#The Holy Spirit brings ...a Sacred Opportunity

We are continuing in our impact series where we are working our

way through the book of Acts and we are pausing every time we see

the Holy Spirit at work. And we're doing this because we

want to be a church that is set ablaze by the Spirit of God.

We want to be a church on fire for Him.

That the Holy Spirit would work powerfully in US, that the Holy

Spirit would work powerfully through us, that each one of us

would have significant encounters with God by His

Spirit, and then we would be sent out into the world to tell

our world about who He is. Amen.

That is why we are praying and fasting together as a church

every Wednesday. That's why we have an amazing

prayer room here in this building.

That's why every Wednesday between 7:00 and 9:00 PM,

there's a whole group of people that meet in that prayer room to

pray. And we would love to invite you

to come along. If, if that works for you, we'd

love for you to come. That's why every Wednesday

lunchtime we have space, which is a wonderful place, space of

intercession and worship, where you, again, can come into this

building, but also you can TuneIn online as well in your

break at work. And we're doing all of this

because we want to cultivate a deep and enduring connection

with the Lord that is this active, ongoing pursuit of Him.

And this practice of corporate prayer and worship and fasting

every Wednesday as a weekly discipline is such a powerful

way to communicate to the Holy Spirit our dependence on Him,

right? It's a deliberate act for us to

seek God's will and his power for our lives, for this church,

for this city, for this region, and to the ends of the earth.

And there are so many people that we are connected with every

day who are searching. They're searching for truth.

They're searching for authenticity.

They're searching for a purpose that is greater than themselves.

And we need the power of God to complete the mission of God

because we have to make the most of the season that we are in,

our nation actually is in. And we as a church family, we

have to make the most of this opportunity.

Just think for a moment, if you can think of three people that

don't know Jesus, they might be friends, they might be work

colleagues, they might be gym buddies.

Now just think if you invited all those three people to come

to church, do you know the stats say that one out of those three

people would say yes, I want to come.

And friends, that is the season that we are in right now.

And God is challenging us as a church family to go public with

our faith in a whole new way that we would receive afresh the

call of Jesus, each and every one of us to be his witnesses.

That we would respond to the call of God when he says come on

now it's time to blow your cover.

And for some of us, being baptised will be the perfect

opportunity and we have a whole bunch of baptisms that we have

opportunities for people to get baptised all across this year we

have lined up. It's very deliberate, it's

intentional, it's not by accident.

We've done this, it's on purpose.

And maybe for a whole bunch of you here, this is your moment.

So the first lot of baptisms are happening on Easter Sunday.

Yes, yes. And So what I want to do today

is we open up God's word is I want to take some time for the

benefit of those who are new to faith and for those who've been

a Christian for a while but have not yet been baptized, to look

at what is baptism. So a couple of weeks ago, Chuck

spoke about Pentecost. You know, this wild moment where

the Holy Spirit pours himself out upon the disciples and they

begin speaking in languages that they had not learnt.

And we saw this intense experience of God's presence and

power, and that power wasn't meant to be kept in the upper

room. It was so explosive that

literally they spilled out into the streets of Jerusalem.

And they obviously a massive crowd kind of came around and

they were confused and they were wondering like, are they

dreaming or are they drinking? You know?

And that's when Peter, this guy who a few weeks before had been

hiding in fear, he stands up and he's got this fresh new

authority, and he takes them. He takes the crowd through the

history and the prophets and the reality of who Jesus is.

And then he reaches this crescendo and the atmosphere

starts to shift from curiosity to conviction.

And we're going to drop in right up towards the end of Peter's

speech. The crowd is leaning in, their

hearts are starting to burn, and they're about to ask, I would

say, one of the most important questions we can ask about

Jesus. What do we do now?

So if you've got your Bibles, we're in Acts chapter 2 and

Acts 2 · chapter mention

we're going to read verses 36 to 41.

It's going to come up on the screen as well.

Therefore, this is Peter. Let all Israel be assured of

this. God has made this Jesus whom you

crucified both Lord and Messiah. When the people heard this, they

were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles.

Brothers, what shall we do? Peter replied.

Repent and be baptized everyone of you in the name of Jesus

Christ for the forgiveness of your sins and you will receive

the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for you and your

children and for all who are far off, for all whom the Lord our

God will call. With many other words He warned

them and He pleaded with them. Save yourselves from this

corrupt generation. Those who accepted His message

were baptised and about 3000 were added to their number that

day. Amen.

So Peter says really clearly in verse 38, Repent and be

baptised, everyone of you. Yet there can be confusion about

what baptism is and what it isn't.

You might remember back in the day, David Beckham when he had

his first son, Brooklyn, it was a baby.

He was a baby. And he was interviewed and they

and he said, I'm definitely going to get him christened.

We just don't know into what religion yet.

Then there's the group of medieval warriors who went

straight into the river to be baptized, but the priest was

very confused because each one of them held up their right arm

and refused to allow it go to go into the water.

And when the priest was like, what's all that about?

They said they were concerned that if their right arm touched

the water, it would turn their right arm more Christian, more

gentle, and they wouldn't be able to hold a sword and they

wouldn't be able to slay their enemies.

So let's take this step by step, friends.

What was baptism in the Bible? So most ancient cultures had

some concept of ritual cleansing, a bathing ritual for

the bridegroom before his marriage, or like ceremonial

washing of hands before meals. But the Christian sacrament of

baptism almost certainly finds its origins in the ritual

washings of Jewish Old Testament law.

For example, in Exodus 29, where we see Aaron and his sons,

they're brought to the entrance of a newly completed Tabernacle,

and they're washed. Leviticus 14, where we see

people who appear to be healed of skin diseases.

They wash their clothes, they shave off all their hair, and

they bathe in water to cleanse themselves.

And it seems this concept of ceremonial bathing in water

developed over the course of Old Testament history and beyond

into the intertestamental period, which is basically the

400 year gap between when the Old Testament finished and the

New Testament began. Is that right?

Chuck's looking at me like, yeah, that's good.

I won't look at my husband and archaeologists unearthed in one

community purpose built ritual baths for fully immersing

people. But the first record that we

have in our Bibles of people being baptised and the way that

we would understand it is John the Baptist.

In Mark chapter 1, verse 4, it says so John the Baptist

Mark 1:4

appeared in the wilderness preaching a baptism of

repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went

out to him confessing their sins.

They were baptized by him in the Jordan River.

He was basically saying get yourselves right with God,

repent of your sins, receive God's forgiveness, and get

yourself clean by being baptized.

And that is the major feature of the New Testament for baptism.

It's an external symbol of an internal reality as God makes us

clean. And it's important to know that

baptism in the New Testament always involved a lot of water.

So there's never a moment where people are just sprinkled, you

know, with a little bit of water on their forehead.

In John chapter 3 verse 23, John the Baptist chose a particular

John 3:23

stretch of the Jordan River because there was plenty of

water. When Jesus is baptised, it says

he came up out of the water. When Philip baptises the

Ethiopian eunuch by the side of the road in Acts chapter 8, it

Acts 8 · chapter mention

says they both went down into the water and came up out of the

water. There are no instances in

scripture of a small sprinkling of water.

Now the Greek word for baptise is baptiso.

So that means it's like a sinking of a ship or a dipping a

cup into a bowl or soaking a cloth into a VAT of dye.

It's the common word in Greek, where we would in English use

the words like drench, dunk, dip, duck, douse, deluge or

soak, sink, swamps, steep or saturate.

So John the Baptist, he waded into the river Jordan, the

people repented of their sins and he dunked them under the

water. And again in John 3 we see Jesus

and his disciples baptising people in the same river.

Then in Matthew 28 we see Jesus commanding the disciples to

carry on baptising people after he's gone.

So what does baptism mean? Baptism speaks of a bath.

So when Chuck was young he he really liked to play rugby.

Now he hates all sports now, but back in the day rugby was his

thing. He was a young teenager, I think

mainly because he loved to roll around in all the mud.

The problem came after the game for him because he was literally

covered in mud from head to foot, yet he refused to shower

in the communal changing rooms. So what he would do, So what he

would do is he would wash his face and he would wash his hands

and then he would put his clothes, his uniform back on.

The problem was that as he was walking home from school, there

was so much mud on his body that it hardened and it started

cracking as he was walking home. Grim, absolutely grim.

He does assure me though, that as soon as he got home he had a

bath. And very, very boastfully, he

said there was always at least two inches of scum, you know?

Yeah, really lovely. Really lovely.

The thing is, even as a young teenager, he knew that he could

wash every part of himself clean.

But he also knew that there was dirt and darkness on the inside

that a good bath would never touch.

The wonderful thing about following Jesus is that he is

the only one who can clean us on the inside.

We've all seen the adverts, haven't we?

These bathroom cleaners that promise the world, you know, can

remove even the most stubborn of stains.

Well, that's what Jesus does in baptism.

You know, people come to John the Baptist and to Jesus and to

the disciples and to the early church to say yes, Lord, clean

me. Clean me, as Ananias said to

Saul of Tarsus. And now what you waiting for?

Get up, be black ties and wash your sins away, calling on his

name. So baptism it's it's a bath.

It's also a burial, as well as as the sense of cleansing that

had been obviously part of baptism.

When we see in the time of John the Baptist, the early church,

immediately they saw this action of baptism, you know, going down

into the water and then coming back up again as being like

going down into the grave and then coming back up again.

And so in baptism, they're enacting the burial of their old

lives, aligning themselves with the death of Jesus, and then

coming out of the water raised from the dead like Jesus.

In Colossians 2, verse 12, it says you were buried with Christ

Colossians 2:12

in baptism, in which you were also raised with him.

Baptism is the way that we draw a line under the past and we

begin a whole new life with God. Does anyone remember John

Darwin? He he he kind of hit the

headlines quite a few years ago now but they made his story into

a whole TV series. So he was a science maths

teacher come prison officer. He also had a whole load of bed

sits that he rented out and he also had a ton of debt.

And on the 21st of March 2002 he was seen paddling his canoe out

to sea somewhere near Hartlepool.

Later the same day he didn't show up for work and so he was

reported missing and then the following day they found the

wreckage of his canoe. The trouble was, everyone was a

bit baffled because the sea was like a pond.

It was so still they couldn't understand it.

And of course, it all turned out to be an elaborate hoax to get

insurance money. And he reappeared five years

later at a police station claiming amnesia.

Now in one sense this is a really bizarre and tragic story,

but also how many of us can relate to his desire to want to

draw a line and start all over again?

Of course, the New Testament, it talks a lot about coming to

faith in Jesus is really a death, how we lay down our lives

in order to gain a new life in Christ.

Galatians 2 verse 20 says I've been crucified with Christ and I

Galatians 2:20

no longer live, but Christ lives in me.

Colossians 2 verse 20 says you died with Christ.

Colossians 2:20

So as we come to faith and repentance and new life in Jesus

we die and in baptism we perform the burial.

Now people often ask can I be a Christian without being

baptized? And the answer is yes, but yes.

But you haven't completed the process.

The appropriate thing to do with a dead body is to bury it.

If you haven't been baptized, your old self has been put to

death, but it hasn't been buried.

So baptism it speaks of a bath. It's a burial, and it's a badge

of belonging. It's the mark of membership for

the people of God. In the Old Testament, the mark

of membership was circumcision. Or the guy's breathe a sigh of

relief that we no longer have to do that.

Instead, we baptize one another. That's what we do as a visible

public sign that we belong. So baptism is a sign that we

belong to the church. I've loved every stage of our

kids growing up. You know, you've got the baby

stage where they're so tiny. And I remember going to our

friend's house and every Friday night we would have dinner with

them and we would put our son in the middle of their double bed,

knowing he wouldn't move. There's no way he could move.

And then, you know, when they're just learning to walk and

they're kind of holding onto things all round the house.

And they will toddle if they hold onto your finger.

It's lovely. And then you've got the stage

where they can walk and they would love to be between Chuck

and I and swing everywhere we would walk, which was not great

on the back, have to say. And then comes a time when your

child walks at least three metres behind you, dragging

themselves and they're a head down doing everything they can

to be like, I'm not with them, I've nothing to do with them

because we are just so embarrassing in baptism.

We're saying, I know the church isn't perfect, but these are my

people, I belong here, this is my family.

I'm publicly declaring that I belong, Galatians 326 to 27 says

so in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith,

for all of you were baptized into Christ baptism.

It's a badge of belonging to the church, and it's also a

declaration that I belong to God.

We're baptized into the name of the Father, the Son, and the

Holy Spirit, God's name. It's a declaration that I am not

my own. I was bought at a price, placing

myself under the Lord's kingship and lordship.

So why should I get baptised? Firstly, it's normal.

It's normal for Christians throughout the New Testament,

whenever people encounter the good news of Jesus, they hear

about how Jesus has been raised from the dead, they repent of

their sins and they put their trust in him.

They were baptised. So in the passage that we just

read, right at the start, 3000 people in one day came to faith,

became part of the church and were baptised.

Lydia is selling her purple cloth down by the river in

Philippi. She comes to faith, she's

baptised the Philip. Philippian jailor can't say that

word. Who was holding Paul in prison?

What's he do? He comes to faith.

But not just him, his whole family come to faith and they're

baptised. Crispus the synagogue leader

baptised. Even Simon the sorcerer

baptized. In fact, you'll be hard pressed

to find anyone coming to faith in Jesus who isn't baptized

except the thief on the cross next to Jesus.

But I think he had a reason. You see, it's what happened.

They believed, they repented, they were baptized, and the

truth is that the writers of the letters in the New Testament

just assumed that everyone they were writing to was baptized.

They say things like Galatians 3.

You were all baptized into Christ.

Perhaps that's because, secondly, Jesus commanded it.

Think about the great commandment, Matthew 28, verse

Matthew 28:19

19. Go and make disciples of all

nations, baptizing them all in the name of the Father and of

the Son and of the Holy Spirit. We baptise one another because

Jesus told us to. It's a step of obedience.

It's why Peter was able to say to the whole crowd when they

said to him, what shall we do? Repent and be baptised.

Everyone of you. Ultimately, to be baptised is to

be obedient, and not to be baptised is not obedient.

I think we call that disobedience.

Thirdly, it's a powerful witness.

Let's face it, being baptized is a bit of an odd thing to do,

right? I remember many years ago now, I

was walking along and I saw my friend coming towards me.

I had my bag, I had a folder with papers.

And as they came towards me, I started to wave to them and I

tripped over a big pavement slab.

And I didn't just trip. I like spectacularly trip.

My phone went out of my hand, my bag went up in the air and all

my stuff went everywhere. And my folder with loose papers

in went all up in the air as well.

And I did what any one of us would have done.

I tried to style it out. I tried to make it look like I'm

I'm so delighted to see you. I'm waving with all my

possessions. Why would I do that?

Because retaining our dignity and self respect is very

important to us. So why would anyone in their

right minds get into a big bath with all their clothes on?

Bearing in mind that white things go see through and floaty

things float, why would anyone allow someone else to dunk them

under the water? In my day at school, that was

called bullying because Jesus is more important to us than our

dignity, and that is a very powerful witness.

What better opportunity do we ever have to invite all our

friends and our family and our neighbors and our work

colleagues and our gym buddies to come to church to demonstrate

the central importance that Jesus plays in our lives?

I know that because when each of our kids got baptised, they

invited their friends and their work colleagues and for some of

them it had a profound effect on them.

You know, they came, they saw, they felt they experienced

something of God. OK, let me just answer a a few

quick FAQs. I was christened as an infant.

Does that count? Tough question.

I have some dear friends who have grown up in Christian

homes. They were christened into the

Anglican Church and they were confirmed as teenagers.

And for them they sincerely believe that they have been

obedient to Scripture and to the Lord.

In contrast, I myself was christened as a baby before I

became a Christian. And so I was.

I was a child at the time. I was kind of 710, something

like that, and I just felt I should get baptized.

So I looked at the scriptures. I looked at the scriptures with

my parents. I spoke to leaders in my church

because I just knew I needed to do this.

So the way that we answer this question in this church is by

saying that we believe that the Bible teaches that baptism is

for people who have made a decision to follow Jesus and by

dunking their whole body in the water.

But if in your own hearts and before God, whatever form of

baptism you have experienced and you have peace with that, then

of course, that is a matter of conscience between you and the

Lord. I think I would love to

encourage you, though, to search the Scriptures, to search the

heart of God, to talk it through with the leaders here in this

church or pastors here in this church, and just see where you

end up #2 is it too late? Maybe some people here, you've

been Christian for a really long time, maybe even decades, and

you're wondering, is it too late?

Friends, it's never too late. Ideally, you bury a body as soon

as you're sure that body is dead.

But there are times, on the battlefields of war in

particular, when a body lies unburied for a period of time.

But if you ever come across a body that has not yet been

buried, then the appropriate and the right thing to do is to bury

that body to complete the process of death.

And it's the same with baptism, friends, it's never too late.

So why would you not take this opportunity #3 do I have to

share from the front? Yes.

Shall we pray? Bye.

I know for lots of people that can feel a bit scary, but we

would do our very best, our very best to prepare you and to make

it as easy and as simple as possible for you to help you

write down your thoughts and prepare you for this moment.

And the truth is, it's like giving the groom speech at our

wedding. It's the easiest gig in town

because everyone just wants you to succeed.

Everyone will be behind you. But don't refuse the best

opportunity you'll ever have to share your faith with your world

because you'll worried about standing up here.

So if you would like to be baptized and this is your church

and you're certain that you have put your trust and your faith in

Jesus and you haven't been baptized before, please let us

know. And the way that you can do that

is there is a QR code here right now.

And I'd love it if either you take a picture or you would scan

it because that leads you to a little form.

And on that form, you're basically be saying I am

interested, you're not committing, but you're saying

I'm interested in being baptised.

And then one of our amazing pastors will be in contact with

you. OK Is everyone taking a picture

of those that want to? OK, wonderful.

Yeah. And if you want to go back and

look at it, it will be on the live stream.

That's right. Great.

So what we're going to do now is firstly, we're going to say

goodbye to our amazing sights.