When Something Needs To Be Done

Thank you. Frank inquired. Thank you, Murray. If you have your Bibles, would you turn with me to Luke, chapter three? Luke, chapter three.

I want to introduce you to a person that's already been introduced in the Christmas story, and that's a guy named John. And he had this adjective that went with him. And the adjective that went with him was John the baptizer. And he's the first one to kind of bring baptism into the picture. And as Baptists, that's one of the elements of our faith.

Not that baptism saves you, but because you're saved, you want to be baptized. And so John brought the idea of baptism into the Christian life. And he's the guy that comes out of the wilderness. He's kind of a notorious guy. He wore camel's hair, and I don't wear camel's hair, by the way, but I do have a tie that the youth, the children gave me, and I have shoes that Dobbins gave me.

So. And so I'm. But I don't have any camel's hair, and don't send me any camel's hair. I don't wear camel's hair. But that been the fashion that came out of the desert.

And he ate locust and wild honey. And I don't recommend that as a diet, but maybe if you want to lose weight, that would be a good diet to eat locust and wild honey. I like wings and honey barbecue. That's better for me than locusts and wild honey. But he kind of lived, and he represented in a lot of ways the element in which he came out of.

But he was a fiery preacher. And there are times that we need a good sermon to encourage us, but there are times that we need to come face to face with things that we're doing and not doing, and we need to look at those and ask God to help us to deal with those kind of things that we need to deal with. So John preached a sermon on repentance. And it was a hard, hard sermon, but it was what was needed in that day and that time. It is wrong to do nothing when something needs to be done.

And you can turn away and not look, but it doesn't go away. Something needs to be done in order to deal with what needs to be done. And sometimes that is a very difficult thing for us to do. And often we turn away and ignore those kind of things that God is putting on our lives that you and I need to take care of. And there are things that kind of sneak into our lives, and all of a sudden they take over and they begin to run our lives.

And we know on the outside, we know on the inside that this outside thing is just really just there. And it doesn't have God's favor, and we need to deal with it. So John comes and he tells the nation something needs to be done. And what needs to be done for that nation is repentance. And he preaches that hard sermon.

He really does.

You just can't ignore what needs to be done. And David, I like David when my favorite story is David and Goliath. And Saul looked away, and he kept looking away for 40 days and 40 nights. And he should have gone out there and face the giant, but it took David, and he said, something needs to be done. And so David goes out there and faces him.

And sometimes we have some things in our life that just need to be dealt with, and we can turn our face and look a different way, but they don't go away, and we need to deal with them. Now, with that kind of introduction, I know you're happy today. Are you happy today? You got in a good mood. Well, let's let John speak to us today.

And so, in honor of God's Word, would you stand as I read for us from Luke chapter three? And I really. I changed the focus of what we're reading on. So if you look at verse one, let's start at verse one. Now, in the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip, tetrarch of Ithura in the region of Trachonitis, and Licinias, the tetrarch of Abilene.

Are you getting. Are you still there with me? If I mispronounce these names, you come up to me afterwards and tell me Annas and Caiaphas. Annas was. Caiaphas was a previous priest, and Annas was a priest being the high priest.

All that is preparation for what is about to be said. The Word of God came unto John, the son of Zacharias, in the wilderness. May God bless the reading of his Word. And you may be seated.

If you look at that scripture again, the Word of God, usually the Greek word for word is Logos. But this is a Greek word, rhema. And what that means is not that just the Word came to him, but he experienced the Word. It's one thing to read God's Word and just read the words off a page. It's another thing to experience God's Word as he's Speaking to you.

And there's this call to John to come out of the wilderness or to preach in the wilderness. And there to preach a message that they needed to hear. And the message that they needed here was a message of repentance. And it's not always the message we like to hear. I was in Central Baptist Church, sitting in the balcony playing hangman with a guy named Sherman Looney.

I wasn't listening to the sermon, but then somehow the sermon got my attention. My mama was in the choir, and so she would often point at me from the choir, and she'd do these things. And so, like mamas do. SUSAN CLEARS HER THROAT When SUSAN clears her throat, I come to attention or else I end the sermon. It gets my.

So some of you might want to look at her in a little while and get her attention so she can. Clearer throat and end my sermon. But I was sitting there, and the preacher got talking about hell, and I said, whoa, man, I don't want to go there. So I came down front. And that afternoon, I knelt by my mama's bed and I asked Jesus into my heart.

And the reason I asked him is because I didn't want to go to hell. Now, that's a good thing to get us there, but it's got to take us stronger or something to move us from there. And somehow you gotta move from the fact that you don't want to go to hell to the fact that you love the Lord and he has given you his gospel of grace. And that's a big move that has to come in. This past week, I went to Ace Hardware, and I went to Ace Hardware to get some covering for my pipes.

And I understand that there's bad weather or cold weather that's coming along is gonna be pretty cold. And even in Fairhope, we don't have a frost every now and then. We think the world's going to come apart as we have a frost in Fairhope. But I want to cover those pipes because I'd been there when my pipes were not covered. And I had.

They were frozen, and I had to get a plumber to come fix them. And you know that plumbers cost more than neurosurgeons. You know that?

So I don't want that to happen again. So I did something to get ready for the cold weather. Can you hear that point? To do something to get ready.

John used that to say, judgment's coming. You need to get ready. And he did that with such a force that people came out there in the wilderness to hear God's word as he spoke. And they called it gospel because part of the gospel is the fact that it confronts us with judgment and then it offers us grace to deal with that kind of judgment that only we can face in God's need. Preparing our need for that kind of judgment.

This past week we saw a Coach Saban quit his job or he sent his resignation. And now how am I going to work Coach Saban into my sermon? I don't know. I'm going to keep working at it, so just stay with me. He said kind of.

He had kind. They asked why it was all of a sudden. It seemed to be all of a sudden, but he kind of. It wasn't that he was bad health or seemed like that. And I don't have any insight.

I was just reading. But it seems like he says he'd lost his part of his intensity.

That what him going and you can tell I like to watch him rant on the sidelines as he rants or when he has those news briefs he kind of goes after. I like that rant. But you can see his intensity that's there in that kind of thing. And I He just kind of. He's getting older and intensity sometimes just in there like it used to be.

And sometimes that happens to us. We kind of lost the intensity one time. We used to have that fire and the word fire is mentioned in here three times. Fire. We used to have that kind of fire.

But it's kind of put in the back of our mind or maybe something is coming along and taking that kind of fire and the intensity is kind of missing in our spiritual life. And maybe we need to hear John as he confronts us.

I spent the night last night with Susan and I did with Mandy and Billy. Billy Johnson played for Alabama under Coach Bryant and Coach Brown. Billy said Coach Bryant was mean and it's obvious that he was. In 1958, when Alabama had had three seasons and they had lost something like four games in three seasons and Auburn had beat them 40 to nothing in the Iron bowl and that was the day when all you had the offense was three, three runs and a punt. That was all Auburn's offense was.

And yet they beat Alabama 40 nothing. And so they put down who would they get for the next coach. And the players listed who they wanted for a coach and one was listed as Coach Bryant. But he didn't get a single vote. Nobody voted him.

The players didn't to be their next coach. But the trustees had Coach Bryant come and with the first meeting and read those Reports of, of the players that were there. At the first meeting, Coach Brown walked in and closed the door and then he locked the door and he looked at all those players and he said, what's happened to you in the last couple of years is not the fault of the previous coaching staff. I don't want anybody to say about that. The fault is in this room.

And he said, we're going to have a spring training that you've never had before.

And he said, most of you are not going to be here after that spring training. And they had 27 players on scholarship and after his spring training they had three.

And this way said, we're going to be intense.

But what he did with three people on that team, three or four people in three years, he won a national championship.

I want to take that idea of being intense and see what God can do in this church.

If he had three or four people who really were intense about moving this community and seeing what God can do in and through this church to not only change this community, but change our county and change our world.

Now if you have your Bibles, look and see what John's message is. John. John was the last of Old Testament prophet and Jesus said he was the best of the Old Testament prophets and he was the first New Testament preacher. And he was a good preacher. But John started out talking to him and we see the result of his message in verse eight, if you have your Bible.

Well, I want to go to verse seven. This is a good way to start out. Verse seven is you have that one. That's the way he greeted people. I like his greeting.

And Paul does a good greeting, but maybe we ought to have him do this kind of greeting. Verse 7, he said. Then he said to the multitudes that came forth to be baptized in him, O generation of vipers, isn't that a good welcome? Don't you feel warm and fuzzy after that? O generation of vipers who warned you of the judgment to come?

It wasn't like we're glad to have you and you fill out a visitor card and all those kind of things. He just got right in people's face because there are times that we just need confronting and everything's not good and everything's not happy and everybody's not happy and there's a judgment that needs to be faced. Verse nine, he said, the axe is laid upon the root of the trees. Every tree therefore, which bringeth not fruit forth, good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire.

That's a judgment sermon and it's not easy to hear but it needs to be preached. They asked John, they said who, who are you? Are you the Messiah? And he says unto them, John answered, saying to them all, indeed I baptize you with water, verse 16. But one mightier than I who comes, I'm not worthy to unlatch a shoe.

John knew who he was and he knew who he wasn't. And he didn't try to be who he wasn't. He knew who he was. He had a good self identity of who he was. I think I admire one of the persons I really admire and Susan, I really enjoy going to the COVID is Billy Graham.

Billy Graham as much as he stood up and I wish I could mock, I mean I could give talk like he talked. But he knew he never was a Messiah, never claimed to be the Messiah. He, he had always kind of humbleness that was about him. And John the Baptist said, I am not the Messiah, but I am getting things ready for when the Messiah comes. And when he comes he will give you those kind of answers that I cannot give you.

What I want to do is to make you want to get better. Because more than anything if you don't have that won't, if you don't want that don't have that won't to improve and get more spiritual in your life. If the won't is missing, then you won't be spiritual. But John created that won't. Listening to some marriage counselors and they said, well the main thing about a marriage is do you want to make it work?

If you want to make it work then you can make it work. You can find ways to make it work. And no matter what goes wrong, you will find ways to make this thing work. And with Christianity there's this want to, a need to have this kind of want to. And without that want to, you'll be like the man at the pool of Bethesda.

Been there all those years and just sat and sat and sat and sat.

John created that want to. And he said this what John said, Verse 16. I indeed baptize you with water. And we do baptize with water. And that's the basics of our Christian faith is that we baptize by immersion.

And I like to say we, we put them under until they bubble. Amen. That's what Baptists do because we want to get all of that under. And Dr. McCrummon told me about when he was baptizing, I think in this Baptistry he was baptizing a rather large woman, a very, very Large woman. He did that three times, a very large woman.

And as he put her head under, the other end of her came up.

And so Dr. McCroman he believed you ought to baptize everything. So he took his elbow and pushed the other end down to get all that under. And it happened right here.

Because we believe you just need to put it and just sprinkle it just won't do. You got to have be baptized. And that's what the word means, to put under, to immerse. And it was when John would preach, something would happen on the inside.

Conviction.

And if you don't live that conviction, sooner or later it just kind of fades.

But they want to know, what should we do? And John baptized them in that water, probably some of the coldest water that comes out of those mountains in Israel. And that's where he's baptized and put them under.

It was so different. What he's baptizing is Jews. Because Jews didn't believe they need to be baptized. They had this kind of first in line kind of idea because they had Abraham and Moses and all these before him. But there are no choices above everybody else.

Everybody needs that. And we're sons of Abraham. But he said he can make stones out of the sons of Abraham. And he was saying this to people who were supposed to be God's people. They needed to be baptized.

And nobody is given free status. Everybody needs to be confronted. And John preached that. But John promised that the Holy Spirit would come with fire. Look at verse 16.

He would come with fire. And for some Pentecostals that means there's a second baptism. That is you're baptized and you're given the Holy Spirit and then you're given this second baptism where the fire comes. But the word there's. The idea is not only baptized with the.

The Holy Spirit who comes. And only Jesus could give that. John couldn't give it, but baptized with the Holy Spirit and fire. And I read about a refiners. When they bring gold out of the.

Out of the deep parts of the earth, they take it and they take it to their refiners store. And there they put fire. Put it in the fire. And they put it in the fire and all these impurities are drained off and they keep the fire as hot as they can put it.

And then it gets. So how do you know that that's pure gold? And the refiner will say, when I look down at that piece of gold and I can see my image in that piece of gold, then that's pure Gold.

And what the Holy Spirit does is he bring some fire in our lives to expose those places that need to be brought to the surface and dealt with.

And he keeps bringing them and bringing them because all of us have those kind of impurities that need to be brought. All of us have sinned and come short of the glory of God. And he keeps working on us until finally he sees his image in our life.

That's the work of the Holy Spirit.

He said he will establish the threshing floor. The threshing floor was a place where they would bring the harvest of wheat. And the wheat and chaff looked so much alike. And so they would take a fork and they'd throw it up in the air and. And as the wind would come along, it would blow the chaff away.

And the chaff. Cause it's lighter than the wheat. And the wheat would come down and they would collect the wheat, and that was a harvest, but also the chaff. They would take that chaff, which was worthless, and they'd put it in the fire and burn it. And the idea of he's coming with the threshing floor is the idea.

He's blessing those who have been blessed to and have followed God's word and have done what God has laid on their hearts to do. But then those who keep resisting, pushing away, pushing away.

It's taken and collected and burned in the fire.

Now, that's a hard sermon, but yet it's here and it's what needs to be preached. If you look at your Bible, would you look at the end of the introduction to John? If you look in verse 18, it says, and many other things in his exaltation preached he unto the people. That is, he encouraged people. That was this encouraging part of his message.

But Herod the tetrarch being reproved by him for Herodias, his brother Philip's wife, for all the evils which Herod had done, he added this unto above all that he shut him up, John in prison. Because Herod just tried to silence John's voice.

He tried to look away from John's voice.

He tried to keep it from getting inside of his head. He was drawn to John's message, which was a strong message. And he had this kind of respect that he had for John.

But he knew what he was doing with Herodias was wrong. And so John mentioned his name in the sermon and kept mentioning his name in the sermon. So Herod had John arrested, or really it was Herodias who had John arrested.

And he kept pushing the Message away. I'll silence the message and it'll go away. He repressed the message. And Sigmund Freud said those kind of things we keep repressing the. Those kind of things we put down, eventually they come back in some other kind of form.

They just don't go away. We push them down in the interior minds and just go along our business and keep doing the same thing. But they don't go away.

And they come out in another form which makes us dull of hearing.

I read about this eagle that, by the way, the last time Herod and Jesus met was at the crucifixion.

And Herod tried to get Jesus to talk, but Jesus said nothing.

Because there comes a point when we resist and resist and resist that we can no longer hear the voice of the Lord speak into our hearts. We become what the Bible says, dull of hearing. But I read about an eagle that came down in this icy place over this falls next to a fall. And there was this rabbit on the ice. And so this eagle flew down and he grabbed hold of that rabbit on the ice.

But he kept getting closer and closer to the falls.

But as he grabbed hold of that rabbit, he had all this sense, I can always just fly away.

But the more he grabbed hold of that rabbit, the more that ice grabbed hold of him.

And so after a while pass the danger zone passed a place of no return.

He went over the falls because something that he had hold of that he should have let go of after a while it had hold of him.

Listen to the words of John the Baptist.

Now, if you have your hymnals, I want us to look at this. Got it right here. Our invitation hymn is hymn number 434. No, excuse me, 435.

It's a hymn that's written by Charlotte Elliot.

It was Charlotte Elliot, who was an English lady, high brow, kind of English lady. And yet she suffered a lot of depression. And so a pastor or preacher talked to her one day and said, you need to know Christ as your savior. And she struggled with that until finally she gave this hymn, wrote this hymn. Just as I am without one plea.

But. But that thy blood was shed for me and that thou biddest me come to me, O Lamb of God. What's the word? What's the next one? I come.

I come.

By the way, that second verse was a verse that a guy, a dairy farmer from Charlotte, North Carolina, walked down the aisle and accepted Christ as his savior. That guy's name was Billy Graham.

What a change that God made in his life. And how he was seated, kind of resisting God, but he finally said, I come. And as you know, that was a favorite invitation hymn of the Billy Graham Crusade. And how many people have stepped out of stadiums and come down front to say, I come, I come.

Now I want you to bow your head. This morning we're going to sing the two verses as a kind of invitation of him. But would you, in your own kind of time, in a moment. And I know God is with us. Wherever two or three are gathered, then the Lord is with us.

And so we have him right here with us. And through the foolishness of Jerry Henry's preaching, sometimes he speaks to people's hearts, and maybe he's speaking to your heart. And so would you bow your heads for just a moment? And is there a place in your life that you're just holding onto and you've heard God's voice, and that voice keeps coming, that this is wrong, this is wrong. Maybe a habit, maybe not doing something I need to do.

Maybe my wife and I are not praying for Susan and I have made that such a part of our lives. Every night we would go, we would bow our heads together, hold our hands, and then pray for each other.

Maybe that's not in your home. Maybe there's just a conviction of God that maybe is bringing that conviction to your heart.

And it can be those kind of simple things that you just won't let go of. And you just keep holding onto. And after a while, they kind of just hold on to you.

Or maybe there's somebody you need to pray for, Maybe somebody you know that's just holding on to something. It may be in some kind of addiction. It may be, whatever you name it. The fact that they refused to join the church, refused to be baptized, and left the church and decided not to come back, whatever. But it starts sometimes with a prayer that you can make for that person.

And so maybe there's somebody you need to pray for, just for a moment, feel God's presence and let him speak to your heart.

Dear Father, I thank you for the voice of God that doesn't want to let us go and comes to us with your offer of grace to even our cold hearts.

Start a fire that will change each person, change each family, change this community, do a great work in this church.

In Jesus name I pray.