My prayer this morning is, Heavenly Father, that you will grant me clarity, that you will help me to present your word in a way that will be uplifting and encouraging, and that the candidates who are about to experience the water baptism will remember this as a great benchmark in their life. In Jesus’ name I pray, Amen.
Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee, into a mountain where Jesus had appointed them, and when they saw him, they worshipped him.
But some still doubted. Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.
And lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. And then I want to read a portion from the book of Acts. It’s in Acts chapter 2, when Peter got up on the day of Pentecost and he preached.
And it says that, I believe that they started speaking out even before he was finished preaching his sermon. I believe they almost interrupted his sermon. It says, When they heard this, they were pricked in their hearts, and said unto Peter and the rest of the apostles, Men and brethren, what are we going to do? Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.
And then I want to read a little bit of a lengthy passage. It’s in the book of Acts, and in chapter 8. And it’s about an evangelist whose name was Philip. And the Lord directed him to go and find an Ethiopian.
It was the Ethiopian’s day to have an encounter with Jesus. I want you to listen closely as I read this to you. Because there’s no mention of baptism until the Ethiopian brings it up.
That is, there’s no mention of it in the in the record. But obviously, when Philip was preaching to the Ethiopian, he made water baptism a very important feature of the message that he was presenting. Listen for it. The angel of the Lord spoke unto Philip saying, Arise and go toward the south unto the way that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza, which is a desert. And he rose and he went, and behold, a man of Ethiopia, a eunuch of great authority, under Candace, who was at that time the Queen of Ethiopia. He had charge of all her wealth.
And he had come to Jerusalem to worship. An Ethiopian is traveling to Jerusalem to worship. So what was his religious pedigree? He’s going to Jerusalem to worship.
He’s a Jew. He was returning and sitting in his chariot. So he’s already been to Jerusalem.
And he’s on his way back to Ethiopia. And he’s got questions in his mind. He’s returning.
And he’s reading from Isaiah the prophet. Then the Spirit said unto Philip, Go near him and join him in his chariot. I went for a little ride on my chariot yesterday.
Philip ran to him and heard him and the prophet reading. He heard him reading the prophet Isaiah. And he said, Do you understand what you’re reading? The Ethiopian replies, How can I unless some man can teach me, guide me? And he desired that Philip would come up and sit with him up in his chariot.
The place of the scripture what he had already been reading was he was led as a sheep to the slaughter. And like a lamb is silent before his shearer, so he did not open his mouth. In his humiliation, his judgment was taken away.
And who’s going to declare his generation for his life is taken from the earth? The eunuch answers, I pray you, of whom is the prophet speaking? Of himself or of another person? Philip opened his mouth and began at the same passage and preached Jesus to him out of Isaiah 53. I pause just for a moment to just let you know a little secret. You can go to any synagogue in the world today and you’ll not hear Isaiah 53 quoted in any way shape or form.
And why? They don’t know what to do with it. They’re like the Ethiopian. Who is this man? Who is suffering so desperately? Who has the hand of God? Who is going to pay the price for our sin? Who’s gonna do it? And the Jews can’t read it.
It drives them crazy. Dear Jesus, bring Isaiah 53 right before their nose. Amen.
We love the Jews. We love the Jews. I told you, go a little nuts sometimes.
They went on their way, continuing, and they came to a certain water. And the Ethiopian says, hey, there’s water. Give me a reason why I can’t be baptized.
And Philip said, if you believe with all your heart, we’ll go ahead with the baptism. And he answered and said, I believe. This is from Isaiah 53.
He became convinced. He said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. That’s all that’s required. That’s all that’s required. Do you believe that Jesus is the Christ? And if you say yes, that means you accept all of Jesus. You don’t get away with saying, well, I believe in Jesus, but… No, you keep your butt out of it.
There’s no ifs and there’s no ands. Well, I believe he was a good person. No, that’s not what I… Do you believe he’s the Messiah? And in order for Jesus to be the Messiah, he had to die.
And in order for our salvation to be secured, and that we would know that we know that we know heaven is our home. He had to rise again and walk among us and be seen by many. And to report to us that he was going to his father’s house in heaven to prepare a place for us.
And he’s coming back to take us. Who are the us? Those who follow him in his death to the old life and to sin. Those who in him have been raised again.
The Apostle Paul in the book of Romans talks about us. When he was on the cross, we were there with him. When he went down in the grave, we were there with him.
When he rose again from the dead, we were there. When he went to heaven and he ever lives, so now you and I live in him. That’s the key word when you’re reading the epistles.
We are in him. I’m trying to get excited today. He commanded the chariot to stop.
They went down into the water, Philip and the Ethiopian. And he baptized him. And then you can hear Philip saying, okay, Scotty, beam me up.
He suddenly vaporized. He was gone. I’m about to share with you the results of I’ve lost track of how many hours I spent on this.
But this is not a brag. This is how much trouble it is for me to get ready to break the bread of life to you. I spend 14, 16 hours a week studying, digging, digging, digging, because I fear standing in this place and giving you a half-baked cake.
But as I studied for this one, boy, I got lost in the wilderness. I got lost in the weeds. Then I became somewhat disappointed in the church.
Because even over water baptism, we’re so fractured. We’re all over the planet. No wonder we’re confused by times.
In the first 200 years of the church, they had, the leadership had established that there were seven sacraments. Sacraments. Sacraments.
What’s a sacrament, pastor? Well, by the church’s suggestion, by the church’s conclusion, a sacrament, that being a churchy word, not in the book. They like the word. They call it a sacred, sacred, sacrament.
In other words, something that takes place that is sacred. So sacred that if it’s called a sacrament, there’s something tremendously, volumelessly, volumeful. I just made up a word.
I like that. In a sacrament, the church, who’s the church? You’ll figure that out. We’re part of the church.
Through a sacrament, those who would use this word sacrament, they would imply by that word that the Lord is present and it’s not just a few moments out of a service. That there’s going to be a transition. There’s going to be a powerful moment because of the sacrament.
Because just doing this ritual is honoring God’s word and something’s going to happen in people’s lives. Pastor Dave, is that what happens when we assemble at this table for communion? No. We do not practice sacraments.
We practice, are you ready? Ordinances. Oh, now you’re getting us into the weeds, Pastor. You said you’re in the weeds.
There are these two concepts, sacraments and ordinances. And it wasn’t until last night it occurred to me, the word ordinance is not a difficult word. This town has ordinances.
They’re called standards of our community together. These are the standards. It’s 40 miles an hour, 40 kilometers an hour down this road.
Almost nobody believes that. I’m doing 40 along here and there’s all these young guys in their car. They’re doing everything but they’re on my back bumper.
And I just wave, go on, go on, go on. They race by me going as fast as they. There’s an ordinance in this town and the ordinance is called, this is the standard to keep our children at standards.
So this is a standard preoccupation of the church. That because Jesus said do this often in remembrance of me. Those words are carved in the front of that table.
This do in remembrance of me. So it’s a standard of our Christian experience in him. Is it just part of our relationship here? No.
I go up and I go down to Fonthill by times and I visit the people who desperately want to be here. And that is Jerry and Marnie. We went last night and had a time of refreshment with them.
And she said, I bragged through the whole community where we live. It’s a retirement. She said, I brag about how my pastor and his wife come.
And she said, and how he brings communion to Jerry and I. So it’s not about the gathering of all the people. It’s about you having communion with the Lord through this ordinance. But then there’s the other church or churches who have committed themselves to a sacrament.
So because it’s a sacrament, it’s more holy than that. It’s more powerful than this. So pastor, what do they believe about this? Well, they call this a Eucharist.
Well, I thought this is about water baptism. It is. I’m going to get there.
Wait. They would approach the table, but they would call this a sacrament because we would say it’s an ordinance. Oh, how did you enjoy the ordinance this morning? We don’t talk like that, but we had communion.
Oh, I love communion Sunday. It’s always so pleasant. And I always feel the presence of the Lord.
That’s okay. But to the Romans, the Roman Catholic church, this is a sacrament. And here’s what they believe.
That God is not only present, but you see, in a sacrament, they tend, they, whoever they are, they tend to read in the scriptures and they read these words. Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no part with me. On the night in which he was betrayed, he took bread and he broke it.
He said, this is my flesh broken for you. Eat it. And at the conclusion of the meal, this is a sacrament.
At the conclusion of that meal, he turned and he held it up a cup and he said, this is the blood of the New Testament. Every one of you are to drink of it. We have a new theology that’s born through that idea.
It’s not in the book. What’s in the book is Jesus says, my flesh and my blood. That’s another whole topic.
I can’t run down that trail today, but he did not mean you’re drinking blood. They believe in, they have their own theology. It’s called transubstantiation.
In other words, there’s a transit. We know that word today, right? Trans. There’s a transformation where, where the juice, the wine trends is transubstant.
By substance, it changes into the actual blood and the actual flesh. And they believe then, wait a minute, wait a minute. They believe that as they eat his body and as they drink his blood in the mass, they believe there’s a spiritual thing that happens there that at that very moment, when they participate in this mass, as they would call it, something happens in their life and they are transformed again and again and again.
They have seven sacraments. I won’t name them all for you. Interesting.
The top sacrament is water baptism for the Romans. Why, Pastor Dave? Well, I haven’t had a chance to ask them. The Pope is not answering my calls these days.
But I would suggest to you that they hold the water baptismal to be the supreme, the number one sacrament. Because, watch this, until you have participated, watch it, until you’ve participated in this sacrament, you have no right to participate in that sacrament. Until you participated in this sacrament, you have no right to partake of the heavenly calling.
Until you participate in this sacrament, you’re not saved. Let me turn that around now and say it opposite. To them, the moment you go through the waters, John 3 has been fulfilled.
John 3. What’s John 3? For God so loved the world, he gave his only begotten son. Now, Pastor, I know that part. Do you know this one? Marvel not, Nicodemus.
I say unto you, you must be born again. You must be born again. That translates then, and I don’t think they’ll say this to you, but I’m one who connects the dots.
If water baptism imparts to you spiritual dynamic, that when you come up out of the water, now, now you are a child of God. Now your name is written in the Lamb’s book of life. Now you are a partaker of the divine nature.
Now, when you came up, did you experience the divine? No, no, you experienced wetness, but don’t worry about that. You had the sacrament, and you’re like the Pillsbury Doughboy. Somebody said that, somebody told their children, mommy, where did I get my belly button? And they said, well, God made you out of Pillsbury dough, and when he was all done with you, he poked you and said, you’re done.
To the Roman Catholics, when you participate in this, this is your, not your humble, but this is your glorious beginning. You are now a saint. You are now a child of God, heir in joint heirs with Jesus Christ, and what did it take? Dunk me.
Dunk and donut. Dunk me, and I’m done. You say, pastor, it’s deeper than that.
No, no, it’s not, because they also believe that you can take an infant that’s two days old, and don’t drown him, sprinkle him, and that child’s name is written in the Lamb’s book of life. They’re a partaker of the divine nature. They’re saved.
Marvel not, Nicodemus, you must be born again. Nicodemus should have said, there’s a cup of coffee poured over my head, let’s get it over with. I’m being silly.
I’m being facetious. I’m connecting the dots for all of us today. I want you to know, Nicholas, and forgive me, darling, I forget, you’re such a beautiful young lady, getting ready to be, am I scaring you yet? Oh, good. Something’s going to happen here indeed, but when you’re all done, you won’t be walking on the water, sweetheart. Like, it’s not like that. It is an inward, beautiful experience, and I’m not diminishing what’s happening today, but you know what today is? It’s a drama celebrating what did happen to you the day that you said a prayer, something like, dear Jesus, I have failed you.
Into my heart, come into my heart, Lord Jesus. You got to remember that, Nicholas, I’ll never forget. The first time I laid eyes on you, you’re sitting in this church service, and when I got to the conclusion of the message, I said, who would give their heart to Jesus? And somewhere upstairs, somebody had a great big magnet, and you’ve seen all those rings on his hand.
He had no joy, boing, his hand was up. And Nicholas, that was the moment, watch this, Nicholas, that was the moment that God was counting on you. You didn’t join a club that day, Nicholas.
You did not join a sorority. You agreed with Jesus. The man I was needs to die.
I want to be a new man, but I can’t be a new man. I can’t fix myself, but Jesus, I trust you. So Jesus, I die to the old Nicholas, and Jesus, I want to be the new Nicholas.
I told myself not to do this. I’m gonna do it. I got a pair of shoes at home.
I love those shoes. They’re wonderful shoes, but I’ve worn them in the snow, in the ice. I’ve done all kinds of weird things with them, and the soles are worn out.
I got me new soles. You got a new sole, Nicholas. You got a new sole.
And when you go down in the water today, you are saying, the old Nicholas is done. And when you’re coming up out of the water, you’re saying, Jesus went down, and I was in him. When he rose again from the dead, he rose again from me.
And when he went up to heaven, he prepared for me a place that I’m going to. And it’s okay for you to stand up here and out, and I am the new Nicholas. I’ve got a new sole.
I thought that was pathetic, and I thought I’d tell you anyway. Baptism, are you ready? In the church, the universal church worldwide. The early church baptisms were by immersion.
Total immersion. Because the concept of the early church was that you can’t just take a little sprinkling of the blood. You’ve got to be immersed in the workings of Christ.
And that’s why the wording is there. In him. In him.
You’ve got to be buried in him, so you can rise again in him, and walk in new spiritual likeness of him. The New Testament concept was immersion. Is baptism the right thing? The test of any right, any procedure, any ministry like this, the test is, is it biblical? Is baptism biblical? It’s biblical.
Did Jesus mention it? He did. Go and baptize. Was it something that was celebrated and committed during the book of Acts? Absolutely everywhere.
On the day of Pentecost, 3,000 people gave their hearts to Christ, and the word of God says, and they were all baptized. Now there are some naysayers who say, that’s a bunch of fool. I don’t believe such a thing.
How could you baptize 3,000 people in one day in a dry city? How many have been to Jerusalem? I’ve been there, and I never saw any pools of water, except I never visited the pool of Siloam. There’s a pool. 3,000 people? No, no, wait, wait, wait, wait.
Immersion was a practice of all Jews of all time, because you see, they believed that to appear before God, to ask for an audience with God, to ask for the privilege of going before him and worshiping him. Before you go to worship him, you make sure you’re clean. So all over Jerusalem, there were pools, not unlike the Siloam, where on your way to the temple, you stopped, and you immersed yourself.
It was, how clean did it make you? Well, it was just a rinsing off of water. It was a principle. You were saying to the Lord, I recognize that I come before you as a filthy person, and the closest I can get to making myself clean is to dip in the water, but I know I still smell bad.
I know that I’m not clean, but I’m doing the very best, and there were pools all over Jerusalem. 3,000 people getting baptized on the day of Pentecost is not a long yard. It’s okay.
It was the very first sacrament, but it’s believed by that church that this is essential to your salvation. That opens up a lot of problems. Let me shock you.
I didn’t know all this stuff. Do you know the word Baptist and Baptism? It’s not an English word. I learned about this, I’ve told you before, over in Kenya.
I was so amused. I was so amused. You see, the Kenyans had a language that they learned from the Arabs who come over and conquered the land, and they had learned a new language.
It’s kind of like a mixed-up language, and it’s called Kiswahili. I know a fair bit of Swahili. I can’t carry on a lengthy conversation, but when I meet somebody that I know from Kenya, I say, and they respond, and we start talking away.
I can survive in Kenya. I know enough Swahili. Here’s a little bit that I know.
When the Brits came and they conquered Kenya, they had to bring their concepts of commerce with them. That meant that the company that you worked for from jolly England was expecting you to prove what you did with the finances they gave you. So you’re going to go and you’re going to park your Sahara vehicle for your safari or wherever you’re going, and you’re going to get some petrol, some gasoline, but before you leave, you’re going to ask the attendant who put fuel in your car, you’re going to ask him for a receipt.
So when you go to the Swahili people and you say, please translate receipt for me into English, they say, we don’t know what a receipt is, so we don’t have a word for it. Well, they do now. Do you know the translation in Swahili for the English word swahit to go into Swahili? This is it.
Are you ready? It’s a very long word. Are you ready for this? Receipt in key Swahili is receipt. And this is common.
They have a food that they eat at the end of the week. They eat this food at the end of the week because their money usually didn’t last until the end of the week for their food. So they always kept a few, and they still do this to this day, keep a few shillings because if they run out of money for bushel, which is the main food that they eat, they still have some shillings to buy the makings of a very pathetic, cheap meal.
It looks like very, very dark lettuce. For me, it’s tasteless, but it gives them energy. And so they eat this stuff and they have a name for it.
I’ll give it to you first in English. No, I’ll give it to you first in Swahili because it’s cute. Sakuma, that means push.
Sakuma wiki, the end of the week. What do you need to do at the end of the week? You need to make your food last a little longer. Sakuma wiki.
Baptiste, baptizo, there’s several words that sound like, look like, they’re all Greek. It’s all Greek to me. And there’s no English translation for the word that is written in the New Testament.
New Testament was in Greek. There’s no Greek translation. So what they did when they were translating it and they were putting it into an English version for you and I to read, they took the Greek word baptizo and they just transliterized it, it’s called.
Transliteration. And that is they transformed baptizo into a simple word, baptiste or baptize. So baptize was never an English word.
It is now. It’s in all of our Bibles. That’s how it’s translated from Greek.
But then you see the Roman Catholic Church had a problem with baptizo because it means total immersion. You can’t take that away from it. A new cute word that came up a few words ago, I don’t know, maybe centuries ago, but it’s, did you get your little Johnny, did you get him christened? There’s another word, I looked it up.
In the original Greek, christened, it’s a different word, it sounds, it’s spelt differently, but the word christened in Greek means to plunge. But the average person doesn’t know that. So by the time you get around to about the year 1500, the word baptist never shows up.
Baptism doesn’t show up in the English language until the year 1500. They used another word which meant immersion. But it was uncomfortable because they had also concluded that what Adam failed at in heaven, in the garden, what he failed to do was to honor God, and he allowed the sinful nature to overcome him, and we have inherited his sinful nature.
Last Sunday I took some time to explain to you, you are not called a sinner because you sinned. You are sinful by nature, and therefore you act out your sinful nature. You’re not called a sinner because you sinned.
You were called a sinner before you sinned. Before you sinned. That gives us a problem.
That means, watch this, somebody in those ages, and down in, you know, all the centuries, right down to the 1600s, 1700s, a woman could give birth to as many as ten children. That was not strange and not unheard of. Ten mouths to feed forever? It never turned out to be ten mouths.
She would bore as many as ten children, and two or three would survive. The death rate for little children. We didn’t have penicillin in those days.
We didn’t have all these wonderful medicinal help. When a child got sick, he better be strong enough to recover. And they didn’t.
So many of them didn’t. And that raised a question. How many children do you have? Well, I have two with me that are nicely going to school, and I have eight in hell.
Pastor, that’s crude. I’m connecting the dots, darling. I’m just connecting the dots.
The early church worried about this. What are we going to do about the children? You can’t put them underneath water. That’s cruel.
So, it was about 200, the year 230-something, that a gentleman was desperately ill, and he knew he had to be baptized in order to be saved. So, he called for the priest, come in, please. Can you, I can’t get out of this bed.
The man was so sick, he was dying. What are we going to do about that one? I don’t know. And so, that was the very first time in church history that a man that a person was watered.
I’m going to use a word. The first time that a person was watered in a different mode than buried. I don’t know if they poured some water over him or sprinkled him. Within the next 150 years, it was determined by a special council who got together a group, and they said, what are we going to do about people who need to be baptized, who want to be baptized, they’re too sick. And so, they came up with an exception, and they said, you know, in certain exceptions, we will allow for a person to be baptized without being at the church, etc., etc., or in the case of children, bring them to the church, and we will see that they get baptized. And the means of baptism became legal and okay with the Roman Catholic Church by the year 1600.
Sprinkle them, it’s good enough. But baptizo means immersion. I read a very celebrated scholar recently who said, if the English translators around the 16-1700 who were preparing the Bible for us, if they were honest with themselves, they never would have used the non-English word Baptist, they would have put immersion in every time.
Immerse, immersion. I don’t know how you, I don’t know how you give a name to John the Baptist, John the Immerser. I don’t know, I don’t care, but this is true, this is true.
Martin Luther believed in sprinkling, and he also believed until you were baptized, you were lost. You are lost. I have a problem with that, Mr. Luther.
Now I know you’re a wise man, I know you did a lot of things, but you’re one of the most well-known people in the entire human history to have hated God’s chosen people. You hated the Jew, you put it in writing. So everything that you say, I don’t take it as card stock for my file cabinet.
And Luther wrote in his writings, and I found the exact quote, when I dug for hours this week, I found it, where he said, when you get baptized in water, you become a partaker, you become sealed in, you become sealed as a partaker of the divine nature. When you get baptized, you’re defeating the devil, you have conquered death, you’ve done this, you’ve done that. He just went, and he said, until that’s happened, you’re lost.
Mr. Luther, I don’t think you ever left Germany. Can I take you in a little, Mr. Luther, with me to Ethiopia? For the last two years of my full-time travel ministry around the world, I spent the majority of it in Ethiopia. It’s a very long tail.
But I remember not just once, but many times getting in a four-wheel vehicle, packing enough stuff to kind of keep us alive, like some crackers, what if we don’t get fed, what if, what if, what if? And we would go by vehicle for a whole day’s journey. And the further we went, the darker it got, like it got troublesome. I mean, there’s no more trees anymore, and then you go through an area where there are trees, and you’re going through a valley, and all of a sudden, there’s a tree across the way.
Why is a tree laying there? Why don’t they pull the tree out? Because the people that use this path, they’re walking. They don’t own cars. They’re walking.
And their village is still a dumb distance away. I’ve got to get to that village, and it’s high up on a mountain. So I take a bag over my shoulder, and I go with three others, and we walk what seemed like forever, until we get to the base of a mountain.
Before I climbed up that mountain, I walked like a tight walk, a tightrope walker, across a log about so wide. And it wasn’t I was afraid I was going to get wet. I was afraid I was going to get covered with mud, because underneath my feet was this very minimal trickle of water.
I don’t know where it came from. I don’t know where it went. I know where some of it went, because every morning, when I walk in my mud hut, and preparing for an all day of preaching out in a meadow to thousands of Ethiopians, they would bring me my daily glass of water.
You’re free to do with it whatever you like. Or maybe you want to drink it. Luther would say, they’re all in hell.
Did you baptize them? Hey, Bunky, there wasn’t any water. Give me a break. Well, that’s their problem.
No, that’s your theological problem, sir. You cannot dictate. You cannot show me in the word of God that if you’re not baptized in water, you’re not saved.
Did you know that Paul went down to, I think it was Ephesus, and he’d find arguments there. Oh, I was baptized with John. That’s enough.
And you know what he actually says? It’s in his epistle. He says, I thank God I baptized hardly anyone in that community. I didn’t come to baptize.
Watch it. I didn’t come to baptize. He said, I came to preach the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.
What’s baptism? It’s a symbol of what you went through when you gave your life to Christ. Last story. I got so much more.
That’s the first page of my notes, and I’ve got eight pages. He’s an idiot, Martha. I’m preaching a church in London, and it occurred to me that in all of my days, as a youngster, I never heard a sermon on water baptism.
And I determined today, sweetie pie, that you would not have the experience that I had. I was in a Sunday school class, and the teacher said, all right, boys, tonight’s water baptism. How many are getting baptized? My friend Leslie said, my dad and mom said I should get baptized.
I’m ready to go. Leslie, Dale Unsworth, and Joe Lemire. That left little Dave.
I said, I’m in. How much did I know about water baptism? I just told you. The church is bereft of solid teaching, and it’s not changed in churches today.
We need to learn about this. Unless you’re immersed in the workings of the cross, the death, the burial, and resurrection, you are lost. Not being buried in the water, but being buried in Christ and raised again in likeness of his rising.
So I went through the waters of baptism that night. If I was a teenager, I would have said, that’s cool. It was fun with all my buddies, except, except, the only one who died most recently on I attended his funeral.
The only one that was serving God was Joe. Dale forsook the Lord. My other friend Leslie as much as spat in the face of Jesus.
Well, David, that can happen to anybody. I know, I know. I’m telling you my story.
The first time I heard a message about water baptism was in my first year of Bible college, sitting in a class of 90 some people. And our professor that morning said, today I want to talk about water baptism. I thought, I know that.
That’s like John 3 16. I know that verse. I was such a dingbat.
I was actually bored when he started and I’ve done that. Let’s get on to it. I’m an evangelist.
Let’s get going here. No, no, no, no. He had to take the time.
And as he carefully explained. This celebration, this moment. That the only change that’s going to happen to you when you go through this is the condition of your heart before you go in the water.
I want to say it again. The only thing that you’re going to experience in this today, Nicholas, is the condition of your heart when you go in. Because it already supposed to have happened when you gave your life to Jesus.
This is a celebration of what Jesus has done for you. And when the realization hit me that I was in him on the cross, he bore my sin. The Lord laid upon me, him, my filthiness and my rotten attitude.
And I guess several heads turned as they heard a forehead hit a desktop. And a young man who was 19 going on 20 was heard sobbing in that classroom. It was me.
I suddenly realized what this meant. And Nicholas, what this meant for me. The teaching of what it meant brought my understanding of salvation to a climax.
I’ve got a Jesus. I’m with you. So beautiful little lady from Welland.
I determined that you would understand today. I saw your attitude a couple of weeks ago. If I understand correct, I’m going to you better come on up now, darling.
Come with Grandpa and Nicholas. I’m not your grandfather, but you come anyway. I just I just want to take a moment just to introduce these people.
Come on up here, Nicholas. Yeah. I think it was two Sundays.
Forgive me forever. What’s your name again? Chloe. I remember I told you I should remember your name.
It’s a perfume. He says I’m close. Chloe, I tease him.
He takes his shot too. Yes, Brother Peter, you brought it out very powerfully to me one evening in your house about the Reformed Church, and I get it. They don’t believe in this.
They believe in the sprinkling. And until you’ve been sprinkled, here ain’t worth a fallen leaf. I learned that in my studies this week.
God bless you, brother. I love you. This gal was so excited two Sundays ago.
Apparently she came that Sunday thinking this is my baptismal day. And I saw this person. She’s almost doing cartwheels down the hall.
And I asked what’s got into her? Well, she came today thinking she’s getting water baptized. And I was thinking, well, she’s going to be pretty discouraged, isn’t she? No. Her sense of anticipation had another two weeks to gyrate and get excited.
And if you want, I bet she’d do a couple of front rolls. And she is so excited and a little bit nervous. But that’s okay.
So I don’t know about her spiritual journey. I think grandpa, uh, that guy, the guy that he’s not just Pentecostal speaking in tongues, this guy eats tongues. So this is our friend Alfred.
And you go over there and see grandpa for a minute. And she’s going to go. And I don’t know where you’re in.
She’s got to go and get changed somewhere, right? I’m guessing you, you, you talk that over with her and then she’s going to come back and she’s going to get baptized in a few moments. You go ahead and get ready, whatever that means. And Nicholas, you go and pick up your baggage and you go across and lock yourself in the man’s washroom.
We don’t want any mistakes. You go in there and you come out ready. Okay.
You say, pastor, you’re trying to be funny about no mistakes. I got some stories. I’d like to tell you about water baptism where mistakes were made.
We’re not making those today. So God bless you. So I’m going to disappear now.
Here’s a microphone. There’s a microphone that’s loud. We talked about what’s going to happen.
I got to go and get changed. I have announced that I don’t do baptisms anymore. And that Nicholas is changing my whole lifestyle.
He said, you’re baptizing me. You’re a pastor. You’re my pastor.
And that’s it. So I’ve been told what to do. I usually only obey my wife.
And now you’ve got, there’s, you’ve got competition. You wears a red shirt. So I got to go get, and I got to go and get ready.
And no, I’m not going to get in there. But I got long sleeves. I got to go and change.
So wait right there. Don’t leave. I’ve done a lot of things in church over the years.
From probably preaching to singing to probably you name it. But I’ve never baptized anyone. And when pastor Forrest called me and asked me if I would like to be able to baptize my granddaughter, I think I probably went maybe at least 20 seconds and I couldn’t say a word.
It’s such a great privilege to be able to do that. And I’ll tell you something about Chloe when she comes out. Let her be here.
But it’s been, I mean, we’ve never seen her like this size. And she grew up to be a beautiful lady. And she had been saved now for many years.
But she always said, you know, I want to be baptized. I want to be baptized. And of course, we could never find the means there because we were never here when they had the baptism.
You know, probably except for Lucas at that time. But, and a couple of baptisms there in church, they actually had them somewhere else in a swimming pool. So we weren’t here.
But then her brother that you’ve seen come to the church with her a few Sundays, he’s working today. Well, he got saved last year and he got baptized. And of course, that only inflamed the thing with Chloe.
If he can get baptized, why can’t I get baptized? So this year we said what we would do is seek the pastor for us and see if he would have baptism for Chloe. You can get into there. I’ll just hold on to you.
Turn around. Turn right around. Oh no, that’s right.
This way? This way. Sit there. You can sit down.
I can sit down? Yep. Sit right down. Now I’m going to ask you some questions and you can just answer them, okay? And I’m just telling about you now, okay? So anyway, so because her brother got baptized, she felt that she should be baptized.
And of course, she’d been telling us about it. And Yvonne approached Pastor Forrest and finally we got some agreement. We could find, because our baptismal tank down here is not the best in condition.
So anyway, Pastor Forrest came up with an idea to be able to get this. And of course, Emma and Al picked it up a few days ago and of course got it. Is the water cold? No, it’s fine.
Good. You wouldn’t like me. I got baptized in salt water.
So in any case, so this is what my privilege is. So Chloe, I’m going to ask you a couple questions and you can, if you want to, you can turn this one, say it loud so the people can hear. Because this mic here will pick your voice up.
Don’t touch it. Okay, so do you love Jesus? Yes. And do you want to be baptized today? Yes.
And let me say now, how long have you been waiting to be baptized? For a long time, I guess. Yeah, right. Now you’re going to be sitting, not kneeling, okay? Okay.
If not, I’ll break your legs when I put you back. Okay. That’s good.
Okay. I’m sorry. Oh, that’s okay.
What I want you to do is that when I’m going to, I’m going to put my hand on this shoulder and then this hand on your back. You could pinch your nose, but with this hand, grab onto my arm here. Okay.
Okay. So because of your faith in Jesus Christ, when you’re born again, I now baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. Oh, yes.
Don’t let her fall, Grandpa. Don’t let her fall. Congratulations, Chloe.
What a day. Isn’t this wonderful? You can come up to her. Oh, she wants to watch.
Okay. Take your water with you, honey. Take your water.
Take your water. It’s okay. This is a dry place.
This will dry up quick. I have a towel. You’re good.
Okay. We’re going to go ahead now. Go ahead.
So you’re going to step in right there. You’re going to turn your back to here. Turn your back to here.
Don’t go too far. You’re going to bang your, you’re going to hit your walnut right there. Go this way a little more.
Come this way. Perfect. Down you go.
Sit. Sit, Sophie. Sit.
No. Oh, no. Okay.
Nicholas, I’m proud of you. And I love you with all my heart. You’re our buddy around here.
You’re very special. God bless you. Thank you for reminding me I’m wearing my watch.
Thank you. You’re a good guy. Nicholas, you remember the day that you gave your life to Jesus.
You remember that day, don’t you? Yes, I do. Yeah. I’m not going to ask you what you felt that day because feelings are not the engine that drives this train.
Feelings are the caboose. We believe in Christ because of his word. I agree 100%.
Yes, I agree. So you love Jesus? I love him very much. And you’re learning about him in this house, aren’t you? Yes, I am.
Well, we’re proud of you. And those legs don’t look so bad. Okay.
Nicholas, how long can you hold your breath? Nicholas, upon your confession of faith in the finished work of the Lord Jesus on the cross 2,000 years ago, I now baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. Okay, you got a towel for him? There he is.
He’s been prepared for weeks. Because you see, I’ve told people, you don’t want me to baptize you because I like it so much I hold you down until I see bubbles. He told somebody, I’m afraid of him.
Be afraid. Be very afraid. I’m not looking for a pat on the back.
I’m not looking for… I just want to know, did it make sense for you today, the message? Did it come together for you? Okay. Okay. I take no pleasure.
It had to be you to baptize me. It had to be you. Yes.
He’s always saying the titles of songs. He was singing in my ear. It had to be you.
How many remember the day that you got water baptized? Aren’t you glad you did? And if you haven’t yet, I’m going to make a confession right here. Is it important that you go through the waters of baptism? I’m done. Almost.
Is it important? Of course it is. Jesus said, go preach the gospel and baptize them. Of course it’s important.
But in the country of Ethiopia alone, there are thousands and thousands and thousands. They can’t hope to be baptized. They live in a desert.
Paul said, I don’t spend my time baptizing. I don’t do it. Is it important? It’s an act of obedience, and that’s the weight of it.
So when I don’t get baptized, does that mean I’m not going to go to heaven? Baptism is not a procedure that depends on your eternal security. What your eternal security is based on is your obedience to Christ, and water baptism is obedience. So you do the math and you figure it out.
Is it important? Of course it is. Go and be baptized. If I fail to get baptized, am I lost? The Ethiopian was asked, do you believe in Jesus Christ? I do.
Philip said, good enough for me, and down in the water they went. Hallelujah to God. Now you go and you have yourself a wonderful day, but as you’re leaving, say a little prayer over.
Did you say that little prayer over people this week? I said it over quite a few. In fact, I find myself all kinds of places explaining what it means when I say to them, I have a prayer for you today that God will bless you, and I explain it, and I actually see tears come. I’m not making this up.
I’m not making this up. It’s a prayer. It’s powerful.
Carry that prayer with you wherever you go. Amen. Have a wonderful day.
