Pastor Jon Burgess
May 1, 2016 - W1618

I love that our church has invested in our young people and has said that they are not leaders later but are leaders now. It’s great when we encourage our youth and give of our best to them now. It’s like what is written in Hebrews about God wanting us to have all that He has in store for us now and He doesn’t want us to miss out on anything.

“Therefore let us move beyond the elementary teachings about Christ and be taken forward to maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from acts that lead to death, and of faith in God, instruction about cleansing rites, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. And God permitting, we will do so.” (Hebrews 6:1-3)

We read here, as the church, that God wants us to, so desperately, grow up, but we still have a lot of the basics to learn. He is telling us that He’s got so much more to teach us and wants to take us to the point of maturity. We are still wondering, is there really a hell? Did Jesus really rise from the dead? What about the water baptism thing - does it really work?

And in the same heart as God, today’s lesson brings to mind that there is still so much to learn and God wants to make sure that we are getting the “Full Meal Deal” or that we are getting the whole thing down first before we move on to the deeper things of Christianity. He wants us to have the understanding of the essential things before we move on.

You see, if we don’t totally get the full understanding of the Trinity; Father, Son and the Holy Spirit, then we won’t have the understanding on how that Trinity works in our lives. In other words we are missing out on the real thing. There’s a lot of us who have been shorted of all the glory that God has for us and we don’t even realize it.

It’s like going to a coffee place and you order “decaff” but get a double shot of caffeine instead or vice versa. Not only did you pay a lot of money for your morning fix, but you also didn’t get what you paid for. It is terrible indeed when we don’t get our specific needs fulfilled.

So in the like situation with God, He wants to make sure we get the full understanding and not get shorthanded in our knowledge of the Trinity and how it affects our lives. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit has a whole menu of things in store us, but I have a feeling many of us are getting shortchanged, we are not getting the full meal deal.

We are going to look at the concept of God as three persons, “The Trinity” and how it works in our lives. There is a reason that Jesus told His disciples to go out and baptize in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. It is because there are three baptisms that God wants us to have. And He wants us to have full immersion baptism so that we grasp the full reality of The Trinity. He wants to make sure that every one of us is getting everything God has for us.

1. The Baptism of The Father: True Repentance

Charles Spurgeon, the famous evangelist once said, “There is a wide distinction between confessing sin as a culprit and confessing sin as a child.” Meaning that as a criminal you will always tend to try to hide your true sin, but a child in all their eagerness is outwardly honest. We know, especially as a child, that if we confess with all our heart, even our earthly father will punish us, but it’s better to be honest and that he finds out from us rather than from someone else. Right?

When you come to repentance with Our Father, you are also coming to a place where The Father will set you free and will heal you. Here is what Paul wrote in Acts:

“While Apollos was at Corinth, Paul took the road through the interior and arrived at Ephesus. There he found some disciples and asked them, ‘Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?’ They answered, ‘No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.’ So Paul asked, ‘Then what baptism did you receive?’ ‘John’s baptism,’ they replied. Paul said, ‘John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance. He told the people to believe in the One coming after him, that is, in Jesus.’” (Acts 19:1-4)

Here in this verse, we find Paul talking to a group of men trying to live out their lives as disciples as best they know how, but haven’t come yet to the full understanding of The Trinity. Paul is not disregarding the Baptism of Repentance from John, but he is reminding them that there are three parts to the trinity and John’s water baptism is just the beginning. There is still the part about Jesus and the Holy Spirit. They still hadn’t received the “full meal deal”. It’s like ordering hamburger and fries but only getting the fries. So as Paul will continue, he will want to teach them about the other essential parts, but it was good that they learned the first, by meeting the Father, and experienced the baptism of repentance.

In passages following, we will hear about the birth of the Christian church and learn of its inception and learn of the model and the blueprint of God’s Church. We will see the coming of the gift of the Holy Spirit being poured out and the disciples present being empowered by It causing them to go out among the people to spread the Word of God. Paul tells them:

“‘Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah.’ When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, ‘Brothers, what shall we do?’ Peter replied, ‘Repent…’” (Acts 2:36-38)

So when the people heard that they had crucified Jesus who was laid out to be the Messiah, they are cut to the heart, and plead with Paul. Paul simply instructs them that they need to repent. Now most of us, when we are accused of doing wrong, we tend to get defensive and say, “Where are you getting off telling me that I did that?” But the Israelites reply was what shall we do? They weren’t condemned by Paul’s speech, they were convicted. Now there is a big difference between being condemned and being convicted. To be convicted calls us closer to God where condemnation pushes us away. Conviction shows us how to change, but condemnation says we will never change. Jesus is saying to us that He can help us and we just need to ask Him, but condemnation does not offer help to us at all. Paul also tells the church of Ephesus years later, that they need to be honest and confess. The first step is repentance and The Father is calling us to come forth and be honest with Him and He will help us because:

True Repentance brings what’s on the inside out to change us from the inside out.

What we need to do is respond to the fact that God is not pushing us away, He is trying to draw us closer to Him. In fact, the Bible says:

“For the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance without regret …”

(2 Corinthians 7:10)

We all live our lives within shells and we think this is really going to help us, that this casing is really protecting us, that this shell defines us. But it is really distracting us, it’s keeping us from what God really has for us. Here’s how we know that there is some sinning going on in our life, when someone calls it on us, we get defensive. That is our shell. We know that God has all the power in the world and that He can crush us at any time, but He doesn’t do that. No, He never forces Himself on us, He is always there, and always present, but He will never force Himself on us. If we refuse a lifestyle of repentance then we are denying ourselves of all that God has for us. Corinthians says that we need to live a life of “repentance without regret”. When God brings conviction into our hearts it’s because He is bringing us to freedom and leading us into salvation. But if we follow the sorrow of the world, it brings us death. We have to call out to God to help us. He won’t force us. We just need to repent and call on Him.

Once we have True Repentance, we’ve crushed that defensive shell encased around us and once we have fully opened up to The Father, then, we will be open to receive all that He has for us. At that point we will be ready for …

2. The Baptism of The Son: True Forgiveness

A great example of this is the picture of being baptized. When we go under the water in baptism it is like going under the water in death and then when you come out of the water it is into new life. When we swim under water we hold our breath until we are able to emerge out of the water to breathe in the breath of life. That’s what it’s like to move from the baptism of The Father, which is repentance, to the baptism of The Son, which is receiving forgiveness. We come up refreshed ad renewed. It is why Jesus died on the cross, it’s why He gave us new life.

As the Bible says, “On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.” (Acts 19:5)

“Peter replied, ‘Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.’” (Acts 2:38)

Again this was not condemnation, they weren’t being pushed away. In fact, Paul was saying, “This is good, you’ve got the baptism of The Father, now receive the baptism of The Son. Now you have received forgiveness.” So, The Father calls us to be vulnerable, honest and real to Him, not condemning us, but, convicting us, not causing us to regret, but, calling us to salvation. And then The Son, Jesus Christ, takes us from there and He offers us forgiveness through His sacrifice on the cross.

There’s a testimony of a young man who has lived a difficult life, being incarcerated several times. This is his story:

“I’ve been incarcerated for 25 years and I’m 45 years old. Been released three times in 25 years and I never stayed out for more than a year. This is the 4^th time being released. Something changed in my thinking when one day someone gave me a brand new bible and I started to read and read and read,” He kept on talking about how he read this Bible so much that he wore it out. He read it over and over and over again until it looked like an old beat up phone book, and he started out with a brand new Bible. As he continued to read the Bible, The Divine Mentor started to talk to him. He had every reason in the world to keep that shell around him, he had a really hard life, a really bad upbringing. This was his 4^th time out, but then God met him in jail, God met him through His word. He met the Father in True Repentance and he went on to say, “I realized as I was reading the Old Testament about the Israelites that that was me. I looked at them and I said, “What’s wrong with them, why do they keep complaining?” And then I felt a conviction of the Lord saying, “That’s you. You’re just like the Israelites. You’re pushing away when I’m calling you closer.” It was the Word of God, The Divine Mentor, God that called him. God called him to the baptism of The Father, True Repentance, which lead him the baptism of the Son, which was True Forgiveness. All of a sudden he started feeling forgiveness towards everyone and this forgiveness is the flavor of grace.

True Forgiveness is the Flavor of Grace.

Have you ever asked yourself what grace tastes like? Probably not, but being a food person, I have. Now here is a fungus, it grows in poo. But here is what is amazing about the grace of God, He can take something that grows in the worse possible places, and He takes every single layer of our lives even those layers that still make us cry, and He can make it into something very delicious or beautiful. How many of us are glad that God can take the fungus of our life and make it into something very delicious? I know that I am. God’s forgiveness never gives up on us and He will heal us. He will redeem anything, anything at all. Then we will see why we had to repent, so that God can take our past, and our present to define our future. God will release the flavor of grace in our lives. Some will say that to forgive is a sign of weakness, but it’s not. Jesus forgave everyone and He’s the strongest of all. Jesus sacrificed himself on the cross for us. That sacrifice took a lot of strength.

Only the strong can forgive and that strength flows from the sacrifices of The Son and the results of that forgiveness is:

3. The Baptism of The Holy Spirit: True Empowerment

Hebrews 12:29 says that our God is a consuming fire. What does that mean? Well, when I was at a conference during worship while I was repenting, God was bringing up some things in my life. It wasn’t condemnation, it was conviction. He was calling to me to break down my shell, He wanted to release the flavors of grace. He said, “Jon, just like that burning bush that Moses came across, it was on fire but it wasn’t being consumed.” In the same way, if we are not consumed by The Holy Spirit, we will be consumed by everything else of the world. We will be consumed by worries, fears, stress, temptations and struggle. We will even be consumed by religion but we won’t be consumed by The Holy Spirit. So like these disciples of God we read about in Acts 19:6-7 this is what will happen:

“When Paul placed his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied. There were about twelve men in all.” (Acts 19:6-7)

When we invite The Holy Spirit into the mix, He stirs it up. He has access to us through the repentance of The Father and forgiveness through Jesus Christ, The Son. Redeeming our past through them brings The Holy Spirit to stir it all up. He can even take those things that we went through and turn them into something that‘s going to possibly help others find Him. And as The Holy Spirit stirs things up inside of us, we will no longer be satisfied with being just a halfway Christian, we will want to be totally and fully consumed with God.

“‘…And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call.’ With many other words he warned them; and he pleaded with them, ‘Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.’ Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day.” (Acts 2:38-41)

True empowerment is how we live naturally supernatural.

So let’s get real with God. Repent in the baptism of The Father, so that we can receive and give forgiveness through the grace and sacrifice of The Son. So that we can become empowered through The Holy Spirit which will reveal our gifts and fruits of the Spirit so we can go out and minister to others.

1) What does baptism mean to you?

2) Describe what you think about being baptized in the name of The Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit?

3) What do you think the flavor of Grace is?

4) What does forgiveness mean to you?

5) What does it mean to repent?