Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Hey, New Life Gillette 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.
[00:00:25] Well, good morning once again. If you have your Bibles, go ahead and open up to First Samuel, chapter seven. And we're going to be in verse 12 today. But we have some exciting things happening just after the message here. We're going to be celebrating some baptisms. How awesome is that?
[00:00:44] And we are also in week two of our series of While I Breathe, I hope. But if you have your Bibles, let's go to First Samuel, chapter 7, verse 12.
[00:00:56] Then Samuel took a stone and and he set it up between Mitzvah and Shen and called its name Ebenezer. For he said, till now, the Lord has helped us. Let's pray.
[00:01:12] Gracious Heavenly Father, I pray that you move me to the background and that you would come forth and take control.
[00:01:20] That, Lord, you would reveal your character, your love, and who you are.
[00:01:26] That we know your truth.
[00:01:28] We love you. And we pray this in Jesus name.
[00:01:32] Amen.
[00:01:34] In 2015, my brother graduated from his master's degree in a university in Trenton, New Jersey.
[00:01:44] And so my entire family went on a trip to the East Coast. We got to see him walk across the stage. But while we were there, we ended up in Boston. And we were like, we should do some sightseeing. There is so much history.
[00:01:58] Like, do we go to the Boston Tea Party? All these things, right?
[00:02:02] And as we're in our hotel room and we're scrolling through Google, we come across that Plymouth rock is only 40 miles from us. And I'm like, let's go there. How awesome would it be to be in the place where the Mayflower touched down on American soil that I would be able to stand where the Pilgrims stood? Like, I am just so pumped. And so we decide to go there. We travel the 40 miles. And I want to tell you something. When you park your car, the person who designed this memorial, the exhibit, really, really, really was trying to set people up for disappointment.
[00:02:50] Here's what you see. This is what you see. Like, man, doesn't that look awesome? Like, it looks like a mini Abe Lincoln should be in there. It looks like the Partheon. Like, you are just so excited to look at what you're gonna see at Plymouth Rock. So I went up through those pillars and there's this black fence there. And I put myself against the black fence And I look down, and this is what I see.
[00:03:18] It's a rock. Like, come on now. I don't know what I was expecting, but I wasn't expecting that.
[00:03:26] And you know what's even more like, at that time, even more frustrating is that you find out this information that this rock is probably not even the original rock.
[00:03:37] Right. Like, isn't that frustrating? It's been moved. It's been broken. It's not even the original size.
[00:03:43] At this point, I'm more interested in the lobster roll stand across the street than I am at looking at this rock.
[00:03:52] Yes.
[00:03:54] But I couldn't get this out of my head. Like, why?
[00:04:00] Why preserve this rock if it's not even the real thing? Like, why preserve it? The more you think about this rock, the more frustrated you get.
[00:04:09] So I decided to do some research, and I started to think on it harder, and what I came across is that this rock represents freedom, that this rock represented new beginnings, that this rock became a sacred marker for the colonists in the revolutionary war.
[00:04:31] And then it hit me.
[00:04:34] The rock itself isn't significant.
[00:04:38] It's what the rock represents that gives it its significance.
[00:04:44] It became something the people wanted to preserve, to remember the story behind it.
[00:04:52] See, something is sacred because of its significance.
[00:04:58] And that's what we see here in first Samuel.
[00:05:02] Samuel places the rock. Now, let me give you some history here.
[00:05:09] At this time in Israel, the Israelites are in the time of the judges and the kings in between the time and the judges kings. Samuel is the last judge. He's also a prophet of God. And at this time, the Philistines are oppressing the Israelites. They've gone into many battles, and Israel keeps losing, keeps losing. Israel at one point thought it was a good idea to take the ark of the covenant out of the holies of holies, out of the tabernacle, bring it into the war camp, okay? And they're gonna like, yeah, we've got the ark with us. We're definitely gonna win this battle. This is, like, where the presence of God resides. And guess what? They lose the battle, and the Philistines take the ark. And this is where it gets really weird. And I encourage you, go read this. Is that weird stuff starts happening to the Philistines. And so they're like, I don't want this. So they pass it on to the next philistine town, and they don't want this. And they hot potato with the ark of the covenant. And eventually they're like, we're done with this. We're sending it into the wilderness.
[00:06:12] And when they send it into the wilderness, somehow it miraculously makes it way back to Israel. And it is at this time that Samuel calls Israel back to repentance.
[00:06:26] He says to put away your false gods.
[00:06:29] And Israel starts to repent.
[00:06:32] They start to confess their sin. They start fasting as a nation.
[00:06:37] And Samuel says, well, go gather at mitzvah all together.
[00:06:42] And they do that. But the Philistines hear about it and they're like, let's go attack them at mitzvah.
[00:06:49] And the Israelites are scared. They see the army and they plead out to Samuel. And they're like, samuel, cry out to the Lord for us. Cry out to the Lord for us. So Samuel starts to intercede and cry out to God for them. And so when the Philistines come, come to attack, God sends this thunderous boom.
[00:07:10] And the Philistines are scared and confused. They don't know what just happened. And they start to retreat. And at that time, Israel comes in and wins the battle. But this is when something interesting happens.
[00:07:24] Samuel takes the stone and places it between shen and.
[00:07:32] And mitzvah.
[00:07:34] And he says, he calls the stone Ebenezer, which is stone of help.
[00:07:41] And he says, thus far, the Lord has helped us. See, this stone was just an ordinary stone, but it was pointing to something more significant. It was pointing to where God had helped them. Can you imagine when people would walk from Shem the Mitzvah that they would walk across? They would see the stone, they would touch the stone, and their children would be like, why are you touching the stone? Why is it here? And they would be like, this is where God heard us. God helped us and God delivered us.
[00:08:14] It reminds us that God is faithful.
[00:08:18] See, the stone was not significant.
[00:08:23] It pointed to what was significant, God's work. And this is really helpful to understand what we call sacraments. See, sacraments are tangible expressions of the hope that God has given us.
[00:08:38] Samuel places a stone to point Israel back to what God has done. In a similar way, Jesus has given us sacraments to point us back to his savings work.
[00:08:54] The two sacraments are communion and baptism.
[00:09:02] At the table of communion, think about when you came up today, you took the bread and you dipped it and you partook. But what is to be reminded for us when we partake in this is that Jesus broke his body for us.
[00:09:22] We take the bread, that Jesus shed his blood for us, that he took on sin for us, that he rose again, that you can say that I am loved, I am forgiven, My debt has been paid in full, I have A future. I have a hope.
[00:09:43] Every time we partake in communion, we're supposed to be reminded of what Jesus has done. And this is the same thing that happens in baptism.
[00:09:54] In baptism, when we go down in the water, we are saying, our old life, our old person, our old self is done with, is dead in the water, and we're coming back up in new life.
[00:10:10] Your sin, your shame, your guilt is left in the water, and you rise up in new life because your old life is dead in the grave with Christ and your new life is risen with Him.
[00:10:26] But these two sacraments reveal something about us.
[00:10:31] It reveals that we are forgetful.
[00:10:37] Say it with me. We are forgetful. Don't forget that, right? Like, honestly, how many of you here have misplaced your car keys and you forgot where you placed them? Like, right? Or your wallet or your phone?
[00:10:55] Like, we forget little things all the time. I actually believe that 50 to 80% of marital arguments are happening because we forgot where we placed our keys. Am I the only one?
[00:11:07] A couple? Okay, there's more than first service. I don't feel so bad. But at least in our household, right? Like, we forget little things all the time, but we also forget significant things.
[00:11:24] We forget that we made vows to our wife or our husband to be faithful to them.
[00:11:30] And we go in a back room and we look on a computer, on images we shouldn't look at, or we start talking to people, or we start going to the bars and places we shouldn't be. And we promise that we.
[00:11:41] We promised that we would never do that, and yet we forgot it already.
[00:11:47] We forget the promises that we've made to our children.
[00:11:50] And when they see repeating and breaking that promise, we don't even realize it because we forgot it until it's too late.
[00:12:00] We forget that we made promises to stop this addiction time and time again.
[00:12:11] We forgot where our identity lies. And we've placed our hope in things that will fail us.
[00:12:21] Maybe that's a job, maybe that's a relationship, maybe that's a hobby.
[00:12:29] And when we do that, we start to put our guard down in exactly what the enemy wants. Because at that point, the enemy is going to come in, start to whisper lies.
[00:12:40] You're not good enough.
[00:12:44] Are you really a follower of Jesus?
[00:12:50] And it's all because we are forgetful.
[00:12:54] And Jesus gives us the sacraments. He gives us communion, he gives us baptism to help us remember that Jesus is our good enough, that we have a hope.
[00:13:13] Look, in Samuel's day, they would place stones all the time, or about six times it was common throughout the Old Testament that we have, and it was to point back to what God has done. And they put this marker to remember that in our day, it's a flag.
[00:13:33] And that's exactly what baptism is. Baptism is planting the flag that I can say while I breathe. I hope so. When the enemy comes to attack, you can say, do you remember the water?
[00:13:49] Do you remember? My old life is in the water and my new life is here now with Christ.
[00:13:55] We plant the flag.
[00:13:57] We plant the flag while I breathe. I hope that's what you're declaring. Imagine if the water was purple paint. I promise it's not for you who are getting baptized today. Okay, but imagine if it was when you went down and you came back up. Would you be different?
[00:14:19] Exactly.
[00:14:21] You'd be covered in purple paint. That's what you're proclaiming, that when you believed with your heart and you confess with your mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord and that God raised him from the dead, something happened and everything is different. And now you're publicly proclaiming that in baptism, you're planting the flag and saying, I am made new.
[00:14:45] I had the privilege at my old position as an assistant pastor in Rapid City to speak with missionaries all over the world.
[00:15:00] And one of these missionaries lived in Africa, and the population they were ministering to was 99.9% Muslim.
[00:15:11] And I was reading their newsletter before I was having a zoom call with them, and I saw that they had three baptisms. I was like, oh, that's so cool. That's amazing, right?
[00:15:22] And so I get on the zoom call, I ask him how he's doing, and I was like, hey, I was reading your newsletter. I saw that you had three that were baptized. How cool is that? And he's like, mark, you don't understand.
[00:15:34] And his voice broke down and he says, mark, in America, when you get baptized, it's celebrated, and then you continue on, and that's great.
[00:15:51] But here you can.
[00:15:54] When you get baptized, Those that get baptized get shunned by their entire family, by their entire community, often end up homeless, all because they decided to declare Jesus publicly. Look, they can say they believe in Jesus. They can even read the Bible, but the moment they are baptized is when the entire community takes them seriously because they proclaimed it publicly.
[00:16:30] And his whole point was this is that if we're going to be all in for Jesus, we go through and we are baptized and we proclaim it publicly. Look, we can't call ourselves a fitness nut if we are not eating healthily and getting a gym membership and going and working out like you just can't. You can't be a hunter if you're not buying the gun. You're not getting a tag. You're not laying out the landscape. You just can't. And go hunting like you're either all in and all out. And if you're all in for Jesus, then you're all in. In baptism, you are going follow through with that.
[00:17:10] There's no exception. Because in baptism, in baptism, you are proclaiming to everyone that while I breathe, I hope that's what's happening.
[00:17:28] And here's the thing.
[00:17:32] There's going to be times where it's hard to hope.
[00:17:37] There's gonna be times where we don't feel like we can press on, that life is not going the way you expected it or you hoped for.
[00:17:51] But Jesus gave us these sacraments.
[00:17:56] And so in those times, we need to remember the table.
[00:18:02] In those times, we need to remember the waters.
[00:18:08] In those times, we need to remember the Ebenezers.
[00:18:13] That point got back to what God has done. Because our hope is in the death and resurrection of Jesus.
[00:18:23] And while I have breath in my lungs, I will remember what he has done for me.
[00:18:32] And while I have breath in my lungs, I will remember what he is doing.
[00:18:41] And for that reason, While I breathe, I hope.
[00:18:52] And we have people today that have signed up for baptism and they are planting the flag.
[00:18:58] They are saying, while I breathe, I hope because of what Jesus did in the grave and when he rose again.
[00:19:06] And they're telling that to everyone.
[00:19:09] And we're gonna celebrate with that. But before we get that, I want to invite you here today. If you have not been baptized, if you have not been all in for Jesus, if you are the one that has not said, I fully surrender and I'm gonna proclaim it publicly.
[00:19:26] Come up today.
[00:19:28] Come up today. Get baptized today.
[00:19:33] Don't let the enemy come in and whisper lies. Here's the thing. Did you notice when the Israelites, when they started to be obedient, the enemy showed up?
[00:19:46] But that didn't scare him away.
[00:19:49] Because God meets us in our obedience.
[00:19:54] God meets us where we're at, and he's there to get us through.
[00:20:00] So if that's you today, and you're the one that you're wondering if you should get up there or not, the answer is get up there.
[00:20:09] Because Jesus is calling.
[00:20:13] Let's pray.
[00:20:16] Gracious Heavenly Father, I'm just so thankful that we can plant the rock in our life of baptism that we can have the reminder through the sweetness of communion, of the work you've done in our lives, and that we get to proclaim it to all and we get to follow you.
[00:20:41] God, we love you so much. And I just pray for those that are getting baptized today, whether that was planned or unplanned, that you remind them that you are with them, that they are planting the flag of hope in their life so they can tell the enemy to get out of here.
[00:21:01] Lord, we love you. We pray this in Jesus name, amen.
