Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Foreign church. We are thrilled you decided to listen to our teaching on your favorite podcast app. If you made a decision to follow Christ today, would you let us know by visiting yes.newlife Gillette.com Here is this week's teaching.
[00:00:27] Good morning.
[00:00:29] How are you all this morning?
[00:00:31] Well, there are certainly a lot of you out there this morning. That is amazing.
[00:00:36] Hey, yeah, you can clap about that.
[00:00:41] We're going to be in Joshua chapter four, Joshua chapter four this morning. While you're turning there, I want to say good morning to everybody joining us on Church 307 over at the prison, at the jail, anywhere you're watching from. We're glad that you're here and all of you in the room, so glad that you're here this morning.
[00:00:57] Today, if you're following along in the Becoming book, then you know we are talking about sacraments. Now, some of you, I say the word sacrament and you imagine someone in dark robes swinging an incense thing around a dark room. That's not where we're going this morning. We're going to talk about why God commands us to do things like communion and baptism. So Joshua chapter four, we're going to start reading in verse one. But before we start reading, I don't know if any of you have had a week like this, but over the last seven days or so, for me, it feels like just about everything that could possibly go wrong has gone wrong.
[00:01:35] Basement flooded, called in all hunters, no elk this morning. We've been scrambling.
[00:01:43] We have almost run out of baptism T shirts where we've been. Yeah, it feels like we've been trying to catch up. And normally I don't know if it's my personality, if I'm a skeptic or what, but I would just say it's a bad day, it's a bad week. But this morning I've become convinced that the enemy knew what God wanted to do this morning and he was doing everything in his power to distract and get in the way. So I just want to ask you, even as we're listening, as these people are going to get baptized, would you pray? Would you pray with me that nothing would inhibit what the Holy Spirit is going to do here this morning? Amen.
[00:02:23] All right. Joshua chapter 4. Starting in verse 1, when the whole nation had finished crossing the Jordan, the Lord said to Joshua, choose 12 men from among the people, one from each tribe, and tell them to take up 12 stones from the middle of the Jordan from right where the priests are standing and carry them over with you and put them down at the place where you stay tonight. So Joshua called together the 12 men he had appointed from the Israelites, one from each tribe, and said to them, go over before the ark of the Lord your God into the middle of the Jordan. Each of you is to take up a stone on his shoulder according to the number of the tribes of the Israelites, 12. To serve as a sign among you. In the future, when your children ask you, what do these stones mean?
[00:03:05] Tell them that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the Ark of the covenant of the Lord. When it crossed the Jordan river, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. These stones are to be a memorial. Everybody say memorial.
[00:03:20] To be a memorial to the people of Israel forever. Let's pray.
[00:03:26] Jesus, we are here for you, for your word.
[00:03:30] Nothing else matters.
[00:03:31] We take communion because of you. We get baptized because of you.
[00:03:36] We sing the songs because of you.
[00:03:39] We preach and teach and listen and give up our Sunday mornings because of you.
[00:03:45] So anything that you want to say, let it echo in our hearts.
[00:03:49] Anything that's my opinions, let us notice it and reject it.
[00:03:55] We need you to move this morning.
[00:04:00] Amen.
[00:04:03] Married people.
[00:04:04] Where are the married people at? Yeah. All right.
[00:04:07] Don't email my wife for what I'm about to say.
[00:04:12] Our anniversary, not my favorite day of the year.
[00:04:16] I know. I told her I was going to say it just for the wreck. She okayed this, so don't email her. Don't email me, don't email Mike.
[00:04:24] We're good.
[00:04:25] Not my favorite day of the year. I mean, first off, we both work in a church, and we made the mistake of getting married, like, right around Easter. So that makes it complicated. But also, there's 365 days in a year. There's a lot of competition, right? There's Christmas, turkey season, opening day of rifle. I mean, there's a lot going on to compete with it, right? You know, and I mean, it's a day. Sometimes it's a good day, sometimes it's a stressful day. Like, it's a day. And also stepping into more tenuous waters. The day it celebrates was not my favorite day of my life either.
[00:04:59] Now, let me say this clearly. I'm happy I got married. Second best decision I've ever made.
[00:05:03] Change my life for the better. Love every day of it.
[00:05:07] I didn't love the process of a wedding ceremony. First off, I hate dressing up. I hate it. I don't understand who decided that we should tie a rope around our necks for fashion?
[00:05:19] I think it's ridiculous.
[00:05:21] I don't like it.
[00:05:23] And it's a lot of pressure. And then you go to a party full of people, you sort of know that you have to act like you're their best friend because they gave you a gift afterwards.
[00:05:32] And it's just. It wasn't my favorite day, right?
[00:05:37] We celebrate it. In fact, we mark it every year because it matters.
[00:05:41] Even though, like, in terms of all the days that have happened since then, it wasn't like, the most fun or the most enjoyable of all of those days. Same thing with birthdays, actually, right? We mark the birthday. If you've ever been present for a birth, you know that the miracle of life is horrifying and that husbands are not supposed to be in the waiting room when it happens. So I did my job and the doctor was like, do you want to catch him? And I was like, absolutely not.
[00:06:06] No. I want you to wipe them off and hand them to me.
[00:06:10] Really, really happy that it happened. Love, my son. He's sitting over here today. Absolutely incredible. Our life has been so much better since it happened, right? But a birthday is just a day.
[00:06:22] March 2, every year is a day. It's a day that we assign significance.
[00:06:27] An anniversary is just a day. It's a day that we decide matters, but it's just a day we don't decide. It matters because the ceremony was the best day of our lives, necessarily. For some of us it was. For some of us, it was stressful. We don't decide to celebrate a birthday because the birth was the best day of our lives, because birth is a painful process.
[00:06:49] This morning we're talking about sacraments. And in that word, you can probably pick out the word sacred. A sacrament is really just something that's sacred.
[00:06:58] And when we say something is sacred, here's what we're saying. We're saying it's set apart because of its significance.
[00:07:06] There's a day or there's a thing, or there's a song that you listen to or a movie that you watch with your friends or a cabin in the mountains you go to with your family every five years, that's set apart. It's not like all the others, because it's significant to you or because it's significant to all of us. That's what we mean, really, when we said that something is sacred, we set it apart because it's significant.
[00:07:32] Now we celebrate an anniversary. We celebrate a birthday not necessarily because it's the best day, but because it marks a day that something happened. It's going to be right here.
[00:07:48] Something happened.
[00:07:50] And every Day since then has been different.
[00:07:55] We would have been just as married at the courthouse.
[00:07:59] It wasn't the ceremony, it was that something happened. We made a decision. We made a commitment. And every day since then has been different.
[00:08:08] My son was born, and every day has been different. And every day has been better. Even with the lost sleep and the stress and all of it, every day has been different. And every day has been better.
[00:08:18] So we mark it every year because it was significant to us. Something happened. And since then, every day since then has been different.
[00:08:30] So the people of Israel are coming up to the Jordan River. If you have seen the documentary Prince of Egypt, then you know the story that came before that joke. It's not a documentary. It's just a Wonderful cartoon by DreamWorks.
[00:08:42] If you've seen it, you know they were set free from Egypt. Out in the wilderness. God parted the Red Sea. But as soon as this miracle happens, almost as soon as the miracle happens, the people start to grumble and complain and lose faith in God. They saw him literally set them free from the empire of the world at the time and part a sea so that they could cross on dry land. And they get into the wilderness and they start getting tired of the food God miraculously provides. And they start questioning whether it was good what he did.
[00:09:08] So God confuses them, basically. They wonder in the wilderness for 40 years now. You got to imagine this to see what's going on. They weren't lost in the wilderness, all right? This wasn't like they were somewhere back in the Wind River Range with no compass. All right? This would be like all of us in, right, unable to find Gillette. Like they were right outside of the Promised Land, wandering in the wilderness there, but God was keeping them out.
[00:09:34] Finally, the generations change. Faith is restored. And God leads the people, with a new leader, Joshua, into the Promised Land. And he leads them to the Jordan river, which is the border of the Promised Land.
[00:09:47] And God wants to mark the moment, so he sends the priests carrying the Ark of the Covenant. The Ark of the Covenant is basically a box, really fancy box that contains the representation of the presence of God with the people. It's a sacred thing, significant because of what it means.
[00:10:03] And the Ark goes out into the water. And when the priest carrying the Ark, when their foot touches the water, the water stops, which you have to imagine the water's flowing, but it stops. So I don't know, does it pile up? I don't know what happened. I don't understand the mechanics of it. But the river stops and the People cross in dry land into the promise that God's given to them. Then God commands Joshua, tell one guy from each tribe, there are 12 tribes to go out into the middle of the river and get a stone. Why the middle of the river?
[00:10:32] Any of you fishermen?
[00:10:35] Some of us. Okay, a few. If you've hung out in a river at all, you know, you would never confuse a river stone for a regular stone, right?
[00:10:42] Because the river makes the stone look different.
[00:10:45] The river polishes the stone smooth. You can look at two rocks and tell which one came out of a river and which one didn't. So they go to the middle of the river and they pick up these large stones, they heft these stones, and they pull them from the middle of the river. River stones. So that everyone who looks at them knows the only way they could have come out of the river is if the water had stopped. Because they're from the bottom of the river and they're river stones. And he brings them to the bank and sets them up on the bank. And what does he say? This will be a memorial for and for your children and for your generations. This will signify that something happened.
[00:11:23] And every day has been different since then.
[00:11:27] Something happened, and we're in the promised land.
[00:11:31] Now you might be thinking, why couldn't they just remember? I mean, it's cool. Why couldn't they just remember?
[00:11:38] God knows something about all of us. About you and about me.
[00:11:43] You probably know, too.
[00:11:46] It's this right here. We have a bad memory for good things.
[00:11:54] Have you ever noticed that?
[00:11:56] You ever been in an argument with someone you care about? Someone that you love? Friend, roommate, spouse? Children, parents? Something like that? Maybe you're arguing about the fact that once again, they didn't clean up their clothes.
[00:12:08] Yeah, but that's not what you're arguing about anymore, is it? Right? Because now you're not arguing about the fact there was laundry on the floor. You're arguing about the fact that there was laundry on the floor last week and last month. And you're arguing about the fact that they don't load the dishwasher. Right? And you're arguing about the fact that they keep leaving the car almost on empty. And you're leaving about the fact that one time they bailed on you when you were dating. And you're arguing about the mean thing they said when you were 10. Right? All of a sudden you're arguing about everything.
[00:12:35] Because in that moment, every bad thing that's ever done comes back into the argument. We remember the bad things now. We would forget that that whole week the laundry has been picked up because all we can remember is the one time that it wasn't. We'll forget every flowers that were bought, every kind thing that was said. When we're angry about one unkind thing that was said, we have a bad memory for good things now. It's obvious in these trivial, you know, silly arguments that we all see on sitcoms. You know, we get that.
[00:13:09] But it happens in way more significant areas.
[00:13:14] You can lose £25. You'll go to the mirror, the only thing you'll see is the 25 you haven't lost yet.
[00:13:22] The only thing you'll see, you can work your way up at your job, put in the effort, get raise after raise, management and on. And the only thing you'll see is that your brother did it faster, that your dad made it farther by your age, that you're just renting, but your friends own a house.
[00:13:45] We can't see the good.
[00:13:47] All we see is the bad. You could be clean for a year, sober for a year, fall off the wagon one day, and that one day turns into a month because we convince ourselves that the whole year of sobriety didn't matter because of one day that we failed. And we will trash a year of good for a day of bad.
[00:14:08] Because we can't remember the good.
[00:14:11] All we can see is the bad.
[00:14:14] And we do it with God.
[00:14:17] We know we're loved.
[00:14:19] We know it, read it in scripture, sing it in songs, hear it in sermons.
[00:14:25] But when we actually go to the Lord, the only thing we can think about is every failure and every sin.
[00:14:32] We know he loves us objectively, but when it matters, we can't remember it. All we can remember is how we promised we would stop and we didn't stop. We promised we would change, and we didn't change.
[00:14:50] We can remember every prayer that we don't feel like was answered.
[00:14:57] Everyone.
[00:14:59] But we can forget the one that was answered last week.
[00:15:07] This is part of being a human. You know, I think we could see a miracle today. We could see someone pass away in the service and stand back up after prayer. And a week later, half of us would be saying, did we really see that?
[00:15:19] Was that just a trick?
[00:15:21] Maybe. Maybe he just passed out.
[00:15:25] We've got a bad memory for good things.
[00:15:30] So what does God do?
[00:15:32] He says, set up a memorial.
[00:15:37] Set up a reminder. Do you see how merciful that is of God? I don't know about you, but I have a tendency to say, it's your job to remember it's. Not my job to remind you. I've actually said that to my son. I probably should work on it after this sermon.
[00:15:49] Don't listen to that.
[00:15:53] You see how merciful that is of God, that he would say instead of, get your act together. You see what all I've done for you? Write it down. No, he said, I will remind you. I know you can't remember. I know you'll forget, so I will remind you.
[00:16:09] Let me remind you of the good things I've done for you. So you know you can still trust me.
[00:16:15] In the Old Testament, God gave the Israelites these stones, among other things. In the New Testament, Jesus gave us communion and baptism, these things we call sacraments because they are sacred, they're significant, and we set them apart.
[00:16:31] Now, we don't take communion because the bread is special.
[00:16:36] Those of you who are in the gluten free station with me know that it's basically paper and we suffer under the curse together. That's okay. God is still good.
[00:16:46] We take communion not because there's anything magic about the juice, not because this bread has been just blessed and other bread hasn't been blessed. So this bread contains some sort of magical significance that other bread doesn't. We don't take this communion to ensure that our soul gets to heaven or to ensure that our sins are washed away. We take this communion because something happened.
[00:17:12] And every day has been different since then. Mike read it earlier. In First Corinthians 11, Paul reminds us that Christ, the night he was betrayed, he said, this is my body broken for you. Every time you eat, do so in remembrance of me. This is my blood poured out for the salvation of many. Every time you drink, do so in remembrance of me. That's why we take communion. So I come to the communion table not trying to gain some blessing or some magic thing from God, but I come to the communion table because some days I come to church and I don't want to be in the building because I know what I did last night and I know what my Internet search history is. And I know the thing I said to my son that I can't keep, I can't get out of my mind. And I know that my marriage is basically falling apart and I don't know if it's going to reconcile. And I know all of those things and I feel like a failure. And I let myself and God and everyone in my life down. But I come to the communion table to remind myself so that God can remind me. Because I touch and I taste and I see. And if I can take the bread and the juice, then maybe something did happen.
[00:18:14] And if something happens, then I am loved no matter what. If something happened, then God loves me and he's got me in a love that will never let me go. And if my marriage is about to fall apart, I can still come to him. And if my Internet search history is embarrassing, I can still come to him. And if I got fired this week, I can still come to him. Why? Because something happened.
[00:18:36] And it's different now.
[00:18:38] It's different now.
[00:18:42] I come to communion. I come to communion, and maybe I know there's something. Something that I need to obey.
[00:18:47] Maybe I know that God is saying to start tithing or to break up with that person or to begin reading my Bible or, I don't know, to pursue a different job or change my career. And I know it. But I don't want to do it. Ever been there? I have.
[00:18:59] You know it.
[00:19:01] You don't want to do it.
[00:19:03] So you take communion. And some days we take communion and we're not excited about it because we know.
[00:19:08] We know that the bread and the juice are sacred because something happened.
[00:19:15] And if Jesus can give his life for me, then I can give my career or my relationship status or my finances to him.
[00:19:25] I take communion because something happened. And if it actually happened, everything is different now.
[00:19:32] So communion comforts me when I'm lost and alone, and it challenges me to obey. Why? Because something happened. In just a few moments, we're going to do baptisms once again. This baptism, this water is not holy water. We don't give out holy water. There is no such thing as holy water.
[00:19:53] There's no water that can wash you cleaner than any other. We don't pray a prayer over the water to get some spiritual value to it.
[00:20:00] You don't get saved by getting baptized. Baptism does not save you.
[00:20:06] Baptism is like a wedding ring. Anybody got a wedding ring on?
[00:20:10] I've got a wedding ring, right? You know, if I stop wearing my wedding ring, that's probably a bad sign, right?
[00:20:15] The wedding ring means something happened and everything's different. Doesn't it?
[00:20:20] Says something about my commitments and my loyalties and my faithfulness and who my life is aligned with.
[00:20:27] We get baptized because something happened. Jesus died and he rose again. And we get baptized to declare publicly to the world as Jesus commanded us to do, that we are with him. My wedding ring is a public declaration that I am with Jen. My baptism is a public declaration that I am with Christ. And I go under the water because Christ went under the ground, and I come up out of the water. Because Jesus rose from the dead, defeating sin and death. And Paul said that if one died for all, then all died. So I take on myself a symbol of the death of Jesus, saying, my old life is gone, my sin is gone. I'm not enslaved, I'm not trapped. I am set free in Christ. Praise Jesus. My life is with him now because he died to give me new life. That's what I say when I get baptized. And when we do these sacramental things, when we do these sacraments, the Lord meets us in them because he commanded them. Anytime we obey, the Lord meets us, informs us.
[00:21:27] But we do these things that aren't magic. They're not anything like that. But the Lord meets us when we obey him, and he meets us in the heart. In our heart. So the communion and baptism give us strength and passion and depth. Why? Because they matter. Something happened, and everything's been different since then.
[00:21:46] So today we're doing baptisms for people who have signed up. But we have another invitation.
[00:21:53] There are some of us here. Mathematically, I can guarantee it. You're a follower of Jesus. You would say, I believe in Jesus, I trust Christ, and you've never been baptized.
[00:22:01] Just want to tell you, baptism is like the wedding ring.
[00:22:05] Should probably wear a wedding ring. Wedding ring.
[00:22:08] You should probably get baptized. Jesus commands his followers to get baptized.
[00:22:14] I just want to ask you, did something happen?
[00:22:16] Do you see how beautiful what happened is that Christ died to give you new life.
[00:22:23] Today, what I want to invite you to do, if you have not been baptized, or if you were baptized as an infant and since then have made a knowledgeable and knowing decision to follow Jesus in new life. We don't baptize infants. We believe it is the knowledgeable declaration, when I am old enough to know what I am doing, that I decide to follow Christ. So if you have never made the decision, old enough to know what it means to get baptized, deciding to follow Jesus, then I want to invite you to do that. My friends Brooklyn and Richard are going to be over here. We're going to sing a song in just a minute. Our baptism. Our people are getting baptized, are going to be lined up, and Brooklyn and Richard are going to be over here, and I want to ask you just to walk over there and say, hey, I want to get baptized. And they're going to give you a T shirt if we have any left, and they're going to help you fill out a little story and you can get baptized right now. Yes, you will have wet pants. I don't know what to do about that. It's worth it. I promise. Get baptized today.
[00:23:16] Don't wait.
[00:23:17] Don't wait. Get baptized today.
[00:23:21] Something happened, my friends. And everything is different now. Here's the last thing I'm going to tell you.
[00:23:28] There are probably still some of us here who are saying, cj, what happened?
[00:23:33] What happened?
[00:23:35] You keep saying that and you keep hinting at it, but what happened.
[00:23:39] What happened was that you and I sinned. You know it, we know it. It's obvious. You don't need me to convince you. It's in the way we can say words that somehow cut so deeply that we remember for the rest of our lives. All the way up to wars and violence and assassinations and school shootings. It's in everything.
[00:23:57] It's in divorces. It's in pornography. It's in affairs. It's in selfishness. It's in violence. It's in greed. It's everywhere.
[00:24:06] Sin separates us from God. Paul wrote again that the wages of sin is death. Which means when we work in sin, sin pays something. What sin pays is death. Eternal death. Separation from God. Not just physical death. God is life.
[00:24:20] John, chapter one. The life and light of all men.
[00:24:25] God is life. Sin separates us from him and pays death. The only way to get life back is to be reconciled to God.
[00:24:33] But death has to get paid.
[00:24:37] So what did God do? He didn't say.
[00:24:41] He didn't say, get your act together.
[00:24:44] He didn't say, you should have known better. It's all true. But he didn't say it.
[00:24:49] He said, no. If death has to get paid, it can pay me.
[00:24:54] The only one who didn't deserve it.
[00:24:57] The only one who didn't earn the wages of sin.
[00:25:01] He said, I will pay it for you so that you can be reconciled. Free from sin, reconciled to God, part of his family again. Adopted into sonship and daughtership. As Paul wrote again, you can be with Christ. So God came fully human in the form of Jesus. He became human. Jesus, God himself lived the life we couldn't live. Perfection. He resisted the temptation. He resisted the sin. He resisted the selfishness. So that he. That he didn't owe anything himself. And then he went up on the cross voluntarily. No one made him do it. He was God. He could command anything. But he voluntarily did it.
[00:25:42] To take our sin and our separation and our death.
[00:25:47] To give us his life.
[00:25:51] His life.
[00:25:53] He. He lived the life we couldn't live, took the death we can't handle, to give us A life we don't deserve.
[00:26:02] That's what happened. So that you came in here today thinking you don't belong in a church. Well, you do. Why? Because something happened.
[00:26:11] You came in here today and you've got secrets that you pray every day. No one finds out about.
[00:26:15] Everything's different now. Something happened. You're welcome here. You came here today actively worshiping another God. The devil. Participating in witchcraft. You are welcome here because something happened and everything's different now. There is nothing you could do that would keep you from Jesus if you are in Christ. And there's nothing you could do that would keep you from this church if you're in Christ. Because something's different now.
[00:26:38] Everything's different now. Something happened.
[00:26:41] This is what I want to invite you to do. I'm going to ask everyone, everyone here to close your eyes. I know it's weird. I know pastors do it all the time and it feels weird. It's just so people don't feel looked at.
[00:26:50] Should close your eyes with me. Everybody. I can see it if you're not.
[00:26:55] If you're here today and you've never trusted Christ, and maybe today you finally realize something actually did happen. And if it actually did happen, then everything actually is different.
[00:27:07] I'm just going to pray a prayer, and you can pray it right after me.
[00:27:10] It's not magic. The words aren't sacred. It's just to help start a conversation. But if you want to give your life to Christ today, here's what I want you to do. I just want you to pray quietly. You don't have to say it out loud.
[00:27:22] Just repeat this after me.
[00:27:24] Jesus, I trust you.
[00:27:27] I believe that you died and rose again to forgive my sin.
[00:27:34] Heal my heart.
[00:27:37] I make you the Lord of my life now and forever.
[00:27:44] Amen.
[00:27:46] Amen.
[00:27:47] If you pray that prayer for the first time today and you genuinely meant it, then everything's different.
[00:27:55] Because something happened 2,000 years ago, but it happened in your heart right now. Right now.
[00:28:00] And this is what I'm going to ask you to do again.
[00:28:03] Bravest thing you can do.
[00:28:05] Scariest thing anyone in a church can ask you to do.
[00:28:09] If something really did happen, if you just gave your life to Christ, or if you've given your life to Christ before but never been baptized. While we sing a chorus and a bridge of this song, I want you to walk over to the line. I want you to talk to my friends over here. Richard and Corey are right there. Brooklyn will be over there, too.
[00:28:25] I want you to talk to them and I want you to say. I want to get baptized. I gave my life to Christ.
[00:28:30] Don't wait until tomorrow.
[00:28:32] Something happens.
[00:28:34] Don't wait.
[00:28:36] It already happened.
[00:28:40] Let's pray.
[00:28:44] Jesus, you are good and your love endures forever. Your faithfulness covers us.
[00:28:55] We believe that everything's different because something happens.
[00:29:01] And we love you.
[00:29:03] Amen.
