The way of the cross reads all The way of the cross reads all
It is sweet to know, as I all were know The way of the cross reads all
My best needs go on in the cross We will pray in the path of the Savior's love
The way of the cross reads all The way of the cross reads all
It is sweet to know, as I all were know
The way of the cross reads all Can I bid farewell to the way of the world
And to God be evermore?
Well, my Lord says, God, can I seek my own?
The way of the cross reads all The way of the cross reads all
It is sweet to know, as I all were know The way of the cross reads all
I have found a deep peace that I never had known And a joy this world could not afford
Since I yield in control my body and soul To my wonderful, wonderful Lord
My wonderful Lord, my wonderful Lord My angels and seraphs in heaven adorn
I bow at Thy shrine, my Savior divine My wonderful, wonderful Lord
I desire that my life shall be ordered by Thee That my will be in perfect accord
With Thy own sovereign will, Thy desires to fulfill
My wonderful, wonderful Lord
My wonderful Lord, my wonderful Lord My angels and seraphs in heaven adorn
I bow at Thy shrine, my Savior divine My wonderful, wonderful Lord
All the talents I have I have laid at Thy feet
Thy approval shall be my reward
Be my storm, great or small I surrender it all
To my wonderful, wonderful Lord
My wonderful Lord, my wonderful Lord My angels and seraphs in heaven adorn
I bow at Thy shrine, my Savior divine My wonderful, wonderful Lord
All that last now Thou art fairer to me than the fairest of earth
Thou omnipotent life-giving Word
O patient of days, Thou art worthy of praise My wonderful, wonderful Lord
My wonderful Lord, my wonderful Lord My angels and seraphs in heaven adorn
I bow at Thy shrine, my Savior divine My wonderful, wonderful Lord
Guide me, O Thou great Jehovah, build them through this very day
I am here with the Almighty, holy with my God
My heavenly, heavenly, heavenly Father
Lead me to Thy wonderful Lord, lead me to Thy wonderful Lord
O man, now the crystal mountain, when suddenly rains stream the flood
Let the fire and valley build, lead me all my journey through
Starving in her, starving in her, be thou still my strength and shield
Be thou still my strength and shield, when I tread the verge of Jordan with my angels
Hear some sighing, hear me through the swelling parade
Let me say my name in sign, sounds of praises, sounds of praises
I will ever be to Thee, I will ever be to Thee
We've a story to tell, to the nations that should turn their hearts to light
A story of perfect peace
We will get started, and once you find a seat, grab a hymnal, and we will start tonight in song number 406.
Song number 406, Who is on the Lord's Side?
Hopefully that's an easy question to answer tonight. Song number 406, Who is on the Lord's Side?
Song number 406, everybody sing it out with me on the first.
Who is on the Lord's side? Who will serve the King?
Who will be His helpers, other lives to bring?
Who will lead the world's eye? Who will face the foe?
Who is on the Lord's side? Who for Him will go?
By Thy call of mercy, by Thy grace divine
We are on the Lord's side, Savior, we are thine
Not for weight of glory, not for crown and reign
Enter we the army, praise the warriors long
But for love that claimeth, let from whom we die
In whom Jesus' nameeth must be on His side
By Thy love constraining, by Thy grace divine
We are on the Lord's side, Savior, we are thine
Jesus, Thou hast bought us, not with gold or gem
But with thine own body blood, learn a guile damn
With Thy blessing filling, each who comes to Thee
Thou hast made us willing, Thou hast made us free
By Thy grand redemption, by Thy grace divine
We are on the Lord's side, Savior, we are thine
Fears may be the conflict, strong may be the foe
But the King's own army, none can overthrow
Round His standard reigning, victory is subjoint
For His truth unchanging makes the triumphs low
Joyfully and listening, by Thy grace divine
We are on the Lord's side, Savior, we are thine
Great singing everybody, let's open up the service now with a word of prayer
Lord we love you, we just thank you so much again for this awesome church
The awesome people here gathered to hear your preaching and sing unto you
Lord we love you and just ask you to fill this room with your spirit and help bless this church
And it's in Jesus' name we pray, amen
Alright for our next song, let's go to song number 84
Song number 84
If you know it well, sing it out loudly
Song number 84, Jesus is coming again
Song number 84, sing it out on the first
Marvelous message we bring
Glorious peril we sing
Wonderful Word of the King
Jesus is coming again
Coming again, coming again
Maybe morning, maybe noon
Maybe evening and maybe soon
Coming again, coming again
Oh what a wonderful day it will be
Jesus is coming again
Forest and flower explain
Mountain and meadow the same
All earth and heaven proclaim
Jesus is coming again
Coming again, coming again
Maybe morning, maybe noon
Maybe evening and maybe soon
Coming again, coming again
Oh what a wonderful day it will be
Jesus is coming again
Standing before him at last
Trial and trouble all past
Ground at his feet we'll be cast
Jesus is coming again
Coming again, coming again
Maybe morning, maybe noon
Maybe evening and maybe soon
Coming again, coming again
Oh what a wonderful day it will be
Jesus is coming again
You can lift up your hand real quick or Usher can come by and get you a bulletin.
We are working on a new Bible memory passage, Matthew 28.
And so a lot of verses there to work on this Sunday.
We should have our prizes for our previous Jonah chapter number two.
And then also before I forget,
there is a desk in here in the fellowship room.
Did anybody claim that yet?
Possibly, okay.
If you are interested, see Brother Fur and you can possibly get it.
So someone needs to claim that.
Also, we have our service time, soul winning times, and church stats.
Make sure you're putting that into our group chat.
And we've been doing really well this year as far as our salvation numbers.
Last year, since we had gone to the Bahamas in 2023,
we had like almost a thousand salvations just from that.
So if you kind of take that out, we're actually on pace to kind of break what we did last year,
apart from the Bahamas missions trip.
And so I don't know that we're going to necessarily beat last year,
but we're still on pace and still we want to push forward for the end of the year and keep doing a good job.
On the right, we have the list of expecting ladies.
And then we have our prayer list.
I'm going to go back to this in just a moment.
On the back of our bulletin, we have the note about the Turkey Bowl.
And so that's going to be coming up December 7th.
That's a Saturday from 1 to 3.
And so we'll have basically a flag football game for the young men and also the teenagers and men.
And so if you'd like to participate, there's an address there, but also you can see Brother Marcel.
We did this a year ago and it was a lot of fun.
And so if you'd just like to participate with us.
Also down below is the note about the ladies' Christmas party.
I think most ladies have probably RSVPed via the chat group with my wife.
There's also a sign-up sheet.
If you do either of those, you don't have to do both, but if you do one of those, please, that would be great.
And if you have any questions about the gift exchange or anything like that, you could ask my wife.
It is nurselings only, and so we'd really ask you men to help out and try to watch the kiddos for the one night
to just try and give them that nice little break and then back to the shackles after that, okay?
So, you know, you just give them a few hours and then back.
Also, a couple other events. December 9th is the Christmas caroling.
We'll probably on Sunday at least give you a little more details as far as when and where and how we're going to meet for that.
But probably just a time, and we may not meet here at the building, we may just meet on location, so just FYI.
December 25th is the Christmas cookie bake-off, and so that'll be here at the service.
And I'm not going to give you all the details just yet, but probably starting in December we'll talk about that.
But it's a lot of fun. People have made some truly amazing cookies in years past,
and so it's an awesome event considering how creative you guys are, and so you guys make that event a lot of fun.
January 1st, men's preaching night, and pizza.
So, also I guess we're going to test our musicians because we were thinking about doing our hymn picks as a free-for-all,
so we'll just do crowd favorites or whatever. So we'll see how good you guys are, alright?
And then if we go back to our prayer list, we've been praying for the Naim's grandmother for her vision, health, and salvation.
We've been praying for the Carlson's mother, Miss Rebecca, for health.
Also Miss Miller's friend. Also cancer treatments.
We've been praying for the Scotts' parents, for his father for cancer, also his mother for nerve pain.
We've been praying for the Garcia's daughter who's pregnant. We've been praying for brother Tony for his health and work.
We've been praying for brother Foley, his fiancé. We've been praying for also his co-worker infant who's still recovering.
We've been praying for brother Caputo for his back.
Brother Lee, we've been praying for his job. Praying for Miss Warner's brother for a knee injury.
Also praying for the Hernandez's grandmother who is recovering from surgery.
Miss Goodwin is also asking for prayer for a friend named Sarah who is having surgery to remove a tumor.
Brother Nick was praying for another friend for his salvation.
And then Miss Miller was praying for someone that she works with who's been hospitalized and a lot of people were sick with RSV.
So we'll go ahead and pray for those who were mentioned here in our prayer list.
Thank you Heavenly Father so much for our church and thank you so much for all of the ladies that are expecting in our church.
I pray that you just please give them a good pregnancy, give them a timely birth and that you would just help their children's development.
Please also help our church family here that's mentioned as having various illnesses and cancer and pain and difficulty.
I pray if possible that you would just give them just a miracle, that you could just give them healing,
that you would give them wisdom for whatever decisions they have to make, that you give them peace and comfort during their time of tribulation and difficulty.
I pray that you would help those that are not necessarily our church family, just our friends and co-workers that we're concerned with,
their health, that you'd also give them favor and blessing.
I pray that you'd also just help us with our work and some of the prayer requests that were mentioned here as far as traveling.
Also those who need salvation, I pray that you'd please just give us the boldness to preach the gospel to our loved ones, to our friends, to our family members.
That you'd give us the right opportunities, that you would soften the hearts of those that are lost and that you would give us the opportunity to preach the gospel to them and get them saved.
I pray that you'd also just bless our church during the rest of this end time of the year, that you would bless our Christmas season and our Thanksgiving.
We thank you so much for all that you've given us in our church. We're thankful so much for the gospel and for your son.
And it's in his name we pray, in Jesus' name, amen.
It is Thanksgiving tomorrow, and so make sure to thank God for all the things that you are thankful for.
One other quick announcement, I was visiting, of course, the church plant that we previously had,
Steadfast Baptist Church OKC, this past Sunday, and a lot of people came with me.
I think we had over 100 people from our DFW location go up there, and so we had a huge crowd.
We had about maybe 160 people come out for the ordination service specifically up there in OKC,
and so it was great to see the brethren up there, and the spirit was really, really positive, really energetic, a lot of zeal.
People were really encouraged, and it was a great service. The brisket was even better, and we got a lot of amens there, I noticed.
And then also Pastor Thompson preached for us, and that was also a great sermon, and it was a great time.
And the ordination went really smoothly, and so we now have Pastor Dylan Oz of Anchor Baptist Church up in OKC,
and so if you ever are in that part of the country, or you know anybody, always encourage them to visit Anchor Baptist Church with Pastor Oz,
and it's very exciting for him, and he was such a great blessing to our church and served with us for a long time and really helped us a lot.
And so we very much appreciate him, but the cord has been cut loose, and so we'll continue to pray for them and encourage them,
and hopefully we'll see them around next year or conferences or other events. Of course, they're welcome to participate in a lot of the things that we still do,
and so that was a part of the appeal, that he wasn't going too far, so we could still hang out and see him and everything like that.
But definitely be in prayer for Anchor Baptist Church and Pastor Oz, and we're really excited about them and the work that they're doing up there.
So also thank you to all you who've been up there and traveled with us. It was great seeing you. Thank you to those who stayed here and still had service.
So I really appreciate both groups very much, but it's great to be home. With that, we'll go ahead and sing our third song, Psalm 15.
And so it's in our Psalm booklets, if you'd like to use that.
Alrighty, that was Psalm chapter 15. In your laminated handout, Psalm 15. Everybody sing it out on the first.
Lord, who shall abide in thy tabernacle? Who shall dwell in thy holy hill?
He that walketh uprightly, and worketh righteousness, and speaketh the truth in his heart.
He that backbiteth not with his tongue, nor doeth evil to his neighbor, nor taketh up a reproach against his neighbor.
He that backbiteth not with his tongue, in whose eyes a vile person is contempt, but he honoreth them that fear the Lord.
In whose eyes a vile person is contempt, but he honoreth them that fear the Lord.
He that sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not. He that putteth not out his money to usury.
Nor taketh reward against the innocent. He that doeth these things shall never be moved.
Lord, who shall abide in thy tabernacle? Who shall dwell in thy holy hill?
Great singing everybody. Now as the Alfred plates are being passed around, go ahead and turn in your Bibles to Matthew chapter number three. That's the book of Matthew chapter number three.
Matthew chapter number three, the Bible reads,
In those days came John the Baptist preaching in the wilderness of Judea, and saying, Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.
For this is he who was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his path straight.
And the same John had his raiment of camel's hair, and a leathering girdle about his loins, and his meat was locusts and wild honey.
Then went out to him Jerusalem and all Judea, and all the region round about Jordan, and were baptized of him in the Jordan, confessing their sins.
But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism, he said unto them, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?
Bring forth therefore fruits, meet for repentance, and think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father, for I say unto you, That God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.
And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees, therefore every tree which bringeth forth not good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire.
I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance, but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear, he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire.
Whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.
Then cometh Jesus from Galilee to Jordan unto John, to be baptized of him.
But John forbade him, saying, I have need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to me? And Jesus answering said unto him, Suffer it to be so now, for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness.
Then he suffered him. And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water, and lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and a lightning upon him.
And lo, a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.
Let us pray.
Heavenly Father, Lord, thank You for this chapter of the Bible.
Thank You for this church.
Thank You for the salvations we had.
I just pray that You would fill Pastor Shelley with Your Holy Spirit to preach Your Word unto us, and help us to have receptive hearts to hear Your Word and apply it into our lives.
Praise in Jesus' name. Amen.
Amen. John, I'm sorry, Matthew chapter number three talks about John the Baptist. It says in verse one, In those days came John the Baptist preaching in the wilderness of Judea.
And so we kind of just skip to John the Baptist here in Matthew chapter number three.
And so we fast forwarded a lot of time from chapter number two.
They went back to Nazareth to live.
And then we kind of fast forward to John the Baptist.
Now, John the Baptist is older than Jesus Christ, but not by much.
And so we're talking about only months here that John the Baptist is older than Jesus Christ.
And so and John the Baptist is probably, again, most likely around the age of 30, considering the age of Jesus Christ when he starts his ministry being about the age of 30.
And so, of course, this would be probably maybe two decades.
Fast forward, we're kind of now going to a timeline when John the Baptist is going out into a wilderness.
It says in verse two, In saying, repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.
So John the Baptist preached repentance.
He also went and said this specifically about the kingdom of heaven being at hand, meaning that something is close by.
So this is something that's near.
So it's something that's readily available.
It says in verse three, For this is he that was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.
So John the Baptist is kind of a crazy character.
He kind of goes out into the wilderness, just starts preaching, just starts saying the word of God.
And the Bible is describing as being a voice out in the wilderness.
Again, the wilderness is not well known for there being very many men.
I guess the only guys out there are the ones who have nagging wives.
I guess that's it's a bunch of soy boy guys that can't rule their houses.
So they're just out there needing a leader and they get a hard preacher.
That's you know, they get stuck with John the Baptist.
Obviously, that's a joke.
But I'm just saying that John the Baptist is out in the wilderness.
There's really not a lot of people out there.
It's kind of a remote area, especially in these days.
There's no air conditioning.
They don't have ice.
They can't necessarily be out in the heat as easily.
And so he's kind of in a precarious area, a difficult area.
But he's preaching the Bible and he's preaching, prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.
Now, this is mentioned a couple of places in the Old Testament.
Keep your finger.
Go to Isaiah Chapter 40.
We'll just notice this being mentioned.
It says specifically in Isaiah, which is what we would call Isaiah in the Old Testament.
Isaiah 40, verse number three mentions this specific prophecy.
Isaiah 40, verse three.
The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
And so somewhere out in the desert, someone's out there making a highway.
Now, when we think of a highway, what does a highway really do?
A highway allows you to be transported from one destination to another very easily and very quickly.
In fact, I love highways and I love Texas highways.
You know what I love about Texas?
You can be 60 miles from something and it takes you 60 minutes to get there.
Whereas you go to L.A., you go to New York City, you go to some of these places, you can be five miles away and it's two hours.
And it's confusing because in Texas, you kind of look like how many miles you are away and think of that in minutes.
Whereas in some of these other parts of the world, you know, it could be any number of hours or a timeline.
Go to Manila in the Philippines, you can be one mile and it's two hours.
It's insane.
I remember riding just from the airport to the hotel we were staying, which I thought was literally just right next to each other.
And it took about an hour to drive there.
And at many points in the vehicle ride, I thought, well, everybody's walking faster than we're driving.
And I was kind of thinking, like, I don't know what the point is of this entirely.
But then you look outside the car and you're like, I know I'm in the car now.
OK, so but what I like about Texas is you have a lot of highways and some of them are nice.
Some of them are five lane, six lane.
Some of you have to pay a lot of money to ride on because it's a tollway.
But at the end of the day, the road itself is nice.
It's an access point.
It's getting you somewhere.
And it's an easy, direct path, typically, if you think about it.
And so in a lot of ways, I think that's what John the Baptist is kind of encompassing here.
He's encompassing this highway, in a sense, of this direct access of an easy channel, a clear pathway to get from one destination to another.
And what is that destination?
The destination is to Jesus, to salvation.
John the Baptist wants to cut through all of the junk, which, again, what's the highway do?
A lot of times it's lifted up so it can go over things so it can get you a direct path.
Whereas if you don't take the highway, you have to take a crooked path.
You have to take a winding path.
It's actually very difficult.
When I moved to Houston to start Pure Words Baptist Church, we had planted our church near our house and our house near our church.
Either way you want to look at it, it's probably more the latter because I found a church location first.
But I thought it was going to be pretty good because there was this highway that went, like, straight from our house to the church.
It looked like it was about 10, 12 minutes.
And I'm thinking, like, oh, this is great.
Then I end up finding out it's the third most expensive tollway in the entire United States.
The first two are in New York.
And the third is Fort Bend Tollway in Houston, specifically.
And not only is this an expensive tollway.
If you take it straight to the church and all the, like, all the pathways and straight off the exit, you get three different tolls on this.
It's, like, eight miles.
And, in fact, two of the tolls are only, like, half a mile each or something.
It's, like, we ended up finding out there's a way to kind of, like, get off and you only have to pay one of the tolls.
But if you don't take the tollway, this is what was crazy.
If you go from my house to church taking the tollway, it would take about 10, 11 minutes.
Okay? That's how I drive.
If you don't take the tollway, it would take about 28 to 30 minutes.
And it's not because of traffic.
It's because there's, like, literally no road that even goes there.
You have to just, like, drive through neighborhoods and drive around all these speed bumps and go, like, all kinds of, like, snaky little ways just to try and figure out how to get there.
Because there is no direct path.
The only direct path is the highway.
And there's a reason why they built that highway there is because people that live in that part of Houston want to actually get up north and the only real way is this specific tollway.
And so what a tollway does is it lifts it up and it's a direct path.
And if you think about it, John the Baptist is trying to be that voice out in the wilderness giving you that direct path of Jesus Christ, the direct path of salvation.
Whereas in the world today, there's a lot of snaky paths to the truth.
You know, one of those is, like, the truth movement.
Now, here's the thing. Some people have gone through that snake train of the truth movement and eventually found salvation by Jesus Christ.
But you have to admit that it wasn't really a clear path.
It's not as clear as a guy getting up and just preaching the clear gospel of Jesus Christ, preaching repentance by faith in Jesus Christ, and just being that direct highway right onto the Lord Jesus Christ.
And so I think that what you have to understand about John the Baptist is he was like a highway in a sense that he was just getting a lot of people to the destination quickly.
John the Baptist is not the only person getting someone saved at this time.
Just like, hey, not everybody getting to destinations are taking the tollway.
Not everybody's taking the highway.
Some people are taking all kinds of different pathways and through the neighborhoods and whatever.
But, you know, what the highway does is it's getting a lot of people to that destination quickly.
So what John the Baptist is like is he's like an expert soul winner.
He's like a great preacher.
He's getting tons of people saved, tons of people right to Jesus, a ton of people clear doctrine, and he is like a highway.
And this is what we want in the world today is we want churches and pastors and soul winners to be a highway.
To just be this like super highway and not a tollway, a highway.
We're not charging people to hear this truth.
And we're just getting tons and tons of people straight to Jesus Christ really easy and just lots and lots of people.
We don't want to be the snaky, bendy, lifestyle evangelism way to get a bunch of people saved.
We want to be the confrontational soul winning highway that's just showing up right at their door.
And it's just like, let me take you right to Jesus.
In fact, not only am I going to take you right to Jesus, I'll even hold your hand and give you the words to pray.
Right.
I mean, we don't want to just get someone right up to the edge of that highway and then it be like speed where there's a gap and you just fall off and die.
No, we want to just have the exit ramp there, too.
I'll be a highway and exit ramp.
Hey, I'm going to be the highway and I'm going to show you exactly how to get saved.
And then I'll be like, oh, yeah, here's the exit ramp.
It's called calling upon the name of the Lord in faith.
How about I just tell you how to pray and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and get saved.
So I want to be the highway and the exit ramp and I want to get you safely on the boat and then I'm going to walk away.
I want to get the life jacket snapped in and then I'm going to walk away.
And you know what? That's what we should be like is we want to be people like John the Baptist, who are a highway to Jesus Christ, getting tons and tons of people saved.
Now, what's so cool about this being in Isaiah, not only the highway, I just love the highway word.
Sorry, I love highways.
All right.
Is is the fact that it's Isaiah 40.
Now, I don't I'm not necessarily convinced of this.
If you want to believe this, you can believe whatever you want.
I'm not completely convinced that every single book or I'm sorry, every single chapter, I mean, of Isaiah is a direct correlation to every book of the Bible.
But there are a few that are really interesting in the sense that if you understand the Old Testament is thirty nine books and the New Testament is twenty seven.
That is sixty six books of the Bible.
The Book of Isaiah itself is sixty six chapters.
And if we were to think about it, if the Old Testament ends at thirty nine, what would Matthew be in that numerical sense?
It would be number one, 40.
And then it's kind of an interesting I don't know if it's really a coincidence.
It's probably on purpose.
But a pretty interesting anecdote is the fact that John the Baptist is then mentioned right here in Matthew and then exactly right here in Matthew.
I'm sorry, in Isaiah chapter number 40.
Then you have this reference of John the Baptist preparing the way unto the Lord Jesus Christ.
That seems like a divine a divine accident if you want to say accident or coincidence.
But it seems like it was on purpose, in my opinion.
Now, some people take this so far to say that literally every single chapter of Isaiah has some correlation to one of the books that you would have in the numerical order.
I've tried to look at some that were a little bit more not necessarily obvious ones.
And I'm thinking, like, I don't.
That's a stretch.
It seems like maybe a stretch.
But at the same time, the New Testament, when you look at Isaiah 40 and 41 and 42 and 43 and 44, it really kind of seems to follow the gospels and even particularly acts.
And it doesn't have to be that literally every single one of these particular chapters has a direct correlation of those books.
But I do think 40, 41, 42, 43, 44.
I think those definitely do.
And I think that's a pretty cool thing to have in the Bible.
Go to Malachi chapter number three.
Go to Malachi chapter three.
You can study that yourself and see some of those parallels.
If anything, it just kind of helps you memorize maybe where those things are in the book of Isaiah.
Hey, I want to remember where it said the voice of one crying in the wilderness.
You could think of Matthew's the 40th book in the Bible.
It's Isaiah chapter number 40.
And then you got that match.
You got chapter three and then you got verse three.
Right.
So you kind of have chapter book 40 with chapter three and you got chapter 40 and verse three.
Right.
So you kind of have that to put it in your mind.
If you get a reference Bible like mine, they just give you a reference right on them.
You just have it.
So then you don't even have to worry about it.
Right.
Malachi also kind of has a mention here.
And Malachi is the end cap of the Old Testament specifically.
And it's kind of giving this idea of what's to come.
What's kind of next.
What's on the horizon.
It says in Malachi chapter three verse one.
Behold, I will send my messenger and he shall prepare the way before me.
And the Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to his temple.
Even the messenger of the covenant whom you lied in.
Behold, he shall come say the Lord of hosts.
So again, we have kind of a loose mention here of a messenger coming and preparing the
way before Jesus Christ.
And go back to Matthew chapter three.
Kind of interesting that you have someone coming and preparing the way before Jesus
Christ.
And it seems like if you think about it, we have the Old Testament ends.
Malachi.
He says right before we kind of usher in this new era, this new timeline of Jesus Christ,
we have a messenger coming and he's preparing the way before him.
And in a sense we have the New Testament and it's kind of finalized even though it actually
goes beyond where we're at historically.
It has a lot of future prophecies that have not happened.
But in a sense we kind of are done with New Testament revelation as far as having these
books.
And we're kind of anticipating something.
What are we anticipating?
The return of Jesus Christ again.
So at the end of the Old Testament, they're awaiting Jesus.
That is the next thing that's going to happen.
And a messenger comes.
We also, in a sense, are basically just waiting for Jesus to come.
And we could think about it in the sense that there could also be a messenger.
There's two messengers, in fact, according to the Bible.
You kind of have the two witnesses.
That's specifically some people that come before the Lord Jesus Christ.
And then you also have, you know, in a sense, you could just have anybody preaching the
gospel in a sense that's preparing the way because we're all supposed to, we're supposed
to prepare people and warn people about the coming Lord Jesus Christ.
And so, you know, we have to think about the fact that if God wants someone to prepare
the way for Jesus Christ to come the first time, it makes sense that we too need to be
preparing people for the return of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And so while we may not have, for sure, a John the Baptist of the future, we can be
John the Baptist.
And you know what?
We are Baptists.
And so if we're Baptists, what's one of the things that John the Baptist did?
He prepared the way of the Lord to come.
And we too, in like manner, should prepare the way of Jesus Christ to come.
And maybe, maybe there will be another John the Baptist-like figure.
Maybe there will be a preacher of a particular generation that's out in a wilderness that's
just preaching and no one's ever seen preaching like this.
And he happens to be the precursor to the return of the Lord Jesus Christ.
It could happen.
It could be something like that, again.
But even if it isn't exactly like that, we need to be like John the Baptist and we need
to be preparing the way of the Lord.
And what does John the Baptist really do?
He's just getting a bunch of people saved, turning a bunch of people back to the Lord
Jesus Christ.
That's important.
Because when Jesus Christ comes into his ministry, doesn't he like immediately appoint 12 people?
Doesn't he immediately pick 12 people?
Now one of them's a devil, but he probably needed 11 people that were saved.
And not only 11, he ordained 70 others also, didn't he?
And so in order for Jesus Christ to basically just kind of hit the ground running, you kind
of have John the Baptist laying up and preparing for him.
Just like David lays up and prepares all this material so that Solomon can hit the
ground running and basically build a temple.
And you know, we don't ever know exactly what our particular plight in life is or where
we are in all the stages of life and even spiritual life.
But maybe, maybe our generation is going to be like a John the Baptist generation where
we're laying up and building up a lot of things from a church perspective and then
the next generation or the next group can come and they can just hit the ground running.
Right?
Maybe we have to do the hard groundwork of figuring out how to build a church and get
the money and have maybe a nice property or have everything set up or have everything
established and have soul winning going.
So then the next generation, they don't even have to worry about those things.
They don't have to build those things.
They don't have to like figure out all that hard stuff.
They can just literally hit the ground running and do some great work for the Lord.
And so sometimes we want to be the guy that does the great work but then it's also necessary
to have the guy that prepares the way.
In order for Solomon to build the temple, he needed a David in his life to prepare all
of the lumber and the materials and everything set up and fight all the wars and fight all
the battles and finally get the peace set up so that then his son can come and actually
build the temple.
And so maybe our generation, we're going to have to fight a bunch of battles and lay
up a bunch of lumber and lay up a bunch of material and whatever so then the next generation
can hit the ground running.
I don't really like this sport but I think I like NASCAR.
Only one guy gets to drive the car but that, you know, especially a team is a whole bunch
of people and they have the pit crew and without the pit crew, that guy can't drive the car.
Without the guy that made the car, he can't drive the car.
I guarantee the guys that drive the cars couldn't build the cars.
You know, someone had to build the cars, someone had to pay for the car, someone had to advertise
the car, someone had to organize the pit crew and all the other people that are there but
in order for that one guy to drive, you have to have all of these other people there.
And you know, John the Baptist is necessary in a sense for Jesus Christ to have the ministry
that he does even though he doesn't get to be Jesus, even though he doesn't necessarily
get to do all the things that Jesus did.
And so sometimes we have to just realize, hey, I may not be the guy but I can still
be a guy.
I may not be Jesus but I can still be John the Baptist, right?
And I can still just get in there and prepare something and help something and do something.
You know, a lot of us in this room are sometimes first generation Christians.
Who's a first generation Christian?
Meaning that you got saved before your parents.
I mean, this is like half the room.
How about first generation Baptists?
Okay, yeah, like that's even more people.
So, you know, think about this is like maybe we have to lay a lot of groundwork so that
our kids, they don't even have to know, like they don't have to go through this like
non-denominational church phase.
They don't have to go through this Catholic church phase.
They don't have to go through this Pentecostal church phase.
They don't have to go through a Hindu church phase.
They don't have to go through an atheist household church phase.
They don't have to go through a secular age.
They can literally, as soon as they turn 18, they already have 50 chapters of the Bible memorized.
When they turn 18 years old, they've already been soul winning for a decade.
When they turn 18 years old, they're actually pure.
They marry someone that's pure.
They're set up for life and they can end up doing great exploits for the Lord.
We could end up having way more pastors, higher quality pastors, better pastors.
You know, we don't want to think of the pastors of the day as being the bar of what
a pastor should be.
Because it's very likely that the bar for pastors is a lot higher than wherever I'm
at or other people are at.
Like this is what a pastor should be and maybe I'm like here, but you know, I'm here.
You know what I mean?
Here are my alerts.
It was kind of like, hey, steadfast is in a bad spot several years back.
Who's going to step up?
I might be the least qualified and the worst person to take over the job, but I was willing.
You know what I mean?
It's like there could have been a lot of people that had a lot better pedigree, better resume,
more experience, better equipped, better person, better preacher, just better every category.
There could have been dozens of those just didn't really exist, but you know what?
Maybe the next generation it will exist.
Maybe we could raise or have a crop of people that we're preparing for that can end up
doing great exploits just like John the Baptist is here, but then we're going to have Peter
and then we're going to have Paul and then we're going to have John and then we're
going to have all these other great guys coming down the footsteps.
I mean the Apostle Paul is a young man at the time when Stephen is stoned.
If Paul is a young man at that specific time, how old is he right here in Matthew chapter
number three when John the Baptist is baptizing Jesus?
I mean is he even a young man?
Is he a kid?
Is he a teenager?
I don't know.
And here's a question, how many kids and teenagers do we have in this room or will
have in our church at some point that end up being a great man of God, being greatly
used for the Lord?
And so sometimes we have to think about not only what we will accomplish, but what can
we prepare for the next group to accomplish or for the next people to accomplish?
You know, look at Pastor Dylan Oz who just got ordained, young guy.
I mean Pastor Dylan Oz is in his late 20s and so he has the potential to pastor for
50, 60 years.
Who knows what kind of stuff he might do?
Who knows what kind of exploits he may have in the future?
And maybe we're just a stepping stone for him to step on us to achieve greater heights
and do greater works and preach better sermons and reach more people.
And you know sometimes we just have to have a humble view of ourselves and not always
think about like what am I going to accomplish, but rather just what can I do to serve the
Lord?
Because maybe all I'm doing is preparing for other people.
Maybe I can just be used to help other people and encourage other people and just get other
people on the right path.
And once they get onto that highway of the Lord Jesus Christ, look, all the apostle Paul
needed was to get on that highway and as soon as he gets saved, boom!
I mean that guy is just like a Roman candle just shot out of a cannon.
I mean that guy is just like boom!
As soon as he gets saved.
All he needed was that spark of salvation.
Now where are the nine?
You know there's also nine that they get saved and it's just immediately they do nothing.
They really like the idea that you absolutely have to do nothing and still go to heaven.
But there's still going to be that chance that you get somebody saved and boy they just
do something big for the Lord Jesus Christ.
And so we want to make sure that we're capable of being used and we're preparing the way
of the Lord and we're making his path straight.
We're not preaching heresy.
We're not confusing on the gospel.
No we're making salvation clear and plain so that we can get a lot of people saved because
we never know what they're going to do.
It says in verse four,
And the same John had his raiment of camel's hair and a leathern girdle about his loins,
and his meat was locust and wild honey.
So you see John obviously was very austere in his lifestyle.
I mean living in the wilderness though, you've got to think about it.
Maybe it's not so much as austere as practical.
Because let's just be honest, if you're in the wilderness and you have soft clothing,
it's not going to be very good because it's basically going to snag, get caught on things,
and wear out.
Obviously they don't have a laundromat on every single street corner and a dry cleaners.
So having some kind of a durable garment that you could probably just take into the river
and just wash it hardcore and it just lasts.
So having these type of clothing is probably practical.
Having a belt is practical.
Eating specifically locust and wild honey, again,
it may not be that he's just trying to be cool like Bear Grylls
and he's just honestly, it's just what's available.
You also can't even, like, I think you have to be careful with John the Baptist.
Because it's not like John the Baptist is living in the city
eating like this and dressing like this.
He's in the wilderness.
So it's not like he has steak fillet offered to him and he's like,
no, I eat locust and wild honey.
It's that he's going to die or eat locust and wild honey.
And he's like, I'm going to eat locust and wild honey.
Because you know when you're starving, carrots sound good.
Celery sounds good.
I mean, almost anything sounds good.
In fact, not only does it sound good, it tastes good.
Foods that you don't even really like and you would just be like, eh.
When you're starving and you're on a diet or you've been fasting for a while,
I mean, you just take a carrot and you're like, wow, this is delicious.
You can taste the natural sugars.
I mean, there's sugar carrots.
You wouldn't believe me, but there really is.
Like, food actually tastes good.
The reason why we have such a picky diet is because we have so many options.
If we lived in an area of any other time or other places in the world,
we would not be nearly as picky when it came to food,
just simply out of sheer survival instinct and the fact that that's just how it is.
So I don't want you to get this wrong idea that John the Baptist is just like,
oh, I'm going to live this eclectic lifestyle and I'm cool
and this is a fad that everybody's into.
It's more likely that it's just reality.
He lives in the wilderness, so what is he going to eat?
Well, there's not a lot of options roaming out there in the wilderness,
so he's having what he can.
Again, honey is not necessarily like this sugar-free diet or something.
It's sugar.
I mean, it's not even necessarily this healthy.
It's just, again, it's survival.
This guy has to survive, so he's going to eat locusts
because they're the biggest thing he can find, okay,
and then he's eating honey because, well, at least you can choke down the locust with it.
I mean, you know, he's probably coating those locusts in honey
because he's thinking, like, how in the world am I going to eat this to survive?
But, you know, there's something about humanity that's interesting
is the desire to live, the instinct to live,
and where people will do all kinds of crazy things just to survive,
and humanity is really good at surviving.
Humanity is really good at just making things work.
One of the applications I would make out of this
is how people can kind of survive on almost any budget,
and for whatever reason, we all spend all the money we make
no matter how much money we make.
I mean, it really doesn't matter.
It's like you make $40,000, you spend $40,000.
You make $60,000, you spend $60,000.
You make $600,000, you spend $600,000.
I mean, it really is.
It's funny because especially as a banker, you know,
I would look at sometimes accounts and deal with people
that are doctors and lawyers and whatever,
and, I mean, they are making bank, my friend,
and they lived paycheck to paycheck,
and you're thinking, like, how does that work?
But it's just how it works because their car payment's huge,
their house payment's huge, their kids' expenses are huge,
and so they're just literally living paycheck.
I mean, they're bringing in insane, insane amounts of money
because if you're a doctor, you can make, like,
just as soon as you're out of med school,
just, like, a half a million dollars just, like, day one.
So I saw this one couple is, like, they're making,
I think they're both doctors,
and so they're making, like, half a million day one,
which a half a million sounds like a lot of money,
but it sounds like so much more money
when you put it into monthly payments, okay?
And I want to remember this correctly.
I'm probably going to get the math wrong.
Someone can help me here,
but I want to say that, again,
if you're making half a million,
it was something close to, like, $42,000 a month
or something like that.
And, again, obviously, it's going to vary
based on how much taxes and how much retirement
and all that kind of stuff you have going on.
But, I mean, think about it.
Most of us, if we were thinking, like,
you have to spend $42,000 this month,
you'd be like, I don't even know how to do that.
But I bet you if you made it,
you would figure it out pretty soon.
And that's just kind of how the world works.
But what the positive is,
when we're thinking about John the Baptist,
is it's like he's just making it work.
You know what?
You can make it work on a small budget.
And what many people do,
I'm not going to have kids until I can afford it.
Well, you're never going to be able to afford it, number one.
And then, number two,
you can always somehow make it work.
And isn't it interesting,
the families that usually have the largest,
like, household size are usually the poorer people.
Like, if we were just going to say
generally speaking, like,
who has a lot of kids in the world today?
It's usually Hispanics, which is what I'm saying.
And they're usually the lower income.
They're not necessarily making in tons and tons of money.
But how is it that they have six, seven, eight kids?
Now, again, a lot of people in our church
have a lot of kids, too.
And you'll notice that, hey,
people can just somehow make it work.
And so, you know,
I don't think that you should put your life on hold
because of money and because of budget.
You know what?
Just have the kids.
Because if John the Baptist can make it work,
you know what?
You can make it work.
Now, does that mean it's going to be fun?
Not necessarily.
Does that mean you have every luxury you could ever want?
No.
But I bet you won't have to choke down locusts with wild honey.
And I bet that there's ways to be economical.
I mean, me and my wife, in order to have kids,
the way we wanted, at least,
is with her staying home,
she had to quit her job.
So my wife worked a secular job.
She made money.
She always made more money.
She always made more money than me until she quit.
Okay?
And so she was always making more money than me.
And so not only when she quit did we lose half her income,
we lost a little more than half her income.
Because, like I said, she always made more money than me.
And so, you know, that was hard.
It's hard because, again,
we were spending every single dollar that came in.
But all of a sudden we kind of had to half it.
And then not only did we do that, we're having kids.
So it's like your expenses went up,
the income went way down.
And so, like, I had to do crazy, dramatic things to make it work.
I had this...
I basically told my employer, like,
well, I'm taking off all insurance
because I just need that extra, like, 50 bucks or whatever.
I mean, I'm like, we have no insurance.
So we went to, like, no insurance.
We're eating just, like, bare minimum meals.
The only time we get to eat out
is when our parents took us out to eat.
And so it's like, hey, they're going to church on Saturday night.
We're going to church on Saturday night
because they're taking us out to dinner on Saturday night.
And then, you know, Friday night,
we're hanging out at mom and dad's.
What's for dinner, right?
And whenever I go to mom and dad's,
I'm thinking, like, what's in this cupboard that you don't need?
Because I'm taking it home with me.
And so you just kind of figure out a way to make it work.
But I had a spreadsheet of every meal that we made
of exactly how much it cost.
Because it was mind-boggling to me,
like, how some meals were so much more affordable than other meals.
Because, like, some meals I was thinking, like,
oh, this must be a cheap meal.
And I was like, it's not even that cheap.
And there's other meals that I was like, oh, wow,
this one's actually a lot more affordable.
And so I was like, literally,
we're planning our entire month of meals,
and I'm doing it based on the amount of money it costs.
Do you even make that?
There's a lot of effort.
But I'll tell you what.
That was some of the happiest times in our life.
And it's weird.
It's weird to think, like, we had the least amount of money.
We couldn't do as many fun stuff.
Because before, you know, we're going out to dinner all the time.
We're going to movies.
We're going out shopping.
We're doing all this kind of stuff.
And instead of fighting at the shopping and fighting, you know,
where we're going to go out to eat and all this other stuff,
we're just eating our poor meals and not fighting
and playing free board games.
And it was like, more money, more problems.
Hey, when you don't have any money to spend,
you're not going to fight over spending it.
Whereas when you have $42,000 a month,
boy, you've got a lot of decisions to make.
You've got a lot of things you could be spending that money on
and wasting it on and doing all kinds of stuff.
So don't think that, like, more money makes your life better
because it doesn't always happen.
Now, at the same time,
less money can make your life really hard and really worse, too.
That's why the Bible says,
feed me with food convenient for me.
So ideally, none of us would be in the poor house.
None of us would be in the rich house.
Poverty and riches are kind of relative,
you know, generally speaking.
But John the Baptist is kind of living this more impoverished lifestyle,
a pretty humble lifestyle.
I think it's more out of necessity.
And again, there's nothing wrong with being poor.
But I don't think that we should necessarily strive to be poor.
I think that sometimes poverty is just out of necessity.
Hey, in order for us to have kids
and in order for us to keep going with our life,
we kind of have to take it back a notch a little bit.
But what I wasn't doing is this.
I wasn't saying, you know, I'm working kind of hard right now.
Maybe I should take it easy because poverty is better or something.
I wasn't saying, like, you know what?
I don't like having money,
so I'm going to work a less skilled job so I can get paid less wages.
You know, in fact, I didn't like that situation we were in.
So you know what I did?
I was looking for a second job the entire time.
Not only was I looking for a second job,
I was looking to change the career I was in to get a higher-paying job.
And so I ended up switching to software development
so that I could have more skills and end up being paid a lot more money.
And my boss is – and I was looking for a really high-paying job.
This is, I think, 2014.
My boss is telling me, like, you become skilled in this,
you'll make six figures.
And I'm thinking, like, $100,000 in 2014 is like $10 million today.
You know, sorry, I don't know.
I can't keep up with inflation.
This is so much.
But, like, having that kind of money then sounded great.
I was like, okay, that's great.
I want to get there so I can have a nice house
and provide for all my kids and have all kinds of stuff.
I mean, back then, I'm looking at houses that are $350,000, $400,000.
I'm thinking, like, these are nice.
Now that's just like a shack in DFW, you know?
It's just like you can't keep up with all this stuff.
But at the time, I was, like, looking for, you know,
really ways to improve myself.
And I got second jobs.
I got third jobs.
I did overtime.
My boss knew this.
So any time you had opportunity, I was there working Saturdays,
I was working nights, I was working whenever,
and he would pay me extra money for that.
Not only that, I was looking at side jobs, side hustles.
My brother-in-law knew I was looking for work,
so I found another company I could do some side work for,
and I ended up building them an entire software application
and trying to make extra money.
Because you know what?
I don't like being poor.
But let me tell you something.
I wasn't even close to rich, and I never have been.
And according to America, if you just type it in and say, like,
what is rich or what is wealthy, it's a $2.5 million net worth.
And you know what?
I think that's a pretty accurate statistic.
In fact, I was looking it up.
I think there's like 44 million millionaires.
Did you hear what I said?
44 million millionaires.
It was like something like 11% or something like that
of our population is a millionaire in the United States.
I felt really poor after I read that statistic.
I was thinking, like, what in the world?
There's really 11% of, there's 44 million millionaires?
Like, that seemed crazy to me.
Now, again, fact check that, look that up.
Someone type it in in AI and look it up.
But I was just thinking, like, wow.
But again, like, some people just want to live
an impoverished, poor lifestyle
and think that they're more godly.
I don't think that there's anything godly about trying to be poor.
Now, if you are poor, you could still be the godliest person on the planet
because John the Baptist is the greatest man born among women.
That's what the Bible says.
John the Baptist is great.
But I do not believe John the Baptist is living like this
because he wants to be poor.
He wants to serve God.
And he's told by God to go in the wilderness.
And if he's in the wilderness, well, there's not a lot of jobs,
there's not a lot of money, there's not a lot of good food,
there's not a lot of good clothes, so he's just doing it.
Now, let me give you an example of my opinion of a modern day John the Baptist.
It's Evangelist Duncan Urbanic.
Evangelist Duncan Urbanic gave up a six-figure job
and not just, like, barely six figures.
He was talking high-end six-figure job to leave and go to Houston and work in Houston.
And then, not only that, ended up leaving that to go to the Philippines to go serve,
and the guy is making virtually nothing.
I mean, the amount of money that we're paying him to be a full-time evangelist in the Philippines
is virtually nothing.
I mean, we're talking sub-$50,000, less than $50,000 a year,
in case he was making, like, well over six figures.
But in the Philippines, money goes a lot further.
But at the same time, he has, like, almost none of the modern-day conveniences that you guys have.
In fact, I think they, like, just got, like, hot water and showers or something,
like, wherever they were at, like, they finally got it.
A lot of these houses don't even have air conditioning and whatever.
Now, let me tell you something.
If we bring Evangelist Urbanic back to America,
he is going to have a house with air conditioning, he's going to have hot showers,
and you know what, he's going to eat steak.
If you go to the Philippines, they don't have steak everywhere.
They don't have all these luxuries and delicacies and all the food and all this kind of stuff.
He has to eat whatever they got, wild honey and locusts or whatever, you know.
I'm sorry, I'm just making something up.
Obviously, there's still good food over there.
I'm just saying that it's not the same.
You go to some restaurants and they don't have all the same options when you go abroad.
If you go to the Bahamas even, you go to some restaurants in America that have burgers and beef and steak,
but it's just chicken only.
They've taken a lot of those items off the menu because they don't have the same luxuries, the same delicacies.
So, in some ways, living in a foreign country or living afar off, you're going to have less.
Now, again, is Evangelist Urbanic living as hardcore as John the Baptist?
No. Okay.
But is he living a lot poorer of a lifestyle and a lot lower of a lifestyle than we are
and what he would be if he was living here?
Yes, he is.
But is he doing it because he just wants to be poor or is he doing it because he wants to serve God?
Is he doing it because he's trying to prepare the way of the Lord in the Philippines?
Is he doing it because he cares about souls and serving God and doing a great work for the Lord Jesus Christ?
That's why he's doing it.
That's why we're paying for him.
That's why we're investing in a guy like him.
That's why we send him across the world to go and do this great work is because, you know what?
Someone needs to go out in the wilderness every once in a while and prepare the way of the Lord
and make his path straight to be a highway where they're just getting tons and tons of people
getting saved like crazy over there.
And look, that's what we have in our newsletter with Evangelist Urbanic.
It's like, hey, he's getting 800 people saved.
300 people saved, 500 people.
I mean, they're just getting like hundreds and hundreds of people saved every month over there
so he can just be a super highway and get a bunch of people saved.
But you know what?
He's not living in America saying, how can I make $20,000 a year because I'm lazy?
And let me explain something.
Many people in America are poor only because of the fact that they're lazy.
Now, obviously, we all start on different paths.
You know, if you didn't get any skills, if your parents didn't pay for you to go to college,
if you don't have white privilege like me, okay, or whatever they call it,
if you don't have all these different things, sometimes it can be a rough path to get started.
Sometimes you can make mistakes and it gets hard to get started.
But you know what?
I am not a person, I'm not the type of individual that thinks that we need to have to live
some impoverished lifestyle to prove that we're spiritual or godly.
And I don't think John the Baptist was doing that either.
John the Baptist is simply trying to serve God and he's poor as a result of serving God,
not because he's trying to be poor.
And you know what?
We need people to do both.
We need people to take, you know, great risks and sacrifices to serve God like Evangelos Urbanic,
and then we need other people that are going to work really hard and fund the people like Evangelos Urbanic
and send people out there to do that kind of great work.
Because what if we all do that?
What if we just all go to the Philippines?
Let me explain something to you.
There's not a high paying job for everybody over there.
There's not necessarily a way for us to just all live over there and do all this kind of work.
Like someone's got to pay for things.
And if it costs us, then who's going to get people saved here?
And you know what?
Getting people saved here costs a lot of money.
Because living here costs a lot of money.
Having a building here costs a lot of money.
Ordering material here costs a lot of money.
Trying to bring people in costs a lot of money.
And so you know what?
Sometimes you have to have both.
You have to have the people that are making sacrifice, serving God, preparing David,
preparing the lumber, the material and whatever,
so that other people can then take advantage of that money and that stuff that's been stored up
and doing this work and we can work in tandem.
Not everybody can be John the Baptist.
Not everybody can be Jesus.
Not everybody can be the guy that laid it up.
Not everybody can be the guy that used it.
But we need to make sure that we're willing to just be used even if we have to be John the Baptist.
I went on a long tangent there, but I think that's an important point here in verse number 4.
It says in verse 5,
Then went out to him Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region round about Jordan.
Let me explain something.
When you're a good preacher, they'll come to you.
When you preach the truth, they'll come to you.
It's interesting.
You think like certain...
I mean, I could think of a preacher that was out in the wilderness with a small church that nobody knew of
and then everybody wanted to hear what he had to say.
Why?
Because he was a good preacher.
Because he was preaching the truth.
Hey, you preach the truth, you do what's right, they'll find you.
Not only the good people, the bad people too, right?
It says,
And we're baptized of him in Jordan, confessing the sin.
So, I think this is incredible because it says in verse 5,
All Judea.
It's like basically, it's like everybody went to hear John the Baptist.
And it's almost like everybody got baptized.
It's like the Catholic Church.
You know, everybody gets baptized even though like none of them are saved virtually.
You know, isn't that kind of funny?
Kind of interesting.
I mean, think about how many people have been baptized in this world and are not saved.
I mean, there's a lot of people that are baptized and not saved.
And the same here.
A lot of people got baptized and didn't get saved.
Although a lot of people did get baptized and get saved.
Now, John was not preaching that they had to get baptized to get saved.
He wasn't preaching that they repent of their sins to get saved.
He preached that you have to believe in Jesus.
Keep your finger here and go to Acts chapter 19.
Let's just look at this real quick.
And I want to make that clear because many people use this and twist this passage and other passages like it
to suggest that you have to go and confess your sins and repent of your sins and get baptized in order to be saved.
And then they'll say, look at John the Baptist.
And then isn't it funny that the same people that believe this,
pretty much everybody that believes that you have to repent of your sins and get baptized and do all this stuff to get saved,
is not a Baptist.
And then the people that are Baptists don't believe that.
You want to know why?
You want to know what the big difference is?
The non-Baptists don't read the Bible and the Baptists read the Bible.
Okay?
And you know what?
We love Baptism.
We support Baptism, but Baptism doesn't get you saved.
Now, Acts chapter 19, it says in verse 4,
Then said Paul, John verily baptized with the baptism of repentance,
saying unto the people that they should believe on him which should come after him, that is, on Christ Jesus.
So what did John the Baptist say in the midst of all this?
He was saying, you've got to believe on the guy that's coming after me.
There's a guy coming after me, and that's the guy you need to believe in.
That's Jesus Christ.
Now think about it.
The gospel hasn't happened.
So he can't really point to the gospel that happened.
He has to point to the gospel that's going to happen.
But what saved people in the Old Testament?
Believing in the gospel.
But, of course, their understanding was a future gospel, not a past gospel.
But they still believed in the gospel.
They're pointing them to the Jesus that's going to come and to die for their sins
and to give them salvation, and they're believing in him.
And, of course, while they're there, they're confessing, hey, I'm a sinner.
You know, God be immersed in me a sinner is a prayer that's mentioned in the Bible.
Of course, a lot of people coming out to them are harlots and publicans and whatever,
and they're admitting who won't admit that they're a sinner.
The Pharisees and the Sadducees who scoff and mock at John the Baptist's works here.
And then, of course, after getting saved, he's baptizing them.
Which baptism pictures are what?
Our trust in the death, burial, and resurrection as the payment for our sin
and not in ourselves, not in our works, not what we do, but what Jesus did for us.
And so that is kind of the essence of what's taking place here.
People are coming out. They're hearing, hey, believe in Jesus Christ.
They say, I'm a sinner. I've sinned a lot. I'm going to believe in Jesus.
Now what do I do? And John the Baptist dunked him, brought him back.
He says, now you're going to walk in newness of life.
Just happening just over and over. He's just baptizing tons of people.
Of course, there was lots of people there that heard that, and they just said,
like, I don't know, I just want to get baptized.
And they just fall on the line, and they just get baptized.
I mean, there's so many people that get baptized, and they don't even know what they're doing.
I've had people tell me, they said, I got baptized when I was a teenager.
I don't even know what was happening.
They just said, do you want to get baptized? And I was like, yeah.
It's just a line.
And it would be funny, like a human experiment, if we could just go to a body of water,
and just have this huge line of people, and then like baptizing,
and just see how many people just randomly get in the line.
Like, I don't even know what's happening.
They just show up, and it's like, this is getting a line.
I mean, everybody's doing it.
I mean, talk about peer pressure.
Doesn't mean they were all getting saved, okay?
Obviously, they all crucify him, okay?
Pretty soon here afterwards.
Now it says in verse 7,
He saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism.
He said unto them, O generation of vipers, who hath warned beautifully from the wrath to come,
bring forth therefore fruits, meat for repentance, and think not to say within yourselves,
We have Abraham to our father, for I say unto you that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.
So again, the Pharisees and the Sadducees aren't getting baptized.
They're not believing the message.
And he's like, basically like, why are you guys even here?
Like, who warned you?
And specifically, he says, they're not bringing forth fruits, meat for repentance.
Fruit can mean a lot of things.
It's always based on the context.
Fruit is just the product of something.
What does meat mean?
Suitable or appropriate for repentance.
What is the repentance that John the Baptist was preaching that we've already clarified in Acts chapter number 19?
To believe on Jesus Christ.
So what would be fruits, meat for repentance?
It would be saying things that match and are appropriate with the repentance that these people had.
What would be appropriate with the repentance they had?
I'm a sinner. Thou be one of those things.
Doesn't that match?
Why do you believe in Jesus?
Because you're a sinner, deserving of hell.
What's another reason that they believe in Jesus Christ?
Because he's the Christ.
Because he's the lamb that takes away the sins of the world.
What would be also an accompaniment or an accordance with these type of things?
You know what? It's not by the works of the law that we're saying.
But that's not what the Pharisees teach. That's not what they believe.
The Bible says that they were willing to justify themselves.
They wouldn't be saying those kind of things if they had believed in Jesus to take away their sins.
They wouldn't be condemning people like harlots and publicans to hell because of their sin.
They would have been recognizing their salvation through faith in Jesus Christ.
So again, they have their own gospel. They have their own message.
They're not saying the right things.
And he's like, you know, you guys aren't doing the right thing.
What do they say?
And then he brings up something they say.
We have Abraham to our father.
Why do they think they're saved?
Well, I'm a Jew.
Well, I'm of a specific tribe.
I'm of Abraham's lineage, therefore I'm saved.
I'm better than Gentiles.
And he's saying, no, no, no.
God can literally make children of God out of literal stones, let alone Gentiles.
But even just literal just rocks, this could be a child of God.
So he's saying it's not your lineage that matters.
Because what's the lineage of a rock?
What's the descendancy of a rock?
Nothing.
So he's saying, you guys don't get it.
Being a son of God is not based on who your parents are.
It's believing on Jesus Christ and it's believing the gospel.
God could make stones as children if he really wanted to because we're all dust anyways.
And so they're just not getting the point, are they?
And they're not bringing forth fruits, meat for repentance.
This is what false prophets will say, though, about this passage.
This is like, oh, they're not being nice enough.
They're mean-spirited or they're not kind.
It has nothing to do with the passage.
It makes no sense of the passage.
What I'm saying is what it's meaning.
Verse 10.
And now also the axe is laid under the root of the trees.
Therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire.
So, again, the root of the trees being cut down, this is kind of a parable that he's using for the nation of Israel.
The nation of Israel is a tree.
It's not bringing forth fruit.
And so consistently you have this parable through the Bible.
Jesus curses the fig tree that's not bringing forth fruit and it dries up and it's destroyed.
Their nation as a whole is a tree.
The nation of Israel, it's not bringing forth fruit.
So he's going to lay the axe to the root of that tree and he's going to overthrow that nation.
What is the wrath to come?
70 A.D. when the nation is literally overthrown and then metaphorically also hell.
We can see that as a picture of, hey, there's two wraths that are coming.
There's the physical wrath that's coming from this nation that's going to be replaced.
There's also hell and they're not being worn from either because they're not believing in Jesus Christ.
And so God is going to get rid of physical Israel.
Why?
Why would you cut down a tree?
Because it's wasting the nutrients in the water of your garden.
The tree is for fruit.
And it's wasting the soil.
It's wasting the water.
So you know what you're going to do?
You're going to get rid of that tree and you're going to plant a new tree that's going to do what?
Bring forth fruit.
So he gets rid of the physical nation of Israel so that he can bring in the spiritual nation of Israel to do what?
To bring forth fruit.
But what happens if the physical that's replaced with the spiritual, the spiritual doesn't end up producing fruit?
Well, he can get rid of that too.
And that's what Romans chapter 11 is all about.
How God will get rid of trees, churches, people, whatever.
If you're not bringing forth fruit, John chapter 15, I mean there's just so many passages that correlate to this particular concept.
So he got rid of the physical nation because they weren't bringing forth fruit.
It's that simple.
And you know what?
If you want your tree to continue to last, bring forth fruit.
What is that?
You keep winning souls.
Your family keep winning souls.
Your church keep winning souls.
And you know what?
Your country are winning souls.
And then you'll keep all those things intact.
When you stop, well, now you're in danger.
Verse 11, I indeed baptize you with water and repentance, but he that cometh after me is mightier than I.
Whose shoes I am not worthy to bear, he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire.
Whose fan is in his hand and he will thoroughly purge his floor and gather his wheat into the garner, but he will burn up the chaff of unquenchable fire.
A couple of really important points.
Number one in verse 11, notice he says this in the second part of this, but he that cometh after me.
But he that cometh after me.
What did it say in Acts chapter number 19 that John the Baptist was preaching?
To believe on him that should come after him, which is Christ Jesus.
Isn't that the exact same thing he's saying right here?
Hey, there's someone coming after me.
And what's different about this guy?
I'm not even worthy to untie a shoe.
I'm not even worthy of, like, just helping him out in the least way.
I'm not even worthy of doing anything in comparison to him.
Meaning what?
This is someone special that's coming after.
Not is he just special, it's God manifest in the flesh.
It's the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world.
And John the Baptist testifies this in other passages of the Bible.
So, hey, I'm baptizing you with water, but there's somebody that's coming that's mightier than me and he's going to baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire.
What do you think he's trying to get people to do here?
Believe in the guy that's coming after him.
Doesn't that sound exactly like what it said in Acts 7 and 19?
And doesn't that fit exactly with what repentance...
What is the repentance?
Believe in him.
Trust in him for your salvation.
Stop trusting the works of the law.
Stop trusting what the Pharisees and the Sadducees are teaching because their doctrine is full of leaven.
It's a false gospel. It won't save.
Believe in him that's going to come after me.
That's Jesus Christ.
And Jesus is going to have his fan in his hand.
He's going to basically gather wheat and burn up chaff.
We see the saved and the unsaved.
Notice unquenchable fire.
John the Baptist is a hell fire and damnation preacher.
He's preaching hell.
Wrath to come, unquenchable fire.
It's called hell.
Notice it's unquenchable.
You know what that means?
It'll never, ever end.
Hell is an eternal damnation.
It's an eternal fire.
The fire never is quenched.
Where their worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched.
He warns about it.
Jesus warns about it.
It's important for us to preach hell.
And people don't like the doctrine of hell.
That's the spicy part of preaching the gospel is hell.
Because you notice everybody that's not like us, they're just like,
Jesus wants to have a relationship with you.
Jesus wants you to hang out with him later.
It's like, okay, but what if I don't want to hang out with him?
But you want to be in his presence.
But what if I don't want to be in his presence?
But you want to be close to him.
But what if I don't want to be close to him?
And they just won't say it.
Well, the alternative is hell.
The alternative is unquenchable fire.
Burning and torment and no rest day or night.
Outer darkness, weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Eternal regret.
Oh, okay, well, I like your first option.
Now.
But you know what, you say that, how dare you say I'm going to hell.
You're going to hell.
Hindus are going to hell.
Catholics are going to hell.
Most Christians are going to hell.
Especially people like Methodists, United Methodists for sure.
Many Presbyterians, Lutherans, Greek Orthodox, Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, Eastern Orthodox.
Every Orthodox you can think of.
Catholic, I mean, Catholic light.
You don't like Catholic.
Atheists going to hell.
Mormons going to hell.
Jehovah's Witnesses going to hell.
They're all going to hell.
I don't like this.
This is mean.
You're mean spirited.
How am I mean if you're going to hell and I tell you you're going to hell?
How does that hurt you?
And think about this.
We're comparing what I said, words I said versus being on fire forever.
I didn't hurt you.
All I did was warn you.
I mean, think about this.
There's a guy standing in the street.
A car is coming at him at 100 miles an hour and you say, watch out.
Dude, you're hurting his eardrums.
Bro, that was mean spirited.
Couldn't you be like, hey, buddy, come here.
Hey.
You're going to scream and yell at the guy.
I mean, you're not going to be like, hey, am I okay?
Doing great, buddy.
I mean, that's what so many Christians are doing to Mormons today.
That's what so many Christians are doing to their family and their friends.
They've never even asked them about salvation.
They're just like, doing good, buddy.
Love Jesus, man.
Share this post if you love Jesus, too.
Right?
If you love Jesus, this should get ten retweets.
I mean, but we're not checking to see if they're on their way to hell, though.
No, no, no.
We need to check and make sure that people are actually saved.
It's called confrontational soul winning.
And you know what the confrontation is?
Unquenchable fire.
Look at verse 13.
Then comes Jesus from Galilee to Jordan unto John to be baptized of him.
But John forbade him saying, I need to be baptized of thee.
And cometh thou to me?
And Jesus answered and said unto him, Suffer it to be so now,
for thus it becometh us to fulfill all righteousness.
Then he suffered him.
A lot of thoughts I had here.
For the sake of time, I'm not going to go to the verses.
But I just want to explain a few things that I thought about.
Number one, Jesus humbles himself for John the Baptist to baptize him.
I think a couple things.
Number one, a spiritual picture here could be
baptism represents Jesus' death, birth, and resurrection.
And it represents the gospel that he's going to do.
But the other thing, in order for the gospel to even happen,
Jesus Christ has to allow it.
And so the Bible makes it clear in John chapter number 10
that Jesus Christ is going to lay down his life.
And he's going to lay down his life at the hands of man.
And specifically the Jews.
John the Baptist can be a representation of man and the Jews
and how he's allowing...
I mean, what is baptism?
You're putting your, kind of your life in the hands of another person
and they're taking you down and bringing you back up, in a sense.
And so John the Baptist, being a man, Jesus humbles himself,
gives himself to man, and allows man to literally perform the gospel
and the death, burial, and resurrection.
Now, of course, obviously that example isn't perfect
because man did not raise Jesus Christ from the dead.
God the Father raised Jesus Christ from the dead.
But it has a little bit of a foreshadowing, a little bit of a picture there.
Additionally, you could look at this as John the Baptist is being...
He's older than Jesus.
He's a prophet before Jesus.
And since he's a little bit of an authority figure,
Jesus Christ is meant to go out and to humble himself
and lower himself and to essentially serve under him.
Just like Jesus Christ is supposed to serve under his parents.
Jesus Christ was obedient under his parents and observed the parents' rules.
Now, is his parents, is Mary and Joseph better than Jesus?
No.
Is John the Baptist better than Jesus?
No.
But he humbled himself and served on them.
And you know what?
You too need to submit to the authorities in your life.
Hey, if you're a child, submit to your parents.
Even if you're going to be better than your parents,
even if you are better than your parents,
you just do what your parents say.
Even if you as a wife, even if you're better than your husband,
even if you're more spiritual than your husband,
even if you're greater than your husband,
you still just submit unto his authority and leadership
and just do what he says.
And you humble yourself.
How about if you're better than your pastor?
What if you're smarter than your pastor?
What if you know more than your pastor?
You know what?
You just submit unto him and serve unto him anyways.
And you know what?
The psalmist says in Psalm 119, verse 99,
I have more understanding than all my teachers.
So objectively, he's better than his teachers.
But you know what?
He also, I guarantee, submitted unto his teachers
and his leadership.
But the reason why he got better is because
thy word is my meditation.
He's basically meditating on the word of God.
Thy meditation, he's doing it every day.
So according to the Bible, we need to submit to our leadership
and our authority even if we're better than them.
Jesus is better than John the Baptist.
But he allowed him to baptize him.
And we sometimes have to recognize even if we're better
than our boss, than our parents, than our husband,
than whoever is our authority, the evangelist,
the deacon, the pastor, whatever.
We just do what they say anyways.
And you know what?
People who act differently are not better.
You can be better, but the better people always submit.
The people that rebel are never better.
The people that submit could be better.
Maybe they're not.
But even if they are, they will submit.
The better people are not the rebellious ones.
Show me the guy who rebelled in the Bible that was better.
It doesn't happen.
Oh, Absalom?
Oh, fail.
Yeah, Adonijah? Fail.
I mean, just consistently throughout the Bible,
when someone thinks they're better and wants to be better,
oh, like a devil?
Yeah, fail.
I mean, it just doesn't matter who it is that thinks
that they're better.
They just always fail.
It's always the people that stumble and submissive.
Those are the people that God lifts up.
You know, the way up is down, and the way down is up.
Verse 16, and Jesus, when he was baptized,
went up straightway out of the water.
And lo, the heavens were opened unto him,
and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove
and lighting upon him.
And lo, a voice from heaven, saying,
This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.
How dare you say so many people are unsaved, Pastor Shelley?
They have the same Bible.
They've read it.
Well, it's kind of funny because they read it.
They read it in verse 16, where it says
he went up straightway out of the water,
and then they don't baptize by immersion.
I mean, Catholics don't baptize by immersion.
Many of your Catholic lights, like the Lutheran,
I don't know, maybe some of the Lutherans do,
but like Episcopalians and some of these others,
I mean, they just sprinkle, Methodists sprinkle.
There's all kinds of different groups
that basically don't even baptize by immersion.
I'm thinking, like, if you can't even get that right,
how are you going to get the salvation right?
If you can't even believe the carnal things
that we're telling you,
how are you going to believe the spiritual things?
You know, it doesn't really make any sense.
And so a lot of people are obviously not saved.
They don't even get baptism right.
Why is Jesus coming straightway out of the water
if you sprinkle?
Have you ever seen someone come out of sprinkling?
He straightway came out of the sprinkling water.
Like, what does that even look like?
I think some movies have literally had Jesus
being in water, getting fit, like, getting immersed,
and then they sprinkled him, too,
just to try and, like, not offend people.
And you're just thinking, like, wow, that was stupid.
Okay.
Just pick one, you know.
Or just show him, like, there,
and then just fast forward or something, you know.
But, of course, this is an iconic part of the Bible.
It's in every single gospel.
The thing that's pretty also unique is the Bible says,
in verse 16, John the Baptist,
he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove
and lighting upon him.
So you kind of have a picture of the Trinity here
where Jesus Christ is in the water.
John the Baptist sees the Holy Ghost,
and then in verse 17, and lo, a voice from heaven.
What's also interesting is these are all, like,
spatial locations.
One is in the water, one's in the air descending,
and one is in heaven.
Some people act like God does not exist anywhere or something.
He's just kind of an ethereal idea
or an abstraction that transcends location.
But the Bible doesn't paint that picture.
The Bible pictures a manifestation of God
where he's in heaven, and he can also be on earth.
He could be even traveling in between
as we see the Spirit of God.
Not only spatially, but in person different, too.
It doesn't just say, I saw God, God, God.
He says there's a voice,
then we have specifically the Spirit of God,
and then we have Jesus Christ, the Son of God,
God manifest in the flesh,
all three at the exact same time and the distinctions.
This is a great verse on the Trinity.
Again, do we understand everything about the Trinity?
No, but we can understand some things.
What can we understand?
Well, there's one God.
That's clear in the Bible.
We can understand that there's three persons,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
and we can understand that they're not each other
because the Son's in the water, the Spirit's in the sky,
and the Father's in heaven.
He's the voice from heaven, okay?
But somehow, the Son is God, the Spirit is God,
and the Father is God.
These three are one in unity, of course,
and they're one in the sense that there's one God,
but they're distinct persons, and we see distinctions.
We see a clear distinction between the three.
You know, when it comes to the Spirit of God,
distinction, I don't know.
I think this is kind of interesting
because it says it's descending like a dove.
What does that mean?
I don't know.
Let's look at a couple other verses, and we'll finish.
This is the last thought I want to have.
The Bible does say about the Father,
this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.
This is a confirmation of Jesus Christ to John the Baptist
and that this is the Son of God,
and he's going to then tell everybody,
this is the guy that I've been preaching about.
He told everybody, there's a guy coming.
God the Father wants to make it abundantly clear
to John the Baptist, this is that guy,
and then specifically, everybody's going to point to him.
Here's a couple things that are also interesting about that point.
Did I have you go to Luke 3 first or John 1?
Go to both, but...
John is recognizing Jesus based on some specific special things,
seeing the Spirit of God and the Father literally saying,
this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.
That tells me there's nothing carnally about Jesus.
He's not wearing like a flavor-flave clock
that you can just pick him out of a crowd.
He doesn't have a distinguishing...
The guy with a mole on his cheek,
the guy that has special hair,
the guy that's 10 feet tall, he's different than...
There must have not really been anything about Jesus physically
that you could just, here he is.
Think about this.
When the Roman soldiers come to get Jesus Christ,
Judas has to betray him with a kiss.
I can't say.
Here's this very specific physical distinguishment
between him and all these other people.
So I don't think that there was really anything about Jesus physically
that makes him stand out in a crowd.
And again, I don't think that means that he's ugly or something.
I think he was probably a very good-looking guy
based on his genes and his lineage.
I mean, pretty much every guy in his lineage
is a pretty good-looking guy.
A lot of some of the most attractive women
in his past lineage make sense
that he probably looks a lot like them.
I wouldn't even be surprised if he looks a lot like David.
I wouldn't be surprised if he looks a lot like Adam.
I wouldn't be surprised if Adam looks a lot like Jesus.
Okay?
And sometimes you'll even notice, genes skip.
Like, you'll have, like, Grandpa, Dad, and then Grandson.
And Grandson looks exactly like Grandpa.
But Dad doesn't look like them.
And you're kind of thinking, like, that's crazy.
And sometimes you can have two people
that are not that much, they don't look that much alike,
but one of them looks exactly like one of their parents.
You know, have you ever seen that, where it's just like,
man, he looks just like his dad or just like his mom,
but, like, somehow the other parent
doesn't look anything like them that much.
And so, you know, I'm not saying there was something weird.
I'm just saying, like, it was legit, okay?
But it's very likely that Jesus Christ
looked like those people,
has that kind of genes.
God timed it exactly right.
And, of course, the Lord Jesus Christ
is the root and offspring of David,
so it makes sense that he's going to look like David
since he kind of is the progenitor,
as well as a son and a descendant of David.
So he's probably a good-looking guy,
but everybody probably looks pretty similar anyways.
If you look at it, they're all pretty related.
I don't know if you know this about them.
Now Jews look related, and it's pretty obvious too, okay?
It's about as obvious as the nose on their face,
but that's a different story for a different time.
Luke chapter 3, verse 21, the Bible says,
Now when all the people were baptized,
it came to pass that Jesus was also being baptized
and praying that heaven was open.
And the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape
like a dove upon him.
And a voice came from heaven which said,
Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.
So here's a little bit more info
It says the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape
like a dove upon him.
Now, again, I don't know exactly what this looks like.
Go over to John chapter 1.
I think there's kind of like two theories
that I think are possible.
One theory would be that the Holy Ghost looks like a man,
looks like Jesus, basically, but in a spirit form,
and he's just simply descending like a dove,
like a dove would.
Another interpretation, which kind of seems more like
what the text is implying, is that somehow the shape
of whatever the Holy Spirit coming down looks like
just kind of looks like a dove from a shape form.
But what I don't believe it's saying is that it's a dove.
What I don't think it's saying is a bird.
Specifically, also, like, that wouldn't really indicate
that John the Baptist, this is Jesus,
the bird flew and landed on Jesus.
I think he's literally seeing the Spirit of God.
I also think it's important that it's saying a bodily shape
because it's trying to make it clear
this really is the Spirit of God.
It's not something that can't be seen or isn't even real.
It's real, it's just, you know, it's different.
And, you know, what does the Spirit of God look like?
I don't think any of us really know.
And it's coming down.
How fast is it coming down?
It could look like a blur.
You know, a lot of people have kind of drawn,
like, they have these pictures of a dove when it's going down
and it kind of has this interesting looking shape
and it even could look like fire or, like, whatever.
It's kind of even split.
So it could be, it could appear like a couple different things
maybe to different people
depending on how they're describing it.
I don't think it was a dove
because it probably wouldn't use the language it's saying.
It's definitely, in my opinion, not a bird, just a bird.
I mean, it is the Spirit of God.
But maybe it's also, you know, a man, I don't know.
John chapter 1 verse 32, it says,
And John bare record, saying,
I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove,
and it abode upon him.
And I knew him not, but he that sent me to baptize with water,
the same said unto me,
Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending
and remaining on him,
the same as he which baptizes with the Holy Ghost.
So here, and it says in verse 34,
And I saw and bare record that this is the Son of God.
So John the Baptist got physical witness
of this Holy Spirit coming down, lighting upon Jesus.
Its descent was like a dove, in shape or in descent,
I don't know.
And essentially, the Holy Ghost is fully coming on Jesus.
The Father says, This is my beloved Son
in whom I am well pleased.
And this is the full confirmation.
This is going to usher us into the ministry of Jesus Christ.
John the Baptist got a bunch of people saved.
He's told everybody about it.
He's baptized everybody, saved and unsaved.
And now we got Jesus coming in.
Here's the guy I've been talking about.
Let's go.
And basically, now we're going to start
the ministry of Jesus Christ.
And of course, Jesus Christ goes beyond Judea and Jerusalem,
goes all over this entire area and preaches the gospel
and is going to reach many more people
and do many more miracles.
You know, what can we draw from this story?
A lot of things, but probably the most important thing
is even if we're not going to be the main show,
even if we're not always going to be the main thing,
let's just be humbly used by God wherever we're at.
And if God uses us and we never really have money,
well, we'll never be as poor as John the Baptist.
Okay?
I mean, no matter how poor you think you are,
I guarantee you don't have to choke down any locust tonight.
Okay?
Has anybody ever eaten a locust?
I'm just kind of curious.
Anybody?
All right.
I see that hand.
You're weird.
You probably tried balut, too, so I don't know.
Have you?
Oh, my.
Of course, right?
Well, don't get any food advice from this part of the room,
okay?
But, you know, wherever we find ourselves in,
you know, let's just be used by God.
Let's just be humble about it.
And you know what?
Also, if we're even better than other people,
let's just be humble about it and obey the authorities
that we have in our life and just make sure that we're
being used by God because God can use anybody anywhere
at any time and let us just be humble servants.
Let's close in prayer.
Thank you, Heavenly Father, so much for this Christmas season.
Thank you so much for what you've given us.
Thank you for Thanksgiving that we could be thankful
for the gift of your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
I pray that you would just help us to all be thankful
for what you have given us.
I know that tomorrow we're probably going to enjoy
a lot of good food, a lot of good fellowship,
a lot of good family, a lot of good fun,
but I pray that we would have a humble heart about it,
that we'd remember where it came from.
I pray that you would just help to use us to serve you
wherever we're at, whatever financial means you give us.
If you give us great blessing or if we don't have much,
that you would still allow us to have great faith
and that we could see great men like John the Baptist
who had almost nothing and yet did great works for God.
I pray that you would just motivate us
that are rich in faith to serve the Lord Jesus Christ.
I pray that you'd bless our evangelists in the Philippines,
that you'd be with them in this time,
and that you would take note of the sacrifice
that he's making over there,
that you'd bless them greatly spiritually, even carnally,
and allow them to have a good Thanksgiving.
And I pray that you continue to use our church
for your honor and glory.
In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
All right, closing, let's go to song number 408.
Song number 408,
Loyalty to Christ, song number 408.
Everybody sing it out in verse.
From over hill and plain
There comes a signal strain
Is loyalty, loyalty, loyalty to Christ
Its music rolls along the hills
Take up the song of loyalty
Loyalty is loyalty to Christ
On to victory, on to victory
Rise our great commander on
We'll move in his command
We'll soon possess the land
Through loyalty, loyalty is loyalty to Christ
O hear ye break the sound
That moves the earth around
Tis loyalty, loyalty, loyalty to Christ
Arise to new, bring out what's for true
Of loyalty, loyalty is loyalty to Christ
On to victory, on to victory
Rise our great commander on
We'll move in his command
We'll soon possess the land
Tis loyalty, loyalty is loyalty to Christ
Come join our loyal throne
We'll rout the guy in wrong
Tis loyalty, loyalty, loyalty to Christ
Where Satan's manners flow
We'll send the beautiful know
Of loyalty, loyalty is loyalty to Christ
On to victory, on to victory
Rise our great commander on
We'll move in his command
We'll soon possess the land
Through loyalty, loyalty is loyalty to Christ
The strength of youth we lay
At Jesus' feet today
Tis loyalty, loyalty, loyalty to Christ
His gospel we'll proclaim
Throughout the world's domain
Of loyalty, loyalty is loyalty to Christ
On to victory, on to victory
Rise our great commander on
We'll move in his command
We'll soon possess the land
Through loyalty, loyalty is loyalty to Christ
Great singing, everybody. You are all dismissed.