I am ready.
Good morning, saints. This is a marvelous day. I shared with Laura this morning that baptism is a defining moment in a Christian’s life. It is that point where one says, “I am going to be a disciple.”
It should occur when we accept the Lord Jesus Christ, but often—well, sometimes, because of age—there is a need for delay. But there does come a time in every Christian’s life, I believe, when the Lord challenges the heart and says, “It is time for you to be My disciple.”
And that means you have got to lay everything down to follow Him. You have got to bury it in those waters of baptism and come up a new man in Christ.
Today, the subject on my heart really is this matter of baptism. But I will not be sharing directly on baptism. I will be sharing on the lives of three saints from the book of Genesis: Abel, who gave an acceptable sacrifice; Enoch, who walked with God to the extent that he never died, but just walked right into heaven—into paradise; and Noah in his ark.
May the Lord be gracious today.
Lord, we do come to Thee. We realize, Lord, that the things I am sharing on have been shared many, many times. But Lord, I do pray that what is shared will become new and living in our hearts; that, Lord Jesus, once again we could see something of who God is and God’s ways, that we might be a people that know God and not just know about God.
Lord, we come unto Thee. We ask that You bless. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Lord, bless this time. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Well, I have been sharing on God revealing Himself. God is a mystery in the sense that He is Spirit, and there is just no way to know Him unless He decides to show Himself to you.
Each one of us should be grateful, deep down in our hearts, that God—the Almighty, the Creator of the universe—has decided to reveal Himself to you personally. This little dot on this teeny earth, in this vast galaxy of stars and planets—God has reached down and touched your heart personally. What a God. Praise the Lord this morning.
He has decided to reveal Himself, and He does reveal Himself through creation. His power and divinity are known, and even in looking at His creation, man should be touched enough to realize that there is a God—there is a divine power greater than man is. Therefore, man is without excuse in not being willing to submit himself unto God.
Of course, creation is very limited in its ability to show us who God is. God sent us the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the exact image, the exact nature, of the Godhead. All the fullness of the Godhead dwelt in Him.
So, if you want to know who God is, there is no other way except by knowing Jesus Christ. Yes, you can learn a little bit about Him through the Bible and through knowledge, but you cannot know Him without really knowing Jesus Christ.
Yesterday, I was reading a book that is being taught in the Methodist Church. Basically, it said that our Lord was killed because of His political stance, and not because it was His mission to die on Calvary’s cross.
Oh, I feel sorry for those multitudes who are being taught this, because they will go through life thinking that they are okay and that they do not need the Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ. They recognize Him as a man—a good man. “You should emulate Him,” it says. But how can this fallen flesh ever emulate our Lord Jesus Christ? You must be born again, brothers and sisters.
Oh, in my heart, I get fired up when I hear this kind of gospel going out. It touches me deeply that such another gospel is so prevalent in the churches today.
Our heart is to know God. He does want to reveal Himself, and it is through His Son, Jesus Christ. He has given us this Word, which is the full revelation of Christ. This book is about Christ.
If you want to know who Christ is, if you want to meet the Lord Jesus Christ and have Him as a person in your life, then you need to read this book to find out who He is. God has given this to give us a further revelation of Himself through Jesus Christ.
You cannot just read this with your mind. That is what has happened to the man who wrote this book. It is an intellectual look at the Bible, and it perverts the entire book. You can only read it in the power of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit has to enlighten you as to what this really means, because they have taken every precious Scripture and turned it on its ear to what it is not.
So today I say, brothers and sisters, our sister Laura said she was touched by the fact that she needed to read this Word. Brothers and sisters, I pray that we are all touched in that way. We need to know what the Word of God says, that we not be deceived in this day of a false gospel.
May the Lord really reveal Himself to all of us. I think the real issue in this particular case is that the person really never has encountered our Lord Jesus Christ Himself. And that makes all the difference.
God does want to reveal Himself. We know that Adam fell. We have been sharing on that. It seemed as if God’s desire to reveal Himself through man might completely be negated by the fall.
But God did provide a way. He put animal skins on Adam and Eve. A sacrifice was made on their behalf that allowed them to go on. Praise the Lord.
Even in man’s fallen situation, God did find a few men through whom He could reveal Himself. They are given to us in the Old Testament. The three men who have a testimony of the Lord’s life and the Lord’s ways in their lives, whom I am going to share on today, are Abel, Enoch, and Noah.
Let us look at Genesis 4:1-10.
Actually, I hope that the baptism today is really a summing up of all that I have to say this morning.
And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord.
And again she bare his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.
And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord.
And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering:
but unto Cain and to his offering He had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell.
And the Lord said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen?
If thou doest well, shall it not be lifted up? and if thou doest not well, sin coucheth at the door: and unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.
And Cain told Abel his brother. And it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him.
And the Lord said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: am I my brother’s keeper?
And He said, What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto Me from the ground.
In the life of Abel, Abel’s life is a testimony to God’s ways and God’s heart. What do we see Abel doing? It says he offered an acceptable sacrifice.
What was this sacrifice? It was a slain lamb that he slew on an altar and brought before God. He offered two things: he offered the blood before God, and he offered the fat before God.
Abel’s name means breath or vanity. You might wonder why. Well, think about it. Abel apparently saw the vanity of life. He saw that he was a sinner. He saw that there needed to be something done before God that recognized what he was and what his life was without God.
Brothers and sisters, our life without God is but a breath. As a matter of fact, the only thing that stands today between your living and your dying is one breath. Our brother Abel saw that he was just a breath—just a breath—here today, gone tomorrow.
He saw that without God, life had no purpose. It was vain, a life of vanity, without purpose, without God. He recognized this.
He had to, obviously. He and Cain, and their parents—they wore the animal skins. I am sure that Adam and Eve had explained to them all about the tree of life, how they had lost access to the tree of life, and how they had been put out of the garden because they had sinned and disobeyed God. They would have known that the same nature was in them and that they needed God.
Brothers and sisters, we do not know why some respond to God and some do not. I can only say, for us who do respond to God’s call, it is by His grace. It is because He pursues us and because He will not let us go. But there are some who just persist like Cain.
Why the blood, brothers and sisters? Why the blood offering? It is because the life is in the blood. Our brother shared on that last Sunday. The life is in the blood.
The blood represents the life of man. You take blood from man, and he dies. The life is in the blood. And this sinful life cannot really exist before God. The blood has to be poured out. A life has to be taken.
God, in His grace and mercy, did not destroy Adam after he sinned, but He allowed him to live because He gave him the skin of those animals—the slain animal.
May I say this? This is God’s way. Some people—the humanists, I call them, the ones that do not know the Lord—say, “He is a bloody God.” How sad. But I want to say this: He is God. He can demand anything of us He wants to. He is God. Who are we to say?
If He had accepted Cain’s offering and said that was acceptable, then that would be the way in which we would follow. We would always be offering up good works to Him as a way to Him. But He did not.
Even our good works, brothers and sisters, are defiled, because mostly our good works are selfish in nature. But He is God.
In His mercy, instead of destroying the one who was disobedient—the one whom He created—He allowed a substitute to take his place in death: that of a slain lamb. Abel recognized this. Abel understood it. Abel received it.
In Hebrews, it says:
Without shedding of blood there is no remission.
Now, after what I read in that book yesterday, I want to repeat that: without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin. It is God’s way.
Abel offered the blood before God because he was a sinner. And he also offered the fat, a burnt offering.
What is the significance of the fat? The blood is for our sins. The fat, burnt before God, represents a life dedicated to God. It represents, really, the life of Christ in you dedicated to God.
It is a sweet savor to God because what He smells is Christ in your life. What He senses is Christ in your life. So it represents a totally consecrated life of complete obedience and submission to God.
That is what our sister is going to be offering as she goes into the waters of baptism: a life totally committed and consecrated to the Lord, in submission to Him—a life given to God.
Cain’s offering was unacceptable. It was man’s way, not God’s. Actually, the requirement of a life for sin shows you how seriously God considers sin.
Many people, even Christians, brothers and sisters, think that sin is not so serious, that God will just overlook it. He loves you so much that He can just overlook it. But that is not true.
Cain’s life obviously was not consecrated to God. He did not bring what God desired. Instead, he offered Him something that he was willing to give. There was no fat. There was no consecrated life there. He was not willing to submit to God’s way.
He had been taught just as Abel had, but he was unwilling to submit to God in God’s way. You can read it later, but God did judge him. But that is not the point I want to make today. You see, Cain just wanted to appease God.
God confronted him over this matter. I found it very interesting what God said in the Word: “The blood of Abel speaks to Me. I hear the voice of his blood from the ground.”
I want you to know that blood is a very powerful thing. It is the life. This blood, it seems to me, had a voice before God. He saw that blood. He knew it had been shed.
The world would say God is unfair. After all, Cain was a tiller of the ground, and Abel’s natural work was with sheep. It was natural for both of them to bring what they worked with.
In fact, they would say that God was a bit harsh here, that if He had overlooked Cain, if He had not confronted Cain the way He did, then Cain would not have become angry and would not have killed his brother. That is the kind of gospel that is out there, brothers and sisters. It is humanism.
What does this reveal of God? That is what we are after. What is this sacrifice of Abel—not only of the lamb slain, but his own blood being poured out before God? What does that mean? What does it show us of God?
Abel’s life was a testimony of an acceptable sacrifice.
The Word of God says that our Lord Jesus was the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world. It was already in the Godhead. God knew in His foreknowledge that when He created man and man was put to the test, he would fail. He would fail God’s purpose.
So God looked for a way of redemption in which He could restore man, a way in which He would be able to forgive man. But a life would have to be given—not just any life, particularly not the life of fallen man.
There was only One who qualified for that, and that was His only Son, Jesus.
I do not know the conversation that went on between the Son and His Father. But I believe the Father said, “There is going to have to be an acceptable sacrifice in order to redeem man, in order that My purpose for a bride for You, My Son, can be created, formed, and developed.”
And the Son said, “Father, Thy will be done. I am willing. I am willing to be that sacrifice. I am willing to humble Myself, to go down to earth, to live as a man, to take on flesh, and to redeem all of mankind.”
This reveals to us what I call a God of sacrificial love—a love that does not just excuse things, but a love that maintains righteousness and is willing to sacrifice everything for the sake of the sinner.
That is what Abel’s life testifies to: the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world. He took our place. He took the judgment of God upon Himself.
That is what Abel’s sacrifice means.
For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have eternal life.
I do not know how long Abel lived, but brothers and sisters, his life was a testimony to the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. His life, because he had given it to the Lord, was taken by his brother.
We owe a lot to Abel. He has shown us who God is. He is a loving God, a God who is willing to sacrifice everything for you and me. He loves us that much.
Brothers and sisters, praise the Lord for the voice of the blood of Christ. The work of man’s hands—Cain’s work—had no voice before God. Abel’s blood did.
It only looked forward to the shed blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, whose voice speaks to God. What is the voice of the blood of Christ? What does it say?
It says, “Forgive them, Father. Forgive them. I have taken their judgment upon Myself on the cross of Calvary. I have paid the price for them. Now forgive them, on My behalf, for My sake.” And the Father does.
This is God’s forgiveness. It is an offering God has made to fallen mankind: His sacrificial love offering to mankind, His Son Jesus Christ on the cross.
But brothers and sisters, an offering, to be of value, has to be received. It has to be taken. That offering is open to everyone, every man and woman on this earth, but it has to be received in order to be effective in your life.
That is why this offering is so precious. We are thankful today that the Lord has given us a testimony through the life of Abel. His life shows us the way of God. His life shows us the character and nature of God.
His way is the altar. In other words, His way is the cross. That is God’s way. And what is His character? Sacrificial love. Sacrificial love.
May we all be willing to go God’s way. May we all be willing to partake of God’s nature and be willing to give up everything in sacrificial love back to God. That is His character. That is His nature. If that nature is in us, brothers and sisters, it should stir our hearts that we would be willing to give all.
Praise the Lord. What a testimony in Abel’s life. Now I would like to share on the life of Enoch and his testimony. The Lord raised up Enoch as a testimony to something of God’s heart.
Let us read from Genesis 5:21-24.
And Enoch lived sixty and five years, and begat Methuselah:
and Enoch walked with God after he begat Methuselah three hundred years, and begat sons and daughters:
and all the days of Enoch were three hundred sixty and five years:
and Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him.
Another way to say that in plain English is that Enoch was sixty-five years old when his first son, Methuselah, was born. After Methuselah was born, it says he walked with God for three hundred years, and he continued to have sons and daughters.
Methuselah is the oldest man recorded in the Word of God. But there is one other verse—Jude 14. There is only one chapter in Jude, and this is important. I cannot leave it out, because it helps us understand what God is after.
And to these also Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, Behold, the Lord came with ten thousands of His holy ones,
to execute judgment upon all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their works of ungodliness which they have ungodly wrought.
I just wanted to point out that Enoch prophesied a warning to the people concerning their evil.
Enoch’s name means devoted, or disciplined—devoted or disciplined. When he was sixty-five years old, Methuselah was born, and apparently, at the birth of this son, God gave him a revelation of a great judgment that would come on the earth at Methuselah’s death. We know that judgment was the great flood.
After that point in his life, when God gave him that revelation, he basically became a preacher for three hundred years, warning the people and exhorting them concerning the coming judgment of God if they would not repent.
Because of his faithfulness in that day of great declension—which sounds familiar to me in the day in which we live—he remained faithful to God and faithful to the Word of God. It says God took him. He raptured him.
Enoch never died. God raptured him before the judgment came.
What does this reveal of God? Another way to say it is: what was God’s testimony in Enoch’s life? Well, it is pretty straightforward. It says Enoch walked with God.
I want you to get the emphasis here: Enoch walked with God. It does not say God walked with Enoch. Of course, He did, but it was because Enoch was walking with God.
I think this really reveals God’s heart. He really wants a people who will walk with Him—not just know about Him, not just take His salvation and leave, not just be satisfied with His blessings and His keeping, but those who really want to know Him, pursue Him, and walk with Him.
Is this not our sister’s testimony this morning? May the Lord keep that testimony in her life. That is what God is after.
He is a God who has such a heart. He does not want to live as this distant God, whom nobody really knows, executing judgment here and there and cracking the whip. No, not at all. He wants us, as His own, to walk with Him.
That means we need to be learning about Him. We need to be learning Him. That is God’s heart. A simple way to say it is: He is a God who desires a relationship with man—a life of union, a life in step with Him, a life in which we are fulfilling His purpose and His will.
Now do you see why the Lord Jesus Christ said, “Come unto Me”?
Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.
For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light.
What was the call? The call was, “Come unto Me, and I will give you rest.” This rest is rest from the burden of sin.
Then He said, in the second part of His call—which is really the call to discipleship—“Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me.”
What was that yoke, brothers and sisters? That yoke was God’s will. Christ lived under God’s yoke all His life. He was yoked to God. They were one. Whatever God wanted, wherever God led, whatever God said, He followed and did. That was His life.
He was yoked to God, and now He asks us to be yoked to Him. Let me say it very simply: if you want to walk with God, you are going to have to be yoked to Jesus Christ. There is no other way. A life of discipleship.
This is why Enoch’s name becomes so precious. It means devotion. It means discipline. There is no way to walk with God unless you are devoted to Christ. There is no way to accept and grow under the discipling hand of the Lord unless you know Christ, unless you are yoked to Christ.
It is because He is in the yoke that you can do it. All you have to do is follow—submit and follow.
Often we find ourselves pulling against the yoke. But thank God, there does come that point in life when we yoke ourselves to the Lord. When we start to stray, when we start to go a different way, the yoke reminds us who is our Lord, who is our Master, and to whom we are yoked.
Oh, what great love God has. He desires that man would walk with Him.
I think the problem today is that we want God to be yoked to us. We still want to do our will. We want to go our way and still have His blessing, His guardianship, His care, and His provision. Yes, we want Him yoked to us.
“The Lord is mine,” as the maiden said in the beginning. She had not yet really realized that she was fully the Lord’s. But Kenny can share on that.
Yoked: devotion, discipline.
Brothers and sisters, the Lord’s mercy, His blessings, and His provision are all precious. We can partake of those and be thankful for them. But are we really walking with God?
If we are, we will come under His disciplining hand. We will come under the work of Calvary in our lives, and we will begin to be transformed into this new creation in Christ. That transformation will take place.
We will find difficulties and issues in our lives. If, at that point, we can realize that we are yoked to Him and that we want to learn of God in this situation, then we will be molded by the cross instead of by our circumstances.
God does not force the yoke upon anyone. Let me say that. It is something you have to willingly take. Our sister is doing that today in the act of baptism. She is taking that yoke upon her, yoked to the Lord forever.
The other thing that our brother Enoch’s life testifies to is that God is longsuffering. Longsuffering.
God knew He would eventually have to bring judgment upon man, and He allowed Enoch to preach for another three hundred years before judgment came. He kept appealing to the people. God was longsuffering.
But for His own—for Enoch—He raptured him before the flood, raptured him alive. That is God’s desire. That should be our desire: that the Lord comes back in our lifetime and that we would just be raptured alive.
Praise the Lord for the testimony of Enoch’s life.
Then let us come to the life of Noah. Genesis 6.
Let us read Genesis 6:9-14, and then I will read a few other Scriptures.
These are the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, and perfect in his generations: Noah walked with God.
And Noah begat three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
And the earth was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.
And God saw the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted its way upon the earth.
And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before Me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.
Make thee an ark of gopher wood.
Let us also read Genesis 7:23.
And every living thing was destroyed that was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and creeping things, and fowl of the heavens; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only was left, and they that were with him in the ark.
Now, 2 Peter 2:5.
And spared not the ancient world, but preserved Noah with seven others, a preacher of righteousness, when He brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly.
Praise the Lord. Noah maintained that line of being a preacher, and he preached to these people.
But I want you to get what happened here. It says that the earth had become so corrupt, the people had become so corrupt, that God could no longer bear it.
He decided He would destroy every living thing on this earth and bring about a new earth, so to speak. But He spared Noah and his family.
Noah and his family were the only ones who still believed God and still wanted God in their lives. Those others upon the earth were men of violence. They were men who no longer submitted to God.
They may have known about God, but they certainly were unwilling to submit their lives to God. They did not even want God in their minds. They would not even think about Him. Their hearts became so hardened that even God gave up.
So the Lord brought judgment.
All of that preaching, and no one listened. I tell you what, that would be tough. It must have been really difficult for a man so burdened from God, preaching his heart out, and no one listening except his own family.
Praise God for that. But I often think about how difficult—what a cross—that must have been for Noah, because he could not even fellowship with these people. What kind of life could he have with those around him? They would not listen.
But the Lord spared Noah, as we know. In the end, God started life on earth over again through those who were on the ark—a new kingdom. They represented the kingdom of God on this earth.
What does this tell us about God’s ways, about what is on God’s heart? Well, this one is pretty simple, is it not? Noah’s life centered around the building of the ark.
We know, brothers and sisters—you have been taught this for many years—the ark represents Christ.
The ark represents Christ upon this earth. In order for them to be saved, in order for them to escape judgment, and in order for them to be part of the new earth—God’s kingdom on this earth—it was necessary that they enter the ark. It was necessary that they be in the ark.
In other words, Christ is the only way. He is the ark. We have to enter Christ.
I think, brothers and sisters, it is a testimony that our whole life is involved with the ark. We have to be in the ark, and we need to abide in the ark. We need to be in Christ.
How is it that we are in Christ? How is it that you get put in Christ so that the coming judgment will not affect you, so that you can enter into His kingdom and the new heavens and the new earth?
First Corinthians 1:30 says, “Of God are ye in Christ Jesus.” In other words, when you accepted Christ as your Lord and Savior, brothers and sisters, God put you in Christ. That is why the coming judgment will not fall upon you—the judgment that is going to come upon this earth. That is what I am talking about: Armageddon.
He wants you to be a part of His kingdom. That is why it is so important that we remain in the ark.
What else does it mean to be in Christ? It means that you are really no longer in Adam. You were born with an Adamic life, but God has said, “No. I have put you in Christ.”
That means all that has happened to Christ has happened to you. In other words, on the cross of Calvary, our Lord Jesus was crucified. In Romans, it says we have been crucified with Him. The old man has been crucified.
This is the testimony of our sister today as she goes into the waters of baptism: that she has been crucified in Christ. The old man—not crucified in her, but crucified in Christ. Because she is in Christ, it can be made real in her life. I hope you see the difference.
In other words, we have died with Christ. When Christ was buried, we were buried with Him. That is the waters of baptism—a burial. When He was raised, we were raised with Him in newness of life. He ascended; we ascended. He has sat down at the throne in victory.
Brothers and sisters, it says in Ephesians that we have been seated in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus. Notice: in Christ Jesus. His victory is now your victory.
It is all done in Christ so that, in your everyday life, this spiritual reality can be made real in your practical, everyday walk.
Because you are in Christ, you will escape the coming destruction, and you have the opportunity to reign and rule with Christ in the kingdom age, and then in the new heavens and new earth.
That is why it is essential that not only we be in Christ, but that in our practical, everyday life, we abide in Christ. Because when we do not abide in Him, even though we are still in Him, our life will reflect a life outside of Christ and not in Christ.
Our sister Laura is going to be baptized today, and I think Susan next week. There may be some others who are interested in baptism. Think about the lives of Abel, Enoch, and Noah. There is so much a picture of what is going on today.
These, like Abel, have taken Christ as their Lord and Savior. He is their sacrifice, and they present the blood before God—the blood of Christ. They have accepted God’s sacrificial love offering of His Son.
They, like Enoch, desire to walk with God—not just wanting God to walk with them, but they want to walk with God, to pursue God, to seek God, willing to walk the narrow path and suffer with Him that they might be glorified with Him.
Today in baptism, they take the yoke of discipleship upon their shoulders, declaring, “I want to become—I want to be—a disciple of Christ, to learn of Him.”
At the conference, they mentioned this thought of the old-time apprenticeship. In the old days, under apprenticeship, if a person was going to become an apprentice swordmaker, or whatever he was going to be, he had to go and actually live with the master.
He had to live with him. He had to learn his ways. Often the master would not let them do anything but sweep the floor, clean clothes, and do all these mundane things that seemed to have nothing to do with the craft they were to learn.
But they were learning the greatest lesson anyone can ever learn: submission and obedience to the master. That is what all that was about.
All that initial training in seemingly mundane things, which often seemed to the young to have no purpose in relation to the craft they were learning, taught them submission and obedience. Then they learned the craft.
That is what being yoked means: yoked to Christ, to live with Him, to watch the Master, to see what He does, and to serve Him in any way He has, no matter how mundane.
To learn submission and obedience, and then to be able to serve Him in the power of His life—yoked to Him, His disciple.
And like Noah, they see that they have to be in Christ.
Because they are in Christ, they have been crucified with Him. They have been crucified unto the world, and they are declaring today that they are separated from this world. The world no longer has its grip upon them.
They are denouncing their membership in the world, and now they are Christ’s and His alone. They are declaring that they are dead and need to be buried.
But praise the Lord, hallelujah, it is not only a burial, but also a resurrection. They rise up, and it is the new man that God looks at: Christ in victory. Their life becomes a testimony to the life and way of God.
May it be so.
Lord, we come to Thee today. I really do thank Thee for this precious act of baptism that Thou hast given unto us.
I thank Thee, Lord, that in a marvelous, miraculous way, Thou hast chosen that man might be a testimony to Thy way and Thy life. Lord, Thou hast called us to that. Thou hast called these two in baptism. Lord, we thank Thee for that.
I ask that the power of God rest upon them, that they will walk with Thee the rest of the days of their lives, Lord, and that, Lord Jesus, they will continually abide in Thee.
Lord Jesus, for ourselves, we are reminded of how Thou hast called us and how we are yoked to Thee, Lord, and how all that is in Christ is available to us.
Lord, we worship Thee this morning. Thou art a great God, and it all, Lord Jesus, has been made available to us because of Thy sacrificial love and Thy willingness to give Thy Son as a sacrifice on Calvary’s cross.
Lord, we worship Thee and we thank Thee. We do ask, Lord, that Thou wouldst really bless these baptisms. In Jesus’ name, amen.