Who Are You And What Do You Want?

Why John Writes Like A Courtroom

All right, so we’ve been studying through the Gospel of John, and today’s sermon is called Who Are You and What Do You Want?

Which is how I answered the door. We’re gonna be John chapter 1, verse 19 through 34. Last week we saw the big picture of John the Baptizer, and I like calling him John the Baptizer because it sounds cooler than John the Baptist. And uh we we we saw that he was used by God to introduce everybody in the world to this new grace order that Jesus was gonna bring. Okay, so John, that’s what the big picture was. But this week we’re gonna get into exactly what John the Baptizer testified. So he’s imagine a courtroom, right? Where someone comes in and they testify, they give their witness, they they testify of what they’ve seen and what they know to be true. And so the book of John is gonna give us seven different witnesses in this courtroom, you could imagine. Uh, four in this chapter alone. And why does John do it this way? Because the other gospels, they don’t do this, they they just kind of tell the story. But John’s written completely different as we’ve been learning. And his purpose is so that you you will believe. He’s he’s trying to win the argument that Jesus is the Messiah and that we need to come to him and believe upon him to be forgiven. And so that’s what what these witnesses are there for. And so you might think that John was some kind of John the Baptizer was some kind of crazy religious freak that was simply teaching a new ethic to the world, but we’re gonna find out that um he was doing much more than saying, stop this and do this and do that, because that’s that’s very religious y, uh, very, and that’s not the gospel that Jesus came to bring. But with the the aid of uh a time travel machine, we have obtained, and no one else in the world had we have obtained a picture of John the Baptist, John the Baptizer. And I’m gonna show you right now. I’ve I’ve got it, we we found a time machine, we got this all figured out, okay? So this is today’s sermon.

Who are you and what do you want? Do you recognize this guy? Yeah, where’s his motorcycle? I love that he wore a backwards baseball hat back in. He’s right there. We have our own John the Baptist. I love it.

I love it, I love it. When I as soon as I started thinking about John the Baptist, I was like, wait a second. I know this guy. I know this guy. And just like John the Baptist, when I talk to Russell, what I hear is not law, but I hear grace, I hear love coming out of his heart. So the real testimony of John the Baptist was to point people to Jesus and to help people understand who Jesus is, and to help people be ready to hear Jesus when he comes and ready to receive the grace that Jesus is bringing. So he’s just like a big sign pointing to Jesus.

Lawful Leaders And Cold Hearts

So as we start John chapter 1, verse 19, it says, now this is the testimony of John the baptizer. When the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem, they asked him, Who are you? All right, what does that mean? The Jews, they were the religious leaders of the people. That’s what he’s talking about here. Um and they so these these religious leaders were very much based on law.

Now, how many laws were there? Many. Five Jesus points. Do you have a more specific answer than many? How many? Six hundred and thirteen. You get 13 Jesus points.

There you go. Almost. There was a lot of laws, right? There’s a lot, and they knew every single one of them, and they knew as they believed these laws were their path to life. But they had all these laws, but they had cold hearts. They didn’t have life. In fact, if you met them, you’re like, who is this cranky guy telling me to get off his lawn? That’s how the religious people of the day. And guess what? Religious people today are the exact same way. You can always tell the difference of someone who has a deep relationship with Jesus versus someone who is religious. Because one of them has love and the other does not have the fruit of the Spirit, which is love. The law cannot produce love in our lives. So these guys are like, who is this new guy all about? This John the Baptist. John the Baptist was a very loving guy, we’ll find out. So they’re like, who is this guy and what is he all about? You know, because they see this guy, he’s out there preaching with his honey and locust. You guys know the Bible says he ate honey and locusts, so I said, put the honey and locust stuck in his beard. So that’s that’s what that picture is right there. So we had these two groups of people, priests, right? They were supposed to be connecting people to God. And these priests, we can just say they failed at their mission, right? They were not connecting people to God. In fact, they were separating, they weren’t connecting people from God. They made relationship with God a burden instead of a blessing that it’s supposed to be. And then the Levites, okay, so it’s really interesting that there was a little subsection of the priests called Levites. And these were guys, these guys were like servants of the priests, and so they’re um they’re uh they were like their crew, they’re they’re their homies, they’re you know, little guys that followed them around. They were servants. And so I want to mention three times that these Levites are mentioned in the Bible. First, there’s the parable of the Good Samaritan. You remember the guy gets beaten up and left on the side of the road, and people pass him by, and then finally a Samaritan who was a despised person actually stops to help him. But the Levites, that was one of the guys that passed him by.

And he was so religious that he wouldn’t help or love his enemy. Religion did not make him loving.

Okay, so that was a problem. He had total failure to have neighborly love. In other words, they were total jerks. Okay. Then we see, you know, John the Baptist himself, John the Baptizer, he was a Levite, his dad was a priest in the Levitical order. And so God uses John the Baptizer to help people get ready to hear from Jesus and receive the love that Jesus has for them. And uh this love that Jesus is gonna give them is is gonna help people to actually be loving. So we see that the Levites are actually gonna be involved in a big, big change. They start out unloving, then John the Baptizer is a Levite, and he begins this transformation. And then in the early church, we have a guy named Barnabas, and Barnabas was also a Levite, and he ends up um selling some property from that he owned on the island of Cyprus, uh, and he sold it and he gave the proceeds to the church, and all of that demonstrates he was a very, very loving and self-giving, selfless person. He was transformed by love. So he kind of shows the end result of even jerky religious people, if they meet Jesus, can be transformed into generous, loving people. So these jerky, unloving people, they the these leaders, they wanted to know who John the Baptist was, uh, but he wasn’t really interested in answering their question. He wanted to talk about his mission, which was to prepare the way for the Messiah. So check this out. In verse 20, it says, He confessed and did not to die, did not deny, but confessed, I am not the Christ. So this is fascinating, okay? Because John knows he’s not the Messiah. He clearly communicates it, but the structure of the sentence in Greek is like this. I am not the Christ, but he’s somewhere around here. One of you guys is him. He’s he’s in this crowd right now. I am not the Messiah. That’s how the structure, it’s it’s hinting that the Messiah is, you’re getting close, you’re getting warmer. Is he this guy? Is he that guy? I don’t know. That’s what that’s how we answer this question. And this may have been actually a little bit more worrisome for the Jews because they’re like, wait a second, the Messiah

Levites Then And Levites Transformed

could be here, and we are so blind we don’t even know who he is. So John, you know, he says, I’m not the Messiah. This shows that John is great with humility. He didn’t think of too much of himself. In order to point people to Jesus, we have to love nothing more than Jesus. He has to be top, right? That’s how we can point people like John. John, he he loves Jesus more than he loves himself, his own comfort, his own mission, his own anything. He loves Jesus more. Because people talk about what they love. Have you noticed that? It flows from the heart. When I ask someone, hey, tell me what you’re excited about. Guess what? People love that question. I always get all kinds of interesting information when I ask, tell me what’s exciting you about your job, about your family, about your mission, about your life. Tell me what’s exciting you. People, we love to talk about what flows from our heart. And this is why I hate listening to TED talks that don’t flow from the heart. They’re just giving like canned information or canned sermons, right? When it doesn’t come from the heart, it’s boring to listen to. You know, I can always tell when the person, the speaker, is insincere or just repeating someone else’s thoughts. Uh, because it’s not coming from the heart, it’s just coming from the brain. And that doesn’t really satisfy people. People can tell the difference, right? John was obsessed with Jesus. And it shows in all his words, all his actions. He didn’t even have time to cut his beard, you know. He was just obsessed with Jesus. And I think God is calling us to be obsessed with Jesus also. In fact, I know He is. But I’ve heard this quote. Have you ever heard this? Maybe your grandma?

She said, You’re so heavenly minded, you’re of no earthly good. You ever heard that one before? Well, I’ve heard it. I’ve heard it.

But, and and it’s funny, it’s it’s said about someone who’s like always, you know, talking about Jesus or always in prayer, always focused on these things, and like, oh, you’re just so heavenly minded, you’re of no earthly good. But that’s actually not true. In fact, it’s the opposite of the truth because Colossians chapter 3 says, if you then were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above. Where’s the above? In heaven, right? Where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God, set your mind on things above, not on things of the earth.

Literally everything else is a distraction.

Yeah, and we have

Humility That Refuses Self-Promotion

to think about our lives, I know. But when we have a moment to set our mind and meditate on something, the Bible says, set your mind on Jesus. Once we enter into this union with Jesus, our life ceases to be about us and what we have to accomplish and what we have going on in our lives. Our life is about Him. It’s totally wrapped up in Him and it’s Him living through us. He says in verse 4, verse 3 and 4, For you died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. Well, but what about me and all the things I I I’m concerned about and worried about?

God says, That actually died. That part died.

And he says, When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you will also appear with him in glory. Did you see that? Christ, who is your life.

Does that sound like obsession? Man, his whole life is about this.

That person is obsessed with this or that. We say that all the time. That’s what he’s saying. Our life is to be obsessed with Jesus, just like John the Baptizer, right? All right, so back in John, he says, they asked him, What then? Are you Elijah? He said, I am not. Are you the prophet? He answered, No. So they keep coming back to John saying, Well, then who are you? Who are you? And John’s like, You’re barking up the wrong tree, guys. I’m not about me. Nothing I am is about me. My identity doesn’t matter. I find my whole identity in him. My whole identity. So they say, okay, well, then are you Elijah? What are they talking about there? This is a reference to a prophecy that Elijah would come back from the dead before the Messiah returns. Okay? And this will happen in the future, right? We see this in the book of Revelation that Elijah comes back. But Jesus says later in this book that John actually did come in the spirit and power of Elijah, so he fulfilled this prophecy as kind of like a foreshadow of what will eventually come before Jesus’ second coming, of the real Elijah coming back. But um, so Jesus is like, yeah, John did fulfill that, but he’s not technically Elijah, he’s John. They’re two different people. But John doesn’t need to toot his own locust, so he’s not talking about it. So then they ask him, Are you the prophet then? Well, what are they talking about there? And that’s a prophecy back from the book of Genesis, uh, where God said he would send another prophet. So they’re just like, Are you that guy? And John the Baptist is like, wrong again. Like, you’re not listening. I’m not, it’s not, it doesn’t matter about me. You’re you’re focused on the wrong thing, guys. So he goes to verse 22. He says, Then they said to him, Who are you that we may give an answer to those who sent us? What do you say about yourself? And he said, All right, I am, and then he just quotes this verse I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, makes straight the way of the Lord, as the prophet Isaiah said. So John wasn’t obsessed with rules and law like some people think. Some people think when they hear of John the Baptist that he was always telling people, you suck, you’re doing bad, you’re you this, you’re that. But that’s not what he was all about. He was obsessed with Jesus. He had received this mission from God. As he was reading the Bible, the Spirit said, This is your mission. And he quotes the verse that God gave him, uh, which was his life verse, his mission from God, which is Isaiah 40, verse 3, which is make straight the way of the Lord. This is my purpose, to point y’all to Jesus, is his is what he’s saying here. He’s gonna bring this new grace

Identity Questions Elijah Prophet Voice

order that all the people need, and he’s gonna bring it whether you like it or not, whether you kill him or not, because they will eventually figure out a way to kill him, but it’s not gonna stop God’s grace from coming. So look at verse 24. Now those who were sent were from the Pharisees, and they asked him, saying, Why then do you baptize if you are not the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the prophet? And John answered them, saying, I baptize with water.

But there stands one among you whom you do not know.

It is he who, coming after me, is preferred before me, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to loose. And these things were done in Bethabara, beyond the Jordan, where John was baptizing. So this is where he gets his famous name, John the Baptizer. What is baptism all about? Why was John doing this? Okay, baptism is something that they knew about, okay? So Jewish people back in that day, they practiced self-baptism. Self-baptism. Okay, and they did it in three ways. It was called the mikvah. And when you go to Israel, and I’ve been there, they’ve they’ve unearthed a lot of the religious temples and uh places they did church, and they always had a mikveh, which was like a pool or a bathtub where you could go and baptize yourself. And why did they do that? Well, there were three reasons why they did that. The first reason was purity loss. So if you uh had a ritual defilement, which you touched a dead body, or you touched some something else dirty, or a bug, or an animal like a pig, something that was unclean, or you had contact with bodily fluids, you had to go to the and take a bath. You had to, and this was self-baptizing in the mikveh. And it was there’s all kinds of rules about it in the Old Testament. God wanted his people to understand they needed to be clean and pure and holy, and this represented cleanliness for them. Okay. Then there was a second time they would self-baptize, which was with priests, they would have these priestly preparation ceremonies where the priest Aaron and his sons would wash themselves before ministering in the tabernacle. God says, before you go to work, take a bath. Okay. Doesn’t want stinky priests for the people to come and get to know Jesus. All right. The third way, the third time that they would do baptism is when a proselyte, someone who was not Jewish, said, I want to join God’s family. I want to become part of the Jewish nation. This is how you

Why Baptize Mikvah And Its Meaning

would have that happen, is you they had a whole ceremony and they would be baptized, showing that they’re dying to their old identity and they’re being raised as a true Hebrew. They were taking on all the law on them and everything as a family, being part of the family of God. Um, it was a sign of genuine repentance. Like, I’m sorry, I was basically they were saying, I’m sorry, I was born a gentile. I want to be part of God’s people. And God, that was perfectly loud. Anyone in the world who wanted to become a Jew could through this little process. There was a whole rule system for that. Okay, now this was that one was very interesting because it was like they were um, they were like becoming a newborn child. They were being really adopted into, they would never refer to them as their old identity, but they would refer to them as a new identity. Now I want you to point out three things. Uh, each of those three ways that they practice baptism, it was self, self, self.

That’s how the baptism happened. It was all about self.

So when John the Baptist comes and he’s like, I am going to baptize you, this was crazy and world-shattering and deeply offensive to the religious world of his day. Okay, first, because the Jew who came to him to be baptized had to identify with Gentile converts, basically saying, I am a no-good, dirty, rotten Jew, and I need to become a good one. Basically saying, I’m as bad as a Gentile. And that is so crazy to them because they truly believe Gentiles were only created to keep the fires of hell burning on fire. They’re just fuel for hell. There was no reason for them to get saved. There was no, that’s that was how negatively they viewed Gentiles. And so a Jew being baptized by someone else or coming into the family that would they were like identifying with, I have been wrong and I need to be transformed. This was horrifying to them. So John the Baptizer, he is repurposing this baptism tradition that they did, this practice, and he’s doing, he’s repurposing it for this new grace order that he is bringing, that Jesus is bringing. And let me show you how it does. So instead of self-baptizing, it’s done to you. John says, I’m gonna baptize you. Okay? What does that change? It changes the source of this is from me to its being done to me. All right. So instead of national pride thinking that I’m right with God because of where I was born or where, you know, my race or anything like that. It’s humility and it’s believing all people are equal. The Jews, you have to be baptized just like a Gentile would be baptized. Instead of outward cleansing. It was about the blood of Jesus cleansing the heart from sin. And that’s how baptism is now how we can see it is it represents the cleansing of Jesus. And this is all good grace stuff. So baptism has changed from a Jewish thing that was self to a Christian thing that is grace. It’s done to us. The Jews wanted, they came to John in this first part and they’re like, we want to know what your authority is, why you’re doing these things. And John says, This is a completely new order that you know nothing about, and I’m not going to even really talk to you about my authority. This is what I’m doing because this is what God’s doing. There’s a new authority, there’s a new king coming. In fact, he’s right here, and you might be offended. You might be stepping on his toe right now. You don’t even know it.

He was showing them that they were blind to God’s, what God was doing. So we see verse 29. John isn’t done yet because he gives them this statement.

The next day, John saw Jesus coming toward them, and he said, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. So the first thing he says is, Behold. And that means, you know, in Greek, that means study him, focus on him, look deeply and intently at him. And then he says, the mission of the Messiah was clear from the start. It was to be the Lamb of God or death. From the very beginning, John said his mission was to be the Lamb of God. What does that mean? It references the sacrifice. Okay, so in the Bible, there’s this thing called the sacrificial lamb, the lamb of God. It represented many things in the Old Testament. We see it many times, and they all point through time towards Jesus. Every single lamb of God, sacrificial lamb, they point towards Jesus. It’s an image, it’s a foreshadow of Jesus. Okay, so I want you to remember a few of them. Way back in Genesis chapter 2, Adam and Eve sin. And what’s the first thing God does?

He kills an animal, probably a lamb, and makes clothing for them, covers them, gives them grace. Through what? Through the sacrifice of an animal, probably a lamb.

Baptism Reframed As Grace And Humility

Then we, you know, we see uh he’s called the lamb of God that was slain before the foundation of the world. So when talking about Jesus, Paul says that he was the Lamb of God that was slain before the foundation of the world. In other words, God and the Father and the Son had a conversation before any of this happened, before they created the whole world. And the Father’s like, I know I’m gonna create people. Yes, you are. I’m gonna love these people, yes, we are. And then, oh, but these people are gonna fall into sin. Yes, they are, and we are gonna have to redeem them. Yes, we are, and son, you’re gonna have to go down and become one of them and give your life to redeem them. And he says, Yes, I am. What does that mean? It means he was technically already the sacrifice before God ever created man, before God created anything. He was slain before that. Then we see God chooses Abraham a little bit later in the story, and Abraham, God tells Abraham, I want you to sacrifice your son. And so they go up on a mountain. Abraham’s about to sacrifice his son, and God says, Okay, don’t. I know that you fear me, I know that we have a good connection.

And so what happens?

There was a lamb caught by his horns in the thicket right next to him. And that lamb was provided by God to be the sacrifice. Guess what that lamb points to? Jesus. Then after 400 years, they’re in Egypt and they’re coming out of Egypt, and God says, I want you to do this ceremony as we go out of Egypt. The tenth plague was the destroying angel that would come and kill the firstborn. And he says, if you go get a lamb and kill the lamb and put his blood on the door and eat the meat of the lamb, and that lamb will protect it’s the Passover celebration.

Guess who that lamb points to? Jesus. It’s it’s over and over and over again.

So when John says, This is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, all of them know what he’s talking about.

All of them know what he’s talking about.

But there’s a huge difference between these Old Testament sacrifices and the new grace order that Jesus is gonna bring. And what is that difference?

It’s the difference between sins and sin. One S.

And it’s a huge difference. What do I mean? So the old system, all these old lambs and all the sacrifices that they were required to make, every time they killed a lamb and sprinkled his blood and provided forgiveness, what did it forgive? It covered temporarily the sins of the people. So that’s the actual deeds that they would do, the thoughts they would think, the evil things that they participated in. And that’s that’s all that was available to them at that point. Why did people keep sinning over and over and over again? And they’d have to kill more and more lambs over and over and over again. It was exhausting, and it never really worked. No one was ever really changed. So Jesus is bringing a new system called a new covenant. We call it the new grace order, where he removes not just the sins. Yes, he will absolutely pay for all your sins. As soon as you’re a believer, all your sins are paid for. But he changes one big other thing. He removes the sin, which is the sin nature. The reason

Behold The Lamb Of God

why we have sins is because we had a sin nature. And so Jesus, he gives a solution for the real issue, the deep issue. He doesn’t just bring forgiveness over and over and over again. He brings forgiveness, but then he brings a healing for the inside. He replaces the old sin nature that we had with a new divine nature called the Holy Spirit that is righteous. It’s actually his very spirit. So now our deepest desire is to serve God and to love God once you become a believer. God changes that inner part of you. Now he doesn’t change your brain, and so our brains we have to learn how to walk in this new identity. And that’s why we read the Bible, that’s why we study the gospel, that’s why we let the gospel change how we think, because our brain doesn’t change when we get saved, but our spirit does. Our inner nature is transformed, and we can then just through study and uh learning the gospel, it goes into our brain and into our heart and starts flowing out of our lives our new identity, which is righteousness. So, believers, when you’re uh you get you get both. You get sins and sin taken care of. You are once for all forgiven. You know, the cross was the payment, and and it’s not your repeated asking for forgiveness rituals that gets you forgiven. Did you know that? This is the absolute truth. How many times do you have to ask God to forgive you? Once. And then it’s thanking God that you are forgiven. When you ask God to forgive you of all your past, present, and future sins, which I’m sure almost all of you have, maybe every single one of you, God says, Yes, I will forgive you.

But we don’t believe that. We’re like, no, I gotta ask you again.

Let me ask you again, because I’m not really sure. Or I did another bad thing. And I don’t I believe you forgave my past things, but I’m not sure you can believe my future things. God says that’s not the deal. The deal is I forgive you completely, and you have to learn how to believe that. We have to learn how to believe it. Once you believe it, instead of always saying, God, forgive me, forgive me, forgive me, that’s not the relationship God wants from you. He wants once, yes, do that. And then you live in repentance, saying, God, I shouldn’t have done that. I repent, I changed and I thank you that I’m forgiven, and I’m asking you to continue to transform the way my mind works, the way my behavior flows, everything about my life.

I give to you, I surrender to you. It’s like when you go to H E B and you you want to pay for your groceries by doing a dance that you made up or begging or pleading or trying to barter with them.

No, there’s just one form of payment that they accept, right? Money. That’s the only you can’t deal with H E B. And this is what happens when we were like, you know, maybe if I just ask God a hundred times to forgive me, that’ll work. That’s not how it works. You ask once in faith and it’s done. And then we walk forward in the confidence and faith that what he said is true. This is so freeing to us because I think many of us have struggled with, I think I’m still on the other side of God. I think I’m still in my sin. And you don’t have to have that worry and that fear. You can rely and rest in the gospel. The other difference,

Sins Covered Versus Sin Removed

you know, two verses that come to mind when we’re talking about the difference of these Old Testament lambs and then Jesus is in Hebrews chapter 10, it says it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. But here in our verse, it says Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And he says it’s the whole world. So Jesus’ blood is valuable enough to pay for the sin of every single person in the whole world, including Hitler. Which he’s the guy that we’re all like, no, no, no. He’s the one. Right? He’s always the one we say. But even your biggest mistakes, his blood is, and here’s the thing. Sometimes we just are convinced by voices in our head that the thing you did is too big for God to forgive, or it’s too great.

And I just want to tell you, that’s bunk. Why? Not because you’re so great, and not because the thing you did wasn’t super, super, super evil, because it probably was.

But the blood of Jesus is so valuable to God the Father that it’s worth a billion, trillion, infinity times more than your worst mistakes.

So you can call upon Jesus and be forgiven. No matter what.

Any person who’s ever lived, that’s the deal that’s offered in the gospel of grace. It truly is. And when we doubt it, what we’re doing is we’re dishonoring and being disrespectful to the Father who chose to give his beloved son as the sacrifice for our sin. We’re minimizing his the value of his blood when we don’t freely accept that we are forgiven. Guys, sometimes we wander in self-pity, saying, I shouldn’t have done this, and I don’t even know if God can find it in his heart to forgive me. I can’t forgive myself. And we’re just like we wander in the dumps, and it’s not okay because it’s dishonoring the sacrifice that was made. The sacrifice is good enough.

We have to believe it or not.

And that’s that’s where the rub is, right? All right, the next verse is verse 30. This is whom I said, After me comes a man who’s preferred before me, for he was before me. I did not uh know him, but that he should be revealed to Israel, therefore I came baptizing with water. And John bore witness, saying, I saw the spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and he remained on him. I did not know him, but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me, Upon whom you see the spirit descending and remaining on him, this is he who will baptize with the Holy Spirit. And I have seen and testified that this is the Son of God. So John tells us that, listen, at one point God opened my eyes so that I was able to see the Spirit visibly coming on Jesus, and that’s this confirmation. So that’s his testimony. Remember, this is like a court, and he’s saying, Listen, I saw the Spirit of God coming down. And so now Jesus was already one spirit with God, and so this was literally something God was doing for John and all who were there to see this testimony that God did proving that Jesus was the Son of God, right? But God was showing us, uh, He’s showing us how it will work for all men in the near future. As soon as Jesus dies, is buried, and rises from the dead, just a few weeks later, it’s the day of Pentecost. And it’s a new day when the Holy Spirit will also come upon men and be placed inside them and live forever inside them. And this is what happens today when you believe. So the moment you guys chose to believe in Jesus, this happened to you. The Holy Spirit came down from heaven, was sent from heaven into your heart and life. Well, don’t I have to like go to school for something or learn more about something or give up something? You know, is there something I have to do to make this happen? No, absolutely not. This is a free gift of God. And he says, This Holy Spirit coming upon you is Jesus

Spirit Witness New Life And Response

baptizing you. So you’re like, man, I wish I could have been baptized by John. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We get way better than what John got. We get to be baptized by Jesus. Because he says, I have seen and testified that this is the Son of God, God. You know, so John the Baptist is like, this is the Son of God, and this is what the Son of God does. He shares his death, his burial, and his resurrection with us.

And then he gives us his Holy Spirit as our new life. Okay? So when you guys think of John the Baptist, in fact, every time you look at Russ, I want you to think about what baptism means.

It’s not about water. I mean, we love going to the beach. We had a great time. We love going to the beach and baptizing you, but it’s all symbolic because the real thing is that Jesus shares his very life with you. So as you see Russ walking around, when you go over to Peggy’s to get a tattoo this week, and and you’re like, Russ, you know, ink me up. He what’s gonna come out of him is the Holy Spirit love, right? Because we know Russ is filled with the Holy Spirit. Russ is nothing but love, right? He’s awesome. And that’s available to every single one of us. Okay, it’s not about working hard, it’s simply about believing in the blood of Jesus and receiving his life into you by faith and humility. Amen?

Amen. Would you guys all stand with me? We’re gonna sing another song. And during the song, I want you to remember that we get we get into a rut at church where we come, we listen to the sermon, we sing a song, we go home. Please don’t let that happen today. We must have the Holy Spirit.

And if you have any doubt that you are forgiven, I want you to take a moment and talk to God about that and say, God, would you please forgive me? And if you have any doubt that you have the Holy Spirit, all you have to do is say, God, I want your spirit. And there’s not gonna be fire from heaven coming down, it’s gonna be yeah, it’s gonna be silent, it’s gonna be quiet, but God will always answer the true prayer of a child saying, Give me your spirit because of Jesus. So take this time and connect with God. Don’t let it be, don’t think about anything else in the world. It’s you and Jesus here. Father, we ask for your mercy, we ask for your grace and your spirit. Do things that we could never do in this room, in our hearts. Lord, I pray that there would be freedom and rejoicing that we know that we’re forgiven and new consecration to live our lives holy to you by the power of your Holy Spirit. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.