MAY 28 2023 | The Gospel of John S1E6 | Seeing – Saying – Doing

Sea Change Church · The Gospel of John S1E6 · "Seeing - Saying - Doing" · May 28, 2023
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

The gospel according to John chapter one, verses 29 through 34. The next day, John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, look, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, this is the one I meant when I said, A man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me. I, myself did not know him. But the reason I came baptizing with water was that he might be revealed to Israel. Then John gave this testimony.

I saw the spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on him. I would not have known him except that the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, the man on whom you see the spirit come down and remain is He who will baptize with the Holy Spirit. I have seen and I testify that this is the son of God. This is the word of the Lord.

Good morning. We are in the last episode of our, uh, gospel series on the book of John going through that. If you have your Bible is open 'em to John chapter 1 29 through 34. I told you we never got out of, uh, chapter one. We were supposed to be in chapter four by now, but it's just so meaty and rich and so good. And today as we this, uh, entire message is wrapped in Pentecost Sunday, today is Pentecost Sunday.

It's the day that the Holy Spirit was given to the church to equip the church to do the work of God in the world, to be relevant in the world, to be able to make a difference. The Holy Spirit has a whole bunch of different roles, but it was 50 days in Pene Penta meaning 50 and five like the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible is what it called, it's called.

And on the 50th day, the believers were huddled in an upper room for fear of the Jewish leaders. Uh, and they were Jews themselves that were going trying to attack them, trying to come after them. And they were fearful. The Holy Spirit comes and equips them and all of a sudden they go back out into a culture from a place of fear recalibrated to change the world.

And that happened when the Holy Spirit fell. I wanna say that if we are gonna be a church that is relevant, if the church of Jesus is going to be relevant in the years going forward from where we are as a culture right now, we are gonna have to have more than just good sermons. We're gonna have to have a lot more than just good fun ministry for kids to go hang out and get away.

We're gonna have to have more than just feeding the homeless, although that's important as well. We are going to have to have a real encounter with Jesus, his father and his spirit. Uh, we have got to show something to the world that is not on offer in the world. I believe in the next five to 10 years, the church is gonna have to become kind of a trauma center.

There is a lot of things that people are getting involved in in the world right now. A lot of things going down, different paths that they are going to have to re have to recover from. And the church is gonna have to be a place where we meet people that are broken, that are perhaps on the edge of verge of suicide, that have done things with their body to their body that they regret and they're going to come looking for something more.

And so today's message is kind of wrapped around that idea of Pentecost. How do as believers do we launch our lives? How do we actually become something more than just a Sunday going church follower of Jesus follower who listens to occasional Christian radio or whatever it is, and you actually make a difference. We are going to have to offer something that is more than just our, our, our good sermons and whatever it would be.

So here's my main point for today through this scripture that you just heard about John and the baptism and what he was doing. Main point is how to become a seeing, saying and doing follower of Christ. This verse, I actually highlighted them in some of the bold in the, in the message. You'll see the, the text I highlighted them is full of seeing, saying, and doing. And those three things are crucial.

If we're going to be a believer who makes a difference in this world to offer something to a broken world. I wanna say that as we look at this, John started his ministry with baptism. He started with a call to repentance and then he started with baptism. So I'm gonna talk about baptism today. One, the baptism of John the Baptist that he was doing, which was a baptism of repentance.

It was calling the Jewish people back to God and saying, be cleanse the ritual that they understood a cleansing ritual. They were all about, you can't go to the temple unless you've been cleansed. And they would have these giant um, uh, urns, seven or eight urns that would be out in front and people would just wash their hands and their feet and they would cleanse themselves Before that, they would go into the temple in order to meet with God.

And so John now was out in the wilderness doing a baptismal ritual. We'll talk about that. But I want to say this, that God's launchpad for a life in Christ is baptism. Say that again. The launchpad, the the starting place when you make a decision to follow Jesus, the starting place according to the scriptures, according to the ministry of Jesus, Jesus ministry started with what?

It started with a launchpad. With a baptism. So baptism is so important. It is a crucial sacrament. And we're gonna just in a second look at John's baptism and then Jesus who comes baptizing, but he doesn't baptize with water. He baptizes with the Holy Spirit. So I wanna give you a little history lesson on baptism so we can understand it.

You'll see in your notes a history of baptism. John the Baptist, who is considered a forerunner to Christianity. So he was that little spot in between the Old Testament of Christianity and New Testament. Christianity used baptism as a central sacrament of his messianic movement. Meaning the Messiah is here is what he was saying.

Not the Messiah is coming, the Messiah is here. Christians consider Jesus to have instituted the sacrament of baptism by being baptized himself. The earliest Christian baptisms were by immersion. So Jesus actually comes out and validates what John is doing out in the wilderness. And lemme see. The first thing is this. There was no such thing as baptism as a Jewish ritual.

I looked it up online and I was uh, and I searched the search category. Did the Jews baptized before John, the baptism before Jesus, there were some scholars that were like, yes, there was people that would baptize, you know, they would go in full immersion in water. You have a, I think it was Elijah the prophet telling the centurion or the leader that had the leprosy go dip yourself seven times in the Jordan River.

There's some stories about it, but there was nowhere in the scripture of the Old Testament, in the ou, the first five books of the Bible, the Levitical law that says you should be fully immersed as an adult in baptism. There was nowhere in the scripture that says that. So we can assume if we're gonna be biblical Christians, that yes, some people might have done it. The Jews were zealous for being pure before God.

And I'm sure there was Jewish Pharisees that were dunking themselves completely. It probably did happen, but there was no call to that in the scripture. So when John is out there in the desert doing this new ritual, he was calling people to himself to say, Messiah is here. And then he was saying, fully clothed, come down into the water and I'm going to dip you in the water.

This was a new ritual. This was something they hadn't seen before. And this is why the Pharisees, a few scriptures back had sent people out to say, John, what are you doing? This is something new that we have never seen. Now the thing that was interesting is when Jesus comes, they're looking at Jesus to say, Hey, is this legit? Like what this guy's doing?

It's weird. It's it's beyond. It's above and beyond. And he, he's calling for repentance. And Jesus could have said, Hey, that's never been in the scriptures before. That's not in Levitical law. We're not gonna do that. But instead, what does Jesus do? Jesus humbles himself, goes to John and says, I want to be baptized. Now Jesus didn't need to be baptized cuz he was completely pure, but he says, I want to be baptized. And so Jesus was absolutely baptized.

It says immersion baptism then was an outgrowth of the Jewish ceremonial cleansing and was performed after one believed. Now this is important because there are traditions and that have some scriptural backing that say a a whole family was baptized in the New Testament. You have that in the Book of Acts and people have come to see that maybe you can have your children baptized. I was baptized as a child, but it is clear that even if you were baptized as a child, there is an adult baptism that Jesus did himself that comes after you believe babies. I mean God, God love Elsie over there, but she cannot currently believe. And so if you were to baptize her as a child, maybe she would be sealed of some kind. We don't do child baptism, infant baptism, but many traditions do.

But we do agree that Jesus initiated baptism as a right for all believers by being baptized himself. And so that was super important. So I would say if you have never been baptized or if you were baptized as a child, I want to encourage you to also make the decision as an adult to follow the model of Jesus. To say, I wanna be baptized as in a believing adult.

And we see that people, if you want to go to verse 32, then John gave his testimony, I saw the spirit of God coming down from heaven as a dove and remain on him. I would've not known him except that he sent me to baptize with water. And it says that he would continue to baptize. And as people believed, if you go to um, uh, the next verses as people were coming to 'em, it says that after they believed that they would be baptized.

So that's super important. So if you have not been baptized, we want to encourage you get baptized. And uh, we have the opportunity to do that. The interesting thing now then is if you look at Jesus, Jesus, it says in, um, with in verse go to verse 33, I would not have known him except that the one who sent me to baptize. So he was sent to baptize with water, told me, the man on whom you see the spirit come down and remain, he is the one that we baptize and he will baptize with the Holy Spirit.

Well this is interesting. So when Jesus baptizes, now Jesus allows the Holy Spirit. Once Jesus died on the cross, the Holy Spirit now has the ability because he died for our sins to live within us and we are baptized now through the Holy Spirit. What is really interesting is this, is that Jesus did not decommission full of immersion baptism just because he was now baptizing with the Holy Spirit.

You see, it isn't the water that cleanses us, it is the blood of Jesus that cleanses us. And it says actually in the scriptures, if you were to read in Acts 1914, um, and, and excuse me, in Acts 19 four, it says, Paul said John's baptism was a baptism of repentance. He told the people to believe in the one that was coming after him. Well, when Jesus comes, what we see is that Jesus now comes and as you see in Hebrews nine 14, let me read this one, it's not in your notes, how much more then will the blood of Christ through whom the eternal spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciousness from the acts that lead to death so that we may serve the living God. So now when we are baptized, we are baptized.

Once we believe in Jesus, we are filled with the Holy Spirit and you're actually cleansed within the scripture sets. So why didn't Jesus just get rid of baptism then? Like there's no need for it anymore. Immersion, baptism. He didn't do it for a reason. Because as I said at the beginning of this, the scripture calls us to be seeing, saying and doing Christians and baptism is an outward symbol.

Baptism is an outward symbol of something you believe internally. It says if you believe in your heart and what confess with your mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord, you will be saved. Now I believe that we are saved by faith alone, but that scripture says, and it shows at least in that scripture that it requires some form of outward action to show that you are a believer. It is confessing.

If you believe in your heart and confess with your mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord, you will be saved. And so baptism is what? Baptism is a symbol. We had a, uh, uh, two people that, uh, who got baptized here from Iraq, excuse me, from Iran. And they were in a, in a, uh, a camp as they came over and they said that there was a woman who got baptized in the camp, in the refugee camp.

And her life was at risk because she was baptized in front of people who wanted to take her life. Were basically leaving the faith that she was born into and becoming a Christian. There's a lot of dire consequence to that, but it is something that Jesus says that we do. So that's the first thing. The second thing is that Jesus says that now he comes and when he baptizes, there just isn't a cleansing as we'll see, he gives a Holy Spirit that actually commissions us to move into the things that are of God and to br and to do that.

So the process and the purpose of baptism then is to be a launchpad, to create functioning Christians, Christians that make a difference in the world. Now, how do you make a difference? We see it modeled here in this passage of John one, and we see this happening. We see a bunch of things happening. One you see seeing, they're looking at something, John is seeing something.

And when they see this thing, it changes their life. Have you ever seen something and all of a sudden that happens? You can't get it outta your memory, it actually changes your life. John is pointing and all John is doing is running around pointing at Jesus and saying The lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world? That's Jesus.

He's the messiah. That's him, that's him, that's him. He's seeing, he's saying, he's saying this is Jesus. He's testifying this word. Testify over and over again in John chapter one is so important. Talk last week about just having a testimony, having something to say, beginning to use the name of Jesus again to speak and to testify who he is.

And then also doing where are we doing? Where are we making a difference in the world where when you see someone hurting and homeless and or whatever it would be, you're pulling over to the side of the road in your life so to speak, and you're making a difference saying, I'm gonna show up here. I'm going to give my coat. I'm going to, we had a story, it's funny, we had a story. One of our, uh, elders was down. Um, I heard, uh, you know, helping the homeless down in downtown and they, they gave their coat away.

They heard the sermon a few weeks ago. So they gave their coat away forgetting that they left their Tesla keys in the, in, in the coat. So luckily they were able to find the person to get that sorted. So you get a coat and the Tesla, which is awesome, that's next level. Uh, I love that. And so we see this that John is, is, is, is in this.

So look in your passages. I uh, the first thing I put is this John the Baptist mentioned seeing in some form seven times in this passage, seven times he mentioned seeing it is important that if you are going to know where to go, it is important. If you are going to be a functioning passionate believer that makes a difference in this world, that you are actually seeing Jesus.

And I think this is what's important because I oftentimes forget that the thing that I'm looking for is Jesus himself. I'm asking God, what should I preach about this week? Where should the church go? How should I move uh, in my marriage? What should I do with my life? What job is should I do? Or whatever the thing is that we have?

I'm constantly being like, oh, oh Jesus, I've seen Jesus. Yeah, no, I get that we're supposed to see Jesus now. God, where are you taking me? What we see in this passage, everything starts with seeing Jesus. If you want to know where God is taking you in your life, you need to look at Jesus. If you want to know how to be a husband in your marriage, you need to look at Jesus. If you want to know how to serve the poor, you need to look at Jesus.

We need to be seeing people and reframe in our lives what we're actually looking at. I realize I can do so much ministry and good stuff that doesn't start with looking for Jesus. Everything John did started with, that's Jesus. He's my Lord, he's my Savior. I want to see Jesus. We have got to get back to Jesus. We have nothing else to offer the world. We only have Jesus.

Jesus says that he will offer the Holy Spirit. Jesus says that he will show them the Father. So I don't need to offer them the Holy Spirit and I don't need to offer them the Father because if I get them to Jesus, it says in this first chapter of John that he will take them there. But I can't offer something I'm not seeing. I can't offer something that gets further and further out of the lenses of my focus because I've walked so far away from Jesus doing the things of God that I'm no longer passionate about knowing Jesus. I want that passion back.

I want that hunger back. I want that hunger that started with me as a 19 year old kid. Fresh off cocaine, fresh off meth, fresh, fresh off all the things I was doing, all the things I was circling the um, you know, trying to find in the world. And I knew how to get home and I came back to Jesus and Jesus was everything to me. I just wanted to be with Jesus.

And so the first thing we see is this is a text about seeing if you were going to be a functioning Christian, the first thing is being baptized. Being baptized, literally making a a a a, a plan to make sure you've been baptized. But then also getting our eyes on Jesus who says that he will give you the Holy Spirit that will equip you for these thingss.

So the first thing John was a seeing believer, next thing we see is this passage shows of mentions five times in this passage of speaking of some sort. See if you can find him. There's saying, there's telling, there's testifying, there's revealing. And I put revealing as kind of a speaking John was constant. You couldn't get Jesus off his lips, you couldn't get Jesus off of his his mind.

You couldn't get Jesus out of his language. You couldn't extricate the message of Jesus, the testimony of Jesus. Why? Because he was passionate about finding Jesus and making Jesus known. The mission of our church is to make Jesus known. I want you to know that that's what we're doing here in our children's ministry, in our home groups, in our worship, in our preaching. It is to make Jesus known.

And if you have lost that or maybe you've never gotten to that and maybe you're seeing Jesus for the first time, that's the starting point. The starting point is not only seeing Jesus, but once we've seen him, once you see Jesus, he will, he will flow into your heart. He will begin to, to encourage and and set you a light. We want to be on fire.

It says that God is a consuming fire. It says that he consumes the sacrifice and the sacrifices our life. But God doesn't consume where there is no sacrifice. You see, God says he's a consuming fire. You have to have a fuel for the fire. God doesn't need it, but it says that we are his fuel. And when we get passionate about Jesus to say I no longer want those things that I'm going to, I no longer want the addictions. I no longer want the half truth.

I no longer want the compromises. All I want is Jesus, then we're going to be the church that this generation needs now and it's gonna be the next 10 years. If we don't become those type of people, what are we doing? Why even come like we have got to meet the need that is coming. And I will say I really believe that with the emotional resources that our church has and the different things that we bring people in regard to meeting Jesus, we have got to be equipped ourselves and be passionate about knowing Jesus.

The final thing that we see in this is that some form of doing is mentioned three times. It's interesting, seven times in this passage there's some form of seeing Jesus. This doesn't mean that we shouldn't be doing and that doing's more, you know, more important. But I think there is an emphasis on the seeing because all the doing and the speaking comes from the scene. And so you see seven times in this, in this uh, not passage, 29 through 34 of seeing you see five times of speaking and then doing is mentioned three times in the text. So you see review, review actually revealing.

I put Underdoing baptizing and sending says that you know, he is, he is sending people out. He is, he is revealing people and uh, depends on the translation you use to use the word sending. But he's actually doing things. I wanna say that we want to be doing things for God. I was reading reading aw Tozer this week. If you want a spiritual cleanse, go by aw toaster's book, go get the audible and listen to the pursuit of God.

It will be like a detox, it'll be a spiritual cleanse. And he starts out talking to pastors. He says, what we don't need anymore is great sermons. We don't need more theology, we don't need more programs. We're so good at that. This is written in like 46 or 1948. He says, what we need is people that are passionate who want to go to the holy of Holies cuz it's open now through the blood of Jesus to spend time at God's feet to boldly go before the throne of God. As it says in Hebrews, we need those people, not people that are just willing to spend time. If you understand the, the structure of the temple. Back in the day in the Old Testament, the Old Testament had a, a temple structure that had a courtyard, had a courtyard for women, that had a courtyard for sacrificing and all these courtyards.

And eventually there's a holy of holy only the priest could go there once a year. Now you can go there in prayer every single day, which is awesome because of the love of Jesus. Actually been to Israel and there's a underground, you go in Jerusalem will be there again this year and next year if you wanna come with us and you go underground and there is a um, a giant rock and the Muslims own the other side of the rock, but there's this giant rock and it says 10 feet behind this rock is where the holy of holy was. And so you can go to the rock, you can kind of put your hands on the rock and you're way underground.

It's super cool to be down underneath there, but it, but Tozer says we need people that wanna spend time there. And he goes, our pastors are content in all the other courtyards. He says, you're content. And I was so convicted you're content in the sacrificial courtyard because so much sacrifice is being done and it looks really spiritual.

There's so many spiritual things happening and oh then there's this courtyard and this layer of the temple. And if you've ever studied what the temple looks like, you go from courtyard to courtyard to courtyard and then eventually less and less people can go into. Finally only once a year the priest can go, the high priest can go in and he thought, we have pastors that are just so happy just cuz they're in a courtyard and good stuff's happening there.

But they don't even want to touch or go into the holy of Holies. I wanna say Jesus came to make himself known. Jesus is the holy of holies. Jesus is the person of Jesus wants to know you. And if we believe in him, if we confess with our mouth, if we are baptized, says that he will make his home within us. And now we become the temple.

We become that place. 10 feet behind the rock. You become the place 10 feet behind the rock where the spirit of God moves. This is the promise this. Now when you're offering that to a broken world, that's different. I'm gonna say that that completely hits different than, hey we got a few good programs for your kids. We're going to Disneyland on the third.

We wanna bring them and we're gonna have a church bus that says Jesus name or something like that. No, your offering saying God himself has said you can become the temple of God and that each of us can have the, the presence of God dwell within us through the Holy Spirit. And then so finally it mentions three times in this text, some form of doing what are you doing? What are you doing?

I'm, I'm sure you're all doing something for God, something you're doing something. Maybe you're giving your lives away. I know it's important in our culture today. It's gotta begin with at the feet of Jesus or it has no meaning. It won't make it. So it says in the scripture all the things we do for good that have not been given to Christ, that have not been initiated by Christ.

This is a paraphrase. It says you'll escape into heaven as if one going through the flames. But all the good things you did will not come with you. It's paraphrase para off the top of my head. So forgive me for not having the verse. We have got to be seeing. We have got to be saying, we have got to be doing. The Holy Spirit operates in all these ways. And I got a couple more minutes, lemme just give you a couple scriptures the Holy Spirit sees.

Let give you a scripture. First Corinthians two, nine and 10. And this is fascinating. Go to your Google search or your chat G p t or whatever it is and put in what is the role of the Holy Spirit. You will have a incredible afternoon being just filled with what the Holy Spirit does. But there's three things that we're gonna, boy, we're gonna minimize him for a second into three categories that are seen in this passage that he equips you and replicates in our lives. Number one, he's seeing First Corinthians two, nine through 10 rather as it is written. No, I has seen, no ear has heard, no heart has imagined what God has prepared for those who love Him.

Mm Ah. But God has revealed it to us by His spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. No one has seen. But the Holy Spirit is seen and the Holy Spirit is gonna reveal it to you because God is a revelator. He wants to know you in a deep and meaningful way. It's powerful. God is not only seeing, he's saying John three six, uh, John 1316, this is what the Holy Spirit does. But when he the Holy Spirit, the spirit of truth comes cuz he speaks truth. He will guide you into all truth.

Mm. You need that in your life for He will not speak on his own initiative, but whatever he hears, he will speak and he will disclose to you what is to come. He's gonna give you revelation, he's gonna give you direction. And then when he speaks it to you, it is our job to go out to the world to say, once I've been at Jesus' feet to say this is what God is doing, this is what I see him doing, this is who he is. So the Holy Spirit is seeing, he's saying, and finally he's doing Hebrews two, four, God also testified to it by signs and wonders and various miracles. And by the gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will.

There's a debate on how many miracles God will still, still does in our society. Seems like he does more in the third world than they're here and they have different belief. And I've seen God work in powerful ways. I'm not sure your theology on how Jesus works and how the Holy Spirit works is as important as being a willing vessel that throws yourself out 1% beyond your comfort zone to work in the realm of the Spirit and say, God, I you gotta show up here. I just went, I just said something about Jesus and now I'm terrified.

You're gonna have to show up here. And this person's looking at me in a weird way. Whatever the thing is, the Holy Spirit will equip us for that, for a seeing, saying, and doing. And so here's a challenge today on this Pentecost Sunday. The challenge is do you want to recalibrate back to the source? Or if you've never known Jesus, and I'm trying to act as much as I can like John the Baptist saying they're Jesus, this is Jesus, this is who he is. And you say, I want to know and follow Jesus. Today can be that way.

Say we, we live in a desperate world. You know that. I don't need to tell you that desperate. And it's gonna get more desperate. And we wanna believe believers that make a difference. I don't wanna escape into heaven as if through the flames like, Hey, you did a bunch of outer courtyard work. It was awesome, it was great, but we got no use for that up here. You really didn't start at defeated Jesus.

And your passion wasn't making Jesus known. It was about your own ego. It was about whatever the thing is to move forward. So a few years ago, we had on Pentecost Sunday where we invited anybody who wanted to be anointed with the Holy Spirit, to ask the Holy Spirit to, to, to be anointed, uh, and to be blessed on this Pentecost Sunday to come forward.

And we were here and we have oil, we had this eucalyptus, well it's actually olive oil and eucalyptus. So if you are allergic to eucalyptus, just do it like that or something. But if you come forward, we wanna anoint you today. If you come forward today, they do this in churches all over the world, Catholic churches in different places on Pentecost.

But if you come forward with your hands like this, we're gonna have, uh, some couples and some people that have been leaders at the church up here today. They're gonna anoint your hands if you come forward. We're gonna anoint your hands as we close the service. And then if you come forward with your hands down like this, they're gonna anoint your forehead and they're gonna say, I bless you in the name of the Father, son and the Holy Spirit. All right, Anin you the name of the fathers son and the Holy Spirit. It is symbolic.

There's no magic. Although the Bible says when we're anointed, God does something, as we visibly say, I'm willing to take a a physical step. So that's how we're going to end the service today. And then there's one other, uh, caveat if you wanna be baptized today. I threw this one at the last minute cause I was liking what John said and people just rolled up to John fully clothed and got baptized.

If you wanna be baptized today, we filled the tub. Pastor Harry is gonna be in the tub. And if you say I've not been baptized and I wanna be baptized, I went to Costco and I got, cause I love Costco and I got black drawstring shorts in every side and black t-shirts and every size. And if you want to be, I'm not playing. If you wanna be baptized today after the service, we're gonna baptize you.

Pastor Harry's gonna do it. He'll be up there. I made him get in the tub. Uh, and we're gonna do that. And uh, this is Pentecost Sunday. So.