My Future, My Choice | Dr. Conrad Vine

the uh I was intrigued to discover about the second and the [music] third meal late at night. When my mother wanted to punish me, a routine punishment was to be sent to bed without supper. If I were a smart boy, knowing what I know now, I would have said to my mother, "Mother, if you want to punish me, insist I eat the third meal tonight." But I [clears throat] don't think she would have listened to me had I said that. So, it's been a blessing learning about uh the stomach as the washer machine. I'm really enjoying these health nuggets, aren't you?

They're practical. Um, they're low cost. They don't cost us anything. Just helping us leave healthier lives. You know, Jesus came that we might have life and have it more abundantly.

And, uh, when we follow God's instructions, uh, then we see an improvement in our health. And so, I want to thank um, the Leyon family for their wonderful ministry of health nuggets. Thank you so much. Thank you. So tonight I'm going to speak about the the sermon is entitled my future and my choice.

And as we begin I'd like to invite you to bow your heads with me and we invite the presence of the Holy Spirit. So shall we pray? Our dear heavenly father uh we thank you for the blessings uh we've enjoyed this weekend. We thank you for full stomachs. We thank you for fresh air.

We thank you for um clean water to drink. We thank you for beds to go home to tonight. Father, we count all these blessings almost if we take them for granted. But Lord, there are many blessings indeed. And Father, in a want in a world of wants, I thank you that you meet our basic needs.

Now, Lord, we ask you for the greatest gift of all, for the promised gift of your Holy Spirit. Fall upon us now, Father, as I speak. Please speak through me. Please speak for me. Please speak to every heart and head that is bowed here this evening.

and for those who are watching online wherever they may be. I pray that your Holy Spirit will move tonight in a powerful way in each of our lives. Thank you, Father, for hearing this prayer. In the name of Jesus, we ask. Amen.

So, this is going to be our journey this evening after our introduction. We're going to look at what baptism is in the Bible. What the baptism says about uh the Bible says about baptism, you might say, in a physical sense. We're then going to look at the meaning of baptism in the Bible. And then we're going to look at God's part in baptism and then we're going to come to our conclusion.

So this is the journey we're going to go on this evening. And um so uh if we start out um does anybody know who this character is in the center of this picture here? It's Martin Luther. Here he is in 1521 at the diet of verms in Germany speaking before the Holy Roman Emperor. and be bes be behind him and around him are all the German princes, the electors of the Holy Roman Empire.

And then there's the papal delegates sitting there beside the throne of the Holy Roman Empire. And uh this picture here doesn't really do full justice to it, but when Martin Luther stood the diet of Vorms, one man stood up and he changed the course of world history forever more. He changed not just the way we think, he changed the course of Western history. He changed um uh religious history around the world. He gave birth to the Protestant Reformation.

And with the Protestant Reformation, he gave birth to Protestant missions to the ends of the earth. And so Martin Luther when he stood up at the d the diet of worms in Germany in 1521, he changed the direction not just of Germany but of the entire world. Uh this guy here, does anybody recognize this picture here on the right? Does anybody know who he is? [clears throat] Uh well this guy his name is William Wilberforce.

Does that ring a bell to anybody? [clears throat] So William Wilberforce um he was a committed um Anglican and he was also fiercely opposed to the slavery in the British Empire and he was a member of parliament from Hull in the northeast coast of England. And for 60 years his entire adult life he fought in the British Parliament so the British Parliament would pass a law banning slavery. And finally in 1833 near the end of his life um the British Parliament was the first empire in world history to officially abolish slavery. And on the right there you see one of his pamphlets where he would demonstrate to the members of parliament just how the slaves were packed into those um slave ships crossing the Atlantic.

But William Wilberforce gave his entire life for the abolition of the slave trade. And from that moment on in 1833, for the next 70 years, the British Navy, rather than protecting slaveships, fought wars all around the world to prevent slavery um particularly out of the continent of Africa. Does anybody recognize this lady here, Harriet Tubman? Does any does that ring a bell? um she was um a lady in the deep south in America in 1840s and 1850s and she was opposed to the fugitive slave act and the fugitive slave act said that if a slave ran away from their owner in the deep south and they made it across the Ohio River into the free states of the north then if if you found somebody like that you were obligated to return that runaway slave from freedom back to their original owner in the deep south.

and she opposed this and she helped set up what we now call the Underground Railroad. And that Underground Railroad was a series of of friendly homes running all the way from Alabama and Georgia all the way up to the Ohio River to Cincinnati and then beyond that up to the Canadian border so that um people escaping slavery and yearning for freedom could make their way to Canada and be free not just of the slavery in the south but the fugitive slave act in the north of the Americas of North America. So this lady changed history for a lot of people. Coming from the continent where I'm from, anybody remember this guy here. He's in the 1980s.

His name was Le Pelsa. He was an electrician in the Gdansk shipyards and he wanted freedom and he wanted the communist regime to fall in Poland. And he created or he led a trade union called Solidarity or Solidarosk in Polish. and he um he led a peaceful revolution and communism essentially faded away in Poland. And Poland was one of the first nations behind the Iron Curtain in the late 1980s to achieve freedom for its citizens without any violence, without any need for a revolution.

But he led a peaceful revolution in his country. So one man stood up and he changed the course of history for his nation. I think many of us know this picture here. Here it's a very famous picture. Uh this is of Martin Luther King Jr.

the civil rights leader at his very famous I have a dream speech in 1863 um in the march on on America. And it was Martin Luther King's dream that he dreams of a day when his grandchildren will be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their characters. It was the civil rights movement that led to the Civil Rights Act. And there was a number of other acts that came straight after that such as the Fair Voting Act. And so he changed the course of American history together with the uh the Civil Rights Movement.

Does anybody recognize this lady here? I I would hope every lady in the hall knows who this lady is. Um this lady is Susan B. Anthony. She was a leading suffragette and uh she was arrested for voting in America in 1872 when the laws said that women were not allowed to vote.

So she went to vote and she got herself arrested and she became a national celebrity. But essentially um that was the catalyst that enabled um women in America to get the vote as well as men. And so each of these individuals here I've just showed you, each of them decided to take a stand for what they believed in and they changed the course of history. In some cases for their nation and in some cases for the entire world and so we we say today, you know, when national elections come up, people say my vote really doesn't matter. I say on the contrary when you believe in something and you stand up for something you can change not just your life and the life of your children but you can also change life of your community of your nation and in some cases of the entire world.

So the question is not um can you change anything more fundamental question is do you believe in anything? The Bible says that at the end of time I was discussing this with someone over the evening meal this evening. It says the dragon that is Satan was angry with the woman that is the pure church and went off to make war on the rest or the remnant of her children. Then it describes who those children are. Those who keep the commandments of God and hold the testimony of Jesus.

The Bible reveals in Revelation 12:13 and 14, and we'll look at this on Sabbath night this coming weekend, that there is going to be a final crisis of conscience. It's going to affect the entire world. Nobody is going to be exempt. It will involve coercion of conscience, economic mandates, social and economic professional and professional cancellation, no buy no sell rules, imprisonment, and ultimately the death penalty for those who refuse to yield control of their consciences. And in the struggle that's coming upon our world, just as we've seen in COVID in the early just in the last five years, there is another struggle coming, but it's of a magnitude greater than COVID.

And once again the question will be over liberty of conscience and true worship. And in the tr in the coming struggle the eternal the prize is eternal life for those who choose to be faithful to God. So every person has to make a choice where they stand. There is no neutral ground in the battle for souls. We are either obedient to God or obedient to the commands of men.

The prize is eternal life. Not just in general, but for me and for you. And so it is your future and your choice. Each one of us has to declare our allegiance one way or the other. We're either for God or we are for or we submit to the fallen powers of this world.

The Bible describes those who are faithful to God in that final crisis. We read then in Revelation 15-6 it says, "And from Christ Jesus, who is the faithful witness and the first begotten of the dead and the prince of the kings of the earth. Unto him that loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood and hath made us kings and priests unto God and his father. To him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen." Now, I'm not going to go in any great detail through this verse here other than to say that those who are faithful to God are God has washed us from our sins in his own blood.

And that's a reference to the waters of baptism. So, let's come to what the Bible actually describes about how baptism takes place um in in the scriptures. We're going to start out with the Gospel of John chapter 3 and verse 23. There are four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And Matthew, Mark, and Luke are called the synoptics because they see the gospel through the same set of eyes.

And John is a quite distinct gospel. In actual fact, the underlying Greek text of Matthew, Mark, and Luke is about 60% identical. That's why they call the synoptics. They they look at the scriptures through the same set of eyes. But John's gospel is somewhat different and it focuses on the signs and the works of Christ.

And here we have the baptism of Jesus. And it says there that John that is the Baptist was baptizing at Anon near Salem because water was abundant there and people kept coming and were being baptized. And so this is the description the description of John the Baptist and he was baptizing in the river Jordan and he was baptizing in the Jordan because there was a lot of water there. You know, when um when [clears throat] the president Lula of Brazil, any anybody remember President Lula of Brazil about 15 years ago, he visited Israel and he said to the um Shimon Perez, who was his host, who was a former Israeli president, he said, "Ah," he says, "the Jordan, the Jordan," he said, "a river rich in history." And Shimon Perez responds and he says, "Ah," he says, "the the the Amazon, the Amazon." He said, "A river rich in water. [clears throat] And if you go to Israel today, you see that the River Jordan has almost no water in it.

It leaves Galilee as a regular river and the water gets pumped out with irrigation. So by the time it gets to the Dead Sea, the River Jordan is itself a dead river. There's nothing left by the time you get to Jericho. But this passage here tells us about John the Baptist who was preaching in the river by the river Jordan. And people kept coming to him for baptism and he baptized there because there was much water there.

And then we also read then of the baptism of Christ. It says in those [clears throat] days Jesus came from Jordan from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water he saw the heavens torn apart and the spirit descending like a dove on him and a voice from heaven. You are my son, the beloved. With you I am well pleased.

So Jesus himself was baptized at the beginning of his ministry to demonstrate to us what a righteous life looks like. And the text indicates that Jesus was not baptized by sprinkling. Is that correct? Because he came up from the waters. So baptism for Christ, the the baptism that he modeled for us was baptism by full immersion under the water.

You know, I baptized somebody about four weeks ago and it was in a lake in Sweden and um the the the the ground under my feet was was was filled with slimy rocks covered with this green slime and it was very very hard to get my footing under the water there. And so when I when I dropped the man down into the water, um I I couldn't find a footing like where where's where's my foot? How am I going to lift him out of the water? And he kind of realized that I wasn't in control. So he jerked up out of the water and I said, "No, no, no, no, no, no." And they c they capture this on video.

These are things that shouldn't happen to a pastor. So I put my hand on his throat like this. Said, "Down you go into the water." [clears throat] And he had quite a shock when that happened to him. And but he was well and truly baptized under the water on kind of held him down there like, "You're staying down there now, you're coming up." The first baptism I did was a young girl. She was 14.

It was in a big Jamaican church in London and the baptistry was narrow and there was cement steps down into it and it was my first baptism. They never teach you how to do baptisms in seminary. They just assume everybody knows. So I stood in the middle of the baptistry not realizing that the steps were just here and all her family stood in front with their video cameras and their phones filming this. So I dropped the girl down into the water.

But before her head could go under the water, she cracked the back of her head on the cement step. Oh, there was a terrible shout of pain, I thought, how I broken her neck. She got up. I was so happy she was still alive. And cuz I said, when you baptized, you die with Christ.

I didn't mean literally. And so I said to the girl, "We're going to take two steps to the left." And I said, "You have to say with a very straight face." I said, "Don't worry." I said, "This happens all the time. We're just going to try this again." and she was somewhat skeptical about being baptized a second time and said, "Look, turn around, see where the steps are. You're going to be okay here." But Jesus was baptized, he it says he came up out of the water, which means baptism as practiced by Jesus and modeled for us was by immersion. You go down into the water.

You also see in this passage that you have um Jesus the son of God, you have the Holy Spirit descending upon him and [clears throat] you have the God the father speaking from heaven saying you are my beloved son with whom I'm well pleased. And so when we go through the waters of baptism today when people come up we also have a prayer for them. We ask for the infilling and for the baptism not just of water but for the baptism of the Holy Spirit. We want the Holy Spirit to fall upon that person. We want them to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit and the presence so that the Holy Spirit continues the work of character transformation that is known as the fruit of the spirit.

But we also want the Holy Spirit to give that person unique gifts because everybody has different gifts in the body of Christ. And we want people to have those gifts from baptism onwards. So they don't sit on the pews and just listen, but they are active members of the body of Christ from day one with the spiritual gifts that the Holy Spirit has given them. And so then we come to Acts chapter 10 37-38. It says that message spread throughout Judea.

This is the apostles beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John announced. How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. How he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil. for God was with him. So once again, we see that Jesus went down into the waters of the Jordan.

As he rose up from the waters, the Holy Spirit came upon him and he went about serving God in his appointed ministry. And then at the end of Matthew's gospel, you have the very famous gospel commission. And this is what Jesus commanded the apostles to go and do. And this is uh maybe why part of the reason why we're here tonight as well. Jesus commanded his apostles in every generation, his messengers, um, his ambassadors to go out and this is what Jesus commanded us to do.

It's called the gospel commission. Says Jesus came and said to them, "All authority and in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. Now in the English it doesn't quite come across here but the imperative in this in this there there are a number of verbs there go therefore um and make disciples and baptizing them and teaching them the the the imperative there is to make disciples and the go therefore and the teaching them and the baptizing are participles.

So the the f the thing that Jesus wants us to do is not just to baptize people. The focus of this command is to make people disciples of Jesus Christ. That is you obey the teachings of Jesus. That is once [clears throat] you are baptized, you read the teachings of Jesus in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John on a daily basis and you ask the Holy Spirit to guide you as how do I put this into practice? And so [clears throat] if um do you remember the World Cup that's just finished in America, the soccer?

Um could you tell who the Norwegian fans were? They go, "Woo!" Remember that. [clears throat] And uh you you knew you knew how the who the Scots fans were because they all wore kilts and got drunk and drunk Boston dry. and uh you knew who the um let's say the Argentinian fans were through their blue and white striped um um shirts and so forth. You knew who was a fan of which country.

Yes. And so people ought to be able to tell that I am a disciple of Jesus even if I never preach. A famous English preacher once said, "Preach always and only if absolutely necessary use words." It should be evident to everybody that I'm a disciple of Jesus because I'm obedient to the teachings of Jesus. And the more obedient I am to his teachings, the more I reflect his character. And just to ponder this for a few minutes more, when Jesus is baptizing them in the name of the father, son, and the holy spirit, yes, this is talking about baptism by immersion underwater.

But um the the name of the father and the son and the holy spirit, does the name of God reflect his character? Yes or no? Yes, it does. Uh so um and God's character is summarized by one word which is love. So if you are baptized not just in water but you are baptized into the character of the father, the son and the holy spirit into the three members of the godhead if you are baptized into their character it means that just as go under the water the water reaches every part of your physical body.

Baptism also means is that you are immersed in the character of God. And God's character of love permeates every nook and cranny of your character. That God's love reaches those places of bitterness and places of anger and places of fear and parts of anxiety and it replaces them with a peace that passes all understanding. So baptism isn't just a physical act. It's also an immersion into the character of God.

So that God's character starts to heal my character and changed me into his image. So then we come to Acts 8, uh, which is the story of the Ethiopian unic. I'm looking at the clock here and I probably need to move along with this, but um, here we have the story of the Ethiopian unic. I'm going to read it out. It's on the screen.

So uh, it says um, this is Philip. He got up and went. And the story says, "Now there was an Ethiopian unic, a court official of the Candace, Queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning home, seated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah." So Philillip ran up to it and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah. And he asked, "Do you understand what you are reading?" And the unic replied, "How can I unless someone guides me?" And he invited Philillip to get in and sit beside him.

The unic asked Philillip, "About whom may I ask does the prophet say this about himself or someone else?" He was actually reading Isaiah 53. So then Philillip began to speak and starting with this scripture, he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus. As they were going along the roads, they came to some water and the unic said, "Look, here is water. What is to prevent me from being baptized?" He commanded the chariot to stop and both of them Philillip and the unic went down into the water and Philip baptized him. When they came up out of the water, the spirit of the Lord snatched Philillip away and the unic saw him no more and went on his way rejoicing.

So the the Ethiopian unic's experience illustrates certain truths about baptism. Number one, the unic accepted Jesus as his Lord and Savior. Number two, it was the unic um was baptism was based on faith in Jesus as his Messiah based on what the Old Testament prophecies had said about Jesus. Thirdly, his baptism was by immersion going down into the b into the water and his was a believer's baptism because after studying the word of God, he was convicted that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah of God sent to deal with our sin problems. and uh once he was baptized he went on his way rejoicing.

Now the Ethiopian disappears from the scripture in this place but the three earliest translations of the Bible um in the early 2nd century are the Armenian version, the Aramaic version and the Ethiopian Coptic version. And so we we know that almost from the end of the life of the apostle John that in Ethiopia they were they were already working on the Ethiopian translation of the New Testament. And so whether this Ethiopian was part of that we don't know but um he was one of the first converts to Africa and Africa today is a global center for the followers of Jesus Christ. And then you have the last example I'm going to give you here is in Acts 16 and Paul and Silas are in prison and they've been put in the darkest dungeon and they're praising God in there and there's an earthquake and the prison starts to collapse and the jailer is going to kill himself because under Roman law if you lost a prisoner then you're going to be executed. So the jailer was afraid for his life.

And so um it says the jailer called for lights and rushing in he fell down trembling before Paul and Silas. Then they brought him outside and said then he brought them outside and said sers what must I do to be saved? They answered believe on the Lord Jesus and you'll be saved you and your household. They spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who are in his house. At the same hour of the night he took them and washed their wounds.

Then he and his family were baptized without delay. So once again you see the same components of baptism in the New Testament. The jailer was instructed in the teachings of Christ. Then he and his family were baptized. There was remorse for sin.

There was a desire to be saved. There was a personal belief in the Lord Jesus Christ as his savior. So this was believers baptism for young and for old. So what does baptism actually mean? what happens when you are baptized.

[clears throat] We've just looked at some of the the examples in the Bible of of baptism. And I just want to uh just um share tonight that um in the Middle Ages at the time of Luther, they had they practiced what they call infant baptism. Have you heard of infant baptism? where when you were born, you were immediately baptized into either the Lutheran Church in Germany, into the Catholic Church in Germany and across Europe, or in England, you were baptized into the Anglican church. And you say, well, why were they baptized as infants?

Well, the the argument was that they would then be saved um and then when when they're teenagers, they would have a confirmation process of some kind. But there was another reason for infant baptism, and it was this. If you were baptized as an infant, then [clears throat] you came under the sorry then you came under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of that church from birth. It meant that the church had ecclesiastical jurisdiction over you in matters like marriages and death and and and the sacraments and so forth. And so, um, infant baptism was a way for the church of your country to gain a lot of power over you without even without you even realizing it.

And so, um, in the, uh, 1840s and 1850s and so forth, a new group arose in Europe called the Anabaptists. And they said, "No, we don't believe in infant baptism. We want to practice what the Bible teaches, which is believers baptism." And those Anabaptists paid a terrible price for that belief, for standing up for this biblical truth. And uh some of their leaders were martyed. One of their most famous leaders was held under the water in Zurich and he was drowned to death by some other Protestant reformers um because they said, "No, we believe in infant baptism." And so the freedom we have in Hawaii today to practice believers baptism where you choose for Jesus Christ, you believe in Jesus Christ, you want him to be the Lord of your life.

This isn't a freedom that we should take for granted. That people died that we might have the freedom to practice believers baptism just as people died so that we might have the Bible in our own language. And so we are standing here in 2026 with incredible freedoms. And it used to be in Europe that the Bibles were literally chained to the desks in the churches. The Bibles were in the Latin language which nobody could understand.

And no common person was allowed to read the Bible for themselves. And the people who translated the Bible into English, such as Tindale, when when the when the king of England discovered that Tinddale translated the Bible into English, he hunted him down across Europe, dragged him back to England, and burnt him at the stake for the crime of translating the Bible into English. And this book has been burnt. It's been banished. It's been banned.

It's been buried by governments for the last 2,000 years. Why? Because this book points us to a greater kingdom than anything this world has to offer. And it points us to a king who is above any ruler on this world. And it speaks to the the deepest yearnings of our heart for meaning and purpose and forgiveness and reconciliation uh with God and the promise of eternal life.

So let's come to the meaning of baptism. We're going to pick it up in Romans chapter 6. It says, "Do you not 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." So, baptism is commanded by Jesus as a way of commemorating his death, his burial, and his resurrection. But it's emit it's not just um uh something that looks back to what Jesus did.

When we are baptized, we are saying we are dying to our old way of life and under the water, we are buried under the water as Jesus lay in the grave um bit after his crucifixion. And just as Jesus was raised from the dead, so we're going to be raised from that watery grave. And we are going to be raised as the text says here to walk in newness of life. And I was just chatting with somebody here at lunch and she was describ 6:00 here this evening. I won't say who it was.

And she was describing the profound change that came over her life from the moment she was baptized. The experience she had of a complete newness of life. So the Bible says when you come up out of the waters of baptism, you you are going to walk now in newness of life. That is your old life is dead. Your old sins are forgiven.

um your your your guilt is washed away and you've been you'll be given a new chapter by God and you're going to ask the Holy Spirit to write that chapter of life for you. Acts chapter 2 38 and39 this is Pentecost. Um they they said what must we do to be saved? And Peter said to them he said repent and be baptized every one of you. Now the word repentance metanino it means that in Greek it means that I'm walking in this direction but when you repent it doesn't just mean that you stop doing that thing.

It means you turn around and now you walk in the opposite direction. So it's not just I'm going to stop doing that thing. It's I'm going to have no part of that anymore in my life and I'm going to walk away from the sins that trapped me and held me down earlier in my life. And so Peter says,"Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus so that your sins may be forgiven and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him." So when we are baptized, what happens?

Well, the first thing is we are forgiven for our sins. Can you say amen to that? If you're a felon in America, how do you clear your record? You can't unless you get a presidential pardon. Yes.

So you you you may be you may make a mistake at the age of 18. You have a felony on your record. Does that felony affect every aspect of your life? Yes or no? Yes, it does.

It affects everything. Affects your job prospects, your housing prospects. It affects um uh how you relate to local government. The police always know it's on record if they stop you in your vehicle and so forth. But the only way you can get rid of that felony conviction is if the president gives you a full pardon.

But the Bible says that when you are baptized, you are forgiven by God. Your guilt is removed. It's washed away by the blood of the lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. We are treated by God as entirely innocent of our past. Can you say amen to that?

Like God doesn't remember it. I will remember your sins no more. It is promised to me and to you. As far as the east is from the west, which is a long, long way. So far has he removed our transgressions from us.

So when we are baptized, we are forgiven for the sins of our past. We no longer carry that guilt. We no longer carry those regrets, those woulds, those could ofves, those shoulds that everybody carries with them. When we are baptized, God says, "Your past is done. It's washed away.

It's gone forever." The next thing that happens when we are baptized as we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit gives you the power to leave lead a new life that's not just on the outside, but the Holy Spirit changes you on the inside. and he changes you day by day into the character of Christ. The Bible says this uh speaking about the transformation the Holy Spirit brings into our lives. Says now the works of the flesh are obvious.

Fornication, impurity, lentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, emities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I'm warning you as I warned you before that those who those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. By contrast, the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. So when we are baptized and actually even before our baptism um when the Holy Spirit is working in our characters, the Holy Spirit is actually leading us away from um um the desires of our fallen heart and he's bring putting into our heart a desire to do that which is true and honorable and noble and pure and worthy of go good reputes.

And when we are baptized and we receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit, we pray over people for the Holy Spirit to fall upon them. that person from that moment on is collaborating with God so that the fruits of the spirit are manifest in your character. It's a charact. It's not just a you know you see these programs talk about like makeovers. Yes.

Makeover for the faith, makeover for the house, makeover for the garden. But the Bible talks about the most difficult makeover of all. And that's the makeover of a deformed, angry, hate-filled character to a loving, gracefilled Christian. And the greatest advert for the gospel of Jesus Christ is not preaching, but it's the ex it's the witness of a transformed life. Someone whose life has been transformed by the presence of the Holy Spirit within them that produces this beautiful fruit of the Holy Spirit.

It's a fruit that appears in every season of life. It's a fruit that appears in the winter of life and in the summer of life, the spring of life and the fall of life. God is seeking a harvest of beauty in each of our characters as he transforms us day by day. And so a Christian is somebody who gets up in the morning and say, "Lord, this is who I am and the this is these are what my struggles are, but Lord, by your grace and by the work of your Holy Spirit tonight, when I go to bed, I want to be a different man or woman to the person that got up this morning. and I'm asking you to perform that work of divine surgery in my heart and in my mind so that I will be changed.

And so um the the greatest testimony to the power of God is actually a transfer a trans a transformed life. And then the third thing that happens when you are baptized is you're welcomed into a new family. The Bible says this. as many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourself with Christ. So there is no longer Jew or Greek.

There's no longer slave or free. No longer male and female. For all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ then you are Abraham's offspring, hes according to the promise. And so when you are welcomed into the family of God, then you suddenly discover you have a worldwide family.

I mean, I've come from Michigan to Kihei and I've discovered a family here in Kihei of fellow Christians, brothers and sisters in Christ. And if anybody here would go to any city on planet Earth, almost any city, and you do a Google search um Adventist church close to me, you would walk into that church and find people who are studying their Sabbath school lesson, who are studying the word of God together. Um the chances are they're all going to have haystacks. That's one of the drawbacks, I guess. I don't like haystacks.

But you could go, if you are an Adventist today, you can go to any city in the world and you can you have the right to walk into an Adventist church and receive a warm welcome. When I was a student, my parents were praying for me. There was a family in the city where I was staying and they knew that I was living on, you know, baked beans and pasta on a daily basis and I wasn't really looking after myself. And every Friday night, because we're in a church plant, they'd say, "Come and stay at our house." and we did and there was always a proper meal made for us. My parents were so grateful that their son every Friday had a proper meal and someone was taking care of me.

I remember that family with great warmth and great I just have so much love for them because I was a young man living away from home when I was losing weight and kind of you know I was a shadow basically and um they saw this need and they took care of me and when you enter the body of Christ it's not just a spiritual concept you suddenly have brothers and sisters who treat you with respect and kindness and sacrificial love in any corner of the world there's nothing like it this world has to offer It's an amazing thing. And it doesn't matter what your family of origin is, whether it was good or bad, whether it was perfect or painful. When you enter the body of Christ, you're entering a new family where we find fellowship. We find people who pray for us. We find acceptance of of ourselves based on the fact that we're all sinners in need of a savior.

And in a world that is torn apart along racial lines and gender lines and sexual orientation lines and national identity lines and all the rest of it, the Bible says that when you enter the body of Christ, what matters is not what you have that is different, but what matters is that which we share and have in common. And so the Bible says in Ephesians 1 uh 4:es 1-6 as I Paul therefore the prisoner in the Lord beg you to leave a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called with all humility and gentleness with patience bearing with one another in love making every effort to maintain the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace. Then Paul talks about the things we have in common as Christians as disciples of Jesus. He says there is one body and there is one spirit just as you were called to the one hope that is the second coming of your calling. One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and father of all who is above all and through all and in all.

And so when you join the body of Christ through the waters of baptism, you suddenly you find you have an immense number of things in common with people from every nation, tribe, language, and people from all around the world. It's an amazing thing. And you can go to Saigon, you can go to Egypt, you can go to Russia, you can go to Europe, you go anywhere in Africa, you go anywhere in the Americas and you walk into an Adventist church of disciples of Jesus and you will find we have one hope, the second coming and one Lord Jesus Christ and one baptism, baptism by immersion, name the father, son, and holy spirit and one father whom we all worship and uh we have one faith that we share together and it's an absolutely amazing beautiful experience to have and you knowuring During the COVID pandemic, my local church family gave so much support for me. It was incredible. People rallied around.

We supported each other. We looked out for each other. And I realized that when when crises come, as they do in life, you want to have be part of a local congregation that will support you, that will encourage you, that will pray with you and for you, will visit you, will provide practical care when needed. and you not only receive these things, but it's your privilege to bless others in the same way as well within your local congregation. I cannot imagine what life would be like without having my local church.

It's an inc it's maybe the best support mechanism you'll ever find on planet earth. So, what is God's part in baptism? And uh I see I need to be scooting along here. So, let's ask some questions and answers here. First of all, who are called to repentance?

Jesus says, "I've come not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." So Jesus didn't come for the wealth, for the for the sick, sorry, for the healthy spiritually. He came for those who are sinners. What accompanies repentance? Jesus says that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations. And then we say, well, actually, who needs to repent?

Bible says, what then? Are we any better off? Know not all, for we have already charged that everybody, both Jew and Greek, are under the power of sin. For it is written, there is no one who is righteous, not even one, since all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. So if Jesus came to call sinners to repentance, and this verse says that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, that means Jesus came for everybody in this room here tonight because we're all sinners.

By what means is sin made known? For through the law comes the knowledge of sin. Most of us look in the mirror sometime in the morning. Yes, most of us do. [clears throat] And we want to make sure that our hair is nice.

If we want to shave, we make sure we're not cutting ourselves and so forth. Most of us look in the mirror. The reason we look in the mirror is because we need an honest assessment of who we actually are first thing in the morning and then we know what we need to fix ourselves. how we fix ourselves. Is that correct?

And the law of God is like that. When we look into the law of God, the ten commandments, which is a reflection of the character of God, we actually see an image of God, and we compare ourselves with that, and we realize, oh, I really do need a savior, and there's sins in my life. There's blemishes here and blotss here, and there's eczema up here, and the acme down here. So, that the mirror doesn't save me, but it tells me you need to find a savior. And the law of God, we look in the law of God in the morning when we read our Bibles.

And through the law comes a knowledge of sin. And the knowledge of sin points us to our need of a savior. And who awakens our conscience to our sinful condition? The Bible says when he, that is the Holy Spirit, comes, he will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment. So the Holy Spirit brings conviction and conversion to our hearts.

And what does a truly repentant sinner do? Psalm 38:18 says, "I confess my iniquity. I'm sorry for my sins." Now, if you look at if you look elsewhere in the Bible, it it talks about how we confess our specific sins. So, if you're dad and you've been in you've been on a bad mood all day and the kids have been walking on tentuks around the house because you're in a foul mood, they don't want to get a slipper thrown at them or something like that. When it comes to the evening prayer, family worship time.

If dad says, "Dear Lord, we're sorry for our sins of today, that doesn't cut it because the kids all know what dad's been like during the day. Dad needs to say, "Dear God, I was I was uh I was on a knife edge today and I was angry today and I was hurting my children today and that was wrong. I'm asking you to forgive me and to give me the grace never to do it again." And when you are specific about your confession of sin, if you do it in a family worship, then the entire family knows that that kind of behavior is not acceptable in the kingdom of God. And the kids know that dad knows that this should not be happening rather than kind of glossing over it and just saying, "I'm sorry for my sins." What promise is made to those who confess their sins? Famous verse.

If we confess our sins, says the Bible, he who is faithful and just um will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And that verb to cleanse, cathariso, um we get the word catharsis is from that. When Jesus healed people, the verb is normally therapuo, we get the word therapy from that or therapeutic. So Jesus healed Peter's mother-in-law of a fever. That may be the reason that Peter denied Jesus at the end of his ministry.

Maybe not. Who knows? That's a joke everybody. Okay. He healed his mother-in-law.

He wasn't happy about it. Never mind. When Jesus healed lepers, he didn't The verb is never therapo. The verb is catharizo because leprosy was a disease unto death. And when Jesus cleansed a leper, he was removing all trace of that disease from their body.

And when Jes when God forgives us of our sins, he cleanses us of our unrighteousness because it's that sin that is a deathdealing disease and he cleanses it from our beings as well. Is God ready to forgive? Says, "For you, oh Lord, are good, good and forgiving, abounding in steadfast love to all who call you." And how full is God's forgiveness? Does is he stingy in his forgiveness? No.

The Bible says there in Isaiah 55:7, the bit in red says, "He will abundantly pardon." That's good news. You when I I've got a twin brother at home, and when we were fighting, my mother would say to me, "Conrad, who started this fight?" And I would say, "Well, mom, it all started when he hit me back." And because we're always fighting like cats and dogs, myself, my twin brother. And um so my my mother would say to my brother, she'd say, "Now I need you to forgive your brother and he'd look at me with like daggers in his eyes and through gritted teeth," he says, "I forgive you." And I knew that wasn't genuine forgiveness. I knew that I was later that night, I was going to pay a price. I'd be fast asleep and a pillow would smash across my face or my my sheets would be sm jerked off my p my bunk bed and thrown to the ground.

I knew that forgiveness was not full and free. But when God forgives us, he will abundantly pardon. Like this is your sin and God's forgiveness covers everything from every possible angle. God is not just going to give forgive the sin but also the consequences of those sins and the damage we brought onto other people. And why is God ready to forgive?

Well, I've highlighted it in red there on the screen. It says he delights in showing clemency. So what do you delight in like ice cream? Sunday morning it's free time. What you most people do what brings them joy.

But God what what brings joy to our heavenly father is he delights in showing clemency. Praise God. What a God we serve. He delights in showing mercy to me and to you. It's what brings him joy.

He's not angry. He's not trying to catch us out. He's not wanting to strike us down with lightning bolts. He delights in showing clemency to every penitent sinner, to everybody that says sorry for my past. And why is God longsuffering towards sinners?

Says the Lord is not slow about his promise. That is the second coming as some think of slowness. But he is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance. So when you have a child, do children mess up some days? Yes or no?

Yes, they do. If your children mess up today, do you just kind of like throw them out on the streets at night and say, "Don't come back again." No. Why? Because as a parent, you you always hope that tomorrow will be a better day for your son or your daughter. You always have that hope as a parent that tomorrow things will be different.

Tomorrow they won't show the same behavior again. Tomorrow they're not going to make the same mistakes. And so God um Jesus is not returning as soon as we'd like him to return because he is not willing that any should perish. Part of the reason for the delay of Christ in coming back is he wants everybody in this hall here to be in his kingdom. And he's waiting and he's patient because when Jesus comes and you're not in his kingdom, that's it forever more.

Like there we only face eternal destruction. And so God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. And we saw this promise earlier on last week. This is the Messiah's promise to anyone tonight caught in the shame and the guilt of sin. Jesus himself says this, "And anyone who comes to me, I will never drive away." That's a beautiful promise.

It's a promise to me and it's a promise to you. Anyone comes to me says Jesus I will never drive them away. So what do we say in conclusion tonight? Well the sermon tonight the talk is entitled your future and your choice. How important is baptism for your future?

We'll hear the words of Jesus. Jesus speaking to Nicodemus who came to him in the middle of the night. It says, "Jesus answered him, very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above." Or some version saying, "Without being born again." Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and the spirit. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.

Indeed, God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. So Jesus said that no man can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and of the spirit. We are to go through the waters of baptism. Number one. Number two, we are to receive on a daily basis the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

We ask God to change us every morning. And guess what? He does. He transforms us. And our spouses tend to be happier as we're going through that transformational process.

And our children are happier when mom and dad go through that transformational process. And our employers tend to be happier when we go through that transformational process. And when we look in the mirror each day, we can say with John Newton wrote the song Amazing Grace, that converted slave trader. He said, "I'm not the man that I want to be, but by God's grace, neither am I the man that I used to be." And so, as we follow Christ and we go through the waters, the baptism of water and the baptism of the Holy Spirit, we find that Christ does a mysterious work inside us and he changes us day by day so that we reflect the character of Christ. It's your future and it's your choice.

This is the promise of Jesus to us today. Jesus says at the end of Mark's gospel, he says, "The one who believes and is baptized will be what?" saved. This is a promise. It's not made by a preacher. It's not made by a bishop.

It's not made by a denomination. This is the promise made by the one who died on Calvary. This is promised to us tonight. The one who believes and is baptized shall be saved. It's the promise of Jesus to you wherever you may be watching online tonight or here in this hall.

And none of the promises of Jesus have ever fallen flat. They've always come through. You can trust him on this. The one who believes and is baptized will be saved. And so we paraphrase or we go back to Acts chapter 22.

The apostle pe Paul says, "Now why do you delay? Get up, be baptized, have your sins washed away, calling upon his name." The Bible goes on to say, "Today is the day of salvation." Or to put it another way, it's your future and it's your choice. It's your future and it's your choice. So, our time is up here tonight. The Bible describes those in the book of Revelation who indeed are baptized of water and who are baptized of the Holy Spirit.

And we're coming to a final crisis in our world when we must all cho choose loyalty to God and to his eternal law, the Ten Commandments, or loyalty and submission to the mandates of men. We're coming to that final crisis. We're going to discuss it later on this week. Uh the final crisis just before Jesus comes again. But we uh if you look at YouTube these days, it's full of um channels of preppers, isn't it?

Food preparation, gun preparation, house preparation, country life preparation, all the rest of it. But the most important preparation we can do for the final crisis that is coming upon our world is to be right with God. Is to be born again of water and of the spirit and to be filled with the spirit and to be led by the lamb of God on a daily basis. The Bible talks about those who are prepared for the final crisis, who live through the final crisis. It says, "Then he said to me," this is the angel speaking to the apostle John, "These are they who have come out of the great ordeal, that is the final crisis on planet earth.

They've washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the lamb. For this reason, they are before the throne of God and worship him day and night within his temple. And the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them. They will hunger no more and thirst no more. The sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat.

For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. What a beautiful promise. Yes. For those who accept Jesus as their savior, for those who are born of water and are born again of the Holy Spirit, they are ready for the final crisis.

They're not caught unawares. They're not caught unprepared, but they are prepared and their characters are formed in the in the likeness of Christ before the final crisis bursts on our world. And every man, woman, or child has to choose loyalty to God or submission to the fallen authorities of this world. And we all need to make that decision. It's not just my future and my choice.

It's your future and your choice. So maybe there's somebody here tonight who says, "I want to make that choice tonight." Maybe there's somebody here tonight that says, "I want to choose for God. I want to be born of water and I want to be born again on a daily basis with the Holy Spirit. I want to receive have my name put in the Lamb's Book of Life." As we saw two nights ago, I want to know that the Holy Spirit will lead me and fill me and guide me and mold me and transform me every single day until the day that Jesus comes in the clouds of glory. Is there somebody here tonight that would want to go through the waters of baptism or prepare for baptism?

Is there somebody here tonight who would say, "Yes, I want to give my life to the Lord Jesus Christ." You know, I it's it takes a lot of courage. Maybe you want to raise your hand and say, "Yeah, I want to prepare for baptism." But I gave my life to Jesus when I was 13. And it was the best decision I ever made. And he has never let me down. And I've lived in war zones.

I've been in South Sudan. I've been in Afghanistan. I've been in the Balkans. I've seen terrible things. I've seen lots of killing.

And this I know. Life is cheap and life is fragile. But eternal life is the most precious promise you can have. So, is there somebody here tonight who would say, "Yeah, I would like to go through the waters of baptism. I want to be born again.

I want to have the guilt of my past washed away, and I want a place in the kingdom of God." So, somebody tonight wants to make that decision. Merrick, praise the Lord. Come to the front here, Merrick, would you with me? Ladies here, you raise your hands. Maybe Pastor Vasili, could you come forward here as well?

Okay. And sister Dena. Yes. Hi. So, uh, Pastor Vasel, one of our local pastors.

Pastor Ramal, if you want to come forward here. Good to see you. Um, so [clears throat] what's your name, sister? Erica. Erica.

Yes. So, this is Sister Erica, everybody. And where are you from? From here. You're from here.

All right. Okay. And this is sister Dena. And you're from this area as well? Yes.

All right. And here we have brother Merik, our new brother in Christ. He serves in the Coast Guard, and he his job is to save people's lives. And it's my prayer that one day, Brother Merrick, you'll not just be saving lives on the seas, but you'll be saving lives for eternity. And God has a plan for you in your life.

And we have Sister Judy. Uh may God bless you, Sister Judy. Sister Judy was on church this last Sabbath and it was just wonderful to see you with your husband here and um just seeing how God has been been working in your life. So, um, we're going to have a prayer around our new new baptismal candidates here. And, um, maybe pastors, can you stand behind?

We'll put our hands on our brothers and our sisters. You can kind of bunch up here, everybody. [clears throat] We want to thank God for his work in our lives and in the lives of our precious brothers and sisters. Our dear loving father, I thank you for each of these precious souls. Father, I thank you for sister Dena.

I thank you Lord for sister Jackie Erica. Lord I'm sorry for my bad memory but thank you for sister Erica. Thank you for brother Merik. And thank you Lord for sister Judy as well. Father you know their past.

You knit them together in their mother's womb. They are fearfully and wonderfully made. And you know you you know the plans you have for them to give them a future with hope. to give them purpose in their life today, to guide them and lead them and shape them and mold them so that in the in earth's darkest hours, they will shine brightly for you. That they will be pillars and and heroes of faith in the final generation.

That when men and women see the this young man and these ladies, they will see a living manifestation of Jesus Christ, the son of God. So Lord, as we go through this process, as we prepare for the waters of baptism, I pray, Father, that your Holy Spirit will fall aresh on our new sisters and our new brother. I pray Lord that they will see your guiding hand in their lives, that they will recognize your voice and they will follow you all the days of their lives. Father, thank you today that Satan is rebuked, that Jesus is lifted high, and that we today there is rejoicing in heaven above over every sinner that turns to God. Thank you, Father, for hearing our prayer tonight.

May your hand of blessing rest upon our new sisters and our brother. May your angels surround them and may the love of Jesus be seen in their eyes and heard in their voices. In the name of Jesus, we pray. Amen. Amen.

Amen. Amen. Amen. God bless. God bless you.