Message - "Do you need to be baptized to go to Heaven? Did Jesus?"

Join Pastor Joe Liles as we explore the River Jordan and the profound meaning of baptism in our 'I Found Jesus' sermon series! Discover the historical significance of Jesus' baptism, learn about the River Jordan's geography, and understand what it means to carry your Christian identity everywhere you go. Perfect for anyone seeking to deepen their faith and understanding of biblical locations. 

Highlights:
• Journey through the River Jordan's biblical history
• Understand the theological significance of baptism
• Learn how to live out your faith beyond church walls

Key Quotes:
- "We cannot contain the Holy Spirit just to where we're comfortable. In fact, our hope and our prayer should be that we ask for forgiveness for the times that we have contained the spirit, and ask for the spirit to release us into the world so that we may care for others."
- "The longer that you keep Jesus to yourself in the spaces that were comfortable, the longer it will take the kingdom to grow what God intended."

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome and Introduction to the "I Found Jesus" series
• 2:30 Vacation, Faith and Travel
• 8:47 Biblical significance of the Jordan River
• 17:56 Matthew 3:13-17 (Jesus' Baptism Story)
• 25:58 Meaning of Baptism
• 27:58 Living Out Your Faith

Transcript

Pastor Joe Liles: 0:02

You. So in a series right now that is called I found Jesus, and the series was originally titled, Jesus was here, and in a beautiful way, we got to a space where there was an Easter, where we packed 1000 eggs and we hid little mini Jesuses inside those eggs, and we hit about 50 Jesuses in the 1000 eggs, and 950 were empty, because it was the empty tomb. And so the kids had to go through a lot of empty tune. And hearing about the tomb being empty before they found Jesus, what we didn't realize is that one the kids would be so excited that when they came out of kid city, they shouted, I found Jesus. And it was wonderful. And I was like, Oh, that's really special. I kind of really enjoy that as Pastor Joe, like hearing the kids say, I found Jesus, and it was like this real, tangible reality. And they meant it for little mini Jesus, right? That you can get in bulk. But what they were saying in their heart was, there was this moment where they found Jesus, and it's something that we could move with them and talk with them about. What we didn't expect is when the kids came out and said that they had found three found three Jesuses and then they stole other Jesuses from other kids. That was unexpected. So we're gonna revamp that a little bit next year, and we're gonna move from that, but it worked out really well. And so what we're doing is we had a series going into summer that was talking about travel. How many of you are traveling this summer? There's by show of hands traveling this summer. That's great. Okay, so with travel this summer, we wanted you to know that you might be leaving your home church, you might be traveling right now and visiting this church. You might be in a space where you're going on travel and vacation. And you know what? I would love to see, a show of hands. How many travel and go to church? If you're there on a weekend like you go to find a church that you go to where you travel sinners. Okay? How many of you, three of you come on now. This is great. So our family is actually mixed on this. I love to go to church. Love to go to church, right? And and church is not where we find our faith. Church is where we gather with the body, right? Church is not the end all be all. You can discover your faith in the mountains, on the lake, right? You can discover it and travel in different spaces. So I'm not saying that, but I love to go to church. So if I'm in a different city, I'll try and hit one, two or three churches on a Sunday morning to walk in and experience the different ways that churches do things. Because it takes me three churches to stop judging other churches. Is what really happens about I would be honest with you, I walk in, I wouldn't do that. I'm like, that was that's not good. And I'm like, ooh, we're going to take that and use that at the neighborhood. And I was like, That is fantastic. So about the third church, I'm tired of doing that. I'm like, can I just have coffee and I just want to listen to the word that would be wonderful. But what we thought is, if you're traveling this summer, how many of us truly think of the identity that when we travel, we're traveling with Jesus, right? We're traveling with our Christian identity. We're traveling as Christ followers. We're not just showing up to a national park, we're not just showing up to the beach, we're not just going to a hotel, we're not just going to a concert somewhere or a cabin somewhere. What we're doing is we're showing up to a different location as representatives of Christ, from where we've learned about Christ. We take Christ with us, and I don't want us to remove that if you're not here on a Sunday, that your faith gets to stop for the week. That's not what being a Christian is about. What being a Christian is about is understanding that your life is now changed because you are a Christian and you are identified as a Christian, which means that you walk into this world saying that my life has been changed by Christ, and because of that, I have a proclamation, I have a message that I need to share with others about what's changed in my life, and it's a beautiful way to live. And in fact, just two times this week, I was walking out of a coffee shop one day, and a person, as I was walking out, opened their car door, looked at me, and they go, Joe. And I was like, you know, I have no idea how this is gonna go. I was like, I don't know what the next statement is beyond are you who you think I am? And I was like, yeah. And they're like, pastor at the neighborhood. And I was like, oh, man, it still could go 5050, right now. And I was like, yeah, no, I'm just kidding. I didn't do that. I was like, Well, that was like, Well, that was one of my responses. That is, I was threatened right up a little bit. And I was like, yeah. And he goes, Oh my gosh, I've been watching the neighborhood. You guys are doing incredible stuff. I work over here, and I work at work matters, and love the partner. And I was like, beautiful. And we ended up talking for 510, minutes, right in a beautiful space. We represent Christ, wherever we are. If you walk out of this church and it's the last time that you think about Christ until next Sunday, we have not done our job effectively, as a church, to teach you that you have a message to bring to this community. So we thought about this series is, what if we walked you through literal places where the historical person of Jesus walked when we read about these places in Scripture, and we open them up, we want to know that when we get to these spaces, we have a literal, physical representation of where Jesus was at this time. And so last week, we started at the Sea of Galilee. We started the Sea of Galilee, and we walked through that. And there was many different different miracles performed around the Sea of Galilee, the feeding. The 5000 was on the shores. Right? The Sermon on the Mount was said to be on the shores overlooking the Sea of Galilee. Peter, walking on water was on the Sea of Galilee, Jesus walking on water, and then Peter falling into water. Still, same story. Sea of Galilee, another boat story with the disciples. Sea of Galilee, where the disciples are really afraid a lot of the times. So if you wonder if you're in your Christian life, if it's okay to be afraid. It is. The disciples have shown us that. And if you want a neat revelation from last week, we got into the podcast this week, and we are breaking down the scripture on the podcast. And when we broke it down, right in the middle of it, we are reading that third text where the disciples are in the storm again, and Jesus says, Come to me on the water. And right in the middle, I was like, oh, did you guys see how they said this word here? And it's not like this in the first text. And there was this really cool, like, break open moment, the text for me personally, that I had not read before, and it was like, kind of this really neat moment of, like, the Scripture expanding again, about how I understood it, and it happens live on the podcast. So if you want to see what happens when a pastor is like, whoa, you haven't read that before. Let's go back into it. Check out our podcast this last week. But with that, I want to get us into today. Today, we're going to talk about the River Jordan. The River Jordan. So if I say the River Jordan, right, what are you thinking about with the River Jordan? Like, what is a Bible story that comes to mind with the River Jordan? Baptism of Jesus. That's great. Before the baptism of Jesus, John was baptizing at the River Jordan, right? And had that going on too, and so you have the baptism of Jesus, right? The River Jordan, interestingly, is also in the Old Testament, and it is where the Israelites crossed over into the Promised Land, right? And they were led by Joshua into the promised land, and the water stopped, and they had the Ark of the Covenant, and they're walking with that. And they had all the priestly, priestly cast, kind of taking that ark across. That is also the same river Jordan that happened there also. So we get these stories that continue in the Old Testament to Elijah and Elisha. Horrible time in the Old Testament with those two. But with that they also is the time when Elijah was raised up in a pillar of cloud, right? That was at the River Jordan, which was happening. So the River Jordan has historical precedence and a lot of Scripture as you're looking for it, but I want to take you through what it looks like. So if you're looking here up on the screen, that is the River Jordan as a piece of it, right? That's just a small piece of it. The river Jordan is 165 miles long. The River Jordan 165 miles now it goes all the way south of the Dead Sea, south of the Dead Sea, from the Mediterranean all the way through the Dead Sea, all the way up into the Sea of Galilee, and then beyond the Sea of Galilee into the Lebanon mountains. Is where it goes to, and that's where it gets fed from. So now if you see, this is kind of a water map of the sea, sorry, the River Jordan, between the Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee. The reason I highlighted that is because that's Jesus's ministry area, right? Jesus's ministry now, if you look down by like Jericho, and you go a little bit east of Jericho, across from where, across the River Jordan, that's where you're going to find Jesus's baptism site. So here's the two stories in text. You have Jesus's baptism site, and then it says he went into the wilderness for 40 days, and then he ended up on the Sea of Galilee, calling disciples. So Jesus went from right down near Jericho on the east side of the river all the way up to the Sea of Galilee, which is 65 miles in those 40 days, 65 miles to end up on the Sea of Galilee, where you have there. Now I just want to give you some other pictures so you can some other pictures so you can kind of get a visual representation of the River Jordan. This is also the River Jordan. Everyone go, oh, it's really nice. How deep do you think the River Jordan is? You can shout it out. No one knows. So just guess what? Six feet, 10 feet, wrong. Sorry, trophy, so wrong. You kind of nailed it right out of the gate. It's between six and 10 feet. Six and 10 feet, the deepest part is say it again, 15 feet. Wow. That was great. Good job. That was awesome. It's so good. See I was giving you wind. You just didn't know it was coming at sometimes there's patience in ministry. Sometimes there's patience in ministry, patience in ministry. And we'll get there. It'll be beautiful. And so with that, 15 feet of deceive us, but it's not a deep river. So I want you to take this moment when you think about the rivers you've seen and wading into the river, when we're talking about the baptism of Jesus, five to 10 feet, seven to 10 feet in most areas, right? It's kind of a really light River, and the river is getting shallower and shallower. Now that's because a whole bunch of things going on in Israel, and water conservation, conservations, and them fighting over the water and where it comes from, and the tributaries. There's a whole bunch of modern day things happening that are lessening the flow of the river. But then, I mean, it flowed, and it flowed from all the Lebanon mountains, and three distinct rivers in the Lebanon mountains feed right into what we know is the river, the Jordan River, and it comes down into this. And so I wanted to show you that they have a site that has been preserved as the baptism site of Jesus. And this is also from all the different religions, is claimed to be the baptism site of Jesus. So this is not like one. Religion says. And this religion that UNESCO says, this is the World Heritage site of the baptism of Jesus, and this is what it looks like. So this is the World Heritage site of the baptism of Jesus. How many do you expect that would be what it looks like for the baptism site of Jesus, right? Okay, so it's a little bit interesting, right? There's a little bit of interesting narrative that this site. Now, the reason it kind of looks like this is because the River Jordan has moved right over these years, and it's moved away from the original baptism site, and so now you have churches and different monasteries and everything else planted around where you can get baptized at the River Jordan, which is near where Jesus got baptized, right on the River Jordan, but this is about six miles north of the Dead Sea. So six miles into that 65 mile distance between the Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee is the baptism side of Jesus. And so you walk into the bottom right there, and you will see right what happens right. Right in this bottom area is where there's water from the river Jordan. That's still there. They have some chapels in those areas, and some different other things that happen too. So here's a couple other pictures of the River Jordan, just so you can see this. This is the next one. It's a little video of the River Jordan. So you kind of kind of see how it cuts through the mountains. And I got just two more for you. Here's how it flows the River Jordan, right? So you can kind of get a little bit so there's your shallowness. So just painting a picture of what Jesus was walking through in this time. And then I particularly love this one, because I'm going to take you from biblical times to modern day rafting down the River Jordan. So how many of you considered rafting down the River Jordan? Right? Apparently, that's the thing too, which is really wonderful. So now that being said, we have our baptisms today, right? That was wonderful, because today is Pentecost Sunday, the alighting of the Holy Spirit in the Jesus's baptism, which we'll read about in a second. The Spirit came down like a dove. It's a beautiful moment. Baptized at the River Jordan by John the Baptist, and we go out to the river to have baptisms. And it's beautiful because we never went to the river before. We always did baptisms in the church, and it was usually for infants that we did baptisms for in fact, up until the moment that we went to the river, I had never baptized someone older than an infant. I had actually never seen a baptism from someone older than infant. And so I got into northwest Arkansas. That is how much the Lutheran church baptizes infants. And so with that, I had a youth come to me and say, I want to be baptized in our youth program. This is second, third year of the church. And I was like, This is awesome. I can figure out how to do this in church. Like, I've never seen it before, but I can figure it out. I know I can, right? This is great. They're like, what? Like, people do this in church all the time. Like, no, no one does this in church all the time. I'm like, I'll be the first No, I'm just kidding. I didn't think that. But at the same time, I was like, let's figure this. And he goes, okay. And I said, so, yeah, it's playing a Sunday. We'll get the sponsors together. Let's play this. And he goes, um, he was, yeah, I don't want to be baptized in the church. And I was like, what? And he goes, Yeah, I don't want to be baptized in the church. I said, Where do you want to be baptized? He goes, I want to be baptized in a river. And he smiled all big, I'm baptized in a river. And I was like, boy, that's like, give me one good reason, one good reason to baptize you in a river. And he goes, wasn't Jesus? That's like, look good enough for me. I was like, we're, we're gonna go find a river. I was like, what's that? So that's when we actually went out and found mckissa Creek, which is beautiful now, machisse Creek is gorgeous. It is what they call the Blue Hole. It is a cascading, like green into a blue I mean, it's beautiful. It has this light like walkie rock out area where you can walk out into it. It's wonderful. It's a little bit frigid right now, but it's still wonderful. And it's a beautiful place to do baptisms. It's right north of us in Bella Vista. We're going to be doing those today at 1245, and beautiful. We have, like, there's 23 people signed up, including baptisms, affirmations and baptismal sponsors, which is awesome. And yesterday there were storms, and the day before, there were storms. And I got a text from one of baptismal families that said, Hey, have you checked out mckiss Creek? And I was like, not yet, but I was planning to later today, and they said, Let me save you the trouble. And they sent me this picture of makiza Creek. And I was like, yep, that used to be out in the middle where we go to do baptisms, which you could walk out to, and that tree was not down before that tree was up. And so we had this moment where I was like, Okay, this isn't gonna work. Do you have a couple more pictures? Tom of just other things that are going on? So that's a really close end picture. So we can go to the next one, but that's another close end picture, so we're gonna go to the next one, and then I just hit the next one. There's a tree. Okay, that's great. You can see how hard this is, like, you're so close to it. So yeah, so there's the downed tree, right? You can see that one going on. And so that's right where we do baptisms. And then if you see that that river is actually flowing, it's usually kind of like, just gentle right there. And I was like, can't do baptisms, and as I can't do baptisms out here, right? And so I was like, It's not safe. I don't know what's in there. I don't know what's happening. You know, it's down. So I went up to taneyard Creek, and I hiked that. That's worse, that has waterfall. Was like, that wasn't better. So I was like, well, maybe we'll just do like, a barbecue at the Pavilion and say we're gonna do baptisms later. I was like, we'll do something. And then we found a pool, which was wonderful. We're gonna do baptisms in pool. And then I'm happy to say that this morning, I went back out there at 7:30am and it is gorgeous. It is absolutely beautiful. So we're still, yeah, there we go. God is good. God is good. So we're gonna be back out at McKissick Creek today, doing our baptisms, which will be wonderful. But the River Jordan looks like McKissick Creek last night, and there was no difference between wading in that water and moving into that and so I wanna share with you today the story of Jesus' baptism and walk you through that, and talk you through a little bit about what we believe about baptism. We did a baptism class last week, which is incredible, but I want to walk you through some of the things that we specifically HEAR from Jesus in this story. So we're gonna open our Scripture. We're gonna be in Matthew chapter three. So we're gonna be in the book of Matthew, the gospel of Matthew, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. It is the first gospel. And these tell the story of Jesus Christ from birth all the way through resurrection and ascension into heaven, and then the New Testament continues on about the early church, and then continues on with that and the stories and letters to the churches until the revelation. But we're going to be in Matthew chapter three, and we're going to be talking through the baptism of Jesus, and it's going to be verses 13 through 17. So if you got your Bibles, raise them up. If you got Bibles, we love Bibles in the church. Who's got Bibles today, I can see Bibles out, yes, yes, yes. That's great if you don't have a Bible um, we're on the Bible app, so just pull out the church apps card in front of you, you can download the Bible app and open that and have scripture notes in there. Same thing online, uh, that's me. I apologize. Same thing online. There's a link in the description for the Bible app. So you can take that and click on that, and you'll open the Bible app. And we have Bibles in our Bible boxes around the church too, so you can grab a Bible. So here's what it says in Matthew chapter three, verses 13 through 17. Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan. This is John the Baptist, right? And John the Baptist was meant to pave the way for Jesus, right? This was always what John the Baptist intention was, and what he was fulfilling was that same thing. And he came to be baptized by him, and John would have prevented him. And I love this. John would have, for Brendan, been saying, I need to be baptized by you. And do you come to me? But Jesus answered him, Let it be so now, for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness. Then he consented, and when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were open to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove alighting on him, and a voice from heaven said, This is my son, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased. This is the baptism of our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ. Now I want to take you through a little bit of what John the Baptist is doing when he's talking through this. And if you want to read back a little bit in your text, in your text, if you're in Scripture, just take a second and read back through 11. And it's going to be what I talk about. But back in 11, it's talking about how John is baptizing. Now it's weird because we think of baptism in the Christian identity, to be baptized in the name of our Father Son and Holy Spirit right to be baptism, to be baptized in the name of Jesus. But imagine that Jesus has not started ministry yet. This is the beginning of Jesus's ministry. So at this point you're baptizing into, what are the Jewish traditions and rights and rituals leading into worshiping God, and what's happening through here? And so you have Jesus coming on saying, I'm the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy, and I'm come, and I am the one that is talking about. I am the Son of God, the Messiah, the Anointed One. And through me, you will have access to the Holy Spirit and to the kingdom of God. And so you have Jesus coming into there. Well, John has been out in the woods preparing people for this, preparing people that the Son of God is coming and I am not worthy, is what John says. To untie the throng of his sandal. He is coming, and I baptized with water for repentance, but He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit. And here was the very interesting about John, is that John was already doing things that were contrary to the Jewish church at that time, to Judaism and the Jews. See, John was baptized Jews and Gentiles, those who were in the church and out of the church. Is how you can think about that those who were understanding a relationship with God and those who had relationship with God, and John was baptizing them both. But in the church, what would happen is that if Gentiles came in and they weren't a part of the church, they had to go through purification rituals, which were called immersions baptism, to be fully immersed. And so they would go through purification rituals to enter the temple and go through the rites and rituals of the day. And so you have this kind of nature where those who are unclean had to be made clean in order to embrace the altar, in order to embrace their faith. And so now you have John in the woods baptizing Jews and Gentiles, saying, Hey, we're paving the way for someone that's coming after us, for someone. That's coming, that is greater than I, who is baptizing in a different way than I, and people are starting to be baptized by that. And he's saying, I'm baptizing for repentance, which means a changing of your ways. Repentance involves confession, right, asking for forgiveness and changing your ways. Those are the three parts of repentance. And so he's saying, I'm baptizing you with water for repentance, to confess right, to ask for forgiveness and change your ways. I'm baptizing you with water, the person after I will baptize you with the Holy Spirit. And so when Jesus comes up, John's like, cool, I'm out. Like, this is everything that I've been waiting for. In fact, he will send his disciples to Jesus. And Jesus says, No, I need to be baptized by you, which is a great question that people ask often. Why does Jesus, who is part of the Trinity, need to be baptized? Why would Jesus need this? Jesus is one in three, one in the same with God sent by God is the fulfillment of the grace of God is called The Word of God, and yet Jesus comes and says, I need to fulfill this through you to be baptized. So I want to walk you back into this. If we're talking about the baptism of John, I want to walk you through what our definition is of baptism. And it's this that baptism is an outward expression of an inward faith that is baptism outward expression inward faith. And what that means is that we are going to publicly acknowledge our belief in Jesus Christ and our faith in Jesus Christ from something that is happening inside of us, not necessary for salvation. This is public acknowledgement. This is saying, I am being welcomed into the kingdom of God. And we have the element which is water. We have the command by Jesus to go into all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything that I've commanded you. So we have the command. We have the promise of the kingdom of heaven and being welcomed into the body of Christ. And then we have the element, which is water. So we have this beautiful sacrament that happens, and it's an outward expression of an inward faith. But another way to think about this is that it's a public affirmation of an experienced grace. This is why I asked you at the beginning. How many of you walk outside of these walls and take your faith with you? How many of you, when you are walking and traveling publicly affirm your faith as an experience of God's grace every single day of your life? That's why baptism is beautiful. Baptism is beautiful because we go out to McKissick Creek. And you know what? We don't know who's gonna be out there. We show up with a tent. We walk down with 4050 people, and everyone who's down there hanging out and jumping off the rope swing and doing all this kind of stuff, and laying out there in swimsuits and on their chairs. And they look at us and like, that's about to happen with this colt, you know, and I'm not gonna lie. I mean, what would you think? I mean, you got fear? I'm not gonna lie that. And here's the deal. That's why it's hard to publicly affirm your faith, because you're walking with an identity that is how you enter into every situation in your life. And until you embrace that situation uncomfortably, you will never find a reason or a way to share your faith. Uncomfortably. You have to find yourself in situations and places where you can share your faith. And it looks like living out your faith is an experienced grace in a beautiful way. But here's what Jesus says in this, and I want you to take you back to this. This is verse 15, and this is right after John said, but I want to be baptized by you. And this is how Jesus answers. But Jesus answered him. Let it be so now, for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness. All righteousness. Here's what all righteousness means when we live into this world now as a baptism with Jesus through the Holy Spirit. What all righteousness means is that Jesus came and said, We have relationship to God the Father through Jesus, Christ, the Son and the Holy Spirit. John baptized with water, Jesus says, Now we have relationship to the Father and the Holy Spirit, because I am the Messiah. I am the one that fulfills all of these prophecies. What he was talking about was full righteousness, full right relationship with God, and that is the difference between John's baptism and Jesus's baptism. The heavens were opened. The Spirit came down like a dove and said, This is my son, the beloved in that. Moment our baptism changes to being claimed in all that we do. So now listen to this text that happens next. So let's go on. We're going to go on to Romans six, right? Sorry. Romans. We're going to get into yet Romans six, and we're going to go through verses three and four. And here's what Romans six, verses three and four says. And this is dying and rising with Christ. And I want to share with you what baptism truly is in this moment. And here's what it says, Do you know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ, Jesus were baptized into his death, therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. This is the difference between John the Baptist with a water baptism of repentance, changing our ways, and Jesus and being baptized into death and rising to new life. Through Jesus Christ, we now have the experience of grace and the resurrection and the conquering of sin, death and the devil. Baptism has changed in our reality. It's become this newness of life. And so we get to this incredible moment where we realize that we're not baptized into this moment of life, we're baptized into this moment of death, which is a hard language, because baptism, we always talk about is new life. I've been washed by the water. I've been changed. I've been transformed. I've been made new. And that is true, because you have died to your old self. This is what it means to live with the life of Christ, that you have to change your ways and die to your old self, because when you know Christ, everything changes. That is the moment. So when we baptize, and you're fully immersed under the water, and we don't, it doesn't matter. It never says how much water and baptism, just so everyone's clear, it doesn't say that baptism does mean full immersion. But at the same time, when he says, Go and baptize, it doesn't say with this amount of water, you need a flowing river at this many feet per second in order to baptize. It doesn't happen that way. And so when we baptize people, when we dunk them under the water and we fully submerse them, that is the moment when they die to their old selves, and as they rise out of the water, and they take that breath of life that is the newness of life that is entering them, saying that we cannot go back to the way that it was before we are now baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. And what that means is that the heavens have opened for you, and you've been claimed as a beloved, divine love, not just a love child of God, but a divine love of God. You've been claimed as a child of God. That is the beauty of what's happening in this text, is that we're transforming this is why baptism is so important. This is why when we talk about the River Jordan and where Jesus was and the parents that people saw Jesus being baptized, it becomes a public affirmation. It's the reason we're doing this series. The longer that we keep Jesus to ourselves in the spaces that were comfortable, the longer it will take the kingdom to grow what God intended. The longer you keep Jesus to yourself, the longer it will take to become who God intended you to be. This is why we walk with Jesus. This is why we're going back through it. It's so that we can be transformed, not just by water and repentance, but transformed a new life in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. And all God's people said, Amen, let us pray. Oh Heavenly Father. We thank you for this gift of baptism to be welcomed into the kingdom and for Jesus to be obedient to full righteousness, to this fully right relationship between God the Father, Jesus Christ, the Son and the Holy Spirit, to see the heavens opened and experience the spirit in baptism on a day of Pentecost, where we know that the disciples experienced this, and all who were gathered they they experienced these tongues of fire from the Holy Spirit that enabled them to speak to all the nations. And if, and if we think about all the nations that they were able to proclaim to. We go back into baptism when we think that you commanded us to go into all the nations, baptizing them in name of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit in all the nations, means that we're an experience of God where we have to not only be here in Northwest Arkansas and here in our cities, but we have to expand that to wherever we are. We cannot contain all. Holy Spirit just to where we're comfortable. In fact, our hope and our prayer should be that we ask for forgiveness for the times that we have contained the spirit, and ask for the spirit to release us into the world so that we may care for others. Lord, My prayer is that you remind us of our baptism today. You remind us that we've accepted these gifts of discipleship. You remind us that we are sent to publicly affirm this experienced grace of God in Jesus Christ, that we cannot leave that and that we live those gifts every single day for the sake of the world, to bring people, not just a church Lord, but to relationship with you. It is in these things that we pray in Your holy and precious name And all God's people said, Amen. You guys enjoying our series so far. Look.