[00:00:01] Speaker A: Thanks for tuning in to the Met Church podcast. Here at the Met, we are all about connecting people to God and one another. If you have any questions or want more information about what's happening here at the church, then head to our
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[00:00:26] Speaker B: Thank you.
All right.
Always great to have family in the church.
Thank you.
Oh, it's great to see you. It's been a heavy week this last week, wouldn't you say? I think a lot of people just felt like it'd be good to be back in church and to worship a little bit, kind of get refocused and kind of get our hearts reset. They had that school shooting this past week. It's just incredible. It's hard to imagine. I know I'm an old guy when I talk about this, but those were things that I didn't ever think about when I was a kid growing up or even when my children were little. They didn't really worry about them going off to school, worried about something like that that could happen. And it's just a reminder that we're in a very fallen and evil world and that there is a devil, that he's real and he's effective on the earth today.
And we had that happen this last week. And then, of course, you have, of course, the murder of Charlie Kirk that happened. That hit just tens of thousands of lives. And then you had the commemoration of. Of 9 11.
And I remember on 9 11, September, on that day where we were getting ready to start the day, I was going in a little later to the office that morning. Cindy had the television on Good Morning America.
And so she was telling me that a plane had just hit one of the towers. And we thought, you know, like most people, we thought, that's just a freak accident. How in the world would something like that happen? And then like many of you, you're watching the television and suddenly the second plane hit.
And then all of a sudden the fear you have is that was not an accident. That was intentional. And your heart just sank, and you knew that we were in trouble. Something's going on in our country was so, so unsettling and was so difficult to comprehend.
One of my closest friends who's part of our church family, he serves on the board of the crc. Jim Wilkinson and his wife Erin and their kids.
Jim served at that time as special assistant to President Bush. And within an hour. Jim had called me, and he was with the President, and he said, we're preparing remarks for the nation. And he said, we need you to give us some verses or some thoughts of just how this hits you. We're calling a number of pastors, and we're just getting, you know, some impressions and some ideas as we formulate his comments and his remarks to the country. And, man, all of a sudden, you go out of grieving and, you know, trying to just deal with the drama of what you're dealing with into work mode.
And that happens a lot in my line of work, where you shift gears when you've had a hard week and you have a lot of questions and you have a lot of people who are hurt and some people who are angry, and you have a myriad of emotions. And then my job as a pastor is to try to take God's word through the power of the Holy Spirit and try to give some type of comprehension and some type of understanding to help people know that there is a God. And though he does not cause everything to happen, but he permits the things that happen, and that regardless of what happens, that he has a purpose and he has a plan. And at the end of the day, regardless of whether you agree with all that he does or all that he allows to happen, you have to learn, as I've learned in my life, to trust him.
Proverbs 3, 5, 6. Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Don't lean too heavily on your own understanding, but in all your ways, acknowledge him, and he'll make your paths straight. And I've learned in my life, and I know you as well, that life is truly made up of seasons. Not every season's bad, but some are. And you're gonna go through some hard seasons. You're gonna go through those in your marriage, you're gonna go through those in your business. You're gonna go through those in your personal life. And I go back to a verse that really spoke to me when Cindy went to heaven, and that was in Ecclesiastes 3, where Solomon wrote, to everything there is a season. Life is full of seasons. And to those seasons there's a time that's given for every purpose under heaven.
And it really hit me that we're here as long as God has purpose. Purpose is connected to time, according to Ecclesiastes 3. And in the midst of the time and the purpose that God has given us, we go through these different seasons. And you and I, really, at the end of the day, we're immortal. Until God is finished with us. And the minute our purpose ends and the minute that happens, God calls us home.
That happened in the life of my wife. It happened in the lives of, of many on 9, 11. And it happens every day that we live. We have people who leave this earth who step into the presence of God, absent from the body, and present with the Lord. And we know at the end of the day, God had a purpose and a plan. The season of their life came to an end, and God just simply called him home. And the hope that we have in the midst of all the sorrow that we deal with is that there is a heaven. And one day, though we don't know this side of the line, why things happen, we know one day in heaven we will know. And in the midst of all that, guys, I would tell you to keep the faith. Keep trusting Jesus. He will not fail you. Churches will fail you, and pastors will fail you, and friends will fail you. But Jesus will never fail you. And if you don't know Him, I highly recommend him.
And he will never let you down. He said, I'll never leave you. I'll never forsake you. He's that friend who will come into your world if every other friend walks out. And so I just simply say, in the midst of your hurt, in the midst of your pain, in the midst of your questions, trust Jesus. Just lean into him. Lean on him, and he will not fail. So with that said, I just wanted to talk to you a little while this morning about this series that we're in, where we're looking at things that unite us, these core beliefs. And not everything unites people. We're living in a very divided world. And Paul was writing to the church at Ephesus. That's why we have the book of Ephesians. It's the letter to that church. It's a church, by the way he started and Paul is writing to this church. And this church was very diverse. They had people of different backgrounds. They had religious people, they had irreligious people.
They had people who were indifferent to religion. They had all kinds of backgrounds. It kind of reminds me of the average church that, like our church, we have people of all kinds of backgrounds. Most churches do. And so we come from different places, we come from different life experiences. We have great diversity within the body of a church. And that is as it should be. There's nothing wrong with diversity. There's nothing wrong with having different outlooks, the way we look at things. Perspectives, I guess I should say, and opinions about Certain things. In fact, the dynamic of a church that makes it so astounding is that a church with great diversity can be a church that experiences enormous unity, that we can be united. In fact, the Bible never calls upon a church to embrace uniformity.
Uniformity. It's not the uniformity of the Holy Spirit. Now, uniformity has a place. Uniformity is important. If you go into the military or you've served, that's uniformity. Uniform of the day. They're gonna tell you when to get up and go to bed, what to wear, what to eat, when to eat it, what you're to do. Almost to the down to what you think. I mean, that's uniformity. And it's an important discipline if you're serving in the military. So there's a place for uniformity. But it doesn't talk about that in the life of the church. We don't all have to see everything the same way and still love each other. It's not the uniformity of the Holy Spirit the Bible talks about in Ephesians 4. It's the unity of the Holy Spirit. And by the way, that's something only God can bring. Only God can bring people of diverse backgrounds and allow them to love each other and allow them to be on the same page with one another, allow them to pray for one another, allow them to, by love, serve one another. And that's, ladies and gentlemen, that's the dynamic of the local church. That's what makes a church and a church experience different than any other organization you can be a part of. There's a lot of great organizations you can be a part of, but there's nothing like the church, because the church is more than just an organization. Listen to this. The church is an organism. It is a living, breathing thing.
In the Old Testament, God had a temple for his people.
But in the New Testament, God has a people for his temple. You and I are the bodies of the Holy Spirit. And when we individually gather collectively and we become a part of his body here on the earth, we have a powerful potential that is found within that group of people. There's nothing that a church cannot do. There's nothing that we cannot accomplish. In fact, when Jesus established the church in Matthew 16:18, he said, Listen, the gates of hell cannot prevail against the church. You know what that means? I used to think, gates of Hell, that that was a.
You know, that that was meaning that the gates of hell are charging after you. And, you know, and even if hell comes after you, you know that they. It will not prevail. But that's not the imagery. Gates are defensive. They're not offensive. He's simply saying that if the church decided to charge Hell, they. That the gates of hell could not withstand against the power of the Church.
And let me tell you something. There's nothing that we as God's people, there's nothing we cannot do. The problem that you and I face is we're up against a real adversary. And the Bible said our fight is not against flesh and blood. Would to God, people could get that.
He said the fight is not against flesh and blood. But read Ephesians 6. It's against spiritual wickedness in high places.
There is a spiritual evil. There is an evil that's prevalent in our world that drove a lot of what we've experienced in our country and in our families. And there is a real literal devil that works through many of his angels called demons. And I want to tell you something this morning that he has a strategy.
And the closer you get into God, the more you become a threat to his strategy here on the earth. Here's a strategy. It's really pretty simple. In fact, when the Apostle Paul wrote about the devil, he said, we're not ignorant of his devices, meaning he'll do what he's done. He's a pretty easy enemy to study. If you want to know what the devil will do, look and see what he's done. The Bible's full of illustrations. Look and see what he does. Where God is in the business of adding, he's in the business of dividing. And one of the things the devil will do is he will attack people. And the first part of his strategy is to try to keep you away from God. He'll try to keep you away from God. Meaning that he doesn't want people in this room or people watching or people in our community or in our country. He doesn't want people to know Jesus Christ as their personal savior. Because, folks, that is the most significant, that is the most important decision you'll ever make in your life, is to trust Jesus as your Savior. And he does everything in his power to keep you away from God. That's the most significant thing, that is the most insidious thing that the devil will do is to try. Cause that's the difference between heaven and hell, what you do with Jesus. So the first thing he'll do is keep you away. And sometimes he uses people to do that. You see, God set this thing up legally to where you have to in order to influence or in order to Touch someone, you have to have a body legally. God set the earth up that way when he created mankind. And what that means is these demonic spirits, the only way they can touch us and the only way they can affect us is through the work in us other people's lives.
That's how they work. There is a thing called demonic possession. I do believe that demonic influence and satanic power can infiltrate someone's life. And I do believe that. Now, I don't believe that can happen to a Christ follower. When you read First Corinthians 11, the Bible speaks of the fact that light and darkness cannot exist in the same body, that you can't have the Holy Spirit and the unholy Spirit in the same body. Now, while we cannot be possessed by the unholy spirit, we can be obsessed by the unholy spirit, meaning that he can dog us and he can tempt us and he can affect us in a lot of ways that help influence our decisions. So the first strategy, don't miss this. The first strategy of the devil is to keep you away from God. And sometimes he'll use people to do that.
Sometimes he'll use people who are good examples of good examples, and he'll use people who are good examples of bad examples. But he tries to keep people from. And then the second thing is, the second part of his strategy is if he can't keep you away from God, he'll do his best to keep you from doing anything for God. He'll sideline you, put you on the bench, send you back up into the bleachers, get you off the field. He'll do anything within his power to keep you from sharing your faith, to keep you from standing up for the right thing, to keep you from saying, I'm gonna be a person that lives by principle, a person that lives by conviction. I'm gonna swim upstream my. Like Joshua said, as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. That takes some backbone. That takes some courage. And the devil will do everything to keep you from being effective in your life as you try to be a good reflection of Jesus Christ.
By the way, the bottom line is you and I are called, according to Acts 1:8, to be witnesses. And the moment you receive Jesus as your savior, that very moment, God begins process of transforming us into the image of His Son.
When you read Acts, chapter 29. I'm sorry, Acts, chapter 8, verse 29, the Bible says he's in a process of conforming us into the image of His Son.
Best illustration I can give you is Cindy and I, years ago, we saw a guy up in Missouri, and he was carving on these little figurines out of wood. And he was such a great artist. He could take this piece of wood and he could make something amazing out of it. Just whittle and carve and make these little things, figurines out of it, and sold it for a lot of money. Amazing. And I asked him one time, he was just sitting there, you know, just small, talking with people. And I said, man, how in the world. How do you do that? How do you. You know, how do you create that? I've tried to do. I can't. I don't have that. I don't have that ability. He goes, well, I start with a piece of wood. I envision what this piece of wood can look like. I take my knife, and anything that doesn't look like that, I'd simply cut away.
Well, that makes sense, right? But you ever tried to do that?
But can I tell you what God is in the business of doing? God is in the business of taking our lives. He knows what our lives could look like. And he's in the business of carving everything away from our lives that doesn't look like that finished product.
And I'm saying, ladies and gentlemen, that the people. Please hear this. The people and the places who are at the center of Holy Spirit activity, when will be the people and the places at the center of unholy spirit activity?
Anywhere God is at work building, the devil will be at work blasting.
It's stunning to me, honestly, as a pastor, and I've been in ministry for 50 years of my life. And it's stunning to me that in this day and age, we have to have armed security at our church, and we do.
I was pastoring when Wedgwood Baptist had a guy walk into their youth service one Wednesday night and shoot up a bunch of the kids in that youth service. And all of a sudden, if you remember that story here in Fort Worth, that started a dynamic the churches had never embraced before. I mean, we had guys out watching the parking lot so nobody would steal hubcaps.
You know, we had that going on, but, I mean, we didn't have anybody worried about somebody coming in here and shooting somebody. And that's just been a dynamic, guys. That has happened over the life of church in general.
Now we have to lock down schools, and we have to. I'm just saying.
It's just for an old guy like me, it's incredible to see what is happening in our world today. And it reminds me of what the Bible says when it says evil men and seducers will wax worse and worse until the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And I can tell you it's gonna continue to kind of go on this trajectory until Jesus comes. And the good news about the bad news is Jesus is coming.
He is. I read the last book of the Bible, by the way. We win.
And I'm just suggesting to your heart, and I'm just telling you this morning that there's a reason why we have to have security.
Believe it or not, we've been criticized for that.
We have uniformed security. We have people who are plain clothes security.
You guard what's important. We've had people say, I can't believe a church would have security. Well, I wish we didn't have to have it, but we have it. And I don't make apologies for it. We are the church that will shoot back.
So you don't wanna be naive and you don't want to stick your head in the sand and be unaware that we're living in a very dangerous time. We're living in a very wicked time. But I'm just saying that don't despair because God's still on the throne.
This is still his church. He will not fail. And I look into the Bible and I see example after example of God coming through for his people. For example, think about this. And I'm getting to my message and I'm gonna be real short this morning. I am watching the clock.
Have you ever heard a shotgun message where you just go. You hit a bunch of different stuff and you're not with nothing in particular? That's what this is. This is called a. What they call it a stream of consciousness or something. So I hope it makes sense. I hope. If you're visiting. I'm not normally this scattered. I am. I've told you that two or three times. I'm normally not this scattered. I just got a lot on my mind, but I don't even know where I was going with that. No, but the point is, I don't know. There was a point there.
When I think about. Oh, I know. When I think about in the Bible, example after example of people who despaired and how God came through. There's a great verse in Hebrews where it talks about shaking that comes in Hebrews 12. And the reason the shaking comes is so that once the shaking is done, you can see the things that are permanent and those were the things that will remain.
And God sometimes allows shaking experiences in your life. He allows the foundations to shake. I remember one of the things that President Bush talked about in his remarks to the nation. He said, these towers have fallen, but the foundations remain. I remember Billy Graham at the National Prayer Service. He said that the enemy can attack the buildings of our nation, but they can never shake the foundation upon which our country is built. And I thought about how that affects us. In 1 Corinthians 3. The Bible says there's no greater foundation that can be laid than the foundation that is laid. And the foundation, it says, is Jesus Christ.
Let me tell you something, friend. When you're building your life on Jesus, the times will shake. The difficult times will come. It'll shake your life. And the buildings of your life may fall, and some of the ideas you've had may go. Some of your dreams may not be realized. But if you're built on Jesus, you've got enough to begin again.
Those foundations are sure, and those foundations are solid. I think about, for example, the apostle Paul, man. He started out as a man who hated Christians. He started out as a man who did everything he could to stop the cause of Christ and to kill the church.
And by the way, he thought he was doing God's work.
He was Saul of Tarsus, and he went about persecuting Christians. In fact, you have the first martyr we've heard that word this last week. A martyr. When you think about Charlie Kirk, they'd thrown away around the word martyr. When you think about a martyr, the first martyr of the New Testament in Acts, chapter seven was Stephen.
And the Bible says the person that ascended to the death of Stephen was Paul Saul of Tarsus. Now, the reason he had to assent to his death is because Paul was authorized by the government to actually carry out capital punishment. The Jewish people and the average citizens didn't have that authority.
According to the Jewish law, anyone who claims to be God could be stoned to death. And so Stephen was going around saying, jesus that we've just crucified has been risen again. He's living. He's. He's alive. He started this thing called the Church, and Jesus Christ is God. He is the Son of God. And it infuriated the Roman government. So they authorized Saul.
They authorized him to go around and put that rebellion down.
And the enemy was creating a narrative about the church. When you read and you study it, they were creating a narrative that said, these people are cultic, they're crazy, these people, they're cannibals.
And they were taking the Lord's Supper and they were taking the eat his body and drink his blood to be literal. And they were saying, this is accountable cult. Well, you could already see how there was a narrative being shaped. And the narrative that was being shaped was distorting the truth of what they were actually doing to influence people.
And so here's Stephen saying, no, that's not what's going on at all. Jesus Christ is the only answer. And I'm gonna tell people about whether you believe in it or not. I'm gonna tell people about Jesus and man. The religious group got together and they. They stoned him. And the Bible says in Acts 7, Saul. Saul signed the death warrant.
So don't miss this. This is the man who, in two chapters from Acts 7, would receive Jesus as his savior. But something happened in Acts, chapter seven that changed his life. And that's when he saw how a Christian died.
He saw the death of Stephen the martyr.
And what's crazy about it is Stephen didn't do what you would have thought he might have done. He didn't begin to curse the people who were stoning him.
I don't know if I would have been that gracious. You're throwing a rock at me. I might go Old Testament on you.
I just don't know. I still got an old flesh that I battle. And that old flesh sometimes just. You know what I mean? I don't want to grab him, run out of the house with them. But Stephen didn't do that.
In fact, what Stephen did, when he recognized the fact that he was going to die, Stephen said something that was so beautiful and so profound that I think it changed Paul's. I think it planted a seed in Paul's mind that allowed him later to come to faith in Jesus. Here's what he said. He said in the last verses of Acts 7, I see Jesus standing at the right hand of the Father on high.
Now, what's so profound about that?
Well, every time in the Bible you read about Jesus, the Bible says he's seated at the right hand of the majesty on high. He's sitting, not standing.
Now, what happens when a person stands? Well, I was taught, you know, if a lady enters a room, you stand. I'm old school.
And if you had a dignitary, if we were to say, you know, there's a. There's a certain person that's walking in the room. We're gonna. We're gonna honor them.
We're gonna stand to honor them because we recognize the, you know, the office they hold or the power they represent. You would stand.
So when Jesus stood, he was welcoming one of his kids home. He was standing at the right hand of the majesty on high. And Stephen talked about what he saw, and he died.
Well, I think in that moment, I think the Holy Spirit planted something in the mind and the heart of Paul after seeing Stephen die that he never got away from. Because two chapters later, the Bible says he's on the road to Damascus, writing he's going to kill other Christians. And a light shines out of heaven and a voice cries from that light, saul, why do you persecute me?
The Bible says Saul falls from his horse and he looks up into the heavens and he says, who are you, Lord?
And he said, I am Jesus that you're persecuting.
Now, when you read that, you say, well, wait a minute, Saul wasn't persecuting Jesus. Jesus was in heaven. Here was what Saul was doing. He was persecuting one of the kids.
And you know what happens when you go after one of Jesus kids? You go after him.
Every mama bear in the room knows this morning, if you want to get you on their last, you go after your baby, you go after your. Oh, I wouldn't want to be around some of you mamas if somebody goes after your babies. Now, we dads, we'll go after them, too. But there's something about the fury of a mama.
And I'm just saying, as much as you and I love our kids, God loves us even more. And when man, when something happens to one of his kids that moves the heart of God, he says, vengeance is mine. I will repay. I'd just say, buy the popcorn. Keep watching.
And I'm just suggesting to you that when Paul saw Stephen die, it did something in his heart. It prepared his heart to receive Jesus as savior. And here's the significance of this.
Paul would later write over half of the New Testament, he would become one of the greatest evangelists that ever lived. And all of it goes back to the martyrdom of Stephen.
When he saw a man die for his faith and what he believed implanted something in his heart, even though it didn't initially, he still hated. He still hated Christians. But I'm saying it planted something in his heart. The Holy Spirit used to plant a seed that soon would create a faith that would be planted in Jesus that would change hundreds and millions of people's lives.
So never underestimate what God can do in the most difficult times and even in the darkest times. And God is at work where man rules. Listen, God overrules.
Now, this is why it's important in the Eight minutes I've got left with you.
When Paul talked about one baptism.
When Paul talked to that church at Ephesus about being united, he said, we're united around one Baptist. Now, I talked a few weeks ago about spirit baptism.
And I don't believe that Paul's being redundant here when he talks about baptism. Cause he's already talked about one spirit. So this is a different. I think he's talking about here, water baptism.
And here we have one spirit, which I believe in spirit baptism. And my view of spirit baptism is that happens when you receive Jesus as Savior.
Now, I have folks and pastors that may disagree with that, but they're wrong about other stuff. So I'm okay with that.
No, I'm just kidding. Sort of. But the point I'm making is you cannot have Jesus Christ. In my view, you can't have Jesus as Savior.
If the Holy Spirit, who's one of three of the triune Godhead, you can't have one without the other two. You don't get God on the installment plan. He said in Romans, he said, if anyone does not have his Spirit, he doesn't belong to him. So one of the ways he describes receiving Jesus as Savior calls it the baptism of the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit comes into your life. You are immersed in the Holy Spirit, you become a child of God. And there is a difference now between the baptism of the Holy Spirit and the fullness of the Holy Spirit.
The fullness of the Holy Spirit is something that has to happen every day.
He said in First Corinthians 6, you're bought with a price. Therefore glorify God in your body and in your Spirit which belong to God. So when you receive Jesus, the baptism of the Holy Spirit, that doesn't mean you have the fullness of the Holy Spirit.
The Bible says that he bought the house. You're bought with a price. But you didn't let him in all the rooms. You didn't yield control to his authority. He's not yet the full Lord of your life. You led him in to reside, but you haven't given him permission to preside. You see the difference.
And the fullness of the Spirit happens when I began to open up doors to rooms that I've never let him in before. And now God has full access to my life.
I let him in the attic and I let him in the garage, and I let him in the junk room and I let him into every. There's not an area of my life God doesn't have that's the fullness of the Holy Spirit. So that's the baptism of the Spirit.
But I think in this case, Ephesians 4, when he says, One baptism, I think he's talking about water baptism. What we've experienced this morning. And let me briefly touch on that by sharing in Acts, Chapter 8, a story that happened with Philip when he met the treasurer of Ethiopia and he led this man to Jesus Christ.
And the first thing the man said once Philip led him to Christ was, here's water. Can I be baptized? And Philip says, whoa, wait a minute. Let's make sure that you've trusted Jesus as savior, because you aren't baptized in order to be saved. You're baptized because you have been saved.
And once the man said, no, I believe in Jesus with all my heart and soul, with all my mind. Then at that point, he said, well, here, let's go. And the Bible says they both went down into the water and he was baptized. So if you're taking notes, I'm gonna give you my outline, and we're gonna go home.
Number one, you see the meaning of baptism. What is the meaning of baptism? The meaning of baptism is it signifies the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Read Romans, chapter 6, verses 3 and 4. It covers that beautifully. When you saw these folks baptized a moment ago, when they went back into the water, the meaning of it is it symbolizes death.
When you go down under the water, it symbolizes burial. When you come up out of the water, it symbolizes resurrection to walk now in a new life.
So the meaning of baptism is it is a beautiful picture of the work of Christ in our life. And then you have the method of baptism. Point two, the method of baptism. The meaning is tied into the method. Now, what is the method or the mode of baptism? Well, we use water by immersion because it typifies and symbolizes burial.
I talked a few weeks ago about King James when he authorized the Bible to be translated from Greek into English in 1611. One of the things the translators came upon was this word baptizo.
And they knew what the word in the Greek means. Baptizo by definition is to dip or plunge or immerse. The problem is, King James didn't believe that he practiced a different method of baptism. Maybe he sprinkled, I don't know. But he didn't baptize by immersion, so they thought, he's king.
How are we gonna get around this? If we translate that word baptizo as dip plunger, we're gonna be in trouble. So instead they didn't translate it that way. They did a transl transliteration. They used a different word, which is our word commonly known as baptize. And that can be different types of mode implied by being baptized. But the original intent, according to the translators and understanding the Greek definition and the meaning of the word, was the mode of baptism, though it pictures death, burial, and resurrection, the mode would be immersion. Now, I would also tell you that is immersion, not submersion.
You see, what's the difference? If I submerge you in that water, that means I'm not bringing you up for a while.
You don't want to be submerged. I kid people all the time about I'm going to hold them under till I bubble all the sin out of them.
That's really not what happens. I mean, that's just Fort Worth water. You get in that tub dry, you come out wet.
It's a symbol. It's a symbol. It is pointing us to the Savior. It is showing everyone, going public with our faith. And the mode of that experience is immersion, not submersion.
So it's immersion with an I followed by immersion with an E, meaning you go down into something you emerge out of. You go down and then you come out. Because that is exactly what happened in the life of Jesus.
The Bible speaks of the baptism of Jesus. The Bible says he went down into the water to come up out of the water. You can't come out up out of something you hadn't first gone down into.
So Jesus was baptized by immersion. And by the way, this is an interesting little fact.
When Jesus was baptized, it is the first time in all of the Bible. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, the only time in all the Bible that the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit are all together in one place and active.
You have Jesus being baptized. You have a voice from heaven, which is the voice of his Father, saying, my beloved Son, whom I'm well pleased. And you have the Spirit descending on Jesus as a dove. What am I saying? I'm saying there's something special about a baptism.
I'm saying there's something spiritual about a baptism. I'm saying there's something significant about a baptism. So I've given you the meaning. I've given you the method. Here's the last one. There's the motive.
The motive is it's obedience to God. He said that we are to be baptized. Matthew 20:8 in the great Commission, go and tell them about Jesus baptizing them. So when you are baptized, you are. I talk about the first step of obedience. You're being obedient. Not only that, you're showing forth. You're showing forth the work that God has already done in your life.
It's an outward testimony of an inward transaction.
I read an interesting story.
A pastor friend shared it. He knew the people that were there. They were visiting years ago, during the Johnson administration, when Lyndon Johnson was president, they were visiting the Smithsonian, which, if you've never been to Washington, you ought to go to the Smithsonian. It's an incredible thing to see. And they were visiting the ball gowns of the first ladies.
And so these group had gathered and they were taking pictures, and they were standing in front of the ball gowns of the first ladies. And all of a sudden, just out of nowhere, a Ladybird Johnson, who was the wife of the president, Lyndon Johnson, she just kind of walks up into the crowd, and of course, people immediately recognize who she was. She had a little Secret service detail with her, and they're like, oh, my gosh, there's the first lady. So she walks up, and they're talking to her, and they're just blown away that the first lady is here and there's her ball gown. We're just looking. We're just talking about you and having this great experience. Well, the guy's.
The guy in the back doesn't know what's going on down in the front. He lose patience, and he yells, would you guys step out of the way? I'm trying to take a picture of Lady Bird's ball gown.
And never knew Lady Bird was standing right in front of him. And they said, she very graciously steps out of the way, out of the shot.
And so now here's Lady Bird Johnson, first lady of the country, with her Secret Service detail and this obnoxious man back there getting his picture of her ball gown, not knowing the real thing is standing right there.
He never met her, never knew, walks away. And everybody talked about how crazy to be that close to the real thing and miss it.
And I thought, when I heard that story, I said, that's what baptism is. It's the picture.
But if you just know the picture and you don't know the real thing, you missed it.
If you just have the symbol and you don't have the Savior, you've missed it.
The most important thing. The most important thing is to know Jesus as your savior.
The most important thing is to trust him with all your heart and to believe on him. And then once you've stepped through that threshold, follow his example in baptism.
Not be afraid to say to this world, I know Jesus. Live or die, sink or swim. I'm gonna live for him. And I'm gonna let everybody know that I believe in Jesus unashamedly, proudly.
And I'm going to declare that as long as I live. Let's pray together.
Father, I thank you for your word.
Thank you for the opportunity that we've had to be here to celebrate baptism, to experience, worship, to hear your Word.
And Father, I pray for all the folks who are here this morning. Many of them just going through difficult things in their life. Some of them may be marital, some financial, some.
Some related to the career.
Some may just be having difficulty processing some of the craziness that have happened in our world over the past few days.
But Father, help us to walk from this place understanding the fact that you are the answer. You are the answer to whatever the question may be, that if we fall anywhere, let us fall at your feet, because we know you will not. Because you cannot fail.
And finally, Father, I pray for my friends who may never have trusted you, that this might be the moment where they swallow their pride and say, lord Jesus, with everything I know about me, I now trust all that I know about you. Come into my heart.
Forgive my sin.
And Lord, I ask this in Jesus precious name. Amen.
[00:35:55] Speaker A: Thank you so much for tuning in today. If you have any questions or prayer requests, please contact us by visiting metchurch.com so that we can follow up with you this week. We look forward to seeing you next week.
