Ministry of Love

The intention of this blog is to share Biblical messages at least on a weekly basis. Any response is appreciated. I do not expect everyone to agree with my interpretation of Biblical passages. I will try to respond with love and thoughtfulness.

Tuesday, July 25, 2006

A Matter of Motive by John.

A Matter of Motive
Revelation 2:14

1. Where is Balaam mentioned in the New Testament? Only three places: 2 Peter 2:15
Jude 11 and Revelation 2:14, "Nevertheless, I have a few things against you: You have people there who hold to the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to entice the Israelites to sin by eating food sacrificed to idols and by committing sexual immorality."
2. I've read the story of Balaam over and over again. It's in Numbers 22. In Numbers 31: 8, the Israelites killed Balaam as they conquered Moab.
3. The first time I read this story, I marveled at a talking donkey!
4. Sometime later in my reading, I began to wonder, Why did Balaam consider himself a prophet?
(1) Did God call him?
(2) Did he call himself?
5. If the latter is true, then I have to wonder what his motivation was, and I'm aware that most things done in this world are done to gain money.
6. Jude 11 indicates followers of Balaam have a profit motive, and it's reasonable to assume that was Balaam's reason for becoming a prophet.
(1) If he didn't expect profit, Why didn't he tell king Balak's elders that he could not curse the Israelites?
(2) I really think Balaam was shocked when he encountered an angel, and even more shocked when God spoke to him!
(3) We can also be relatively sure there was a conversation between Balaam and Balak that is not recorded in the Bible, because the Moabite women did exactly what Satan consistently tempts people to do.
7. To me, Balaam is one of the most controversial figures in the Bible.
(1) He seems to have been a self-proclaimed prophet of God.
(2) But he also seemed to try to obey God, and did outwardly up to a point.
(3) He was also his own publicity agent. Listen to Balaam in Numbers 24:4, "The oracle of Balaam son of Beor, the oracle of one whose eye sees clearly, the oracle of one who hears the words of God, who sees a vision from the Almighty, who falls prostrate, and whose eyes are opened." My mother would have said that he was tooting his own horn! His first two oracles to Balak did not begin with this, but his last two did. I believe that is significant! I believe he could not contain his greed!
(4) He certainly failed to obey at two points, one when he went with the dignitaries from Balak, and then after he finished prophesying, he taught Balak how to get Israel in trouble with God.
8. How can a prophet of God do such a thing?
(1) In our day and time, we have seen ministers of the Gospel on national TV go astray.
(2) In areas where I have served, I've seen pastors divorce their wives to marry someone else. I've also heard of it happening the other way around.
(3) We know of church treasurers who absconded with all of the church funds.
9. I believe these people all started out, called of God, dedicated to Him, and somehow they fell for the enticements of Satan!
10. I believe Balaam did the same thing. It was no excuse for him, and it is no excuse for any of us, people.
11. When we sin, the fault is all ours! Satan may have tempted us, but God gave us a way to escape, so we are guilty before God! I Corinthians 10:13 says, "No temptations has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it."
12. All of this, leads me to question what our own motivation for serving God is?

I. Response to God's Call Should Motivate Us for Service.

1. He calls us to salvation, obedience and to service.
2. When you do something good for someone, what is their first response?
3. Isn't it, What can I do for you? Let me pay you! Well, thanks! I'll remember this!
4. We like to pay for what we get, don't we? (You do something for me, and I'll do something for you, or vice-versa.)
5. God does so much for us, it is natural to want to do something for Him.
6. We are all sinners! We either are, or were, under a death sentence from the heavenly court of God!
7. No one has ever done for any one of us individuals what God the Father did when He sent His Only Begotten Son Jesus to die for us.
8. We can never balance the books! If we try, we just get deeper in debt to God. It's a fact, we cannot out give God!
9. The wonderful thing about God's gift of life to us is that we don't have to repay Him by work.
10. Micah 6:8 says, "He has showed you, O man, what is good, and what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God."
11. That requires a new life, a new personality, and the only way for that to happen to any of us is for us to place our entire lives into the hands of God by committing our lives to Jesus. Martin Luther liked to quote, "The just shall live by faith!" (Romans 1:17 KJV).
12. Hebrews 11:6 says, "And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him."
13. The closer we get to our heavenly Father, the more we want to serve Him!
14. He calls us to be saved. He calls us to become His children. He calls us to join Him in winning others, and it is natural for us to do it.

II. If Our Calling Is Not Nurtured, We Fall.

1. We are born anew into God's kingdom as "babes in Christ."
2. We become fully mature in Jesus when we learn His Word and systematically use it in our daily lives.
3. Christ must be central in our lives, or we will fall for Satan's temptations.
4. We must not give Satan a "toe-hold" in our lives! If we give and inch, we will fall a mile!
5. Every church service is important!
(1) We are nurtured in Bible Study.
(2) We respond to the presence and the power of God when we worship.
(3) We need to spiritually consume God's Word, the Bible, regularly! Jesus is our spiritual Bread and Drink! We certainly eat physical food at least three times a day, and many of us seldom stop eating during our waking hours!
6. We need to cultivate Christian friends who will help us stay straight with God!
(1) Satan may fool us into thinking we are doing the right thing, and it may be a real friend who shows us how wrong we are!
(2) The Holy Spirit will help us get back on track as soon as we confess our sin!
(3) There's always a great danger that we will say, "The devil made me do it!"
a. That is not true, the devil can only tempt us.
b. The decision to sin is always our own choice!
c. That's why we have to admit that we are guilty!

III. Count the Milestones and Make New Ones!

1. I like to remember when I became a Christian.
(1) Some of us can remember the exact moment, and some cannot, but all of us can remember there was a time when we were lost, and we know now that we are saved! Moving from being lost to being saved is a milestone in our lives!
(2) We should be able to look back, too, and be aware of a time when we suddenly felt like we had to dedicate our lives to the Lord. (Isaiah 6: 1ff) That's another milestone in our spiritual lives.
(3) That may be the time God called us to serve Him in a particular way. That's a milestone, too.
(4) Marriage, graduation, a particular revival meeting, or a service where we suddenly realized we would never be the same again. That's another milestone in our spiritual lives.
2. The milestones in your life may be somewhat different to those in someone else's life, but one thing is sure. God's claim on our lives became paramount at the moment we wholeheartedly said, "Yes, Lord, what will you have me do?"
3. The sad truth is that service of any sort, in business, in teaching, in art, or to our Lord loses its luster, it's newness. It can become extremely stale. 4. Marriages become stale sometimes, don't they? I have often told young people about to marry that their marriage would not last and succeed if their only attraction to each other was sex.
(1) Sex and family are an important part of marriage, but with all of the senses God has given us, we will be attracted to other people. David and Bathsheba are a very real example of that.
(2) We have to develop trust, respect and friendship in marriage that grows from day to day. When we do, our marriage will last and won't be stale!
(3) In a similar way, our service to God may get stale because we seem to do and say the same things all the time. We begin to feel like nothing is happening. We may feel like total, abject failures!
5. We need some milestones in marriage, and we need milestones in our spiritual lives. ill. In I Samuel 4 in the days of Eli, the Philistines fought Israel and killed about 4000 soldiers. In chapter 5, the Ark of the Covenant was brought into the camp, and the Philistines routed Israel and captured the Ark of the Covenant. In chapter 7, Israel's leaders, Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, his sons, are dead, and Israel has defeated the Philistines. In verse 12, Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpeh and Shen. He called it Ebenezer. Ebenezer means "stone of help." It was a milestone to remind the people that the Lord helped them win the battle!
6. We need to recall our Christian milestones, but we also need to set our sights on reaching new ones.
(1) We can choose to be stale, trite and defeated, or we can choose to do something!
(2) I am sure none of us have done all we can for the Lord! Amen?
(3) That means there is challenge and victory in the future! Maybe that future starts today!

Conclusion:

1. If you have been a Christian very long, you are a Christian veteran of spiritual wars!
(1) There are all kinds of veterans. I'm a veteran of WW II, but I never saw action. The only explosion I saw was a floating mine in the Pacific Ocean that we blew up one day by shooting it with a five-inch gun. Other veterans fought, had ships and planes shot out from under them, and today, in this war, we are seeing people returning home blind, lame, crippled for life, and some will never come home. They are casualties of war!
(2) Veterans have all experienced the contrary winds of war to some extent or other.
(3) Veterans are seasoned and better equipped to stand against the stronger winds of war.
2. God uses His veterans who are willing to win new victories that will glorify Him, and that will extend His kingdom on Earth!
3. Do you see yourself as a loser? You're not! Because no one who trusts Jesus is ever a loser!
4. I heard a man say, "Not one of those churches listed in Revelation are in existence today! That proves that Jesus was wrong when He said, "Upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it." That man was wrong. Not a single Christian in those churches is in hell. Those entire churches were transferred into heaven. They were all winners. They were victors over the dark domain! And we are, and we will be, too!
5. Determine in your heart not to be like Balaam. Determine to be like Christ! As someone said, "Expect great things from God! Attempt great things for God!
6. Let's pray. Ask yourself, what is my motivation for serving God?

Emmanuel Community Church 7/23/2006

Monday, July 17, 2006

The Waters of Meribah by John.

The Waters of Meribah.
I Corinthians 10: 1-13.

1. V 4 says "that rock was Christ."
(1) Both Jesus and our Heavenly Father are called "Rock" in other places in the Bible.
(2) We are going to look at two OT Scriptures that Paul refers to here.
2. We talked about baptism last week. In v. 2, baptism is used again without referring to immersion in water. It refers to immersion in the cloud that led the Israelites by day, and to the water that walled up on both sides as they passed through the Red Sea on dry land.
(1) It is interests me to note, that baptism in the Red Sea saved Israel, and that same baptism destroyed Egypt when they tried to use it!
(2) That should serve as a warning to anyone who tries to duplicate the works of God without Him!
3. Today, I want us to see that any kind of disobedience to the Lord is a serious thing, and it is inexcusable on our part because God always gives us a way out. I Corinthians 10:13 says, "No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it."
(1) Obedience pleases God and is cause for blessing.
(2) Disobedience displeases God and is the cause of death for many including most of the Israelites who were set free in Egypt.
4. In vv. 1-4, Paul stressed the word "all." All of the Hebrews had the same opportunity to be blessed.
(1) Only a few took advantage of it. They were blessed by their obedience.
(2) Those who did not take advantage of the opportunity they had, died in the wilderness.
(3) Note they did not fail just once; they failed again and again!
5. If we stopped here, we've already had a strong message from God about our need for obedience, but let's go further.
6. Exodus 17 :1ff tells us about Moses getting water from the rock. Let's go there. (read).

I. The Israelite's Doubted God, but They Confronted Moses.

1. The Lord promised to be with them. They needed water to drink, and there was none.
2. Their natural minds went one step farther. They concluded that God was not with them like He promised He would be!
3. I add this observation: We often think God is not with us when bad things happen, but this Scripture tells us God always keeps His promises!
4. They confronted Moses and Aaron instead of taking their problem to the Lord!
(1) V 3. "Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to make us and our children and livestock die of thirst?"
(2) V 4 tells us they were almost ready to stone Moses! (I suppose they knew they could not stone God!)
5. Moses did the right thing. He took the problem to God.
6. God gave Moses careful instructions:
1) Take your staff and Aaron.
2) Lead the people to the rock.
3) Use the staff with which you struck the Nile, and strike the rock.
a. That referred to Exodus 7, and the first plague God brought on both the Egyptians and the Hebrews.
b. It's important to see that the same staff that brought pain and discomfort to the Egyptians is now used to slake the thirst of the Israelites!
4) God's promise? Water will flow from the rock.
7. Everything worked as God said it would, but something was wrong here.
8. God usually tests people so that they will see how much or how little faith they have. Here, the people reversed the situation! They tested God!
9. Now let's read Numbers 20:1:13. It's a different account of getting water from a rock.

II. As before, the Israelites Confronted Moses.

1. Some scholars think this is a second account of the same event, but it isn't.
2. Miriam was not dead when Moses struck the rock in Exodus.
(1) She is mentioned in the next chapter after that event in Exodus, and about seven times before this event in Exodus.
(2) There are other proofs, but let's pass them up for now.
3. The difference that strikes me here is in Moses.
4. Moses was his usual self in Exodus, the meekest man on earth. Here he does not seem meek, and God gives the reason for that.
(1) He followed God's directive when he went to the rock. (v 10)
(2) Then he made a little speech, "Listen, you rebels, must we (or can we) bring you water out of this rock?" Both translations are permissible.
(3) Then he struck the rock. (God did not tell him to strike the rock! He told him to speak to it.)
(4) When nothing happened, he struck the rock again. (That's a physical sign that he doubted that God was doing what He told him He would do.)
5. God honored His servant by having the water gush from the rock! (He did it even though His Moses was disobedient! God always keeps His Word.)
6. God sees beneath the face we show the world, and God knew the doubt in Moses' mind.
7. In v 12, He said, "Because you did not trust in me enough to honor me as holy in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this community into the land I give them."
8. Disobedience is sin, and sin results in loss. Confession and rededication restores us to blessing.
9. There are a number of differences in the two accounts, but both carry the same prophetic picture of the coming of Jesus and His death for us.

III. Both of these Old Testament Scriptures are prophetic.

1. They give a true picture of God as being God of everything that is. He created and sustains everything!
2. The Rock certainly represents Jesus, and Moses,
striking the rock with his staff in Exodus certainly indicated Jesus would die to give life to God's sinful people.
3. Moses struck the rock in Numbers. We can only surmise what the picture would have show if he had not. Perhaps it would have shown the people that Jesus is eternal. Death has, and cannot have, any power over Him! He laid down His life willingly, and He took it up again.
4. In Exodus, Moses struck the rock and plenty of water came out, but in Numbers it gushed out!
5. Moses called the place Massa and Meribah.
(1) Massa can mean "holy," and Meribah means "contention."
(2) Together they would read, "holy contention."
6. That's what has gone on between God and man ever since that time.
7. Jesus came to earth to give us the water of life and the ability to trust God for everything!

Conclusion:

1. In I Corinthians 10:1-13, Paul uses the Old Testament to tell us that the Spiritual Rock from which all of us must drink is Jesus.
2. All of us, before we meet Jesus, are disobedient, but that does not change the fact that God expects us to obey Him. These things happened to warn us disobedience is destructive in our relation with God.
3. II Peter 3:9 says, "The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance."
(1) God loves us, and He does not want a single one of us to perish and spend eternity in hell!
(2) He wants all of us to be saved and spend eternity in heaven with Him!
4. Paul is telling us that God has provided a way to escape temptation so that we might escape its power, and the destructive nature of sin.
6. The problem is, we all still sin!
7. Only with Jesus can we stand before God!
9. Have you given yourself to Him? You can while we pray!

Emmanuel Community Church 7/16/2006

Saturday, July 08, 2006

Do You Know the Right Way? by John

Do you know the right way?
Proverbs 14:12 [Read in 2.] (Isaiah 58)

1. If I asked a stranger, "Do you know the right way? What do you think he would answer? (He might ask, "to where?")
2. Proverbs 14:12 is an old familiar verse to most Christians and other Bible students, too. It says, "There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death."
3. Knowing the right way is always important, isn't it?
4. In school, we are taught to be confident, and we are told that we can be confident when we really know what we are doing.
5. Many of us are extremely confident about the work we do in this world. We've learned how it is done, right?
6. A great many of us lack confidence when it comes to the next world!
7. As a teenager I was totally amazed when I began to study electronics. I still have trouble with Ohm's law. It bothered me when teachers stopped talking about the old standard cycles per second and started calling them "Hertz!" I was flabbergasted when I discovered that light travels at 286,200 miles per second, and in order to have a working Radar machine, there had to be a switch that was so fast, it could send a signal out and receive it back in less than a milli-second! I learned how it was done, and the utter simplicity of it shocked me.
During my stint in the Navy, I learned to calibrate and operate 42 different radar machines, and I was both competent and confident. I was only in the service 2 years, 4 month and 21 days.
8. I began attending Sunday School and Worship when I was too young to remember it. I was regular in chapel services in the Navy, so I had a lot of religious experience, and I thought I was going the right way! But I wasn't! If Myron Hayter, a young man discharged from the Army, had not taken a hand in getting me turned straight around to the Lord, I would be doubtful about my eternal destination right now! "There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death."
9. I did not have a personal relationship with the Lord.
10. People, when you depend on anything other than a personal relationship with the Lord, you are going the wrong direction, and it leads to eternal death!
11. Turn to Isaiah 58 with me, and let's read Isaiah 58:1-5

I. Religion without obedience is false!

1. God's prophet told it like it was, and a lot of people still practice false religion today.
2. People go through religious rites, ceremonies, and they pray, but God does not respond as they hope because their hearts are far from Him.
3. Many people think religion is a kind of magic. If they work it just right, God will be forced to do what they want.
4. Nothing is farther from the truth! God is not only always present, and all-powerful, but He is also all-knowing! He sees through all of of our schemes and charades!
5. He is under no obligation to do anything for us that He has not promised. Of course, He never goes back on His Word once He has given it! But we must meet His conditions!
6. We can pray all the prayers we want, we can attend all the worship services we want, we can travel great distances to hear Billy Graham or some other evangelist or motivational speaker. We can make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, or to Mecca, we can tithe, or double, or triple tithe, but these things do not impress our God!
7. I quoted a line of an old song last Sunday and I have to say it again today, "Trust and obey. There's no other way!"
8. . Religion is man reaching out to God. Christianity is God reaching down to man! That means...

II. Real Religion is obedient. Let's read vv. 6,7

1. Did you notice God used "fasting" ironically here in v. 6?
2. What he wants is for people to set unjustly treated people free.
3. He wants us stop oppressing other people.
4. He wants us to feed the hungry, to provide shelter for the homeless, and to clothe the naked!
5. And at the same time, to take care of our own families, too.

III. Heart Religion determines blessings.

1. Let's read vv. 8-10.
2. Obedience to the Lord's Will results in blessing according to the Scripture we just read.
3. We have already seen that the Lord withholds His blessings to the disobedient unless they become obedient.
4. In Mt 15: 11,18, Jesus said, "What goes into a man's mouth does not make him 'unclean,' but what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him 'unclean'...But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man 'unclean.'"
5. People can control their tongues to a certain point in public, or in a court of law, but eventually each one of us will tell everyone else who we are. Our words betray us! They reveal our real character!
6. God knows our hearts! Acts 15:8 says, "God, who knows the heart showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us." (Peter was speaking).
7. The greatest blessings:
(1) To know the Lord.
(2) To inherit eternal life.
(3) To share Jesus with others.
(4) Everything else comes after that, and that includes all of the things we hold so dear today: family, friends, money, property, knowledge. None of these things come close to the spiritual blessings God bestows on those of us who put their trust in Jesus!
8. We have to wait for some of the blessings, but the most important come right now!
9. The moment we trust Jesus as Lord and Savior, we have eternal life! The moment we trust Jesus as Lord and Savior, we know our heavenly Father and He acknowledges us, too!
10. Outward religion is nothing when compared to the spiritual religion, heart religion, that God expects from us.

Conclusion:

1. For some of us, it is a surprise to discover that the Old and New Testaments contain the same message.
(1) In the Old Testament is is easy to see both the love and severity of God.
(2) He demands obedience, but He is loving, and when people give Him obedience, He cares for them tenderly.
(3) In the New Testament, we see His love much more easily than we do in the Old Testament.
(4) We seem to think the line between love and God's requirement of obedience is blurred.
(5) It is not. Dr. Adrian Rogers said that Jesus is called Lord 422 times in the New Testament, and He is called Savior only 11 times. (Those numbers may be off a little. I'm going by my memory.)
(6) It is obvious that we must accept the Lordship of Jesus over us, or we cannot receive Him as Savior!
2. The whole Bible is God's Word, and we should expect to find the same truth in the Old Testament hat we do in the New Testament.
3. Paul the apostle used Old Testament truths mixed with his own eye-witness accounts to win Jews and Gentiles to Jesus. There was no New Testament written at that time!
4. Now let's get really straight here: When your lips say "Yes!" to the Lord Jesus, it doesn't mean a thing if your whole life is not given with your confession of faith!
5. Church membership, American citizenship, Christian parents, nor anything else makes any difference.
6. What does make a difference is what you have in your heart!
7. It's time to get off the road that seems right, and to get on the one that is right!
8. When Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me." (John 14:6) The word translated "way" is 'hodos." It means road, journey-way, or road. We go through Him, or we don't go at all!

Emmanuel Community Church 7

Saturday, July 01, 2006

Biblical, Christian Baptism by John.

Biblical, Christian Baptism
Matthew 28:18-20

1. The Jews of Jesus' time on earth always listed the most important things first.
2. With that in mind, think about the listing in these three verses:
(1) The first is authority in heaven and on earth. Jesus is Lord over all there is.
(2) The others are dependent on that.
(3) The second is, "Go." Actually, it would be better translated as "as you are going."
(4) The third is, "make disciples." Essentially, that means lead people to follow and listen to Jesus.
(5) The fourth is, "teaching them to obey." Not one thing Jesus taught is less than vital to life!
(6) The fifth is the culminating promise, "And surely I am with you always." At some point in discipleship, we accept Christ as our Lord and Savior, and this is His promise! He will always be with us!
3. Jesus Himself spoke all of these words, and we are called Baptists because we center our churches on these commands of Jesus, but people have always noticed the strong emphasis on baptism.
4. Some denominations have tried to convince the world that baptism in water in their church by their minister is the only way to get to heaven. (You notice that I said, "have tried." They have had varied success, but in my estimation they are not Biblical, and they cannot succeed.
5. There are two kinds of baptism in the New Testament. I'll explain that in a few minutes.

I. First, Let's Talk about the meaning of the Greek Word used in the NT and translated universally as baptism.

1. It is baptidzo. It means, "to plunge under," or "to immerse."
2. It does not mean, "to pour," "or to sprinkle."
(1) The translators of the King James Bible were concerned because their church did not immerse people.
(2) They felt obligated to ts baptidzo as "immerse." They felt they would be changing God's Word if they translated it any other way.
(3) King James suggested they just bring baptidzo over into English, and then they could give it any meaning they wanted to. They did that.
(4) The practice of sprinkling and pouring started when the churches began to expand.
a. Sick people and injured Roman soldiers could not be immersed in water without serious physical consequences.
b. It should not have made any great difference to them, but if baptism was necessary for salvation, it would, and the churchmen had already fallen into that trap of Satan!
c. This may seem contradictory, but I believe that any person who has not been baptized is lost!
d. Now let me quickly explain that.

II. Spiritual and Physical Baptism Are Both Important.

1. Romans 6:3 says, "Don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?"
2. Jesus was talking about His death when He asked James and John if they could be "baptized" with the baptism He was going to receive.
(1) That definitely did not refer to what we think of when we talk about baptism, right? (We sometimes say soldiers were under a baptism of fire.
(2) Jesus referred to James and John living for Jesus by dying to themselves, and eventually dying for Jesus just like He would die for them.
3. We usually say there are two church ordinances, Baptism and the Lord's Supper.
(1) There are three views about the Lord's Supper.
a. One view is Transubstantiation. This view maintains that the bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Jesus at a precise moment in a communion service.
b. A second view is Consubstantiation. This belief is that the bread and wine do not change, but that the body and blood of Jesus are present in them.
c. By far the most popular view is that the bread and wine represent the body and blood of Jesus.
(2) It is obvious that no one eating the bread and drinking the wine ever experience any change in the taste of those items.
(3) It is true that in John 6:53, Jesus said, "I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you...For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink."
(1) I believe the all the Bible, and I believe this, but this is an instance when Jesus was not speaking literally.
(2) He is talking about the dedication it takes, the total abandonment of self that we must have in order to truly accept Him as our Savior.
(3) It also refers to the fact that when we entrust Him completely with our lives, He indwells us, and He will never leave us!
4. Now, why did I bring that up in the first place?
(1) I brought it up because water baptism is a physical act symbolic of a Spiritual act.
a. Some churches list a number of things a person has to do in his lifetime to be saved, and the Lord's Supper and Baptism are on their list!
b. I see nothing in the Bible to indicate bread, wine, and water applied to our lives either bring or maintain salvation.
c. We do agree that no one ever has or ever will go to heaven without Spiritual Baptism!
d. I think we would also have to agree that no soul goes to heaven without the dedication Jesus was talking about when He said we must eat His body and drink His blood.
e. Salvation comes as we meet God's terms to accept the gift of Life He gives us. We give ourselves to Him and to His keeping trusting in His Son for the forgiveness of our sins. When we do that, He accepts us!

III. Baptism in Water is a Beautiful Picture of Salvation.

1. Baptism in and by the Spirit is absolutely necessary for salvation! Baptism in water pictures what has already happened spiritually!
2. We believe Christians go to heaven when they die, right? Right!
3. But the transaction that insures the trip comes at an earlier time.
4. I was brought up believing that no one would know they were going to heaven for sure until we stood before God at judgment!
5. I had to study the Bible to see that is not true!
6. Judgment takes place when we put our trust in Jesus.
(1) That's why Jesus wants us to be His disciples!
(2) We are sinners! All of us sinned before we knew Jesus!
(3) John 5:24 says, "I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned: he has crossed over from death to life."
(4) "Hears" and "believes" are present tense, right?
(5) "Will" is future tense.
(6) "Has crossed" is past perfect tense.
(7) That means those who believe right now will never be condemned. They have already been judged! Their destination is heaven!
7. That's the picture baptism in water shows of those being baptized.
8. It also serves to remind us that Jesus died to make it possible for God to forgive our sins, and that He arose to open the door to life for all of us!

Conclusion:

1. Baptism is a simple act of obedience to the Lord simply because He asks it of us.
2. It is a beautiful picture of our death to self, and our resurrection to life eternal.
3. It represents our being immersed in the Holy Spirit of God.
4. It is a witness to the world that we belong to Jesus!
5. Do you need to be baptized? Do you meet the conditions we've talked about today? Then you should present yourself as a candidate for baptism and membership in this church.
6. If you don't meet the conditions, you can, and we will be glad to tell you how if you let us.

Emmanuel Community Church July 2, 2006
(the church's 18th anniversary).