Baptism Sunday - 07.12.26 - Wes Dobson

Wes’ Baptism Sunday sermon traced the meaning of baptism from its roots in Jewish ceremonial washing, showing that baptism did not appear out of nowhere with John the Baptist, but grew out of the biblical picture of being made clean and prepared for God’s presence. He connected John’s call to “repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” with the prophets’ vision of God’s Kingdom as a place of peace, holiness, humility, and transformed people. The sermon emphasized that humanity cannot create that kind of Kingdom through better laws, leaders, systems, or human effort because the deepest problem is not outside of us, but within our hearts. Through the new covenant, God promises to write His law on our hearts, give us a new spirit, and turn hearts of stone into hearts of flesh. In Christ, baptism becomes a sign of being united with Jesus in His death and resurrection, a public declaration that we are putting the old self to death and asking God to make us new. Baptism does not mean the water itself changes us, but it does point to the grace of God that cleanses, renews, and forms us into people ready to live in His presence and His Kingdom. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

All right, good morning, Revive. If you guys haven't had the chance to meet me yet, I'm usually hanging out in that booth in the back. Or my wife, Alicia, and I are usually hanging out over here where the crowds are the thinnest because we're both introverts and like we like people, right? But we need like metered doses of like socialization. So guys, I'm really excited to talk today because I'm really humbled to be up here because it's it's a really special day. We just did all these baby dedications, and uh we've got these baptisms coming up. It's a very covenantal day with people making commitments to raise their children in a way that honors God and to uh commit to following Christ in baptism. And so Christ, um Kyle's asked me to speak on baptism today, and uh he told me, uh he said, I need you to make sure that you like quote from Leviticus and Zephaniah, or else no one's gonna understand baptism. And he he didn't say that actually. That was that's totally a lie. Uh but I took the challenge anyways because I'm an engineer and I just love taking things apart. It's my nature, right? And that includes baptism. So what I wanted to do today is talk to you guys about like the story of baptism, because um we I feel like as Christians we have an idea of what baptism is, but I don't know how many of us know like where it comes from or what the story of it is, and it's a beautiful story, so I I maybe we'll do a different take on baptism today. So, where does baptism come from? Um it comes from Jewish ceremonial washing. Could you go to the next slide real quick? This is a mikveh. This is a Jewish ceremonial washing bath, right? This is a this one's been excavated. It's a it's an ancient mikveh. Um, and this was used for Jewish ceremonial washing. It was it's a bath, right? This is a nice one that had, uh it was made out of stone, it had stairs. You would fill this up with water and go down and you take a bath, but it wasn't necessarily for hygiene. Um, it wasn't necessarily for hygiene, it was also for um this whole clean, unclean system that's that's outlined in the law, where if you became unclean for a certain reason, ceremonially unclean, you would sometimes have to do a ceremonial washing to become clean, depending on how you became unclean. And like, what was the purpose of this system, right? Like, God set this system up, this whole clean, unclean system that we've talked about before, it's kind of misunderstood because I mean it wasn't inherently sinful to become ceremonially unclean. In fact, it was inevitable sometimes. But if you became unclean, there were certain things you couldn't do. Like you couldn't go to a holy assembly, you couldn't go to synagogue, you couldn't just go up to the Temple Mountain and offer a sacrifice. And while you were unclean, you might spread your uncleanness. So it was something you'd want to deal with. You'd want to become clean again, ceremonially clean, right? And so oftentimes, if you go to the next slide, please, the the uh the solution was to take a bath, right? Sometimes it was to wash your clothes, sometimes it was just the passage of time or all of the above. And you guys can read Leviticus 11 through 15 later to get all the details. Sure you will. And but yeah, the the solution was to sometimes to wash. But why did God set the system up? God gave the the the Israelites this law, and the purpose was to kind of communicate to these people that, guys, I I need to paint a picture for you guys. I need to explain to you who I am, like God speaking, right? I need to explain to you that I'm a holy God, and you guys are like I'm you're my creation. I made you, and when I made you, I said you were good, I said you were very good, but you've been corrupted. You can't just step into my presence with corruption on you, in you, you know, for but for lack of a better word, uncleanness. You need, if you're gonna step into my presence, you need to be clean. And so this system was a picture of what of who God is and who we are, and what we need to do to be in his presence and to be in his service. Right? And just uh you can go to the next slide too, like um, just for fun, you know, they've excavated tons of these mikvas even around the Temple Mount, right? And um, you can do a like a little tour if you go to the if you go to the Jerusalem today and see all the mikvas that they've excavated. And these were the mikvas that um would have been used, you know, for all the pilgrims that came to the temple to offer a sacrifice. These pilgrims probably would have been unclean on their voyage, or maybe just better do a ceremonial washing just in case. So they would use these mikvas to become clean and they go up on the temple to offer a sacrifice. And we are almost certain, guys, that the 3,000 Christians that were baptized in Acts chapter 2 when Peter gave a sermon and 3,000 people came to know the Lord that day, they almost certainly were baptized in these mikvas right here. That's where the water was. The Jordan River is like miles away, right? So they probably use these. This is, and so it's this is we got a connection right here to our to baptism that I don't know if I don't know how many of you knew that, but um I I find it really fascinating. And um, but moving on, like why we we we this is where baptism comes from, kind of, right? It's these ceremonial washings, and this whole idea of like, hey, you need to become clean before you step into the presence of God, that symbology is still present in baptism in some way. And and this water is kind of murky, hose water, this water doesn't make you clean, right? But God makes us clean. But that symb that symbolism of like gotta be clean to step into God's presence, that's still there. But we come along to John the Baptist in the story. You know, we have all these Jews doing ceremonial washings for a thousand years or so, and then you get this guy named John, and he is doing ceremonial washings for people in the Jordan. And he's a he's that's that's not the weirdest thing, maybe it's a little weird, but like uh it wouldn't be too weird for a guy to be, for a Jew to be kind of assisting in ceremonial washings for people. But what was different about John was his message. Because he said, repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. So repent and let's be baptized, let's do a ceremonial washing because the kingdom of heaven is at hand. So, what in the world does doing a ceremonial washing have to do with the kingdom being at hand or close or near? And that's almost kind of like a little mystery. And so to understand that, you guys have to remember that all these people that John was speaking to, when John said the kingdom of heaven is at hand, there was something very specific in their minds, right? For hundreds of years the prophets had been giving all these prophecies about what the kingdom of God was gonna be like, because they were all expecting that someday the Messiah was gonna be on the throne, that God was gonna be king over the whole earth, there were gonna be mass resurrections, like Isaiah 26, Daniel 12, there was gonna be peace and prosperity and just all these things that they were that were rattling around their heads, even like really specific prophecies, like Ezekiel 47 talks about like water flowing from the temple of God and going into the Dead Sea and turning it fresh, and it gets filled with fish, and people actually go fishing there. Like all these really cool prophecies, all of these things were rattling around these guys' heads when when John says the kingdom of heaven is at hand, it's near. So, why do we need to be baptized still? Like, to understand that, I want to read a couple prophecies, but um, I want you guys to focus on the type of people that will be in the kingdom of God. So we can go to the slide for Micah. So, this is the first five verses of Micah chapter four. This is prophecy about the coming kingdom. And God, through the prophet Micah says, It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and it shall be lifted up above the hills, and peoples shall flow to it, and many nations shall come and say, Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways, and that we may walk in his paths, for out of Zion shall go forth the law and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. We can keep going. He shall judge between many peoples, he shall decide disputes for strong nations far away, and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. Nations shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore. But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid. For the mouth of the Lord of hosts is spoken, for all the peoples walk, each in the name of its God, but we will walk in the name of the Lord our God forever and ever. So think about the people that are part of this kingdom. Right? There's the world is at peace, and nation's not going to war with nation anymore. But not only that, people don't even have any use for their weapons anymore. People are like, I got this sword, what do I do with this thing? I might as well take it to the blacksmith and have them make it into a plow or something, or take my spear and make it into a pruning hook, a farming implement, something useful, you know. And all of these people, they're sitting under their own vine and fig tree, no one's making them afraid. And even if we go back to those first two verses, people from all the all over the world, all the nations are coming up to Jerusalem, coming up to the Mount Zion, going up to the temple to learn God's ways. They want to know the ways of the God of Israel so that they can better follow him. And so the kingdom of God is full of good people. And maybe that's a little bit obvious, right? But the people here are good people. They're not hurting each other. They're not they're not stealing from each other, no one's afraid, people are just at peace. Let's do another one. I uh can you go to the yeah, I'm serious about Zephaniah, okay? So Zephaniah is a short prophecy in the Bible, it's three chapters long. It's almost entirely a prophecy about the day of the Lord, which is the event throughout the prophets that kind of like fully inaugurates the kingdom and allows the kingdom to come into its fullness. Right? But towards the end of the Zephaniah, we get a kind of like a little picture of the kingdom. And I can read you a couple verses that describe the kingdom in Zephaniah. God says, I, but I will leave within you the meek and the humble, the remnant of Israel will trust in the name of the Lord. They will do no wrong, they will tell no lies. A deceitful tongue will not be found in their mouths, they will eat and lie down, and no one will make them afraid. And so the people in the kingdom, they're good people, they do no wrong, they will tell no lies. They're the meek, the humble. Those are the people that end up in the kingdom, the citizens of the kingdom. And so if we go back to John, right? John is telling all these people the kingdom is near. The kingdom is near, it's at hand, it's any day now, right? And that the the that sometimes that phrase is we we misinterpret, we we understand it's like, oh, yes, it's happening right now necessarily, but it's it's this kind of like a prophetic phrasing to just be like it's it's imminent, you know, in a sense of like it's it's it's prophesied and it's coming and it's gonna happen. So, but you if you're in that crowd right there, you might be thinking to yourself, okay, well, if the kingdom is coming and it's gonna be this great kingdom, but it's and it's gonna be at peace, but all the people there are the kind of people that do no wrong and tell no lies and don't hurt anyone, you might be thinking to yourself, I'm not ready to be a citizen of this kingdom. So that's where the repentance comes in, right? When John says, repent and believe and be baptized for the kingdom of heaven is near. He's, I mean, it's part of it is like, guys, I'm not ready to be part of that kingdom. But what would it take to be ready to be part of a kingdom like that? I mean, I mean, maybe we can just step back and just like practice practically speaking, what would it take to make like forget about the promises for a moment of like the resurrection and then the pearly gates? What would it take to just have a society where no one hurts each other, and people don't lie to each other, and no one's afraid anymore? Like, well, you'd have to have no more thieves and no more murderers and no more liars, right? How would we do that? Um we've tried, kind of, right? We've uh we human society has tried a lot to come up, maybe we maybe we have the right mix of laws, or maybe if we purge all the bad people, maybe that maybe then we'll have the kingdom. And that's never worked out when we tried that, right? And or maybe if we have the right leaders or the right society, maybe we're corrupted by our society. Or like, why do people even murder in the first place? Why do people steal in the first place? Maybe the reason people steal is because they just need they need stuff, and and it's there's inequality and people, it's it's not fair, it's it's an expression of injustice. There's these theories about why people are the way they are, and maybe if we can just change that, we can change human nature and we can realize a society like that. We really have tried, like, and it's it's like had mixed results, to say the least, right? Um so and we could quote like these ideas are everywhere in our culture right now, guys. The idea that like if we could just have the right mix of laws or the right thing, we could fix our society and we could realize a kingdom that's like we could have a utopia. We just need to change a few things. Um I could quote a few different philosophers. I'm gonna quote the philosopher John Lennon, um, right? And uh this he wrote this song, Imagine, in the 70s, is before my time. Uh so I understand it was quite quite the stir at the time. You'll have to tell me if that's true or not. I don't know. Anyways, but he he asked people to imagine a world that was like the kingdom that was described by the prophets right there. And if you read a couple of verses of his song, he says, Imagine there's no countries. It isn't hard to do, nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too. Imagine no possessions. I wonder if you can, no need for greed or hunger, a brotherhood of man. Imagine if there was, you know, no nations and no religion. Maybe then there would be no nationalism and no religious wars, and maybe people wouldn't murder each other anymore. There'd be no need for that, right? And maybe if people, if we just had like completely shared all our possessions and no one had any possessions, there wouldn't be any greed, and nobody would be hungry, so there'd be no need to be greedy, and it would just work, it would just be beautiful, right? It it doesn't work. Uh what happened to John Lennon? He was killed by one of his fans who wanted to be as famous as he was, right? He was, he was, he he thought maybe he could gain the notoriety by killing someone as famous as John Lennon. And he was also, uh he thought John Lennon was super hypocritical for singing a song like this while he lived like a multimillionaire. And guys, we could we could eliminate all the reasons materially for why we hurt each other, and we would still find reasons to hurt each other. And what are we gonna do? We're gonna make everyone equally famous so no one's jealous of fame anymore. We'll find new reasons to hurt each other, and it's never gonna stop. And so, what are we gonna do about this? This is this is how I want to get um, I forget what my next slide is. Could you go to the next one real quick? Yeah, okay, there we go. So, you know, guys, we've tried this. We've tried this experiment many times. Like, what if we just had the right mix of laws? What if we just had the right society? God has already run that experiment in a more comprehensive way than we ever have, because God gave the Israelites the law. He gave them the law, and he said, if you do these things, you're gonna get certain results. Right? And in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28, God lays out very clearly, like we call them the cov the blessings and the curses of the covenant. And if you read the blessings of the covenant in the first few verses of Leviticus 26, you're gonna notice that it sounds kind of familiar. God says, If you follow my decrees and are careful to obey my commands, I will send you rain in its season, and the ground will yield its crops, and the trees their fruit. Your threshing will continue until grape harvest, and the grape harvest will continue until planting, and you will eat all the food that you want and live in safety in your land. I will grant peace in the land, and you will lie down, and no one will make you afraid. That sounds awfully familiar. I will remove wild beasts from the land, and the sword will not pass through your country. I will put my dwelling place among you, and I will not abhor you. I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be my people. And so, how similar does that sound to the description that the prophets gave of a world that's at peace, where people where people are no longer afraid of each other? And so God gave the Israelites this law and he said, if you guys do this, you'll get a society that looks like that. Did they do it? Not really, right? Hundreds of years later, the Babylonians came and crushed the walls of the Jerusalem and burned the temple, and God was very clear that the reason the Babylonians were coming, it wasn't just a catastrophe, and it was, but that the reason the Babylonians were coming was because you guys are so corrupt. You like this is we need a restart. This is not working at all. And so all of these, all these Israelites were carried off, thousands of them were carried off to Babylon, and they ended up on the rivers of uh of Babylon. This there's a canal called the Kadar. And all these people that we have a bunch of refugees. You can go to the next slide, Ryan. And we have all these refugees that are sitting on in Babylon and their society is ruined, and it seems like the dream is over. God promised if you do these laws, you'll get this kingdom. And they're like, Well, we we didn't really do that very well, right? And it seems like the dream is over. It seems like the kingdom's not gonna happen now. It seems like God's promises have all been forgotten, right? And in the midst of this, guys, in the midst of all this brokenness and all this despair, this is one of the things God just does. He's in the midst of our brokenness, things we did to ourselves, God still comes in and says, There's hope, and I can and we can fix this, but we're gonna need to make some changes. Right? And so God sent prophets to these people. Like Jeremiah was speaking before and after this event. Uh Ezekiel was one of the, he was one of the um uh exiles that was there on the river with these guys, and Daniel was uh speaking at the same time. He was in the temple courts, I mean not the temple, the palace courts. And God speaks to these prophets and says, I want you to give a message to this to these broken people that have that think that the dream is over. And I want you to tell them something. We've talked before about Jeremiah 29, where Jeremiah wrote a letter to the people that were exiles in Babylon and said, Okay, guys, go ahead and get comfy in Babylon. You're not coming back for 70 years, okay? So don't listen to those false prophets that say you're coming back any day now. Go ahead and get comfy and go ahead and seek the peace and prosperity of the city. We've talked about this passage. And then after that letter, there God gives four straight chapters in Jeremiah, Jeremiah 30 through 33, where it's just promises that I'm going, we're still gonna do the kingdom. I'm gonna restore you to the land, we're gonna restore the kingdom, but we're gonna do it just a little bit differently this time. Okay? That it didn't work, I gave you the laws, and I hope now, it's almost like God knew that it wasn't gonna work, right? Like, it got it's it's almost like God is like, I hope now that I've thoroughly demonstrated to you guys that the problem is not the wrong mix of laws. Right? I feel like as Christians, sometimes we have this idea that the law was kind of like bad in some reason in some way, and it's it's not. Like the Paul in Romans 7 says that the law was righteous, holy, and good. But in Romans 8, he says it failed to accomplish its purpose because of weakness of flesh. And so God comes to these people and he says, We're gonna do it differently this time. And towards the end of Jeremiah 31, God tells us how we're gonna do it differently this time. And this is the promise of the new covenant. We talk about this a lot. Um, but Jeremiah says, or God says through Jeremiah, Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. My covenant that they broke, even though I was their husband, declares the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord, I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. So God says, okay, we're gonna do it differently this time. Instead of me giving you all the laws in your in a book, and you really try really hard to follow them, I'm gonna put my law on your heart. There's still gonna be a law, but I'm gonna put it inside of you. It's gonna be part of you. Like, what does that mean, right? Like, around the same time, Ezekiel was given a message from God about this new covenant. He he's it was a very similar message. He words it a little bit differently. God says through Ezekiel, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you. I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will place my spirit within you and cause you to follow my statutes and carefully observe my ordinances. So God says to Ezekiel, like, the problem, guys, is that I've given you the law, but you don't really want to follow it. Your heart wants to do something different. Right? And so the problem is you guys need a new heart. I need to put my law in you. I need to take your heart of stone and give you a heart of staff of flesh, and that way you will want to do what I want you to do. I will want, you will want to observe my law and follow my ways. And that is the new covenant. And there's more to the new covenant than that. There's promises of like the Jerusalem being rebuilt and never again being destroyed. But that's this is what we talk about in terms of like God's new plan for salvation with the new covenant. That it's still, we God is going to have a law, but it's going to be in us. And so I want to get to the last little bit of what I'm trying to say here, right? Because it seems like it's going to be hard to connect it to baptism at this point. Right? But if we go forward to Jesus again, Jesus gives the Sermon on the Mount, and the whole Sermon on the Mount is a message about the kingdom. If you read through it, you and with a with looking and thinking, is this it? Jesus is talking is giving a sermon about the kingdom of God. And so much of the Sermon on the Mount is talking about the type of people that live in the kingdom of God. And we've all heard this before, but think about what type of people these are. Jesus says, You have heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not murder, and whoever murders will be liable to judgment. But I say to you that everyone who's angry with his brother will be liable to judgment, and whoever insults his brother will be liable to the counsel. And whoever says you fool will be liable to the hell of fire. You have heard that it was said, you shall not commit adultery. But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. And so think about what Jesus is saying here. Like, like let's take the adultery one for a second. You could even take the sexual aspect of adultery out of it. Can we have a world where we compl where people are at peace and completely trust each other if people are breaking their commitments? Or breaking their most important commitments, their greatest vows. Like, that's not gonna work. Can we have a world where people aren't afraid of each other, no one's hurting each other anymore? If people secretly hate each other, but they just don't act on it. No one murders anyone. We kind of want to, we just don't, right? That's not gonna work either because it leads to that, right? Because Jesus is talking about the heart. And your heart is corrupted. It's not enough to not murder. You need a new heart, just like Ezekiel and Jeremiah said. I need to do that for you. And so what baptism is, is something like it was that whole ceremonial washing thing, you need to be clean, you need to be in the presence of God, that's still there. But it took on a new meaning with Jesus' death. Because if we're gonna have a kingdom where there's no murderers and there's no liars, and there's no one that even has the seed of murder in them, or no one that has even the seed of lying in them, we're gonna have to get rid of all of us. Right? Or the murderer inside of us can die. And the liar inside of us can die. Right? And if that, if God is, if if we can do that, then God can take the parts of us that are in rebellion to him and kill them and and and and make us new again, make it give us a new heart. And so Paul talks about this idea of like baptism being like a death in Romans 6. Yeah, here it is. So Paul says, What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means. How can we have died to sin, still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried, therefore, with him by baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For for one who has died has been set free from sin. And so Paul's talking to Christians here, and he's like, guys, don't you, you think you can just keep sinning? Don't you remember what baptism is? He's reminding them of this. He's like, Don't you remember that you died to sin when you were baptized into Christ? Don't you? This is a drowning. We're gonna like, we're about to celebrate some funerals here, right? We're gonna, but we're also about to celebrate some resurrections here, okay? Because we're putting- we're we're not, we're gonna drown the old self that Paul is talking about here, right? We're gonna we know that that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing. And so that's what baptism is. That's that's the we God took something that already existed and put more meaning on top of it. The old meaning didn't go away, it's it's all together. And so, um, yeah, you can go to the next slide, Ryan. So, what is baptism? It still has that understanding, guys, that like we need to be cleansed, we need to be clean if we're gonna step into the presence of God, if we're gonna be with him, if he's gonna dwell among us, we need to be clean. So that that meaning is still there. But what else is it? It's we're dying to ourselves. This is a drowning. We're putting the parts of our heart that are in rebellion to God, to Christ, and we're putting and we're putting those to death. It's not a one-time deal, right? This is this is a symbolic deck that says, I'm going to surrender, I'm going to let give God access to the parts of my heart that are in rebellion to him, so he can give me a new heart. And it's it's a lifelong process. Jesus says, take up your cross daily and follow me. Right? But this is where it starts with it with a surrender to like to the to the waters, to say, take my life, take the parts of my life that are in rebellion to you, God, and change them. And then finally, we're we're getting up here in front of everybody and we're publicly declaring. There was something strange about John the Baptist's baptism ceremonies that were that I didn't mention yet. You previously baptisms were done in private under the law. That was another weird thing that he was doing, is he was they were very public. And so we are publicly standing up in front of here and doing something kind of super embarrassing, right? And just saying, I surrender, right? It takes some it takes some surrender to get up here and go under the water, right? And so we're like publicly demonstrating that surrender to each other and saying, God, please give us new hearts, new identities. My my current identity sucks. I want a new identity, right? And so that's what we're doing here. So uh to wrap it up, guys, if you've already been baptized before, can I remind you what baptism was? What baptism is? Like, maybe it's kind of like your wedding vows. Like you went up there and you said, Yeah, I do, and you didn't realize all the vows that you were making or what you were really signing up for. But you did. And Paul's reminding us. He says, Remember that you died? Remember that you died to sin? Remember that you were we've been baptized into Christ Jesus', we were we were we were baptized into his death so that we can be united with him in resurrection. That's what baptism is. So, guys, if there's parts of your life that you're still holding on to, I mean parts of your heart that are hard that you're not like I've been baptized, but I'm gonna hold on to this hard part of my heart, you think you're gonna bring that hard heart part of your heart into the kingdom? God needs you to put it to death, right? So I hope you remember what baptism is. And for people who have who you've chosen to follow Christ, but you haven't yet been baptized, what are you waiting for? I mean, the idea of a Christian in the early church that was a Christian but not baptized, that that wasn't a thing. Like Paul says in Galatians, for as many of you were baptized into Christ, have put on Christ. It's the same group of people. The people that have been baptized in Christ, the people that have put on Christ. Like, it's time to do this, right? And what prevents you from being baptized? That's a quote from the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts chapter 8, right? If it's physically hard for you to do a baptism, if if there's something holding you back, you can talk to us and we'll figure it out. We can figure something out. Um, this is something that we're commanded to do as Christians. And finally, if you don't know Christ, guys, I don't have much else to add to Peter or John the Baptist's message. This kingdom that we're living in right now, it's corrupt. It's coming to an end. Okay, God is going to bring a new kingdom, and we have to be prepared to be citizens of that kingdom. We're not ready. We need Christ to do that for us. So I would encourage you, if if if if this is somehow speaking to you and you've never thought of this way, you've never like God is calling you to surrender to Him, would you talk to me? Would you talk to Kyle or the other elders? We'd love to talk to you guys. So I think that's all I have to say. Um let's pray. Um, Father God, uh, would you remind us what that when we that when we commit to baptism, we committed to die to ourselves and we committed to let you make us new. And um we're asking you to do that every day, God. We need your grace every single day to do that. And so I pray that those of us that are remembering the ceremony that are seeing these people going this into this, I pray for the people that are about to step into this that you would fill them with this understanding and fill them with your spirit, and that you would cause them to observe your ways and observe your ordinances. Um and we're so thankful for your sacrifice. Uh pray this in Jesus' name.