So I want to read a couple verses to you just as we start the service. From Galatians chapter three, verses 26 through 29. And in Galatians three, this is the apostle Paul speaking to these people in this church. And there's a whole bunch here, but I'm just going to read these three verses and talk for just a minute or two about them. He says this, for in Christ Jesus, you all are sons of God through faith.

For all of you who are baptized, listen to this. Into Christ. See, you're not just baptized as a sign or a symbol. You're actually, something is happening here where you're baptized into Jesus Christ. So he says, for all of you who are baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ, there is neither jew nor greek, or slave, or free, or male or female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.

And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's descendants and heirs according to the promise. I mean, we could preach a whole message on that, and I'm not going to. I say sometimes, if you want to hear the rest of that, come to Sunday school and ask about it there, and we'll talk about it, because that happens right after the service, so you're welcome to bring it up there. So that's another good reason to, like, write some notes down and say, okay, this is what we're talking about in class, because otherwise I'll go rambling or ranting about something, and you never know what you're going to get. So it's better if you bring some stuff up.

But, you know, this is, this idea of baptism is about having new life in Jesus Christ. It's not like just a simple reset. I don't know if sometimes, if you've had a problem with your phone or a computer, I know a lot of you have, because you come to me, we're going to actually probably do, like, a tech support class someday and be like, hey, bring all your tech questions, and some of us young folk will try to answer it, you know? But sometimes the best thing you can do is turn it off and back on again. That sometimes fixes it.

That's kind of what we do when we go to sleep, right? Like, have you tried turning yourself off and back on again? You know, just sleep for a while and wake up? We say we sleep on it, but baptism is not just as simple. Like, we're going down and back up and being reset.

Baptism is so much more than that. It symbolizes and takes part in the initiation of a new life in Jesus Christ. So the sermon later. We're gonna sing a couple songs, have prayer time, and then have the full sermon. And that at that point, I want you to know that I will be speaking specifically to five people who are the candidates for baptism today, but also for each of us to know and understand what it is.

And if you've already been baptized and you can remember that time of your baptism, like, you know, some people were baptized as a small child and they don't remember it. But if you remember your baptism, I want you to understand what it was about and what it is for, and that through that, you would understand where your faith in God is placed and what has taken part when you were baptized. Because even though it may have been in faith, you might not have fully understood what or why. But God can still apply the full effects of your baptism in your walk with him today. So I'm going to invite the praise team to come up.

We're going to sing a couple songs. I would invite those of you to stand who are in the seats, and I'm going to pray. So if you'll stand, I'm going to pray as they come forward. God, we just thank you this day. We thank you that you love us, that you care about us, and that you have renewed us and regenerated us.

Thank you, Lord, for everything you're doing in our hearts and in our lives. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. So we're going to be looking today. I know I already shared a scripture from Galatians three a few minutes ago, but we're going to be looking in the book of acts.

And in acts, chapter eight specifically is where I'm going to be. So there's little blue bibles in the rack in front of you. You can use one on your phone. Either way is fine with me, or just listen along. But I want us to understand a couple things about baptism.

Baptism is a new life. It signifies, it helps get us into that new life, and it's a life that only comes from God. But I want you to hear this. Baptism involves faith. Baptism is worthless without faith.

It involves a declaration that you're making, whether you say it out loud or not. And we'll kind of ask a couple simple questions. But when we do the baptisms. But baptism is a faith and a declaration. That declaration is saying God is right, and I want to live for him and I want his power in my life.

You see, baptism doesn't, like, just fix you. It doesn't change a lot of things. We'll get into that in a little bit. But what it is is it's this genuine. Just from the deepest part of your soul.

It's this declaration that says, I want to be who God wants me to be. Now, I'll admit, just like when I got married, I had no idea, really, what marriage was about. Like, I don't know if anybody really stepped into marriage knowing what it was about, because I think you probably wouldn't do it. Like, you would hear so many things. I remember these guys that I worked with.

I worked on this landscaping grounds crew. I've done a lot of that over my life. I worked on this grounds crew at a college campus. And there was these. I called them the old plumbers.

There were these guys that worked. They had this plumbing shop, and we'd go there basically when we didn't want to do any work, we would just hide out there. The kind of unspoken rule was, if you aren't doing anything, just don't get caught. Not doing anything, and everything's fine. Like, that was from our boss's boss, you know, like, just, if there's nothing left to do, you did all your work.

Just don't get caught. Not doing nothing. Not doing anything, you know? So I remember before I got married, I'm hanging out in the plumbing shop, and these guys. Oh, man.

One was this russian guy, and one was this guy that lived out in the middle of nowhere in a mobile home. There was actually three mobile homes on the same two acres. You know, it was like. So this guy had a very. Both of them had very unique, like, experiences.

But they both agreed on one thing. They said, well, you're about to get married. Huh? Better get ready to start sleeping on the couch a lot. And I was like, bah.

No, I own my own house. My wife's moving in is my bed. I'll sleep on my bed anytime I want. And they laughed in my face. I mean, they laughed at me with this big, hearty laughter, both in, like, redneck and russian, you know?

Like, it was great. Like, the laughter just blended together, and it was. It was great. I still got married. I also found out they were 100% right, you know?

Like, there's a lot of things that I was like, there's no way that'll be me. And then it was. I'm not saying don't get married. I'm saying marriage is great. But if they told you, like, all these things, it's like, if you're buying a used car and the guy's really honest about it, like, this is sometimes why you need to have somebody else sell a car for you.

It's like, look, I don't know. Buy it as is. It's cheap. Take it or leave it, you know? And so baptism is something that we need to understand, but I don't think you fully understand it in the moment, but it's something that God will continue revealing as you walk in faith.

Much like I find out more and more about marriage, the longer I'm married, the more you're walking with Christ, the more you find out about what that has to do with your life and what that means for you. So I wanna look in the book of acts at this guy who jumped into it, not fully ready to commit, not fully ready to understand what this new life was that he was committing to now, without getting into a whole bunch of background in the interest of time, I'll try to be brief in my summary of what's going on. But there's this guy who's one of Jesus apostles, and he's named Philip. And Philip decided by the power of the Holy Spirit leading him and guiding him, that he's going to go up to an area called Samaria. Samaria was where a lot of people that were Jews didn't like to go because they didn't like each other.

So they go to Samaria, though. Philip goes there and he preaches, and these people are like, this Jesus guy is pretty great. You're saying there's forgiveness for my sins, that I can have new life in him. I want that life now. What Philip didn't do was say, okay, now that you're saved, you have to wait a few years, go through some catechisms or discipleship classes or something like that.

Serve a while in a church, prove it that you know what you're doing, and then get baptized. What he did was, he said, let's get you guys wet right now. Let's get you baptized right now. So there was this guy that he meets that initially jumps into the faith. But this guy was a sorcerer.

Like a legit sorcerer, not like a magician. Like we have today, where they, like, have a deck of cards and do sleight of hand and things like that. Like, Elaine, who leads our singing, her son is one of these guys. Not the sorcerer kind, like the sleight of hand kind. And he had a store, like a brick and mortar store, where they would sell tricks and, like, you could buy it.

And every trick came with directions or instructions for how to do it. So, like, you don't drop the card, you're trying to show or whatever, it shows you how to do the trick. Every trick comes with a lesson. But you've got this guy named Simon in history. He's named Simon Magus, Simon the magician, Simon the Sorcerer.

And he agrees to join the faith in Christ at first, but then as we look in verses 20 through 23, he had seen something that he was interested in. He had seen that when the apostles came from Jerusalem, Peter and John, to help out Philip, who was initially the preacher there. When they showed up to help out, they laid hands on these new believers and prayed over them, and they received the fullness of the Holy Spirit of God. And he said, simon Magus, Simon the sorcerer said that he wanted this power too, so that everyone I place my hands on may receive the Holy Spirit. And he offered them money for that.

He says, I'll give you money if I can have this ability, this trick if you will. But Peter said to him, may your silver perish with you because you thought you could acquire God's gift with money. You have no share or part in this matter because your heart is not right before God. Therefore, repent of this wickedness of yours and pray to the Lord that he may perhaps forgive you for the intent of your heart. For I see that you are in the gall of bitterness and in bondage to sin.

Then Simon prayed that the Lord would, he ask them to pray that the Lord would forgive him of this. You see, the interesting thing here is that this guy, this Simon the magician, thought that this laying on of hands from the apostles was kind of the same thing as what he had been doing as a sorcerer. He thought, like, I can go obtain a new trick or a new thing from another sorcerer or another magician, and I can do that and have the power of that sorcery. And so this is the same thing. He's thinking, like, I can just have this power to lay hands on people and they would receive the Holy Spirit.

And so he's thinking that he could buy that from the apostles. In other words, he had had somewhat of a transformation in his mind. He agreed that this idea of Jesus was pretty cool, but yet he wasn't ready to fully submit to this new life or this new way. He still wanted to live his old ways. And so Peter speaks to him and he says, you missed the point, and you are living in the pit of bitterness and sin.

It has you bound to still, baptism didn't have fix him yet because he hadn't yet believed. He kind of believed a little, but he wasn't fully ready to commit to this way of Jesus Christ. You see, baptism is only effective for those who receive it as a gift of God and allow him to cleanse your heart and bring new life. So, you know, I think about that, and I think if you don't receive baptism in faith with the willingness to submit to Christ, you're just getting wet in front of a whole bunch of people. That's all it really boils down to.

But right after this, it gets really interesting. You see, Philip is this guy. He's really willing to go out where nobody else is willing to do this stuff. All of his other apostles at this point, they're staying in Jerusalem because it's comfortable there. Everybody has the same background as they do.

Everybody speaks the same language they do. They have similar cultural customs as they do. And so they're comfortable staying there. And they preach and they meet in the temple or the synagogues, and they teach the people about Jesus there, but they don't really move out of there. But Philip moved out of there.

Philip went first to Samaria, and then the holy spirit of God leads him to go out to this desert road. And he goes into this desert road and he finds a guy that's from Ethiopia, and this guy is a eunuch. And because of the kids that are here, I won't exactly explain what that means, but if you need to google it, go for it. And, you know, it's like it meant he was in service to usually a female royal figure, a queen of some kind, and they wanted to make sure that he only did what he was supposed to do and nothing else, if you catch the drift. So he's a man in most senses of the word.

So anyway, he's there, and he's been up to Jerusalem to meet with God and worship him there, and yet he's left and he's reading the scriptures. Somehow this man was able to actually afford a scroll or a book that had the scriptures in him, which would have been costly. So you can tell that he was very serious about his faith. And this man, he is reading, he's in like a chariot, and he's reading the scriptures from the book of Isaiah. And the Holy Spirit who had led Philip to go down here, and Philip doesn't know why.

He shows up and he sees this guy and the spirit says, go up by that chariot. Now Philip starts listening to what is happening. The guy's reading the scriptures out loud, and he's like, okay, holy Spirit, I got it from here. I understand the mission. So he says to the guy, he's like, do you know what you're reading?

He's like, no. How many of you guys have ever looked at this? And you open the Bible, and you're like, I have no idea what I just read. Like, I don't get it. A bunch of you guys with your hands down are liars.

Or very, like, very shy, you know, like, absolutely. Or you just haven't read it. One of the two. One of the three. I don't know how many things that was.

And so Philip jumps in there, and he goes up to talk to this guy, and he ends up, you know, explaining it to him. But I want to pick up right after that. We're still in acts, chapter eight, just verses 35 through 40. I want to read those to you and explain it briefly. See, Philip says he starts speaking and beginning with the scripture that the man was reading.

He proclaims the good news about Jesus to him. Now, as they were going along the road, they came to some water. And the eunuch said, look, there is water. What would stop me from being baptized? So he ordered the chariot to stop, and both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water, and Philip baptized him.

Now, when they came up out of the water, the spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away, and the eunuch did not see him anymore, but he went on his way, rejoicing. Philip, however, found himself at a town called azotes. And as he passed through the area, he proclaimed the good news to all the towns until he came to Caesarea. That scripture makes me think of three questions. Three or three things.

One question, three ideas. The question is, what would keep you from being baptized? Specifically, the five people who are planning on being baptized today. What would keep them from being baptized? And if there's anyone else, by the way, the invitation is open to you.

I didn't bring extra clothes because I didn't know who you might be. But we do have extra time. And if you decide on the conclusion of this or right now, if the spirit is speaking to you and saying you're number six or you're number seven, if you want to be baptized today as well, because you say, I want in on this faith and I want in on this life change, then we're willing to baptize you as well. But what happens here is we see this question. What would keep you from being baptized?

I think that's a question that we don't just read, but we need to ask of these five and of anyone else who might wish to be baptized today, what would keep you from being baptized. I have three thoughts that come to mind that might prevent someone from being baptized. I don't mean your own fear and trepidation or anything like that. I mean three biblical things, three spiritual things that would prevent you from being a candidate for baptism today. The first one is quite plain and quite simple.

Unbelief if you don't believe that Jesus Christ came to die for our sins and for our new life, baptism won't make any sense to you. It won't have any efficacy in your life. In other words, it won't be efficient or it won't actually accomplish anything in your life. If you have no belief in Christ, baptism doesn't matter. It won't do anything bad.

It won't bring you into some point of damnation or lostness or anything like that. If you are baptized with unbelief, much like Simon Magus, Simon the sorcerer, he was baptized without fully being committed to that belief, and it still left him in the same place he was before, in the pits of despair, entangled with sin. But when he prayed that none of these things would happen to him, I believe he was repenting at that moment like he hadn't done before he was baptized. The second thing I believe that would prevent you from being baptized would be your unwillingness to confess Jesus Christ as lord and savior. In other words, you have no business being baptized.

If you can't say, Jesus, I understand, forgives me now, and that he offers me new life. If you can't make that simple declaration, and literally for those five of you, I will ask you that question. And all you have to do is say, yes. Yes, I do. That's it.

It's very simple. You don't have to put it in your own words, but if you want to, you can. We certainly are welcome to do that. The third thing that would prevent someone from being baptized is if, like Simon the sorcerer, if you have false or selfish motives that glorify you, rather than glorifying Jesus Christ, you see, he is the one that receives glory in your baptism. He's the one that receives the credit and the honor for that.

It's not that he's selfish or self serving in that way. It's the fact that he deserves the praise and glory and honor for the change that he brings about in our lives. You know, you don't have to go very far into looking up different things on the Internet, maybe YouTube or something like that, or news sites, and you'll read about some horrible, evil thing that's happened in the world people harming other people, something of that nature. And people say, how would a loving God allow that? You know, that's a question that I can't fully answer today.

I have some thoughts on it. I don't know if they're concrete or definitive, but I have my ideas there. But the idea that God isn't doing anything about it is simply ignorant on our part. You see, one of the things God is doing, at least for five people that I know of today, is that he is working in their lives to bring about a regeneration, a newness of life in their lives that would keep them from taking part in those wicked things. And the more we go and share that good news of life, transformation of new life in Jesus Christ with others, the more we share that and the more people receive it.

Evil is dealt a hard blow, and righteousness wins. See, God is renewing all things, and he starts by renewing us individually. So I want to talk just for a couple minutes, about what baptism is and isn't. By the way, I watch a church online that we visited one time two years ago in the mountains in east Tennessee. Amy and I went there, and Emma and we sat there, and I loved it that they had a bunch of kids there, and they were all just kind of scattered throughout, and they had, like, stacks of coloring books.

And those kids would go around and they would play with them and everything. And I usually watch that on Sunday morning, their service from the previous week. I usually watch that as I'm preparing to come to our church service. And I saw that this morning. I saw kids milling about, moving around.

I said, man, how great is that, that their kids are down in the service with them? And here ours are today. So I love it. It's good to see you guys in here. And you know, I love the noise because you know why?

Some of you folks have been sitting there too long, and you think you're supposed to be quiet in church. I heard a preacher this week say, you know what? You guys help me preach. Because as you respond, as you say, yeah, that's right. Or amen.

Or I don't know about that. I'll be like, oh, man, maybe I need to. You know, I used to have this old guy that was a retired pastor, and he'd sit in the back row, like, that didn't help. Okay, so maybe don't do that. You can talk to me later if I get it mixed up, you know, like, it'll happen.

I'm fallible. I know that. I'm not like the pope or whatever that speaks, you know, supposedly like, you know, the words of Christ or something when he talks. But I try my best, I prepare for it. And my plan is that I would say something worthy of you guys, like saying, yeah, that's right.

Not your right. I don't care about me being right. I care about me siding with the truth of Jesus Christ. That's right. Is the thing to say.

I learned that from an FBI hostage negotiator. He tries to get people to the point where they're not. They don't say to the negotiator, yeah, you're right. Like, hey, you need to not kill all those people and blah, blah, blah. Like, no, no, he needs to get to the point where they say, that's right.

They agree that that is a statement of truth. Not that I just figured something out, but that you recognize the truth of what is being said. So here's some things about baptism, and here's where I said earlier, you might have learned some things about baptism growing up in church or attending church for a number of years, or maybe just from an outsider's viewpoint where you think, hey, that must be what it's about, because somebody said it. But I want to tell you, on this kind of journey I've been on in the past year, looking through the scriptures, talking with some other pastors that baptize a lot of people, and I wanted to look at it and say, what does the scriptures tell us? Not what does, like the Nazarene doctrine say, what does my history from what I've learned say, but what do the scriptures say?

And I don't have time to do a comprehensive thing on today, but I want to give you a few things that I'm very convinced of. And like I said, it's acts 17, where the berean city was, that Paul visited the city of Berea, and as he spoke to them, rather than the Jews in other cities who had tried to kill them and run them out of town, these people examined the scriptures and said, we're going to see if what he says is true. So baptism first and foremost, isn't a cure all. Like, it doesn't fix the problems that you have. That might be physical, mental, emotional, financial, whatever.

It doesn't promise to fix those things or to change those things. I'm not saying that God won't do that. God loves you. As he reveals himself as a loving heavenly father. He wants to provide for you in ways that a good father would do.

But baptism itself does not mean that those things will happen. Baptism isn't a thing that seals in or solidifies your place in eternity in heaven. Baptism doesn't make that happen. If you want proof there was a guy that died on the cross next to Jesus that wasn't baptized. Disciple didn't ever sing a christian song.

Like, didn't do anything. He just said, like, jesus, I'm sorry. And he's like, hey, you're gonna be with me today. Like, good. You know, the guy's thinking like, oh, man.

Because sometimes crucifixions took a couple days before somebody expired. So he's like, oh, good. That's happening today. Like, I don't have a long time. I heard a sermon on this recently, or a clip of one, and it talked about that guy getting to the heavenly gates.

This is kind of a fictional viewpoint of it. And he gets up there and there's somebody at the gate, and he's like, uh, why should you get in? He's like, I don't know. He's like, well, can you tell me about, like, you know, he's like, listing off these doctrines? No, I don't know that.

He's like, well, can you tell me, like, how was your catechisms or your baptism or your class? He's like, I don't have any of those things. He's like, well, then why should you be in here? He says, the guy on the middle cross said I could be here. I love that, the guy in the middle.

And I'm like, we need. Where's Michelle? Michelle? We need to make a shirt for that. I don't know where she.

Oh, you're right here. You're usually in the back when I'm preaching, but we got songs layers here up front. I'm like, where's Michelle? So we need shirts with that, right? I don't know what the design is, but it's like, you know, the guy on the middle cross said, I could be here.

I love it. I love it. So we can do it. So, you know, baptism doesn't solidify your place in heaven. Baptism doesn't cleanse your sin.

Now, we can get into some theological gray areas on this, because it does talk about that in a way. We'd have to get into some deeper discussion on that. But I want to be very clear right now. The thing that cleanses your sin was the death of Christ on the cross in your place and the new life that he gives you via his resurrection. There's a whole bunch of theology around that.

There's a whole bunch of doctrine and discussion around that. One statement, but I want to be clear. Your sins aren't washed away in baptism. Although I joked with a friend of mine named Pastor Mike, who we talked about some people might need to be held down a little bit longer, you know, like, until all those sins are washed off. And he said, like, when you see that leg still kicking, they're still fighting it.

You need to hold them down until they stop fighting it. You know? We're not doing that today. Maybe. I don't know.

Anyway, Tom, you can tell me how long we need to do for some of them. Okay? Does that sound good?

Baptism is not a powerless symbol or declaration of your faith. And I say that because what I mean by this is, I've heard too many times in the tradition that I've grown up in, where people said, and tell me if you've heard this, baptism is an outward sign of an inward change. You ever heard that? Can I tell you right now, with hopefully some charity in how I say it, that was wrong. It was wrong.

It's so much more than that. Baptism is so much more than just coming up here, getting wet in front of people and saying, yeah, I'm a Christian. You don't have to get wet to tell people you're a Christian. You don't have to get dunked in the water, have it sprinkled on you or poured on you or anything like that to just declare your faith. Baptism is so much more powerful than you just saying, I believe in Jesus, and he's cleansed my sin.

It's so much more powerful than that. See, baptism actually does accomplish something, and we'll talk about that in just a moment. But the Bible never says that baptism is simply an outward sign of what's going on inside. It does accomplish that, but that is not its only mode or thing that it does. It does so much more than that.

So I want to be clear that baptism alone is not saving grace. I talked with my mom, which is gail over here that leads our kids ministry with her volunteers. We were talking about that just this week. She's taking some classes, and she's like, we keep talking about these, you know, method or means of grace. What is a means of grace?

It's literally something that God does in your life that brings or imparts God's power, God's salvation into your life. Some things are like, communion is a means of grace. It's a sacrament that we partake in, in which we say this isn't just a symbolic little tokens of the body and blood of Jesus. We actually believe that there's something that Jesus does, that when we participate in that we are making a declaration about what his death did for us. But we're also saying, like, somehow God is enjoining himself into us a little bit more when we do that.

And depending on the denominational backgrounds, there's a whole bunch of stuff that they say, like in different takes on that. I'm not trying to get into all that today. I just want to let you know, baptism, it doesn't physically save you. And yet Jesus commanded it for his followers. I know.

I already talked about the guy that died on the cross next to him, and he didn't have to be baptized because Jesus hadn't died yet and risen again. There was no reason to be baptized. The faith in Christ was simply that his death meant something for that guy. But for us who have come to faith in the time after the resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ into heaven, we are baptized because he commanded it. Jesus himself was baptized by his cousin John the baptizer.

So what baptism does do is it's the first step of obedience to Jesus Christ. He didn't say, like, get, you know, be saved, agree to salvation and make your declaration of faith and repentance of sin, and then wait a long time to be baptized. He just said to his disciples, he's like, go out, make disciples and baptize them. And then he didn't even give them instructions for how, when, why, where. Like, we argue about all this stuff, but it doesn't simply give us a roadmap for baptism.

We've had to figure all this stuff out. Some of the way we do that is, then we continue reading in the Bible, like after the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Then we've got the rest of this where we read it and see any time that it talks about somebody being baptized and we write it down, or I do, and then you listen to me talk about it, and we go through all that and we start to have a picture that's being painted of what baptism is, what it means, and what it does. So I want to tell you what baptism is. It's a sign and it's a seal.

It's a sign, as we talked about, that it does testify to what God is doing in your lives, but it also seals you into this new covenant. We talk about that in communion. Jesus says that it is the cup of the new covenant in his blood. It is the sign that we're in this new covenant, a new covenant that is a cleansed heart. When we're baptized.

It's also a sign of something not that we have done. In other words, it's not a work that accomplishes something in your life. Baptism is actually taking part in what Jesus is already doing in our lives, and baptism is conferring God's grace to everyone who receives it. That's why we call it a means of grace. And through this act, God grants a special measure of his grace that can only be found as we are obedient to him.

So with all that being said, the most important thing for us to hear right now, this morning, through everything that I said, and you can go back and listen to it and argue with me later if there was something that didn't jive with your understanding of it. Baptism is only effective as a means of grace if you believe see, without faith, baptism is just getting wet in front of people. If you're joining us online but you have never attended in person, let us know that you're watching by leaving a comment. And please give us a thumbs up on the video. If there's any way we can pray for you, or if you would like to know a little bit more about this church or relationship with Jesus, text us at 339-7926 and be sure to check out our website@cfnfamily.org, thanks for watching and we pray that God blesses you this week.