Rise in Newness of Life — Embrace Baptism and Break Old Chains

God is doing good things amongst us. He really is moving.

And I've got a very timely message today. It's a timely message,

I believe, for our church, but for us as individuals, and also especially for

those that have just recently been baptized.

It's a significant time, and it's a bit of a hard word, but it's a spiritual,

It's a supernatural word.

So I believe that it's going to touch my heart as I share.

You know, we are living in difficult times. You know, you've just got to turn

on the TV for 10 minutes and this world's gone mad.

And I'm not going to dwell on that because, you know, I've got so many good things to share.

But Paul said to Timothy in 2 Timothy 3 verse 1, But know this,

2 Timothy 3:1

that in the last days, perilous times will come.

Tough times are coming, and the world is going crazy.

You look at politics, the politics in Australia is, in the UK is,

in the US, everywhere you look, it's just crazy.

Jesus spoke in Matthew 24 about wars and rumors of wars, and we see that all over the place.

In fact, Jesus said in Luke, he's talking about the end times,

distress of nations with perplexity.

Wow, doesn't that sum up what's going on in our world today?

Distress of nations with perplexity. And, you know, it's so easy to get caught

up in that, to get caught up in the crazy world in which we live.

And, you know, it's easy to get fearful and worried and confused.

But you need to know that we are of a kingdom that cannot be shaken.

That even though this world is going mad, you know, we are not of this world.

We're on our way through.

And God's going to take care of us. But it's easy to get caught up in it.

And, you know, I really believe that we need a fresh revelation of biblical

truth about who we are and where we're going.

Tim shared, was it last week or the week before?

About Psalm 112. I love Psalm 112. It is just so good.

And talking about the righteous, this is Psalm 112, 6 to 8.

Surely he, this is talking about the righteous. Surely he will never be shaken.

The righteous will be in everlasting remembrance. He will not be afraid of evil tidings.

His heart is steadfast, trusting in the Lord.

His heart is established.

He will not be afraid. Wow, I want to get there.

I want to get there. We need to get there because crazy things are happening

and we need to have our heart established in who we are and where we're going.

Now, this is a timely message, as I mentioned, for those that have been recently baptized.

We need to align our hearts with heaven, not on the things of the world.

It says in Romans 6, verse 4.

Romans 6:4

So this is about baptism. Therefore, we were buried with him through baptism

into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father,

even so we also should walk in newness of life.

So in baptism, as you went down, the old man went with it, you know,

and the old man died. the old ways, the old thoughts, the old way of living is over.

It's gone. And when you rise up, you rise up in newness of life.

But we need to learn to live in newness of life.

You know, it's easy just to get caught up in some of the crazy things that are

happening in this world, but we need to learn to walk in newness of life.

I'm just going to share a couple of scriptures. I keep coming back to John 12.

I think I mentioned to you on the cruise, I started reading John 12 and I spent

the whole cruise reading John 12.

There's just so much stuff in here.

John 12, 24 to 26. Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls

to the ground and dies, it remains alone.

But if it dies, it produces much grain.

He who loves his life will lose it, and he who hates his life in this world

will keep it for eternal life.

If anyone serves me, let him follow me.

And where I am, there my servant will be also.

If anyone serves me, him my father will honor.

You know, seeds are amazing. I'm not going to talk too much about seeds because,

you know, I need to, otherwise I'm going to be here for half the day.

There's just so much. I'm going to try and keep to time today. But seeds are amazing.

Seeds are incredible.

And apparently seeds were found in the pyramids and they'd been there for thousands

of years. They took them up and they.

They're amazing. So seeds, if they just put aside and left, they remain alone.

But if they die, if they are put into the ground and they start to break down

and the shell of those seeds breaks and opens and it changes, then life comes.

So it's an amazing thing. Now, Jesus died.

He rose to new life and he became the first fruits.

He became the firstborn of many brethren.

Now, in verse 25 of John 12, verse 25 says, He who loves his life will lose

John 12:25

it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.

That word life there is natural love, it's suche in the Greek.

Oh, it is, it is, trust me.

And it refers to natural life. It refers to a worldly life, a fleshly life.

And, you know, it's easy to get caught up in natural living and not allowing

the true life of God to grow and to blossom in our lives.

We can get caught up with pleasing ourselves, loving a lifestyle, but we need to let it go.

Let go of the low life, the life of the world, and embrace eternal life.

So it goes on to say, he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.

That word eternal life is the Greek word zoe, the God kind of life.

The life of the Spirit. And we need to learn to live in that life and let that

life grow and move and motivate and live in us.

In verse 26 it says, if anyone serve me, let him follow me.

So it talks about dying, serving, and following.

Follow Jesus. Die to self. Live for him.

Lay down the fleshly life and take up the high life.

Take up the high life, the life of the Spirit.

Right, embracing new life. How do we embrace new life?

In verse 28, Jesus said, Father, glorify your name.

Glorify your name. Now, I've spoken a little bit about that before,

but I want to expand on that a little bit. What does it mean to glorify your name?

And the Father came back and said, I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.

Glorify your name. You know, in the Old Testament, names mean a lot, or they meant a lot.

And even now, in the Middle East, names are very, very significant, and they mean a lot.

Now, in Jesus' ministry, let's just have a look at his ministry,

he came to reveal the Father.

The power, the love, the compassion. He came to reveal the Father to mankind.

Remember Philip said, show us the Father and we'll be happy.

And Jesus said to him, have I been with you so long and you have not known me, Philip?

He who has seen me has seen the Father. So how can you say, show us the Father?

Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father in me?

The words that I speak to you I do not speak on my own authority,

but the Father who dwells in me does the works. That's amazing.

It's a father doing the way. Jesus didn't say anything or he didn't do anything of his own authority.

He was sold out to the will of the Father.

John 5.30 says, I of myself can do nothing. As I hear, I judge.

My judgment is righteous because I do not seek my own will, but the will of the Father who sent me.

He was totally surrendered to the will of God.

And he allowed the Father to release the glory of heaven through him.

So Jesus glorified the Father's name. How?

When we come back to the wedding of Cana in Galilee, where there was a significant

miracle take place, where Jesus turned water into wine.

And it says in John 2.11, This beginning of signs Jesus did in Cana of Galilee

and manifested his glory, and his disciples believed in him.

So Jesus glorified his Father's name by performing supernatural signs and wonders

and miracles, revealing his love, compassion, nature,

his character, and his love for humanity.

The names of God highlight his character, aspects of his character,

his nature, and his relationship with mankind. His name was significant.

In Psalm 148 verse 13 in the Amplified, it says, Let them praise and exalt the

Psalms 148:13

name of the Lord, for His name alone is exalted and supreme.

His glory and majesty are above the earth and heaven.

So His name is exalted. His name is lifted up.

You know, I cannot even begin to explain the incredible nature of God,

His power, His awesomeness,

His, you know, we can't even begin to understand God and who He is and how mighty He is.

We cannot see God, but we can see Jesus.

And Jesus is revealed to us, and He reveals the Father to us.

So the Father reveals himself through the Word in the Old Testament through his names.

He appeared to Abraham as El Shaddai in Genesis 17, God Almighty,

the God who is more than enough.

In Genesis 14, his name is El Elyon, the Most High God.

Adonai, Lord and Master in Genesis 15.

Yahweh, Lord Jehovah, revealed himself to Moses in Genesis 2 Jehovah-Ra,

the Lord my shepherd, revealed in Psalm 23 Jehovah-Rapha, the Lord who heals

in Exodus 15 Jehovah-Jireh, the Lord who provides,

Genesis 22 Jehovah-Shalom, the God is peace in Judges 6,

Jehovah Sabaoth, the Lord of hosts, in Jeremiah 9.

So God revealed his character, his power, his majesty, his might,

and his incredible love and compassion for us through his words,

through the Bible, through the Old Testament.

And he revealed all this to the nation of Israel for 40 years as they went through

the wilderness. Now, this is something very significant.

Every challenge we face, every test, every trial, every difficulty,

every suffering, every need is an opportunity for God to reveal his character and his love to us.

That is, if you can get a hold of that, that's a revelation in itself.

I'm going to read it again. Every challenge we face, every test,

every trial, every difficulty, every suffering, every need is an opportunity

for God to reveal His character, His love.

And as we learn to trust Him, we release our faith in Him, and He releases His

supernatural power to us to glorify His name.

His name is glorified in miracles. Testing and trials give us an opportunity

for fresh revelations of Jesus.

And read 1 Peter 1. I'd love to go there, but I'm going to run out of time.

And I'll give you a few examples. God revealed himself to Abraham as El Shaddai,

the God who is more than enough.

The all-sufficient one. And you know, God gave Abraham a promise when he was

75 years old that he would be the father of many nations. 75 years old.

Now he was pushing 99.

You know, 25 years later, nothing had happened. He was old.

Sarah was old. Sarah was 90. She was barren her whole life.

See, talk about an impossibility, really, totally impossibility,

but El Shaddai, the God that is more than enough.

And then they conceived, and Isaac was born, and the promise was fulfilled.

An impossible miracle took place.

We had an El Shaddai experience this week. Thank God it wasn't the same as Abraham's.

Oh, I'd do a runner.

Anyway, we had a miracle this week.

Jean's got an engagement ring that I gave her in 1974, and it had damaged,

you know, one of the little things had broken off.

And we needed it repaired. We'd been wanting to repair it for a long time.

And Jean took it off and she took off her eternity ring and her wedding ring

and put it in a piece of tissue paper and put it in the car where you've got

your cups in the car in the center console.

Just stuck it in there. A piece of tissue paper.

So anyway, it had been there for several weeks.

Last week we decided, right, we're going to get this ring fixed. I had a look.

Gone. Gone. So where are those rings? Where is it gone?

And then I remembered that a week before, I was having the car cleaned at this place in Middagon.

And I went around and obviously just picked up a few of the tissues and bits

of paper and a bit of the garbage that was in the car.

And then I thought, well, maybe I threw it in the bin.

You know, I just went around the car picking stuff up. Maybe I threw it in the bin.

Now, it was Tuesday morning, and we have our bins removed on Tuesday morning.

And I thought, well, let's go back home, and I'll go through the bins.

And now you know it it was the end of the week so we had three big bags of garbage.

And it was absolutely rotten. Anyway, I took these three bins of garbage,

emptied them out in the driveway,

and with my bare hands went through and pulled out all the dirty,

rotten, filthy, stinking tissues to see if I could find these rings.

And the garbage was full of maggots.

It stank. There were chicken carcasses and rotten veggies, and it was disgusting.

And I spent about half an hour, you know, working through this garbage, and in the end, nah.

So anyway, I packed it all up, washed my hands, or I tried to wash them,

or try to get the stink out of them.

And I thought, well, anyway, I prayed.

And I actually prayed about El Shaddai.

I said, God, you are almighty God.

You are El Shaddai. You are God that is more than enough.

And I ask you right now to have those rings dropped back into my hand.

And then I thought, well, now what are we going to do?

Anyway, Gene suggested that we go back to the cleaning place in Middegon.

So I thought, okay. So we went back to the cleaning place, and they've got one

of these big industrial bins.

Anyway, look, I was tempted to jump in there, but I thought,

no, I'm not going to do that.

Anyway i went to the guy and i said look i

i think maybe you might have picked up a

tissue and thrown in there and it's got three rings in it anyway the guy sort

of half-heartedly picked up one of these these rake things and and he was scratching

through the garbage in this big industrial bin and i thought i don't know anyway

after about 10 minutes he pulled up this tissue,

and he came to me and he dropped three rings in my hand.

I thought, that is an absolute miracle, because he was scratching around there,

and it wasn't exactly all wrapped up nicely in tissue paper.

It was just stuck in there, and there was lying in this bin.

He pulled it out, dropped it in my hand, and I thought, that is a miracle. El Shaddai.

God, that is more than enough.

Look, I've got a few more examples, but I'm going to go through them very quickly.

Our youngest son, Frank, Jehovah Rafa, the Lord who heals.

He was born with an incurable blood disease, I think aplastic anemia.

And they said, look, he's probably got seven years to live and he's going to

live with blood transfusions.

Anyway, we prayed and our pastor's wife came to us and said,

what do you see when you look at your baby?

And I said, well, what Jean actually says, look, I see a sick baby that's not

going to last beyond seven years old.

And she said no see him

healed speak healing

over his life a couple of months later we we took this little baby who was still

very very very sick through to a specialist in in Salisbury in the capital city

he went and ran tests all morning we went there at lunchtime and he said to us well well,

you know, I really can't explain this.

It must be what I say, or what I can believe is a miracle. He's totally normal.

And that son is now, well, 40, 45 years old.

He's got four kids, and he's as fit as anyone.

Jehovah Rapha, the Lord that heals.

Jehovah jireh the lord provider i i've got lots of stories about jehovah jireh but anyway,

we were we were living we were living in

the southern part of sydney and we were going to church there we'd

gone to church here for a long time and and the lord really wanted us we really

to move up to up to french's forest up to oxford falls phil pringle's church

up there and and we We were really in tough times in those days financially. We had no money to move.

And it just so happened that that week, my boss called me into his office,

said, look, you've been doing extra work, you're doing extra,

and I'm going to give you a bonus of $1,000.

And he gave it to us, and that was the money we needed to move.

And I've got many, many stories like that, Jehovah Jireh.

This is God's nature. This is God's love and his blessing on us.

Jehovah Shalom. Now, this is a long story, but I'm going to cut it short.

A couple of years ago, we were coming back from a Gideon's convention in Tasmania.

I had a major, major heart attack, and I was taken by ambulance through to the hospital in Wagga.

They did an angiogram, and they said, oh, look, you're going to have to have

an operation. And I said, keyhole?

And they said, mm-mm. And one thing that I, I can't say that I feared,

but one thing I definitely, definitely did not want was open-heart surgery.

You know, the whole thing is just a horrible thought.

Anyway, previously, the day before all this happened, the Lord had revealed

that scripture to me in Isaiah 26 verse 3.

Isaiah 26:3

You will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you because he trusts in you.

He will give you perfect peace. And I'd laid there in that hospital in perfect peace.

It was amazing. It was supernatural.

It was the peace of God that had,

enveloped me. They flew me to Sydney, and I had the surgery,

and I had perfect peace through the whole thing.

Jehovah Shalom.

You know, God is a God of miracles. We're part of a supernatural kingdom,

and he wants to bring the power of his kingdom to earth.

Difficult times come. We need to learn to die to self, reach out in faith,

and allow God to release His glory, to reveal His love and compassion and power in our lives.

So I'm going to wrap up right now. What do we need to do?

Firstly, start your day with Jesus.

Start your day with Him, even if it's five minutes.

You know, sometimes we get very, very busy, and we get sidetracked,

and you know, other things seem to be more important at times,

but spend time with Jesus.

The longer, the better, because the more time you spend with him,

the better your life is going to be. Start with thanksgiving.

Thank him for our lives, our family, our health, our blessings,

and then surrender your life to him.

Remember, die to yourself and rise up in newness of life.

You know, we all have a prophetic destiny. God has a plan and a purpose for our lives.

There's no way that we're going to reach that prophetic destiny until we surrender to him.

Surrender is tough because you're letting go of the old, and we've been living

with that old man for a long time.

Haven't you? You've been living with... Yeah, anyway. You won't go there. Yeah.

It says in Luke 9, 23, If anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself

and take up his cross daily and follow me.

For whoever desires to save his life will lose it. Whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.

You know, we need to follow him. We need to follow Jesus. In Gethsemane,

he says, oh, my father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me.

Nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done. You know, we need to wait on the

Lord, especially first thing in the morning.

Wait on him. Meditate on his word.

Be quiet. Let your heart be quiet. There's too many voices out there.

Goodness, there's so many voices in this world.

We need to be quiet and learn to listen and hear from heaven and allow the Holy

Spirit to reveal Jesus to you.

2 Corinthians 3, 16 to 18, when one turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.

In your quiet time, in your time with the Lord, the veil is taken away when you turn to him.

But we all with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord,

are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory,

just as by the Spirit of the Lord.

As we spend time in His presence, in intimacy with Jesus, the Holy Spirit will

open up as you meditate on the Word, reveal Jesus to you, and you will go from glory to glory.

And I'm talking about the presence of Jesus, Christ in you, the hope of glory. He lives in us.

And we need to come to a place where we surrender ourselves to him and let ourselves

become his hands and his feet so that we can touch our world.

You're going to meet people every day of your life that other people are not

necessarily going to reach and touch.

But we can touch them with the glory of God.

And it's so important. It goes on 4, verse 6, chapter 4, verse 6 of 2 Corinthians.

For it is, I love this, for it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness,

who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory

of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

In his presence, intimacy with him, he will reveal himself to you.

And my, that is absolutely powerful. You know, I believe that this is a word

for our church. It's a word for you.

It's a word for me. I know it's a word for me. I tell you, I got a lot out of this.

And I'm at this place where we need to start to reveal the Holy Spirit,

reveal the power and the glory of God within our lives.

Romans 12, verses 1 and 2. I beseech you, brethren, by the mercies of God,

Romans 12:1

that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God,

which is your reasonable service.

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your

mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

You know, as we yield to him, as you give time to him, as you become quiet.

Remember, Jesus said in John 10, I think it is, My sheep hear my voice.

Deuteronomy 8.3, I keep coming back to this, or God keeps bringing this back to me.

Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.

He speaks to us. He wants to speak to us daily.

We need to learn to live by what he says to us.

But that can only come from a place of surrender, a place of being quiet,

a place of hearing what he is saying to us. and then we need to live that out in our lives.

Now, I don't know where this quote came from, but I found it in my,

well, I found it, in fact, I can't remember where I found it,

but it's in my Bible now. But listen to this.

Do something with your life.

Give him your day. Walk softly in the word and pray.

Get alone. Walk with him.

Sacrifice. Allow him to take out everything that hinders.

Climb out of the smog of the world into the crisp, clear atmosphere of heaven.

I don't know where that came from, but I love it.

I can carry on. I've got a lot more I can share, but let us pray.

Father, we thank you for your word.

We thank you that your desire is for us to be filled with your presence so that

we can touch a world that desperately needs it.

So Lord, I thank you for each one bowed in your presence right now.

And I pray that a revelation of heaven, a revelation of Jesus,

would touch every heart and every life as we move from this place.

Ask for your blessing and a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge

of God would enlighten every heart.

In the name of Jesus, we thank you for it. Thank you for your love and your

grace and your blessing upon us. In Jesus' name.

Amen. Amen. Thank you, Peter. Great job, mate. Great job.