Well, as I said, we're turning
to Matthew's Gospel and chapter 3 this morning. But first of
all, I would like you to turn to Daniel chapter 2, just to
set the scene for what we read in Matthew chapter 3. In Daniel
chapter 2, you might remember that it's about the dream that
Nebuchadnezzar had. Nebuchadnezzar was the great
emperor of the Babylonian Empire, one of the great empires of ancient
history. And Nebuchadnezzar was this all-powerful
king, I mean his word was life or death to whoever came in front
of him. And he had a dream that greatly
troubled him in Daniel chapter 2, we read the record of it,
and none of his magicians, his astrologers, his sorcerers, maybe
the predecessors of those magi that we were looking at last
week, None of them could give Nebuchadnezzar an explanation.
Not only did he want them to explain it, he wanted them to
tell him what he had dreamt. Which is rather difficult. And
Daniel prayed. And Daniel was given the dream
that Nebuchadnezzar had. And Daniel told Nebuchadnezzar
what that dream was. And Daniel interpreted it for
him. Now if you remember, it was a
dream about a great big statue that was set up. and it had a
head of gold, and it had shoulders and chest of silver, and the
middle bit was of brass, and the legs were of iron, and the
feet of iron mixed with clay. And a little stone came, and
the little stone grew. The little tiny stone that was
insignificant came, and it grew, and it crushed the entire image
and ground it to powder. What was it about? It was about
the kingdoms of this world. It was about the empires that
were to come. The gold head was Nebuchadnezzar
and the Babylonian, the Chaldean Empire. The silver shoulders
and chest was the Medo-Persian Empire that came and took over
from Belshazzar. The brass was the Greek Empire,
Alexander the Great, and the great conquering Greek Empire.
And the iron, the iron legs, was the strength of the Roman
Empire. But when you get down to the
feet, that iron is mixed with clay, which is crumbly. And it
has, as we use the expression, feet of clay. In other words,
not strong. Strong legs, but not strong feet.
And the little stone comes and crushes it and grinds it to powder.
Now look, verse 44. Daniel chapter 2. And in the
days of these kings, those empires that I've just mentioned, shall
the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed,
and the kingdom shall not be left to other people. But it
shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall
stand for ever. For as much as thou saw'st that
the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that
it break in pieces the iron, the brass, the clay, the silver,
and the gold, the great God hath made known to the king what shall
come to pass hereafter. And the dream is certain, and
the interpretation thereof sure. That kingdom, that kingdom that
God will set up is the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God,
the kingdom of Christ. And as we read elsewhere in the
scripture, the kingdom of this world, it's actually translated
wrongly in our King James Version, the kingdoms of this world, but
in truth the original is the kingdom of this world. All of
the kingdoms of this world in actual fact form one kingdom
of this world. It's the kingdom of Satan. It's
the kingdom of Antichrist. It's the philosophy which is
against the God of heaven and against the gospel of the Lord
Jesus Christ. And we read, the kingdom of this
world is become the kingdom of our God and of his Christ and
he shall reign forever and ever. So that's the setting, the scene,
because you see, the unfolding of time and the unfolding of
history is nothing other than the deliberate, planned, implemented
fulfilling of God's purposes, revealing his kingdom and the
triumph of his kingdom. Do you remember the book I wrote
on Revelation from our series of sermons on Revelation? I gave
it the title, The Kingdom of God Triumphant, because that's
what it's about. The kingdom of God is triumphant
over the kingdom of this world. And that kingdom of God is a
kingdom, what's its characteristic? It's a kingdom of eternal bliss,
of intimate communion of God, the Creator, the Judge, the Sovereign,
and His people. Intimate communion, that's the
picture, the picture of heaven in Revelation is a picture of
bliss, of intimate communion of God and His people. And who
are His people? They're saved sinners. They're
justified sinners. They must be justified sinners. They must be qualified to be
there, because we read of this kingdom of God, this heaven of
God, that nothing that defiles shall enter therein. And yet
we are sinners by nature. So if we are to be there, we
must be justified from our sins. We must be qualified by the grace
of God, for the works that we do will never qualify us. That
is the message of Scripture from start to finish. The works that
we do will never qualify us for heaven. But the grace of God
in our Lord Jesus Christ, coming as the sinner's substitute, to
stand in our place, to bear our sins by the decree of the sovereign
of the universe. You say, I don't understand it.
Why do you need to understand it? Why don't you just believe
what he says? By his sovereign decree, he has
decreed that God becoming man, Jesus Christ, bearing the sins
of His people, can satisfy His offended laws' justice in respect
of those sins and thereby justify His people. We read of Christ
that He came to redeem His people, to pay the price, to pay the
liberty price, to pay the ransom price for His people from the
curse of the law, the bondage of the law that would send them
down to hell for their sin. Now, this is what we're talking
about. In the days of these kings, and
we read at the start of Matthew chapter 3, in those days came
John the Baptist preaching in the wilderness of Judea. In those
days were the days where We haven't time now, but if you were to
look on into Daniel chapter 9, you see the prophecy made perfectly
clear of when Messiah would come. Messiah is the Christ. Messiah
is the Hebrew Old Testament term for the Greek Christ of the New
Testament. It's the same person, the same
concept, the same idea. And in Daniel 9 you have the
prophecy of the weeks, or of the heptads. Seven heptads, Greek,
seven heptads. the 70 heptads of years, the
490 years or thereabouts and there's some detail in them which
again we haven't got time to go into now but it's come to
fruition that time has come about when Messiah will come and here
we are 490 years after Daniel prophesied it in those days,
verse 1, in the days that we're talking about now, what days?
28 years after chapter 2. Do you remember in chapter 2,
Jesus was a little boy of 2 years old, right? He's now 30 years
old. When he began to be about 30
years of age, we read elsewhere in the Gospels, when he was about
30 years of age he started on his ministry. And in those days,
It's about that time, 28 years after the end of Matthew chapter
2. Now then, we come to chapter 3, where we see John the Baptist
in his ministry and Jesus coming to him to be baptized. And what
I want us to consider together this morning is John the Baptist
himself, secondly his message, thirdly his baptism, Fourthly,
the baptism of Jesus, and fifthly, and very briefly, the message
for today that we get from it. First of all, John the Baptist
himself. In those days came John the Baptist
preaching. Now, we've seen him before in
the scripture. If you read chapter one and chapter
two of Luke's gospel, well, chapter one especially, you'll read about
John the Baptist being born. He is the miraculous son of a
priest, Zacharias, and his wife, Elizabeth. Now why do I say miraculous? Well, Elizabeth could have no
children. She was barren, as the scripture
puts it. And they were, it says, well-stricken
with years, which means that they were well beyond the age
where people have children. And yet, the angel came and told
Zacharias when he was ministering in the temple your wife is going
to have a son and he didn't believe him at first so the angel struck
Zacharias dumb and he said you will call him John and the baby
was born and they said what should we call him we'll call him Zacharias
after you and John had to write down on a tablet no his name
shall be John but there's nobody called John in your family his
name shall be John and as soon as that happened Zacharias was
able to speak and he prophesied concerning what this little boy,
this baby boy would do, he would grow and he would be the one
that would prepare the way of the Lord. Elizabeth was Mary's
cousin, Mary the mother of Jesus. She was Mary's cousin and John
the Baptist Elizabeth was six months pregnant with John the
Baptist when the angel came and told Mary that she was pregnant
of the Holy Ghost with our Lord Jesus Christ. And they spent
some time together. So he's six months older than
Jesus because he's going to prepare the way, he's going to go first,
he's going to prepare the way for him to come. He's ordained
of God to prepare the way for Messiah to come. Messiah who
is prophesied, who is predicted, who is foretold throughout the
Old Testament, who is going to come for the redemption, for
the salvation of his people, And John's job is to prepare
the way. It says in Luke chapter 1 verse
16 that he will turn many in Israel to God. That was part
of the prophecy when he was a baby about him. He's going to turn
many in Israel to God. And he came to preach God's message
to his generation. Do you know John the Baptist
was the first prophet for 350 years. Before him it was Malachi,
350 years earlier. And then 350 years of silence. Now, when you trip 350 years
off the tongue, it doesn't seem that long, does it? We're always
being told these days about things that are multi-billions of billions
upon billions of hundreds of millions of billions of years
old, aren't we? That's all we ever seem to get told if you
listen to the media. And so we think 350 years is
no time at all. Well, actually, think back 300,
you can't think back 350 years, but go back 350 years. 350 years
is 1670. That's a long time ago. It's a long time ago. There had
been no prophet in Israel all that time. Silence from heaven. Absolute silence. They'd been
going through the motions of the Old Testament rites and fulfillment
of the ceremonial law in the temple, often in a sort of an
empty, hypocritical, shallow way. But there'd be no prophet,
there'd be no word from God. And then comes this one, John
the Baptist, who is the last of the Old Testament prophets. Get that? John the Baptist is
the last of the Old Testament prophets. And he's raised up,
and he's moved by God, God had his hand on him all the way through.
And where did he get his theology from? John the Baptist got his
theology from God. It was God that taught him. He
didn't go to a theological college to get his theology, he was taught
by God. And so it must be. So it must
always be. Those who are raised up for the
service of God are taught by God. by revelation, by divine
revelation. The world, and especially the
religious world, doesn't like that. They say, oh, if you're
going to be a minister of the gospel, you must go to a theological
college. I tell you, in my opinion, honestly,
that will do far more harm than good to anybody who aspires to
preach the gospel of Christ. Go and listen to a man who is
truly preaching it and learn there. And let God speak to you. These places that fill themselves
with such importance with their professor of this, that and the
other, they do nothing for the purposes of God, the true purposes
of God. They just fill heads with empty
knowledge. No, John was taught by God and
he was outside of orthodox religion. He noticed he didn't go to the
temple and the Pharisees' school in Jerusalem and he didn't go
there amongst them to try and teach them. He was outside of
Orthodox religion because Orthodox religion didn't want anything
to do with him or what he was saying. You see, man, when man
gets hold of religion, man imposes his structures on it. and can't
accommodate the truth that is from God. And so we see with
all the big religions all around us in this world, they cannot
accommodate the truth of the Gospel of Grace. I know I often
tell you, but I was listening again whilst pottering around
at breakfast time this morning to the service on Radio 4. They
were even reading these Scriptures that we read. They even read
the bit in Luke about Jesus going to the synagogue in Nazareth,
and reading from the prophet Isaiah, the Spirit of the Lord
is upon me. And you wouldn't believe the
nonsense that followed from them reading that. There is absolutely
no light in them. So John is outside of Orthodox
religion. He came from God, We read again
and again, Jesus said it, in the spirit of Elijah, it says
that Elijah must come first before Messiah comes, well he's not
actually Elijah but he's in the spirit of Elijah and he's the
one who comes as Elijah preparing the way of the Lord. Just as
Isaiah spoke of him, the prophet Isaiah, again remember in verse
3 of Matthew it says, Isaiah, well that's the Greek for Isaiah
in the Old Testament. And in Isaiah chapter 40 verse
3 it says, the voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, prepare
ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway
for our God. And that's what John came to
do, to say, The Messiah is coming. He's imminently coming. He's
about to come. You need to get ready for Him
coming, because the one that's promised throughout your religion,
throughout your scriptures, is actually coming. He's due any
minute now. Look for Him. He's coming now.
So he preached in the wilderness, in the separation from that which
was formal religion. I mean it wasn't a very sparsely
populated area, it was outside of Jerusalem, in amongst the
towns and the villages of Judea, but near the River Jordan, outside
of Jerusalem. And the remarkable thing is that
God drew to him all sorts of people. Can you imagine You know,
he's a bit of an oddball. He's got a girdle on, and his
clothes are made out of camel's hair, and he's got a leather
belt around him, around his loins, and he's got a very funny diet.
In fact, he would have got on quite well in Africa at the moment,
because I saw news pictures of a huge, great swarm of locusts
in Africa. You know, when locusts swarm,
they absolutely strip the vegetation bare. in a day they can strip
it bare, and there's huge great plagues of them in Africa now,
you know, they get drought and nothing happens, and then they
get lots of rain and greenery, and then as soon as the greenery
comes, the locusts come, and so they've got great plagues
of locusts. But that was his meat, he ate
locusts and wild honey. And God drew to him, out in the
wilderness, this weird character odd clothes and eating a weird
diet, God drew to him all sorts of people. Verse 5, then went
out to him Jerusalem. What it means is a lot of people
from Jerusalem, and Judea, and all the region about Jordan.
And we don't know the numbers, but clearly significant numbers
were drawn to him. If you would hear God's message
to your soul, you won't hear it in mainstream religion. What
does the Word of God say to you? Revelation 18 verse 4, I could
quote other places too, but Revelation 18 verse 4 says, come out of
her. Come out of that that looks like
the formal organized religion. Come out of her because it's
false. Test the spirits, what they're preaching, and see if
they're preaching the truth of Christ. So what was John's message
then? Well in verse 2 he said, Repent
ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. A call to repentance. Repentance. Repentance means
To think again. To think afresh. It comes from
the French, penser, to think. Repentance, think again. Thinking
afresh. It's a change of life mindset. About what? What is it a change
of life mindset about? Primarily, it's about sin. That's what it is. It's a change
of life mindset about sin. About what we are by nature. And do you know something? You
cannot teach yourself it. You cannot. In the flesh, it
is impossible for you to teach yourself the truth about sin
and what we are by nature. It must be the Holy Spirit's
work. Because as that hymn says, a
sinner is a sacred thing. Why? A sinner who knows he's
a sinner before God is a sacred, a holy thing. Why? Because the
Holy Ghost has made him so. The Holy Ghost by divine revelation
has shown him what he really is. And it's that that's at the
root of true repentance, of true rethinking. Repentance is not
a resolve to commit less sin because of fear of judgment to
come. No, that's false repentance.
People sort of repent, but it's just a remorse for the judgment
that's coming. No, true repentance is the gift
of God, it's the teaching of God. It's a change of heart from
seeing what sin is as an offense against the holiness of God.
From seeing what God had to do to His Son, His well-beloved
Son. to the Lord Jesus Christ, when
Christ bore the sins of His people in His own body on the cursed
tree of Calvary, what God had to do with Him there, to forsake
Him, to pour out His infinite wrath upon that sin, that the
justice of the law might be satisfied. That's what it is, is to see
what a dreadful thing is in the sight of God, in the judgment
of God, according to the nature of God. It's a rethinking, is
this repentance, that goes on within us, and it's a taking
of God's side against ourself. It's God's gift. It says in Acts,
God has granted repentance to the Gentiles. It's a gift of
God, taking God's side against ourselves and saying, yes, I
know what I am, what your word tells me I am, what your spirit
has convicted me within that I am. Those who will populate
the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven, must think like God
regarding sin. Did you hear what I said? Those
who will populate the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven,
those who will go to heaven, must think like God concerning
sin, in some degree. They must have, as Paul tells
us in 1 Corinthians 2.16, they must have the mind of Christ. The mind of Christ, which is
what the Holy Spirit gives. The message was urgent, Repent,
for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. The message of repentance
was urgent because the kingdom of heaven is at hand. It's about
here. The Messiah is coming. It's not
distant. It's not far in the future. A
lot of people think, well that's all well and good, I'm not going
to bother them, they can get on with their religion, it's
for others but it's not for me. No, it is, it's relevant now,
the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. Don't you sometimes wish you
could grasp your friends and neighbours and unbelieving family
members and say the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand? The kingdom,
it's here now, it's coming, it's imminent. It isn't distant, you
mustn't put it off. No, it's relevant now. It's about
the issues of eternal life. It's about the issues of hell.
Religion and this world doesn't like the idea of hell, but it's
in the scriptures. You need to take an awful lot
of passages of scripture out to get rid of hell. It's quite
clear. Sin brings God's judgment, and
God's judgment is hell, and it's not to be put off. John the Baptist
fearlessly condemned the corruption and the hypocrisy of religion.
We saw it in verse 8, bring forth therefore fruits, meat for repentance,
because he called them a generation of vipers. He said, what are
you doing here, you generation of vipers? You see, he didn't
hold back, he told them the truth, because they were hypocrites.
They were just seeing what was all this fuss about, but there
was no heart in it at all. He called out that corruption
and hypocrisy of religion and he talked about those fruits
meat for repentance. What would they be? What are
fruits that are meat for repentance? I would suggest firstly humility.
Humility that God brings us down off that. One of the advertisements
in the media that I hate more than any other is one of these
cosmetic ones and it's because you're worth it. If you've got
the mind of Christ, and if you've got the mind of the Gospel, you
know you're not worth it. You know that you're what the
Scripture calls a worm. You're down in the dust. You're
not worth it. You're not worth anything. Humility is a fruit meet for
repentance. A confession of sin, taking God's
side against me. And this, above all, a prayer
for mercy? That publican by the, you know,
there was the Pharisee thanking God what a lovely religious man
he was and how he was surely in God's favor, and there's the
publican, the sinner, next to him, and he doesn't claim anything. He just beats his breast and
cries, God be merciful to me, the sinner. No, it's not about
turn over a new leaf and try harder not to sin. And you know
the clue to it all is in John's baptism. A lot of people get
it wrong and think that it's just a turning over a new leaf
and trying harder not to sin. and getting ready so that we're
in a good condition when Messiah comes, so that we ourselves have
made ourselves better, so that when he comes we're better. But
no, the clue is in John's baptism. Why did John baptize? What do I mean by baptize? I
mean he went to the River Jordan because there It's a river. There
was much water. They tell us that it was a much
bigger river in those days than it is today. It's a little bit
of a muddy stream a lot of the time now, but then it was a big
river. Why did he immerse people. He didn't sprinkle the River
Jordan on their heads. No, he immersed them in the River
Jordan. They went down under its surface,
and then he brought them back up from its surface. Why did
he persuade crowds and crowds of people to come out to him,
an oddball character, to anybody that looked at him, and to follow
his call to go with him down into the water that he might
dip them underneath this water and raise them up out of it.
You see, you've never read a baptism in the Old Testament before this.
This is the first time we read a baptism. There was priestly
washings in the temple rites in the Old Testament, symbolical
of cleansing for the service of God, but not baptism. Why did he preach this immersion
in water? Why did he practice this immersion
in water? Why, seemingly, did thousands
of people go out to him, and hear him, and believe his message,
and follow him by being baptized? John must have preached why he
baptized repentant sinners, mustn't he? He must have done! Can you
imagine if I dressed up funnily and went down to the banks of
the River Thames, and started preaching a message and telling
people that they need to follow me into the water and get dipped
under it. I wonder how many people I'd get. How many people would
be persuaded that that's the right thing to do? I think you
know, not very many at all, if any. No, John must have preached
why he baptized repentant sinners. How else would he get so many
to go through it? So what do I mean? He must have
preached the holiness of God. He must have preached the corruption
of formal religion, and the need for redemption. What do I mean
by redemption? You know, but I'll remind you.
I can't tell you often enough. I mean the paying of the price
of liberty. That's what redemption is. If
you redeem an object from a shop where you've lent it to them
so that they would lend you some money, you redeem it from their
possession. you redeem it, you free it from
their captivity. There's a need for redemption
because we all by nature as sinners are captive to the law, to the
curse of the law. We're in Satan's thrall. We're
under his sway. We cannot but sin, and God must
condemn sin. We need a Redeemer. We need one
to come to pay the price, to set us free. In the Old Testament,
we see the term Redeemer ten times. It's the one who comes
and pays the price of redemption, to set us free from the curse
of the law. And the Messiah, the one to pay
it, is coming as the suffering servant of God. The Old Testament
says again and again, He is coming, He is coming. And the prophecy
points to the fact that now is the time, in those days when
John was preaching, the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Get ready,
get ready. Turn to God, the Lord whom you
seek. is coming to His temple, even
the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in, says the
Lord of hosts. Why does the prophecy say, whom
ye delight in? Because the One is coming who
is going to deal with the sin problem. The One who is coming
is going to make us right with God by His dying for our sins
in our place to satisfy the justice of God. That's why He's the One
in whom ye delight in. The Son of Righteousness is rising
with healing in His wings. He's coming. The Kingdom of Heaven
is at hand, is what He said. The long-promised seed of the
woman from Genesis 3, the long-promised seed of the woman who is coming
to bruise the serpent's head, is coming. He's imminently here. The seed that was promised to
Abraham, in whom all the nations of the earth shall be blessed,
is coming. That is Christ, the Messiah,
the seed of Abraham, from Abraham's loins and from Abraham's descent,
in whom all the nations, people from all nations, of every tongue
and tribe and kindred, shall be blessed. Blessed with what?
Lots of nice new material things? No! No. What's the blessing of
God? It's salvation from sin. It's
the assurance of heaven. That's what it is. The seed in
whom all nations shall be blessed. John 1.29, we read John's account
of John the Baptist, and John's with two of his disciples, and
he sees Jesus coming to him, and he says to them, pointing,
Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. This one who is coming is the
fulfillment of the Old Testament sacrifice types. These, the true
Passover. You know, the Passover, the killing
of the lamb, and the coming out from Egypt. Paint the blood over
the doorposts, and the angel of death. When I see the blood,
I will pass by. The firstborn of everybody in
that land was to be slain, except where the angel of death saw
the blood over the doorposts, because the Passover lamb had
died. And Christ, our Passover, is sacrificed for us, is what
Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 5 verse 7. This is the true Passover. John must have said, your Passovers,
your annual Passovers, this is the true, this is the Lamb of
God. Look at all your lambs that you kill as sacrifices in accordance
with the Old Testament rites. But look, this is the Lamb of
God. They were just pictures. Here
is the truth. Christ our Passover is sacrificed
for us, and he's going to do that by going down into death,
by shedding his blood for the sins of his people, and rise
again from death so that his people might be cleansed of their
sin and justified in his sight. exactly as was pictured with
the Old Testament sacrifices in symbol and in type. Those with true faith were forgiven
their sins when they went through that looking to what it represented,
which was Christ. What they were looking to was
what Paul says in Romans 4 verse 25, that he, Christ, was lifted
up for our transgressions and raised for our justification.
Baptism symbolized in picture spiritual death and spiritual
resurrection. Death, that's the curse of the
law. The soul that sins, it shall
die. The life is in the blood and
without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins.
It pictured that death, but also it pictured resurrection from
death to newness of life. And those being baptized publicly
identified with Messiah, with Christ, who was coming to purchase
their redemption from the law's curse. You know, there's people
that give you the idea that John's baptism was deficient, and there's
an example in Acts of, what have you been baptized into? Well,
it was just John's baptism, or it was just what they'd heard
about John's baptism, without realizing the truth of it. But
I cannot help seeing that John the Baptist preached the truth,
for the Messiah was coming. The kingdom of heaven is at hand.
Behold the Lamb of God. He preached the truth of Christ.
Can you believe that the one to prepare the way for Christ
would do other than what Paul did, being determined to know
nothing other than Jesus Christ and him crucified? Of course
he did. His message was gospel, like
all true Old Testament prophets. His message was gospel. He was
a great preacher. Jesus himself gave great testimony. After his beheading, he gave
great testimony to John the Baptist and what he did. He said, there's
none greater, born of women, than John the Baptist. But he
who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. In
other words, that's the key thing, be in the kingdom of heaven.
So then, quickly, moving on. Baptism of Jesus. Why? Why did
Jesus come to John to be baptized? He made a three-day journey from
Galilee to Jordan. He made a long journey. You say,
why? Because he had no sin to be repented
of. Jesus didn't need to heed the
call to repentance. No. He had no need of redemption
himself, for he was pure and holy and undefiled and separate
from sinners. It was, as it says in verse 15,
to fulfill all righteousness. Because by
doing so, he pictured his life's mission to fulfill all righteousness
for his people. As a man, he demonstrated obedience
to God the Father. He was obedient, obedient unto
death, even the death of the cross. And he gave example for
his people to follow, and thereby to fulfill all righteousness. We need to be clear that just
as with communion, it confers no mysterious spiritual benefit,
we need to be clear that baptism, like communion, it's a picture
of redemption, it's a picture of the remission of sins, it's
a picture of salvation accomplished, but baptism in itself is not
those things. No, no. Don't look back to your
baptism and say, that proves that I'm a true believer because
I went through that. No, that's you testifying what
had gone in your heart. It isn't the thing that makes
you a Christian, but nevertheless, it is a right pattern for us
to follow. How would we do it? Well, I know
we've borrowed baptisteries in different places. I think we
could do it now. You can get some very big plastic
pools, can't you? You can get some very big pools
whereby you can do immersion and not sprinkling. We could
do it in the right way. There's no excuse. Anybody wants
to profess their faith will find a way, but it isn't for babies,
and it's most definitely not for children. It's nowhere in
scripture. Now then, let me, before we finish,
apply this. What do I want you to take away
from this? The kingdom of heaven was at hand then, with the imminent
appearance of Christ the Messiah. Therefore get ready, was John's
message. What I want to say is that today
is no different. Today the kingdom of heaven is
at hand. everything that the scripture
says must happen is fulfilled. Where even I believe, I can't
prove it, but I very strongly believe it because you know as
Jesus said, look at the signs in nature, look at the buds coming
on the fig tree and you know what season of the year it is,
look at the things like that, you know that leaves go brown
and they fall off, you know that winter's coming, look at things
like that and looking at the days in which we live, I am very
much persuaded that we are living in Satan's little season, Revelation
verse 20, which is very much at the end of things. You know,
even the world around us warns of an end coming. They talk of
climate catastrophe. They talk of nuclear disaster.
We've got fears at the very moment of viral pandemic. You know,
this whatever it's called in China, this virus. Are you ready
for whatever might come? You know, when the world all
around us is thinking that things are not set to go on forever.
Are you ready? The prophet Amos says this, Amos
4 verse 12. You might have seen caricatures
of people proclaiming the kingdom of God and there's a man with
a sandwich board over his shoulders and it says on it, prepare to
meet thy God. That's the text of Amos 4, 12.
Well, you know, we may laugh at things like that, but it's
deadly, deadly serious. Will you seek the Lord while
he may be found? Today is the day of salvation.
Will you call upon him while he is near? Will you forsake
your way to hell and seek peace with God for eternity? Will you
go on as did the folk in the days of Noah? As Jesus said in
Matthew 24 verse 7, As it was in the days of Noah, so also
shall the coming of the Son of Man be. In what respect they
thought that life was just going to go on with nothing upsetting
the apple cart at all. And all of a sudden, in one day,
it says God took them all away. The world empires, that we saw
in Daniel 2.44 are all coming to an end. They're going to be
crushed and the thing that's going to fill everywhere is the
kingdom of God. Will you be in it? Seek peace
with God while today is the day of salvation. Amen.