The Baptism of Fire | Luke 3:15-17 | First Baptist Church of Kamloops

When you get baptized, what you're saying is this, I go under the water, I'm dead. I can't save myself. I can never make it right what I have done wrong, and I have no hope. And praise be to God because he has brought me to this place of utter hopelessness. Because in my hopelessness, now I know I can only trust in Jesus. And now I rejoice because there is no one else I need trust in. He saves me to the uttermost. [00:44:49] (39 seconds)  #DeadToSelfAliveInChrist

Don't count on some prayer you prayed at VBS thirty years ago. Don't depend on those things. What matters, what counts for all of it, is that you know Jesus. You know his hand is on you, and you can sense how he's guiding you, and you enjoy a personal relationship. And more often than not, it hurts the way he leads you. But you wouldn't have it any other way because you know he's with you through it all. Have you known that baptism? I pray that you would know it. [00:45:50] (31 seconds)  #PersonalFaithMatters

Because he loves you, he's gonna strip that from your hands, and he's gonna do it with skill and care and grace. It will always feel bad. Some of us, we're gonna be thrashed by being beaten with a rod. Others of us, we're gonna be put on a stone and ground. For each one of us, God's purpose is the same. He will not let us hope or depend or trust in anything besides Jesus Christ. That's what baptism is all about. [00:44:11] (38 seconds)  #RefinedToTrustJesus

Church, listen to me. Believe in Jesus. The only baptism that counts is the baptism of knowing him and his refining, purifying work in your life. Father in heaven, save us. Save us today. If there are any here who do not know you, if there are any here who are mistakenly counting upon some religious experience that they can't even remember remember, some sort of dunking in water took place decades ago. I pray that you would awaken their eyes to know the greatness of having you in their life as their only treasure, their only hope. [00:49:36] (35 seconds)  #ChristOnlyHope

They pulled six people out of the water that night. Of the many hundreds that ended up in the free water, most of them perished. Only six survived. One of those survivors was this man that John Harper had witnessed to and given his life jacket to. And he said, I am John Harper's last convert. As he sank below the water, I realized death was upon me, and I had no hope. And the only one that could save me in that dark moment was the one who saved John Harper. [00:48:40] (44 seconds)  #WitnessSavesLives

Baptism apart from Christ is totally pointless. Water is totally irrelevant if you don't know Jesus. Whether we're talking dunked, whether we're talking sprinkled, whether we're talking having water poured on your head, denominations across the centuries have gotten into the nitty gritty of these things. And please don't misunderstand me. I'm a Baptist, guys. You're in case you didn't notice, you're here at First Baptist Church. We have views on this that matter and are very important to us. But for however seriously [00:20:02] (36 seconds)  #WaterMeansNothingWithoutChrist

Now what John is telling us is this. When we trust in Jesus, we receive the Holy Spirit, a spirit of comfort and encouragement. But with that, we also receive a process of threshing. We go through a trial of fire. And that trial of fire looks a little different for every person. In fact, what Isaiah is telling us is that God knows exactly the trial and the circumstance and the ordeal that you need to go through. He knows exactly what it is that you're holding on to, what you're depending upon more than him. [00:43:31] (40 seconds)  #SpiritRefinesUs

Now what has happened across two thousand years of church history is that we've taken this statement, baptism, and we've pulled it out of the context of the gospels, and we've so focused on it that it's almost as though what we're saying is the most important thing here is that we get into the car. But that's not the most important thing. The most important thing and don't misunderstand me. I wanna go and get my groceries and be done. So the car is the fastest way to do that. I'm not in any way trying to diminish or downplay the significant baptism, [00:18:23] (35 seconds)  #BaptismIsNotTheDestination

See, many of us and this is where the rubber meets the road. This is the ballgame in a nutshell. Many of us, when we sit down with an evangelical preacher, he begins to ask the question, okay, tell me about when you first met Jesus. And our default answer, our knee jerk response is to go back to some experience with water, however many years ago it may have been. But that is not the evidence of a knowledge of Christ. [00:29:00] (24 seconds)  #EncounterNotRitual

There was a man that was there. We don't really know a lot about him. We know he was a minister of the gospel. We know he was a Baptist. We know that his name was John Harper. Somehow, he ended up in the water that night. He had taken his daughter and put his daughter on a lifeboat while he himself had stayed behind to help others. He ended up in the water with a life jacket, and multiple witnesses testified to the fact that he swam around amongst all the survivors in the water that night asking them, do you know Jesus? Do you know Jesus? He began to share the gospel with many of them. [00:46:57] (42 seconds)  #ShareTheGospelBoldly

John Harper, had a life jacket on, sat there for a second staring at him in disbelief. This man had no life jacket. And so John Harper stood there and he began to unbutton his life jacket. And he gave it to him. He said, here, you need this more than I do. And he swam away. A year later, thirteen months later, at a reunion of titanic survivors, all the peep many of the people on those lifeboats got together in Hamilton, Ontario. [00:48:07] (33 seconds)  #SacrificialLoveInAction

Luke is talking about people, whether they're front row Baptists or back row Baptists, they're coming to get baptized, so they're Baptists. But Luke is talking about people who are sitting on the edge of their seat. They're leaning forward. They're in expectation. They believe something is gonna happen. They believe that something powerful is about to unfold. They're not sure what, but they know something good is gonna happen. And this is an earned expectation. For four hundred years, there hasn't been a prophet in Israel. Malachi was the last one to preach. [00:07:14] (34 seconds)  #ExpectantForGod