Fulfilled: The Chosen King: Spirit and Fire with Pastor Clayton Tyner

Welcome to the MetaCurch Podcast.

My name's Clayton.

I'm the pastor here at MetaCurch.

And my hope is that today's podcast finds you at the perfect time in your life that God uses it to inspire and enlighten you.

I hope that you enjoy today's message.

I want to welcome you in uh wherever you're joining us from.

If you're at one of our venues, if you're here in Helotus, or if you're at Petrenko, I'm so glad that you joined us on a rainy Sunday extra heavenly credit for you or something like that to get out in the rain.

Uh I'm so glad that you are here.

If you're joining us online, I'm so glad that you're here with us as well.

Uh, we are in a series called Fulfilled.

We are going line by line all the way through the Gospel of Luke.

Uh that's gonna be a long journey.

We are going slow.

We're asking the question: who is the real Jesus?

If Jesus is who we believe in and who we follow, who our hope is in, we should know who he really is.

And because it's a long gospel and it's gonna be a long journey, we're in seven sub-series.

We're at the very first one called the Chosen King.

And this is where we are learning uh about the purpose of Jesus' life.

Now, we're in a unique section.

We're spending three weeks on John the Baptist.

We've made clear uh John's baptism is different than Jesus' baptism and believers' baptism that we practice in the church today.

But why John matters so much, number one, he is the forerunner of Jesus, who is the chosen king.

He came to prepare the way and prepare the world for Jesus' first coming.

And we study John very carefully over these three weeks because John is our template as the church.

I remind you guys all the time, for almost seven years now, uh this Sunday service is not church.

The buildings that we gather in, that is not church.

The 501c3 nonprofit MetaCurch Incorporated, that is recognized by the Internal Revenue Service, is not the church.

That is something you have to do to have organized gatherings in America today.

If we didn't need that, we wouldn't have it.

But we need it so we have it.

You are the church.

That is the biblical truth.

You are the ecclesia, that's the biblical word, the called out people of God.

And I want to let you know uh a month and some change from now, October 26th, uh, we're gonna have live baptisms in every service at both venues, and that's exciting because baptism is the best thing that we do at Metachurch.

It is evidence of the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit among us.

And I just want to say something before I get into my message because we're just on the topic of baptism.

Uh, last year we baptized uh almost 150 people.

We've baptized a lot of people already this year.

We've already got a bunch of people signed up.

If you've put your faith in Jesus and you haven't been baptized, you need to sign up, go out to the Connect Wall, scan the QR code, get signed up to get baptized.

Um, I want to remind you consistently that we are in spiritual warfare.

If you're a believer in Jesus, you are engaged in spiritual warfare.

And if you are unaware of that, it just means you're probably losing ground.

So it's time we wake up and we realize that.

That is why we are in Hilotus, because we are planting flags and taking ground for the kingdom of God.

It's why we will open more venues and try to get this movement to the ends of the earth, because Jesus commanded us to do that, and because we are taking ground from the enemy.

Amen?

That is what we are doing.

Baptism is a supernatural act of spiritual warfare.

What we do when we open a venue on the corporate level, we do on the individual level by baptism.

It is showing the enemy that we are winning souls for the kingdom of God.

And so I want to give you something new.

I did not do this last baptism, and I have been kicking myself for six months for not making this clear.

Uh, if you are primarily attending Prenko, probably means you live in this geographical area, then you need to get baptized at Petrenko.

If you are attending primarily in Helotus, then you need to get baptized in Helotus because we are in spiritual battle.

This is why we gather even when it's raining, because you go to the battlefield, rain or shine.

Amen.

Right?

We start taking this seriously and we will see serious results as we unleash the power of God.

This is not my sermon.

You guys are getting me too worked up.

All right, uh, let me calm down.

We're talking about John today.

Three weeks, uh, two weeks ago, we looked at John's purpose.

Last week we saw John's preaching.

Today we get John's perspective.

And this matters because John is our template.

John prepared the way for the first coming of Christ, we prepare the world for the second coming of Christ.

And what we're gonna see today is John's perspective on who Jesus is, and John's perspective on who John is.

And you, if you have put your faith in Jesus, that means you have been given the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is in you and on you and leading you and prompting you.

You may not be paying much attention.

All of that is happening if you will open your spiritual eyes and open your spiritual ears, open your heart to his movement.

You have a ministry.

Your ministry is not just supporting the work of our organized movement at Metachurch.

I am not your ministry.

I'm living out my own ministry, which means I have to look at my calling, my gifting, and how the Holy Spirit is prompting me.

You have to do that as well.

And I promise you, the revival that we are looking for does not come because we sing good enough songs or preach good enough sermons.

It happens when you, as the church, the called-out people of God, take your ministry seriously.

We gather together like this, it matters, we're commanded to do it.

We get inspired, we get enlightened, but revival comes when you walk out of the doors of our venues, in your neighborhoods, in your families, in your places of work, in your gyms, in your Walmarts.

Here's what happened to me last night.

Like, uh, I shouldn't, but I get a lot of credit at MetaCurch because I'm the most public face and I am typically who is preaching.

But I was at Walmart last night with my wife, and we're checking out.

I do self-checkout because I have control issues, okay?

Like, I want to scan it.

It like, bro, if you put my yogurt with my hoodie in the same bag, right, we're gonna fight.

I don't like it.

So I want to check myself out, right?

And there's all these like empty lanes, cashiers just sitting there, like praying that someone would come to the and Katie's like, ooh, we gotta go on 13.

Now, 13 was the only long line, you know?

And so I'm kind of the strategist of our family, so I was like, babe, let me explain something.

Um, these are short lines, and this is a long, and then I ducked, you know, because she and here's what I didn't know is for the last couple of months, Katie has been ministering to the cashier that works on 13.

And I'm telling you, it will not be me on this stage, it will be you choosing register 13 because the Holy Spirit has prompted you there.

That's how it's going to happen, okay?

It's not me with a spotlight and a microphone, it is my wife behind the scenes ministering for months that I did not even know about.

Just doing her ministry in secret as the Holy Spirit prompts.

This is how revival will happen.

And so this is John's call.

John's call is for us to prepare the way.

Now, John has caught some traction, right?

We said last week John is ancient viral, and people are coming out.

Now, they have been waiting for the Messiah, the last and final chosen king, the king of all kings, for 2,000 years.

And anytime someone rose to prominence in Israel, the whispers would start, hey, maybe it's John.

Maybe John's the Messiah.

Now, John's weird, right?

If you watch the chosen, they call him crazy John, you know, because he's out there a little bit.

And so the conversations in my mind were probably around a dinner table, like, yo, do you think it could be John?

And then the other person at the table is like, the guy who eats bugs for real?

That is that our best guess?

It's like, I don't know, man.

He's got a big following, you know.

So people are wondering this.

And watch what happens in Luke chapter 3.

Luke 3 · chapter mention

I know a lot of us were bringing the word in, we're opening it up, we're taking notes, we're taking this seriously.

Luke chapter 3, verse 15.

Luke 3:15

Now the people were waiting expectantly, and all of them were questioning in their hearts whether John might be the Messiah.

They were questioning in their hearts.

But remember, John is the first national prophet from God in Israel for 400 years.

John breaks 400 years of prophetic silence.

And so John has a little secret weapon called the voice of God, right?

John opens his mouth and he is speaking prophetically on behalf of God.

So God shows John what is happening in the hearts of the people so that he can address it.

The people are anxious, they are waiting, they are hopeless, and they are looking for something that they can hang the weight of their hope on.

And John knows they're they're they're whispering and there's rumblings, and so he's going to address it.

We're gonna spend like 30 plus minutes in verse 16.

There's so much here that we have to understand if we want to see the full potential of living a life on purpose and with purpose.

I want us to look at 16 and 17.

John answered them all.

I baptize you with water, but one who is more powerful than I am is coming.

I am not worthy to untie the strap of his sandals.

He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.

His winnowing shovel is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with fire that never goes out.

There is so much here, and I do not have time, so I just want to jump in.

Here's what he says in verse 16.

He says, One is coming who is more powerful than I am.

More powerful than I am.

Now you have everything that you need for the Holy Spirit to speak to you in the English versions of our text here.

Every once in a while I will pull out a Greek word, only if it really, really illuminates something in the text for you.

And this phrase, more powerful, this is the Greek word, iskorteros.

There will be no pop quizzes, don't worry about that.

Here's what you need to know iskuroteros, one more powerful than I am.

This is not a degree of power.

This is not, you know, I'm pretty good, but he's really good.

I'm pretty strong in my faith, but he's really strong in his faith.

I am pretty righteous, but he's really righteous.

This is not a degree of power, okay?

This is not, you know, he can bench press 405.

You know, he's a degree of power stronger than I am, because I can only bench 395.

Okay, fine, 315.

Okay, 285.

It doesn't matter, it's not actually the point.

That's a degree of power, right?

You're twice as strong, but that's a degree of power.

Escuroteros is not a degree of power.

Listen, it is a category of power.

This is not you can put up twice as much weight in the weight room.

This is a category difference, like a slingshot compared to a nuclear warhead.

It is a category difference.

And so John is not saying, look, you know, like I'm doing a pretty good job.

I'm pretty good, but Jesus is really good.

He's saying, there is one coming after me who is fundamentally different than I am.

He is radically different, he is limitless and infinite, and I am limited and finite.

And so one of the things Jesus does is he comes to earth and he puts on human flesh so that he can relate to us, so that he can suffer like us, so that he can be tempted like us, so that he can reveal the Father to us, so he can be accessible to us.

But we put ourselves in dangerous territory when we embrace the humanity of Jesus, but we reject the deity that he carried with him.

Yes, he was fully human, but yes, he is also fully God.

John opens his gospel like this: everything that was created was created through him, and not one single atom in the universe that has been created was created apart from him.

He is the agent of creation, he is infinite in spans, he is eternal in his being, he has all of the power and all of the authority and all of the might and all of the wisdom.

He is infinite, and I am so finite I do not even register in the scale of the cosmos, and he is the one who created the cosmos.

And so the question is this is John's perspective, and it must be ours.

John knows who Jesus is, his cousin.

He's only six months older than him.

And look what he says.

Yo, y'all don't understand.

You think I've got power?

The one who is coming is nothing like me.

He knows who Jesus is.

Do you, believers?

Do you know who Jesus is?

This is not a rhetorical question.

I want you to search your mind and heart.

Is that how you see Jesus?

If you pray, and you should pray, when you pray, who are you praying to?

We are told to pray in Jesus' name.

What does that mean to you?

Are you praying to someone who is like you but a degree more powerful?

To someone who is like you but a degree uh more perfect?

It's like there is a reason that Christians are praying in Jesus' name and sometimes even bold enough to ask for a miracle in Jesus' name, but in the deep recesses of our mind, we don't believe it will actually happen.

Because we don't know who He is.

John knew who Jesus was, and this is why we are going so almost painfully slow through Luke.

Because when we discover who Jesus actually is, it will change our lives.

We will pray for things in Jesus' name and we will pray it with faith and expectancy because we understand the name that we're putting on it.

We will cover our lives in the blood of Christ, and we will get rid of the shame that has taken root in our souls because at the foot of the cross there remains no shame.

We will plead the blood of Jesus over our children, and we will expect protection on their lives because we know in whose name we are asking, and the blood that was shed by that name.

We will start to change our fundamental positioning and how we view the world.

We will get new eyes, we will get new ears, we will have renewed hearts because we will understand finally who Jesus is.

John knows who Jesus is, and John knows who John is.

I want to show you this.

He says, one is coming who's more powerful than I am.

I am not worthy to untie the strap of his sandals.

Now I have a metaphor in uh a colloquial term that we say, a colloquial saying that we say today.

And uh, I'm just gonna let you know, like, my mom won't like this metaphor, and she's watching.

Okay, she's not gonna lie.

But this is this is immediately what I thought of because I grew up in a sports context.

I was an athlete, and there is a saying, right?

Every once in a while you'll end up with someone who's kind of a scrub, and they're they end up put on a team with one of the goats.

And so they probably shouldn't be in the league, and they find themselves sharing a locker room with Tom Brady.

They're lucky to be in the league, but they find themselves on a roster with Michael Jordan.

And you know what people say to show the disparity between those two athletes?

They will say, that athlete on the same roster with the goat.

I'm just mom, I'm sorry.

This is what they'll say.

They'll say, bro, he can't carry Michael Jordan's jock strap.

They're trying to show, like, there are levels to this.

I thought that's what this meant.

It's more, it's deeper.

You see, this is all happening in the ancient Near East.

And in the ancient Near East, one of the things you need to know is everyone wore sandals.

That was the footwear of the day.

If you had money, you had sandals.

And there were no paved roads, and there were no sidewalks, and it was just dust and dirt and mud and mire.

And then people had a home, or there were places of business, and they didn't want all the dust and dirt coming in the house.

And so it was tradition that there would be a little place to wash your feet before you come in the house.

You also need to know in the ancient Near East that about 50% of the population lived in some form of servanthood.

Now that really offends our modern sensibilities.

I understand that, but if you want to understand scripture, you have to know the context it was written in.

About 50% of the world lived in some form of servanthood.

Most of this was not slavery like we know slavery from America's past.

Most of this was indentured servanthood, where you would choose to put yourself under a master because it actually would improve your life, and over time you could work back your freedom with new skill sets to go out and make a better life for yourself.

So in Israel, they followed the Torah, that's the Jewish law.

There were very strict guidelines on how you had to treat your servants.

It was a part of life.

However, while as a master you could ask your Jewish servant to do a whole host of things to make your life easier, there was one custom that you could not ask them to do.

A Jewish servant was not allowed to untie your sandals and to wash your feet.

It was too low, it was too demeaning.

They can wash the dishes, they can cook the meal, they can take care of the yard, they can feed the animals, they could press your clothes, they could do anything.

But they could not touch your sandals, they could not touch your feet.

It was too demeaning.

John knows who Jesus is, and John knows who he is.

This is what he's saying.

There is such a gulf, a category, qualitative, quantitative difference between me and Jesus, the one who is coming.

That if I were allowed the privilege to untie his sandal, if I were allowed the honor to wash his feet, it would be the privilege of my life.

I am actually not worthy to do what is the most demeaning task in our culture.

This is true humility, an understanding not just of Jesus, but an understanding of himself.

Now, I do not have time for this.

I know I don't have time for this, but I cannot breeze past this without at least mentioning that the night before Jesus died, the one who is a nuclear warhead to our slingshot, the one who is so much higher, so much grander, so much greater.

The night before he dies, he puts a towel around his waist and he gets down on his knees and he takes off the sandals of his disciples and he washes their feet.

I mean, your homework is to go read that in John's gospel with new eyes.

That the one who came with all of the power did not come to be served but to serve others.

This is what happens when you know who he is and you know who you are, and you must know both of those in order to live out the power of the ministry that God has placed in your life.

To take who you are and what you have, your giftings, your personality, your network, your place, your neighborhood, your family.

Take everything you have and give it back to Jesus in full surrender.

Radical, self-sacrificial generosity.

This is an amazing, amazing perspective from John.

And because of this perspective, there are whispers.

Could it be John?

Is he the guy?

Could John be the chosen king?

There's a real danger to this because there is a whole line of people who claim the name of Christ and who stand on platforms every Sunday or who broadcast out to your televisions or your YouTube channels, and they don't understand this distinction.

They are called wolves in sheep's clothing.

They are fleecing the flock because they knew what John knew that there is a world of people who are desperately and anxiously looking for hope.

And instead of pointing people through them to true hope found in Jesus, they position themselves as the hope.

And they call themselves teachers, and they call themselves preachers, and they call themselves prophets and they call themselves apostles, but they stand in Christ's place and they want eyeballs on them, and they position themselves as having something inherently in them that they can give to you in order to fulfill your hope.

They are called false teachers, they are a danger to the church, and our job is not to call people to ourselves.

I try to say this a lot, but you need to hear this if you're gonna be a part of MetaCurch.

I have no hope to offer you.

I am a fellow beggar looking for bread just like you.

I am hope contingent.

I had to find hope.

And so our job is to know who I am.

John says, I'm not Jesus, I'm not the Messiah, you can't look to me, my baptism can't save you.

There is one who is coming, and my only job is to prepare you to meet him.

That is our job, and it cannot be more and it cannot be less.

And if I think the hope is found in me, then all eyes on me, baby.

You give money to me, you give time and attention to me.

I don't have it, I can't carry the weight of your hope.

And so every single service, I stand behind the curtain and I pray the same prayer with all of my heart.

I ask the Holy Spirit, Holy Spirit, empty me of all of me.

I pray to be transparent on stage because there is hope to be found.

It's not found in me, it is found in the hope I have found in Jesus Christ.

If you find hope in my message, it is not from Clayton Tyner.

It is from Christ who lives in me.

It's the Holy Spirit who is on me.

It is what animates my life.

Your job is to.

Take your weakness, that's your testimony.

Your job is to take your scars, that is how you are accessible.

And people go, Yo, I got the same scar.

How are you not living hopeless and devastated and disappointed?

Where does your joy come from?

Where does your hope come from?

And then they find that joy, find that peace, find that hope.

They find eternal life, not in you, but in the one who resides in you.

And so we say, like the Apostle Paul, it is no longer I who live, it is Christ who lives in me.

We have a quote from John the Baptist in John's gospel.

You know what he says?

I must decrease.

Holy Spirit, empty me of me.

I must decrease so that Christ may increase.

And when we are living this correctly, we are not a mirror, we are just a window.

And people see right through us to the Christ who lives in us.

And those who are trying to leverage a hopeless generation to position themselves as Savior, position themselves, as Messiah, position themselves as king, woe to them.

For someday they will meet their king face to face.

And if they will not humble themselves today, they will be humiliated tomorrow.

Power will meet true power, and it will be a day of judgment for those who try to be Jesus instead of living as John.

Does that make sense?

We are not Jesus, we are John.

And every time John spoke, people heard Jesus.

And every way John moved, people saw Jesus.

And everything they experienced, they experienced Jesus because Christ was just permeating through him.

And that is our call.

And that cannot happen without this perspective.

I know who Jesus is, and I know who I am.

I know the wide gulf between that.

And see, this informed John's ministry.

For two weeks now, we've tried to make clear John's baptism is not Jesus' baptism.

John's baptism was preparatory.

Now, we actually have many places in scripture that make this clear, none as clear as Acts chapter 19.

Acts 19 · chapter mention

So all of my note takers, you're gonna want to write down Acts chapter 19.

Acts 19 · chapter mention

We're starting in verse 1.

This is decades, okay?

Decades after the cross, grave, and ascension.

The church has started.

Paul and others are on missionary journeys, so they are going into foreign territory, they're taking the gospel.

In Acts chapter 19, it says, While Apollos was in Corinth, Paul traveled through the interior regions and came to Ephesus, and he found some disciples.

Acts 19 · chapter mention

And he asked them, Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?

No, they told him, We haven't even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.

This is a very interesting passage.

Verse 3.

So Paul asked them, Into what then were you baptized?

And they replied, Into John's baptism.

Here's what has happened.

These are people who live in a foreign land, who came to Jerusalem, who went to the Jordan region, who heard John the Baptist preach, who tore open their hearts and minds and allowed God to transform them.

They were baptized by John, and so they were ready to receive the king, but they went back to Ephesus.

So they missed Jesus.

They were not there when he fed 20,000 people with a few loaves and a few fish.

They were not there when he called Lazarus out of the grave.

They were not there when he opened the eyes of the blind.

They were not there when he died, and they don't know he resurrected.

They don't even know the name Jesus or the concept of the Holy Spirit.

They missed all of it.

This is the ancient world.

Nobody was on IG Live showing the world what Jesus was doing.

They only lived a little ways away in foreign territory, but they missed all of it.

However, they have gone through repentance, which means they're ready.

They are ready to receive Christ.

And God in his sovereignty has now brought Paul to them to introduce them.

Watch what they say, this is important.

In verse 4, Paul said, John baptized with a baptism of repentance, telling the people that they should, future tense, believe in the one who would, future tense, come after him.

In other words, they should believe in Jesus.

And watch what happens because of their repentant heart.

As soon as they heard this, they were baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus.

It goes on to say that they received the Holy Spirit.

They even displayed the first century signs of the Holy Spirit.

I mean, this is unbelievable, but the key point is what John already had perspective on ended up coming true.

We see it decades later.

John's going, look, uh, I baptize with water.

But one who is coming will baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire.

This is different.

This is different and it matters.

Because it is not enough to just have a religious experience.

It is not enough to just keep some religious laws.

It is not enough to have a nagging in your conscience about your morality or your ethics.

There is one way to eternal life.

There's one way to the Father, and Jesus did not hide the ball.

Jesus said, I am that way, period.

I am the truth, period.

I am the only way to life, period.

And nobody gets to the Father except through me.

This is incredible because you can go through the rituals, you can go through the sacraments, but if you have not come to a moment in your life where you have surrendered your heart and said, My only hope for this life and my only hope for eternity is in Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ alone, then nothing else matters.

And this is just the most incredible moments, the most incredible news.

That when you believe, you see, we've got to get this right.

John's baptism, which was a preparation to receive Christ.

We have believers' baptism.

That is a practice, it is a sacrament in the church today.

It was commanded by Jesus, it is the symbolic act of demonstrating what has happened when you have faith.

But I want to make clear what Paul is talking about.

Paul is talking about the moment when you believe.

When you put your faith in Jesus, the Holy Spirit will regenerate you.

This is the complete changing.

Jesus calls it a new birth.

And in that moment, you do receive baptism of the Holy Spirit.

Paul says it this way to the Ephesians.

Everyone who is in Christ, he's not talking about water, he's not talking about believers' baptism.

He's saying everyone in Christ through faith, they have been sealed with the Holy Spirit.

The Greek word is Erebon.

That means the Holy Spirit is our inheritance, it is our down payment, it is your guarantee that Jesus will in fact return to claim you at the end of time.

So when we put our faith in Jesus, we are baptized by the righteousness of Christ, fully immersed in it.

We are baptized by the blood of Calvary.

We are baptized by the gift of the Holy Spirit.

We move from death into eternal life, and it happens in that moment of faith.

I'm gonna help you because I want y'all to see something.

I don't know how close we can get on the cameras.

All these white hairs, every white hair, y'all think it's from my kids, every white hair is where I have landed on a moment of truth, and you have not reacted as if you were once dead and have come back to life.

And if it takes until my whole head is white, I am going to give you instruction as the shepherd of this church.

If I came in the day after another banner went up in the frost bank center and I said, Let's go, Spurs go, you would erupt.

If I came in on a Sunday and said, last night someone donated a million dollars, you would erupt.

If I put an open and said, look under your chair, everybody gets on, you all, you would erupt.

And I come in and I say, You were dead and damned and separated from God, and you've been baptized with the blood of Jesus Christ, and you're like, Mm-hmm, golf club.

That's good, that's good.

I like that.

And so let me tell you something.

I want to talk to believers, right?

We have a lot of people who are skeptics, they're unbelievers.

This is the place for them.

We have built a culture for you.

If you are unconvinced by the claims of Christianity, we have built this movement for you to come in, belong here, be loved here, even if you do not believe what we believe here.

This is where you can come and wrestle.

But believers, you need to know in our Sunday services, there are the unconvinced, the unchurched, the dechurched, even the anti-church.

And if I get up screaming and sweating about how you were dead and you've been come back to life, and you sit there with less enthusiasm than if the Dallas Cowboys could finally do anything positive for once in their entire lives.

Here's what I think.

Here's what I think.

The skeptics, the unbelievers who are here, they belong here, and we love them here.

I don't think they're going to believe you.

I don't think the unconvinced will become convinced.

Now the Holy Spirit will do what the Holy Spirit will do.

But we cannot surrender when we are worshiping through music.

We cannot just surrender and fully worship and just not worry about what the people around us think.

Jesus snatched us out of the jaws of hell and we can't give him worship through music.

We can't give him worship through the word.

Bro, we're not playing games anymore.

I know the scriptures.

I watched Jesus take Gideon, give him 30,000 men, and wean it down to 300.

Because with 30,000, they would be defeated by the Midianites, and with 300, God gave them the victory.

I will preach us from a thousand members to a hundred members.

If it's a hundred members, who will plant a flag and take this seriously?

It is time for us.

So I'm gonna try again.

I'm gonna try one more time.

Hilotus, I may need you, Helotus.

So loud we hear you through the camera.

What happens at the moment of faith is you are baptized by the blood of Jesus Christ.

You are brought from eternal death to eternal life, and everything changes.

Listen, this matters, and it matters that John knows his ministry.

He knows the difference.

He knows what he can offer, and he knows what Jesus can offer, and he knows how those lay on top of each other.

He knows the interplay between him and his humility and weakness, and Jesus and his unlimited power and strength.

And we are John, every one of us, you are the church.

And so it is time to act like our ministry matters.

We come together, we meet together, so we can move together and actually make a difference in our world.

Now, there's more.

We're still in verse 16.

In verse 16, it says, John says, I baptize with water, right?

We just learned there's a difference in the baptism of John, the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

He says, the one who's coming, Jesus, will baptize with Holy Spirit and fire.

Holy Spirit and fire.

I'm gonna be honest.

Uh I've been in ministry for about 20 years, almost all 20 of those years, I read this as both positives.

And there's a reason.

Even in scripture, fire is often used positively, even in the ministry of Jesus.

The refiners fire that purifies us.

However, uh, this this is not one book.

This is 66 documents from dozens of authors written across thousands of years in about three different continents.

That's what this is.

And so, what we have to allow is for different authors in different contexts to use the same word, like fire, in different allegorical purposes, in different metaphorical purposes, in different similes, because words have meaning as described by their context.

And so, what does John mean when he says that the one who is coming, Jesus, will baptize with Holy Spirit and fire?

To determine it, what you have to do is just look at the context.

Now, this is where I lose some people, because they're like, how will I ever know what the scripture says?

Let me assure you, the scriptures were not written for literary geniuses to figure out.

The scriptures were written for a world that was educated somewhere between third and eighth grade standards by today's world, okay?

All you have to do is just read more than the verse, right?

Because if you take the verse out of its context, that's called pretext.

Every cult has used that, every false teacher uses that, every prosperity preacher uses that, everyone who twists scripture to try to make things okay in the culture that scripture calls sin, that's how they do it.

They just pull verses in isolation, make them say what they want them to say.

That's not our job.

Our job is for scripture to interpret scripture, and you actually don't need much.

In this one section, the same word fire is used three times.

The first is used seven verses earlier.

We saw it last week.

Luke chapter three, verse nine.

In verse nine, he says, the axe is already at the root of the trees, therefore, every tree that doesn't produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the what?

We know the meaning of this.

We looked at it last week.

This is a prophetic warning of judgment.

In times judgment, where we will stand before our Maker and there will be judgment.

Also, immediate judgment for Israel that came 40 years later in 70 AD when Jerusalem was burned to the ground.

It's a warning of judgment.

Fire is now used in both 16 and 17.

Let's look at it together.

It says this: John answered, I baptize you with water, but one who is more powerful than I am is coming, I'm not worthy to untie the strap of his sandal.

He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with what?

Fire.

This is our question.

What does he mean?

What does he mean?

Verse 17.

He says, His winnowing shovel is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and gather the wheat into his barn.

But the chaff, the chaff he will burn with what?

With fire that never goes out.

This is an agrarian metaphor.

We don't live in an agrarian society.

So I want to explain it to you quickly.

In this agrarian society, they would take the wheat filled, they would clear the stalks, they would bring the stalks to what's called the threshing floor.

Now, the threshing floor they would be laid out and they would fix a post directly in the center.

We have an image of this.

And they would tie some animals, usually some large oxen, to that post where they would have to walk, these heavy animals, they would walk in a circle and they would crush all of the stalks.

And here's the purpose they're using these animals to separate the grain off of the stalk and then the chaff off of the grain.

And so the grain is what is valuable.

This is where their sustenance comes from.

The chaff is a hard, useless outer layer that needs to be removed.

And so as the animals stomp, it all gets separated off from each other.

When that process is done, they remove the animals, and then the farmer takes a winnowing shovel, and with this shovel, they scoop all of it together and they throw it in the air.

Now the grain is much heavier than the chaff.

And so the grain, the good stuff, will fall back to the earth, and the chaff will blow off to the side.

And once that's done, the only thing left to do is the farmer will go carefully, meticulously gather all of the grain, carefully, meticulously store it, protect it, and preserve it in the barn.

The chaff is useless.

It's all blown to the side by the wind.

They gather all of the chaff and they burn it.

Because there is nothing good about the chaff.

What is John preaching?

One is coming.

Him and I are not in the same league.

He is more powerful than I am by categories of difference.

Compared to him, my humility would make untying his sandal the privilege of a lifetime.

He is coming to be the dividing line of history.

He will baptize with Holy Spirit and with fire.

The threshing floor, the winnowing fork, this is a metaphor of judgment, just like the axe at the root of the trees.

It's a metaphor of judgment.

You may not have heard this before.

But when he says, Jesus will come and baptize with Holy Spirit and fire, those are two different baptisms for two different purposes.

We can look at the grammar, you may or may not care about this, but the verb he will baptize, it is in the dative distributive sense.

And what that means in Greek is one group divided into two categories.

One group distributed into two categories.

One group baptized with the Holy Spirit, born again, new life, eternal life, adoption by their heavenly father, purpose and power and significance.

And one group baptized by the fire of judgment at the end of time for rejecting the offer that Jesus came to give us.

No one is a game of baptism.

Please hear me.

Everyone gets baptized.

Either we bend our knees and humble our hearts and surrender ourselves, putting our faith in Jesus, the chosen King, or we reject his offer and we stand in judgment at the end of time.

Let me ask us a question.

This is non-retorical.

You want to see revival?

You gotta start taking these questions personally, seriously.

Do you live like that's true?

We have a church culture that has just prioritized the good news.

Oh, we don't want to talk about hell and damnation and fire.

We don't want to scare anybody, you know?

And it's a it's an overreaction to the churches some of us grew up in, you know, where about every third Sunday was hellfire and brimstone, and they would turn the thermostat up to about 90 degrees and say, You think it's hot in here?

You know, wait till you get to hell.

Oh, you think smoking is cool here?

I hope you don't mind smelling like smoke forever.

All these things I heard growing up.

And it's like, bro, I don't want to do that.

I'm not I'm not interested in just scaring the hell out of people.

But we have overcorrected so much that we no longer live with a sense of urgency.

We do not wake up every day like this is true.

We are a culture of Christians who do not deny ourselves every day, who do not pick up our cross, who are not interested in suffering, who are not insanely insanely generous, who are living for the kingdoms of this world because our eyes are closed to reality.

And the reality is that Jesus is the dividing line.

There will not be three groups, there will not be ten groups, there will be two groups, wheat and chaff, and one will experience eternal bliss with their father, and the other will experience eternal damnation separated from him, and we are the mouthpiece of God to do something about it.

Do we live like it's true?

Or are we so distracted and so enamored with the kingdoms of this world that we just shut our eyes?

We've got our ticket punched, so we'll just wait for heaven instead of taking up the call to live as if we could bring a piece of heaven to the earth.

This is an incredible moment because we don't like this naturally.

As Americans, as Westerners, in 2025, we don't like this.

We finally brought a friend, and now pastor's talking all about hell, you know.

You told me to bring a friend, and here I am, we're just screaming about hell.

Here's something so interesting.

It's, I'm like 90% sure you're not gonna think it's funny.

I think it's funny.

Basically, the last verse, John's like, everyone's going to hell.

And then, verse 18.

Luke says this.

Then, along with many other exhortations, he proclaimed good news to the people.

Okay, Luke heard John, everything he just said and everything I just explained, Luke heard it as good news.

And the reason we don't is because we don't know who Jesus is.

And we do not know who we are.

And we have bought a cultural lie that we are pretty good people, living in a pretty good world.

And there's some like bad people and evil people and serial killers and stuff like that.

But we're pretty good people, and Jesus is a better person, but I'm pretty good.

And Jesus is like better than, you know.

But John saw the world correctly, and so he understood that Jesus, who is at the door, and his winnowing shovel is in his hand, and he's getting ready to separate the wheat from the chaff.

What John understood is we are not good.

And for a lot of people, you don't meet Jesus till you get all the way to rock bottom because rock bottom makes you look in a mirror and face reality that you are not, in fact, good, that you are in desperate need of redemption.

That's what it took me.

It took me coming to the end of myself and realizing I'm not a pretty good person who needs a little bit better person, this Jesus fellow, to help show me the way.

That I am a sinner, I am a rebel who spits in the face of God daily, that I deserve death and damnation, that I am separated from God, not because God is angry and malevolent, but because I am a sinner who has rebelled against my creator, and that God loved me so much and he is so gracious to me, and he's shown me so much mercy that even though, because of my sin and my action, I am destined for a baptism of fire.

God stepped off his throne and took the fire for me.

Jesus came, stretched his arm, was baptized into fire, so I could be baptized into life.

John is like brothers and sisters.

He's got the winnowing fork in his hand.

We're a bunch of chaff, but through Jesus we can be made the precious grain that the Father will gather up.

And once we are in the Father's hand, nothing And no one can take us out of the Father's hand.

And you are hopeless and you are anxious and you are desperate.

But Jesus has come to fill that void in your life.

And if you will put your faith in him, he will baptize you in his blood.

He will baptize you in his righteousness.

He will baptize you by the Holy Spirit.

I'm running out of time.

Here we go.

Holy Spirit and fire.

Now, this ends weird.

This ends weird.

It's a very quick turn.

I'm gonna go fast.

Here's how it goes.

Verse 19.

Here's Luke writing.

But when John rebuked Herod, the Tetrarch, the guy in charge of the area, because of Herodias, his brother's wife, and all the evil things he had done, Herod added this to everything else, and he locked up John in prison.

With John, you need to know everybody gets the smoke.

Everybody gets the you get the smoke, the priest, the prophets, the temple, and even Herod, who has actual power, who imprisoned John and eventually cut his head off.

Now Herod is not Jewish by ethnicity, but a hundred years earlier his family converted to Judaism for political means.

Herod is now in charge, so he is religiously Jewish, but he doesn't follow the law.

He illegally divorces his wife so he can marry his brother's wife, evil on evil.

Now, Luke is writing this gospel decades later, which means he has a historical perspective.

He knows what happens to Herod.

See, Herod divorced his wife, who was the daughter of a king of a large province nearby.

The king was enraged, and he marched his troops, and he destroyed and humiliated Herod's armies.

And the people in Israel saw this as God's judgment on Herod for what he did to John the Baptist.

I like bringing in historical sources outside of the Bible, especially for those of you who can be a little skeptical towards the word.

Here's Josephus, who is a non-Christian historian of the Roman Empire.

Josephus said this: Now some of the Jews thought that the destruction of Herod's army came from God, and that very justly, as a punishment of what he did against John, that was called the Baptist.

For Herod slew him, who was a good man, and commanded the Jews to exercise virtue, both as to righteousness toward one another and piety toward God, and so to come to baptism.

Accordingly, John was sent a prisoner out of Herod's suspicious temper to Macaris, the castle I before mentioned, there he was put to death.

This is an extra-biblical historian who is telling you what the people of the time thought that Herod was under judgment from God for what he did to John.

He was not baptized by John's repentance.

Herod was not baptized by the Holy Spirit in faith in Jesus, so Herod was baptized by fire.

We are left with two characters, John and Herod.

And the question that is begging to be answered in every one of our lives.

Who am I?

Am I John?

Am I embodying the mission to be the forerunner of the second coming of Christ?

Am I humble?

Do I know who I am?

And do I know who Jesus is?

Or am I hairy?

Am I living for the kingdoms of this world?

Arrogant and prideful?

Invulnerable and full of shame?

Will I repent?

Will I tear open my mind and my heart and allow God to transform me?

Will I surrender and put my faith in Jesus?

Will I be baptized by the Holy Spirit?

Or will I waste my life?

And one day be baptized by fire.

God has so much for you.

Maybe you know religion, maybe you know ritual, maybe you know morals, maybe you know ethics.

John is telling you, that cannot save you.

Jesus is the dividing line of history.

Either you accept who he is and what he has done.

And by doing so, you receive the forgiveness of your sins.

You are clothed in the righteousness of Christ and you are destined for eternal life with your heavenly father, or you reject him.

The decision is yours.

And it is the most important decision you will ever make during your time on earth.

And right now, I want to go to a time of decision.

Across our venues, right where you're at, if you would just bow your head and close your eyes, come into a time of prayer, settle your mind, settle your heart.

For the believers at our venues, do you know who Jesus is?

Are you seeking to know who Jesus is?

Do you know who you are?

Before we can know the good news, we have to understand the worst news of all.

That because of our sin, we are separated from Christ.

And if you have put your faith in Jesus, then you have received the gift of all gifts.

The one whose sandal we are not fit to untie has come down and given his life for us.

Brought us into his family.

If you are here and you are not yet a believer in Jesus, today can be your day to make things right.

My guess is the Holy Spirit has gripped your heart, is leading you to surrender.

And my deep encouragement is to humble yourself, to give up the fight, and to put your faith in the only one who can save.

If you're here at our venue and you're ready to make that decision today, I want to ask for a moment of courage right now, as a symbolic gesture of your decision.

I want to ask you, with everyone's eyes closed, to just raise your hand up.

By raising your hand today, you are saying, Today I choose to put my faith in Jesus.

Amen.

Amen.

Look, for those who raised a hand, I want to very simply help you acknowledge this moment through a prayer.

I'm gonna ask you to repeat this with me.

I'm gonna ask the believers at all of our venues to pray this out loud as well.

Let's pray like this.

Jesus, today I choose to put my faith in you.

I believe you are God that you died for my sins and rose from the grave.

I thank you for loving me and forgiving my sins.

Thanks so much for listening to the message today.

If this was helpful to you and you want to help us get the word out, you can subscribe to this podcast.

You can rate and review or share it with your friends.

If you want to get connected further with what MetaCurch is doing, you can go online to metachurch.tv.

There you can learn how to take next steps.

You can learn where our different venues are at if you ever wanted to visit, and you can also give financially to help push this movement forward.

Man, I love you guys and I hope you have a great rest of your day.