Come to the Water - Fire & Water

Amen.

Good morning.

Pastor Forrest, lead pastor here at Multiply.

If I've not welcome met you before, welcome.

Glad that you are here with us today.

Glad to see everybody in the house.

If you're new to Multiply, that's good because every single Sunday is somebody's first time here at Multiply.

And if it's your first time in church today, we love that around here too.

So welcome.

If that's you this morning, welcome.

We're glad you're here.

Like I said, I'm Forrest, lead pastor here at Multiply.

My family's lived here in Frankfurt for three years now, and our church has uh been going for two years now.

Started in March 2021 with a bunch of people, uh 2022, a bunch of people among this place who helped to launch the work of Multiply.

And I'm just excited about what God's doing in this place today.

Um can we just give it up for all the shoes that are stacked up out there right now in the lobby that are going to go to feet and go to kids across our community?

Man, I'm excited about what God's done over this summer.

We've gotten to be outside the walls of the church, which we love to do around here, is be outside the walls and serve our city and serve others.

And so we've gotten to do a lot of different things over this last week.

We got to be a part of the Back to Cool School Splash for Hearn Elementary this last week, where we gave away school supplies.

And coming up in a couple Mondays, we're gonna be with Mo Shans Barbershop as they give away free haircuts all day on that Monday, and we're gonna get to supply some.

Uh they want us to give uh school bags, backpacks for kids there at that event.

And so uh I'm excited for that and would love for you to be a part of it.

You can get onto the Church Center app and sign up.

Also, you can find out more out at the Here Station, but would love for us to take what is in here and for us to take it out there to our city, amen?

Yes, and we're doing that, and I'm grateful for each one of you here today.

And our uh second installment of Come to the Water, my message today is called Fire and Water.

Everybody say fire and water.

Anybody ever heard the term before baptized by fire?

Whenever I think about baptized by fire, I think about doing two days of football, two a days in football, uh, and three a days of football in college during the summertime in the sweltering heat.

What they did is it had to be illegal.

Like there was there's has to be some law out there of what they did to us.

I I don't know, maybe or maybe not.

Um some of y'all get that.

Uh uh, I don't know if you've maybe for you, you got baptized by fire because you went through uh some type of hell week with an academy or in basic training, or maybe it's your finals week that you went through to finally get your degree or defending your dissertation.

Here's the thing it's good to accomplish hard things.

It's good to accomplish hard things because that's how we grow.

And today, we're going to grow together.

Today we're gonna grow together because as we're talking about the last two weeks, we're talking about baptism and baptisms that we're gonna celebrate here in a few minutes.

We're gonna grow together today because here's what I know.

From the front of the room to the back of the room today, every single person in this place that you have a bigger part to play in baptism than you realize right now.

If you've been a Christian for 50 years or for five minutes, you have a bigger part to play in baptism than you think or could possibly realize right now.

And I don't know how you were baptized for me.

I was baptized when I was a kid in our church when they decided to bring a bunch of guys with mullets and windbreaker suits and leotards and came and had this big tent revival called the Power Team, and they came and did feats of strength where they bent rebar and they busted concrete blocks and they broke bats over their knees.

And I was like, I don't know what this is all about, but I want that right there.

It was the closest thing to WWE wrestling I'd ever seen in church.

I was like, this is amazing, and so I'm like, I got to give my life to the Lord for this.

Uh I want to rip a phone book in half.

Come on, power of God.

And I got saved at that at that revival.

My wife got saved at that revival, and we were baptized on the same Sunday as kids.

Just because God knew that I needed a lot of signs that he was putting her in my life all the way back then.

So I'm not sure how you were baptized or if you have yet to be baptized, but today we're gonna be looking at the baptism of Jesus.

Today we're gonna be looking at the baptism of Jesus, the one who eventually baptized of the Holy Spirit and with fire, like we see in the beginning of the early church in Acts 2.

But what we're gonna look at today is when Jesus' cousin, John the Baptist, who fulfilling a prophecy and his calling from birth, as he was prophesied to be the one that was gonna point to the coming Messiah, Jesus, John is in the wilderness and he's baptizing people in the Jordan River.

The same Jordan River that the Jewish people, way back in the Old Testament, when they were going to the promised land, the same Jordan River that separated into two, and the people of God walked across on dry ground, just like the Lord did for them in the Red Sea, and the same Jordan River for them to enter into the promised land is the same river that John is inviting people to and being baptized in for them to then usher in a new covenant and a new work in through the coming Messiah, Jesus.

And as we look at this story today, I want us to ponder some questions together.

And the the first question I'd like for us to ponder together is why did Jesus get baptized?

See, what we learn from the story of Jesus being baptized in Matthew chapter 3 is that John is out in the wilderness and he's baptizing people in the Jordan River.

Matthew 3 · chapter mention

And what we learn early in the chapter is that he's baptizing people that they confess their sins and then are baptized by him, but Jesus had no sins to confess.

See, Jesus was a perfect, spotless, never tarnished, never blemished Lamb of God that was completely sinless and lived a completely sinless life.

That one day he is a perfect sacrifice would stand in your place and my place, that we would have new life in eternity through him and his sacrifice on the cross.

He had no sin.

So why didn't he need to get baptized?

John is out in the wilderness and he's dunking people and he's baptizing people and he's telling them and warning them that they're not just gonna be fine because they're Jewish and they're descendants of Abraham, but instead that they need to begin to repent.

And we see in Matthew chapter 3, verse 11, John the Baptist says, I baptize you with water for repentance, which means change.

Matthew 3:11

But after me comes one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I'm not worthy to carry.

I will baptize you, and he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.

He's telling the people that he's baptizing, he's calling them to repentance, he's calling them to change.

They're not just gonna be all good because of their family lineage or because of their grandma's faith or because of their ethnicity, but instead that he's calling them to change, and then he says, Someone is coming who's greater than I.

Someone who's gonna baptize with fire.

And then something very strange happens.

Jesus shows up to be baptized.

Verse 13.

Then Jesus came from Galilee to the to the Jordan to be baptized by John.

But John tried to deter him, saying, I need to be baptized by you.

And do you come to me?

Verse 15, Jesus replied, Let it be so now.

It is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness.

Then John consented.

Verse 16.

As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water, and at that moment heaven was open, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, alighting on him, and a voice from heaven said, This is my son, whom I love.

With him, I'm well pleased.

Jesus comes to John to be baptized, and John immediately says, No way.

No, you want me to baptize you, you should be the one baptizing me.

And then Jesus gives the reason why he is baptized, and he tells us and gives us this answer in verse 15, where he says that it's to fulfill all righteousness.

Everybody say righteousness.

It's to fulfill all righteousness.

See, this is because Jesus, he had read the Old Testament, he had read the book of Isaiah, Isaiah chapter 53, the same chapter that we talked about last Sunday with Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch, when Philip is going down the road and the Ethiopian eunuch is reading out of the Bible and he can't understand what it is, and he's reading out of Isaiah 53, and he's reading this passage, he was led like a sheep to the slaughter.

Isaiah 53 · chapter mention

Y'all remember this from last week?

And and then the same Isaiah 53, Jesus knows that earlier in that chapter that this is what the scripture says about the coming Messiah of Christ in verse 11.

When he sees all that is accomplished by his anguish, he will be satisfied.

And because of his experience, my righteous servant will make it possible.

Everybody say possible.

Make it possible for many to be counted righteous, for he will bear all their sins.

The same Isaiah chapter 53 that we looked at last week, and Jesus was aware of what this says, and what this says is that this coming Messiah, that it's through his righteousness that he's going to make it possible for many to be counted as righteous before God and to have forgiveness of their sins.

Isaiah 53 · chapter mention

And God, through Jesus, gives us an example for us to follow in fulfilling all righteousness.

Now, here's what you need to know more about Jesus fulfilling all righteousness is that Jesus, in his life and his ministry, he fulfilled some 600 different prophecies from hundreds of years prior to his birth in the Old Testament.

I've got a visual for you of what uh this looks like.

And it this visual representation is on one side is the prophecies in the Old Testament books, and then the connection and their fulfillment of the prophecy in the New Testament, hundreds of years before Christ walked the earth, of Christ's fulfillment of those prophecies in the New Testament.

Here's the thing the Bible, the Bible, which a lot of people want to hate on.

The Bible, what you need to understand about the Bible is that the Bible, that it is a library.

It's a library of 66 books written over thousands of years in three different languages, across three different continents, with over 40 human writers and one author, all with a unified story about Jesus, the Savior of the world.

If you don't love the word of God, it's only because you don't know it yet.

It's only because you haven't spent time in it yet.

It's only because you just hear what people say about it on Instagram and TikTok and what different folks try to tell you about the Bible.

You haven't experienced it yourself yet.

And what you will learn and what you will know is that Jesus is the fulfillment of Messiah.

It's such intricate prophecies that it is absolutely out of the question in plausibility that it could just be some circumstance or happenstance or could uh be some in some way something that just happened.

Fulfillment of what God laid this plan for the earth for us to receive all righteousness from him.

And Jesus, this fulfillment, the embodiment of God here on earth, he then invites you to be reborn, to be born again by his death, burial, and resurrection.

For us to receive his righteousness.

See, this is how it works.

That when you begin to follow Jesus and you believe in Christ, and you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, Romans said you will be saved.

And so when your understanding of Jesus moves from just a head knowledge to your heart, when it moves from head knowledge to your heart, then you begin to receive the righteousness of Christ, the freedom, and it's for freedom that Christ has set us free by faith.

And so what it looks like is this is that at one point, when your life is over, there's not one person in this room that is perfect, including me.

So if you came in the room and you think you're perfect, you're not.

You got mess-ups, you've had hangups, the scripture says that you have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, all of us.

And so instead, one day at the end of our life, when we're standing before God in heaven, and he looks at us, when he looks at us, if we are in Christ and if we have received his righteousness, when we stand before God one day, he doesn't see you and your sins and your mess-ups and all the things that you're ashamed of.

Instead, he sees the righteousness of Christ by his blood shed on the cross, covering over you and covering over your sins.

He sees Jesus' righteousness in your place.

That's what happens when you get set free by faith for your salvation.

So why do you get baptized?

Why do you get baptized?

Well, first, because Jesus commanded it.

Mark 16, 16, he says, repent and be baptized.

We can close a service now.

I can just pack up and we can just end it on that because Jesus, the author and the perfecter of our faith, the one who hung the stars, the Alpha and the Omega, he's the one who commanded us that we should be baptized.

This word baptism, baptizo, it means to be immersed, to have the action of being immersed into water.

And this immersion, it's a special symbol.

It's a special symbol.

And we get a clue about it being what it's a special symbol of in Colossians chapter 2, verse 12.

Colossians 2:12

Having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.

And just to double down on you, Romans 6, 3 and 4 says, Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?

We were buried before, therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

Listen to me, listen to me.

You need newness.

You need newness today.

You need newness by faith in Christ, followed by this symbol of baptism.

An outward expression of an inward change in your life.

An outward expression of the fact that you have been baptized into Christ's death, his burial, in his resurrection.

And the picture that baptism is of you going under the water into death, being buried and raised up alive with Christ, just like he walked out of the grave 2,000 years ago, that you come up out of a watery grave into newness of life.

You need newness.

You need newness.

I'll put it to you this way, this symbol.

So uh this week, Emily and I will have been married for 14 years.

Our wedding anniversary is this week.

And I got my wedding ring here, and if if I was to take my wedding ring off, it's maybe a challenge after 14 years.

If I was just to set my wedding ring right here, and I was to walk off, and Jonathan, our worship leader, came up and he came up and grabbed this ring, liked it, thought it looked good, and put it on his finger.

Thankfully, that does not then make him married to Emily, my wife.

Thankfully, that's not how this works.

Thankfully, it's not the putting on the ring.

The power's not in the ring, the power is in the promise.

The power is not in the ring, the power is in the proclamation.

In the same way, baptism is a symbol, it's a proclamation of the inward change in your life that you are now receiving the righteousness of Christ.

And in a holy transaction and transformation, as he takes your sin and forgives it and washes it as white as snow.

I'll tell it to you like this, too.

This week, me and my family went to the pool with our kids, and the pool had a diving board, and always kids that were there running around, and all these kids were jumping off the diving board, and they were doing cannonballs and belly flops and all the things you do at the pool.

Every kid who jumped off that diving board and went down into the water, not every one of those kids were baptized.

There wasn't revival at the pool this week with all these kids jumping into the water.

Just because you go down into water doesn't mean that you have been baptized.

But it is a conscious decision for you to make a proclamation that you're not following Jesus.

That you're saved.

And the rubber meets the road with most Christians with this question.

Many Christians who are in the room and followers of Jesus who are in the room have already been baptized, but the rubber meets the road with this question.

Why do you help others get baptized?

I said you had a bigger part to play in baptism than you realized.

Matthew chapter 28.

Matthew 28 · chapter mention

Jesus gives us the great commission.

These are some of the last words that he spoke to us before he ascended back to the Father in heaven after his crucifixion and resurrection.

And what Jesus tells us in Matthew chapter 28, verse 19, he says, Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit, and teach them to obey everything I have commanded you.

Matthew 28:19

And surely I'm with you always to the very end of the age.

Jesus tells us plainly, he commands us that we should go and make disciples.

We're a church that believes in making disciples, and then baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Now, when Jesus was telling these words, he was speaking to his followers, the apostles, the disciples, but also his other followers that were there at the ascension moment.

And what Jesus, who Jesus was not talking to was a whole bunch of pastors with combover haircuts and big Bibles under their arms and a suit and a tie, and said, All you professional Christians, go therefore and make disciples and baptize them.

That's not what Jesus said.

He told the everyday people who were there, guys who've been fishermen and in finance, people who were followers of him, and people who were just everyday folks, to go make disciples and baptize in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

In a few minutes, we're gonna have baptisms.

And one footnote about baptism that informs the way that we do baptisms here at Multiply.

Something that I honestly it's taken me many years to see in the Gospel of John.

It says, Jesus knew that the Pharisees had heard that he was baptizing and making more disciples than John, John the Baptist.

Though Jesus himself didn't baptize them, his disciples did.

Jesus had his disciples, the everyday people, being the ones with their hands in the water.

The first person I ever baptized was a guy in college, a guy named Anthony Henderson.

And I don't remember what year it was, maybe I was a junior or sophomore, but Anthony began to follow Jesus and he wanted to be baptized, and he asked me if I would do it, and then he made a very strange request.

He wanted to be baptized at the bottom of Cumberland Falls in the river there.

But here's the problem it was almost winter time.

It was the coldest water I have ever been in my entire life.

I wore uh camouflage coveralls into the water.

To bend up to my zenim.

And then as soon as I got another, I got one of those coveralls because it was the coldest water I had ever been in.

And now if I knew now what I did then, I probably would have been like, brother, let's just go to the heated pool where the swim team practices its own.

And we'll just do it there.

We'll do it at church because baptism is an ordinance of the church.

It's ordained by God.

It's been instructed, it's been commanded by God for us to do, but not just for pastors.

Not just for pastors.

In a few minutes, you're going to see several people get baptized, most of them being baptized not by a pastor.

But by believers in Jesus who have impacted their life for Christ.

The hands that have discipled be the hands that are in the water.

And for you today, today very well might be your day that you need to make the decision to be baptized soon.

But before you do that, you need newness.

You need to ask Jesus to forgive you and to give you a new start, a fresh start.

And here's the thing I know.

The scripture tells us that when you're in Christ, when you're born again, you're a new creation.

The old is gone, the new has come.

There is a new you that will be born in Christ when you give Jesus your life and ask for his salvation.

I know this, I know this.

That if you knew the new you, you would want to know Jesus right now.

If you knew the person that Jesus was going to make you into, there would be nothing that could stop you from going to Jesus and asking for salvation so that you can then follow with the proclamation and the symbol of baptism.

There would be nothing that could stop you because there's a new you on the other side of your salvation that God is just asking you, wanting you, inviting you to receive that newness.

Can you imagine with me for a second, church?

Imagine with me.

Imagine with me, maybe you're one of those ones who haven't been following Jesus, and today is your day for you to put your faith and your trust in him, the cross, his death, burial, and resurrection, and for you to join him in faith that you can move from death to life.

That can you can move from the old life into the new life.

But church, listen to me.

What if, what if, what if you as a follower of Jesus, that God wanted to use you for your family, friends, coworkers, people that you know they don't yet have that newness.

And what if, what if, what if God wanted to use you to see them come to faith in Jesus and then you baptize them?

You can do that here at our church.

The requirement to baptize somebody in this church is that you are a follower of Jesus, you are a Christian.

Because we're following after the model of Jesus, and it's empowerment of his disciples.

What if?

What if God wanted to do that through you?

I think that he does.

So I want to invite you now, and I want to invite everybody in this room to take the step of faith that God is leading and calling them to.

So if you would bow your heads with me.

God, all across this room, Lord, I pray right now over those that are in the room right now, God, that they have not yet trusted you, they've not yet followed you, they've not yet received your forgiveness, they've not yet accepted the fact that you died in their place on the cross 2,000 years ago, and that they need your forgiveness, and that they need to step over the line from death to life, from destruction into eternity, from hell to heaven, and that today, God, is their day to follow you.

Father, for every believer that's in the room right now, I pray, God, that you would bring to mind someone who's in their life, who needs the newness.

God, that you would put that name, that person, their face, on their heart, on their mind.

And God, that you would give them the boldness to share with them the hope that they have.

So, right now, if you're in the room today and you need the newness, you need to follow Jesus for the first time, you need to accept Jesus as your Savior so that you can walk into eternity with him.

I'm gonna invite you right now to pray to Jesus.

Not to me, not some magical words, but in sincerity from your heart.

To confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, and then you will be saved.

And so, God, I pray right now, Lord, in this place, if there's anybody who needs to make the decision to follow you, that today would be their day.

And they would pray right now in their heart and their mind something like this: Jesus, save me.

I believe that you're the Son of God, that you are alive, that you died on the cross for my sins.

Forgive me.

Go ahead, pray it.

Forgive me, cleanse me so that I can be in heaven with you one day.

I give you my life as you gave yours for mine.

In Jesus' name.

Nobody looking around this morning, today, you prayed that to receive Christ as your Savior and receive salvation, to get forgiveness from Him from the cross.

Here in just a moment, I'm gonna ask you to take an action towards heaven for you to raise your hand when I count to three as a symbol of the decision you made in your heart and in your mind today.

If that's you today, I'm gonna count to three and I want you to raise your hand.

Ready?

One, two, three.

Anyone in the room over here, way over here?

Yep, I see you on the back row.

Keep your hand up.

I see you on the back row, right there.

Anybody else?

Anyone else?

Father, for those right now, Lord, who are praying to you, God, for them to be saved, to follow you, to be made new.

God, I pray that you hear their prayer.

That God, you would seal it.

God, we thank you for salvation and what you've done for us on the cross.

Father, I pray right now, Lord, it's newness of life.

It's in this place.

Father, that be followed with the proclamation of baptism.

Father, we love you.

We thank you, and we praise you today.

In the strong name of Jesus, everybody said, Amen.

Church, will you stand to your feet as we sing and worship?