up here.
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Let's talk.
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All right, we're going to close in some worship, and I want you to come up.
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Now's the time.
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Okay?
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Let me have a prayer and then we'll close our worship service.
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Our Father in heaven, I thank you so much for the picture that you've given us in baptism.
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What a graphic picture it is, a picture of our own funeral.
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to identify with the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
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And Father, we know that you've never been about a religious act being the substance.
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We know, Father, that salvation comes from your grace.
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But your Word makes it very clear that when we are recipients of your grace, our profession is to be done in baptism.
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So Father, right now I pray for the people sitting in this room, and I know there are several right now who have been wrestling through this and have not taken this step.
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Father, I pray that there would just be a celebration of getting it done to stand up and testify to your grace and mercy that you poured out in Christ.
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Glorify your name, Father, in this way, we pray through Christ.
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Amen.
Small Group Questions (Whole Group):
Read Acts 8:25-38
Breakout Questions:
Pray for one another.