John chapter 1.
How often has this chapter been preached on?
My word, we go back to it time
and time again.
John chapter 1, verse 6.
There was a man sent from God whose
name was John.
The same came for a witness to bear
witness of the light that all men through
him might believe.
You'll see the little scripture I have stopped
at starts with John the Baptist, goes on
to Jesus, the light, and from there to
all men.
I hope to follow that kind of outline,
starting with John the Baptist, going on to
the Lord Jesus, and finishing up with you
and me.
Whichever way you try to get into the
gospel story, you are met at the portal
with John the Baptist.
The portal is fourfold, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and
John.
In Matthew, you haven't gone very far before
you find John the Baptist.
In Luke, you're introduced to the matters affecting
his conception and birth, even before you're introduced
to Jesus Christ.
And in chapter 3, he's telling us his
full ministry.
In Mark, right at the very beginning, you
have the ministry of the Baptist.
He is the gatekeeper, very definitely in Mark.
And here in John, you only got through
five verses, and then at the sixth verse,
here he comes again.
He's there as the great introducer to the
Gospels.
This rugged man who had no formal education,
being brought up in the desert, perhaps wandering
away down to Sinai and up into Judea,
into the desert of Judea, living alone with
God, separated to God from his mother's womb,
filled with the Holy Ghost, yet finding no
outlet, either outlet manward, in all those thirty
years.
And then at last, he was sent forth.
What an amazing man.
Jesus said that there wasn't a prophet in
all the Old Testament greater than John the
Baptist.
He said, what went ye out in the
wilderness for to see?
A reed shaking with the wind?
A man clothed in soft raiment?
You can look in king's houses for those.
What went ye out for to see?
A prophet?
Yea, I say, and more than a prophet,
for from, how does he go?
All the prophets have prophesied until John, that's
a misquote, and there hath not risen a
greater than John the Baptist.
And yet, he finished his whole course of
ministry in his early thirties.
He died even more early in life than
Jesus did.
Fancy burning out for God in thirty years,
and the remarkable thing, only a few years
less than three in public ministry, yet being
greater, or at least as great as the
greatest of all the prophets.
This is the man whom God chose to
be the herald of the King.
He didn't need a nice hall to preach
in.
He didn't need any advertisements in the local
paper even.
As soon as he began to preach to
the passers-by in the wilderness, people knew
and spread the news that a prophet had
risen in Israel after four hundred years' silence.
Full of the Holy Ghost, every word he
spoke was God-inspired.
He was, as he says, a voice crying
in the wilderness.
He's the only prophet, incidentally, as far as
I can see, who was himself prophesied of.
No one told about the coming of Isaiah,
or Jeremiah, or Ezekiel, but John was foretold
by Isaiah and by Malachi, and the closing
verses of the Old Testament look forward to
the ministry of John the Baptist, so that
he is the linkage in the pages of
the New Testament which link us right on
with the prophet Malachi as he closes down
the Old Testament.
He was the herald of the King.
The herald came dressed in a rough garment
of tent cloth, and when the king came
he was the carpenter of Nazareth.
God's standards were different from men's standards.
He preached about the coming one and the
coming kingdom.
He was the herald of the Christ, but
in association with that preaching, as you know,
his key word and his key ministry was
repentance.
The kingdom of heaven is at hand.
Repent ye and believe the good news.
True repentance is born out of the declaration
of good news.
Men lie grovelling in their sin and corruption
until hope arises, and when hope arises then
there is a possibility of repentance.
Hallelujah.
Repentance, which seems to belong so much to
the area of despair as indeed it does,
is nevertheless born of hope that God has
something better.
If a man is in despair and there
is no hope, instead of repentance he goes
down into death and suicide.
But where there is hope he can turn
and turn to a God who is able
to deliver and save and change.
So John's message was a message of repentance,
and as the doorkeeper of the four gospels
we need to recognize that the road into
almost every blessing that God has is paved
with repentance.
As Jesus said, blessed are the poor in
spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
There is a place, of course, for that
true assurance in God which can enable us
to lift our heads and declare who we
are in Christ.
But the weight of the New Testament and
the Old tells us that a lowly and
a contrite heart he will not despise.
And if there's someone in our meeting feeling
a bit depressed and heavy and you're feeling
you're not quite up to standard and you're
not as good as the other believers around
you or something, don't shrug that off.
It may be the very beginnings of the
stirrings of the Holy Ghost in you to
bring you, via repentance, into hope and into
faith and into love and into life in
dimensions you've never known before.
We are not to shrink from repentance.
There is a kind of evangelism which goes
through this land and America which aims at
patting people on the back and saying you're
all right, you are perfectly secure, there's nothing
really wrong with you, God loves you and
that's the end of it.
But that is not the Bible way.
The Bible shows us very clearly in the
figure of this man in his garment of
camel's hair at the dawning of the New
Testament.
The way to God is the way of
repentance.
The way up is the way down.
Humble yourself, says Peter, under the mighty hand
of God, that he may exalt you in
due time.
If I had been a Jew, I might
have said, what's that fellow preaching repentance to
us for?
It's the Romans who ought to repent, not
us.
The prophets told us to leave idolatry and
we've done so.
The prophets told us to keep the Sabbath
and we do so.
The prophets told us to fear the Lord
and we do that.
Moses told us to pay our tithes and
bring our offerings and we do that.
What have we got to repent of?
How strange that God should send to a
people who were a reformed people a prophet
who says repent.
And I think the answer is that reformation
is not good enough for God.
That is only a veneer.
God goes deeper than that and he requires
a broken heart.
Hallelujah.
If you're feeling a bit broken, then blessed
be God, you're almost at the threshold of
tremendous blessing.
Go through with God.
How often we have read little books to
comfort our souls when we should have been
reading something to cut us to pieces.
When I was at Pinecrest, almost for the
first time, one of the texts I brought
forward was examine yourselves, whether ye be in
the faith or no.
What?
Know ye not your own selves how that
Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates.
And someone who had been brought up under
standard evangelicalism thought, whatever's he saying that to
us for?
We mustn't examine ourselves, we must look to
the promises of God.
That's dangerous to examine yourself, but there it
was in the scripture.
And what, the word of God stuck like
a barbed arrow.
And all her evangelical assurance left her bit
by bit.
And thank God, instead of running away from
the searchings of God, she went through.
And every day she has fresh revelation, fresh
light, fresh joy and peace in Jesus.
Hallelujah, the way up is the way down.
John the Baptist is the herald of Jesus
Christ.
He said four major things about our Lord,
and they are listed, three of them are
listed at any rate, in Luke 3 and
verse 16.
We all know John 3, 16.
It's just as well to know Luke 3,
16.
Luke 3, 16.
John answered, saying to them all, I indeed
baptize you with water, but one mightier than
I cometh, the latchet of whose shoes I
am not worthy to unloose.
He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost
and with fire, whose fan is in his
hand, and he will truly purge his floor,
and will gather the wheat into his garner,
but the chaff he will burn with fire
unquenchable.
Notice then the four things he said, or
here are three of them.
One, he is mightier than I.
Two, he shall baptize you with the Holy
Ghost and with fire.
Three, his fan is in his hand, and
he will thoroughly purge his floor.
And the fourth one, as you know, is
found in John's gospel.
It was reserved until the last moments, long,
some forty days after John had seen Jesus,
he was able to make that last prophetic
declaration on behalf of all those who had
gone before him.
When he saw Jesus standing distinct from the
crowd, he had baptized him some forty-odd
days before this, but now he was able
to point him out and say, behold the
Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin
of the world, thus completing his testimony.
Soon after that, he was imprisoned under Herod's
orders.
Even in prison, this brave man preached against
the king and warned him to drop his
adulterous ways.
And his short life of testimony, in which
he burned out for God, was sealed at
the whim of a dancing girl, and his
head was brought on a dish before the
horrified king.
There cometh one after me, he said, mightier
than I.
And he said these things that all men,
through him, John tells us, might believe.
And the first thing we are required to
believe about Jesus is his greatness.
There cometh one after me, mightier than I.
I was brought up as a modernist, but
one thing my modernist teachers did spare me
was that Jesus was a magnificent man.
They did allow me to get through with
a high estimate of the qualities of Jesus.
If John the Baptist was fearless, Jesus was
more so.
If John spoke out boldly, unafraid of priests
and Levites and kings, Jesus went his way
with full knowledge of what was waiting for
him.
John didn't know what was going to happen
to him, but Jesus knew.
He saw the cross from the cross, mightier
than John the Baptist.
John stripped aside the garment of hypocrisy and
exposed the leprosy of sin, but Jesus healed
the leper, saved the sinner, blessed the fallen.
He was mightier.
John was the voice crying in the wilderness.
He defined himself from the definition of Isaiah
40.
He was the voice of one crying in
the wilderness.
Jesus was the Word of God.
John carried the Word.
Jesus was the Word incarnate.
The one coming after me, he said, is
preferred before me, for he was before me.
John is from time.
Jesus is from eternity.
He is the Word of God.
God manifests in the flesh.
And the first challenge that John gives to
us is to believe in Jesus, not only
that perfect man, but God manifest among us.
Not only one tempted and suffering like we
are, but one who is from eternity to
eternity, upholding all things by the Word of
his power.
And let me say to you that we
can never believe in too much in Jesus
and his greatness.
I pray for grace that I might believe
in Jesus more next week than I believed
in this last week.
I want to know the greatness of his
power, and he wants us to know the
greatness of his power.
God wants all men to know who Jesus
is.
And the degree in which you know who
Jesus is, is the degree in which you
can become a channel of blessing to other
people.
It's not in rhetoric or in a natural
ability or anything, but if you know who
Jesus is, revealed to you by the Holy
Ghost, if he indwells you not only in
emotion, but in deep understanding, the eyes of
your understanding being enlightened, so that you know
him and he knows you.
It's there that your ministry blossoms into what
God intended.
We cannot function without Jesus Christ.
We cannot function on a creed.
We need to know him.
That was Paul's great passion.
And John, at the beginning, speaks of his
greatness.
There cometh one after me, mightier than I,
the latchet of whose peasant sandals I am
not worthy to unloose.
Oh, let's renew and enlarge our confidence in
Jesus in this hour.
If you go away with nothing else but
that, you'll have got something that can be
life-changing.
Sometimes we, we depend overmuch on past experiences.
You get your whole being to know who
Jesus is.
Oh, the most life-changing faith that will
change every day and every circumstance.
There cometh one after me, mightier than I,
that all men might believe.
Believe John's testimony.
And the second thing he says is, I
indeed baptize you with water, but one mightier
than I cometh, the latchet of whose shoes
I am not worthy to unloose.
He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost
and with fire.
The second thing he tells us about is
Jesus, the great baptizer.
You would have thought that John would have
gone into raptures about the coming ministry of
Jesus.
You'd have thought he'd have given you whole
paragraphs about Christ's power to heal.
But he didn't say a thing about that.
He seems to have missed all that out.
All that wonderful earthly ministry that the four
evangelists tell us about, he jumps right over
and goes on to something which wouldn't start
until Jesus had left the sea.
For didn't John explain to us, John 7,
that the Holy Ghost was not yet given,
or was not yet, because that Jesus was
not yet glorified.
And didn't Peter say on the day of
Pentecost, he being at the right hand of
God exalted, hath shed forth this which ye
do now see and hear.
It's also a little surprising he doesn't go
into a great detail at this point about
how to know the way of salvation.
He slides past that somehow, omits it just
here, and comes straight to this point that
Jesus will give his converts an experience more
dynamic than anything John gave to those who
believed him.
Those who believed John and came to him
for repentance were baptized in Jordan.
And the nickname that the crowd gave to
John was the nickname Baptist, John the Baptist.
The Greek word is baptisteis, and it means
John the Dyer.
They recognized in his action, the action of
a dyer who takes a piece of cloth
and immerses it in the dye and brings
it out again.
So along the banks of Jordan they were
crying, John Baptisteis, John the Dyer.
He's dipping them in that they might be
changed.
You know perfectly well that if you do
any dyeing of your curtains, I suppose it's
old-fashioned these days, that maybe some of
you dear older saints can remember the dim
and distant past when you actually did dye
your curtains, or maybe some even still do
the same thing.
But I guess you have discovered that sprinkling
is not the best method of dyeing.
And also effusion, pouring the dye on, would
produce some extraordinary results.
The satisfactory way of dyeing is by immersion.
And I think that really settles, as far
as I'm concerned, quite completely the kind of
action that John went through when he baptized
his converts.
And what an experience it must have been
for a farmer.
Farmers usually aren't very fond of washing.
I knew a farmer and he spoke about
a farmer's wash to me, and I said,
whatever do you mean by a farmer's wash?
Oh, he said, a farmer washes when he
goes to market, or just before, after he's
got his hat and coat on.
Imagine then a farmer coming down, and there
is icy Jordan.
And he's so convinced, one of his sin
and need, second of the glorious possibility that
the kingdom of heaven is at hand and
Messiah is near.
He's so convinced that he steps down into
the Jordan, and my how cold it is
about his ankles, and up to his knees,
and up to his waist.
And he moves out to the Baptist, standing
there in his now soaking wet garment of
camel's hair.
And then, for the first time, submits himself
totally into the hands of another, and is
immersed.
He's probably never swum in his life.
Down he goes.
It's like death.
And then he's brought out again.
He won't forget that.
Associated with his conversion to repentance, he's been
immersed in Jordan, and he's received an experience
which will remain with him for years.
John said, I baptize you with water, he
shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and
with fire.
And that means, surely, that the experience is
going to be charged with the dynamism of
God, charged with the power of God.
He shall immerse you with the Holy Ghost
and with fire.
And in order to receive his immersion, then
the great truth is that you must follow
a similar route that John the Baptist disciples
took.
That is, you must go down to meet
him.
Hallelujah.
Go down to meet him, and get as
near to him as you possibly can, where
you are surrounded by the presence and power
of God.
And allow him to handle the whole situation.
If you've never given yourself over to another
totally before, then give yourself totally into the
pierced hands of the Risen Lord.
He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost
and with fire.
There has been a lot of talk of
baptism, and a lot of practice of baptism
in Pentecostal circles, where people are sort of
engineered and manipulated into something which is shallow,
imitation, unreal, and not lasting.
But oh, if you go down, down into
the, into the things of God, in humbleness
and brokenness, and make sure that no one
baptizes you except the Heavenly Baptizer, you'll have
something that'll change you.
You'll have the real baptism.
Hallelujah.
And there's been a great rediscovery of these
things in recent years, and the last, especially
in the turn of, since the turn of
this century, since the great movements in Wales,
and Azusa Street, and elsewhere.
All over the world, poor, humble Christians have
been made more and more aware that Jesus
baptizes in the Holy Ghost.
So much so, that one or two Pentecostal
denominations have reduced the gospel to a fourfold
simplicity, as you may know.
Jesus the Savior, Jesus the Healer, Jesus the
Baptizer, Jesus the Coming King.
He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost
and with fire.
What does the fire mean?
I've looked at it.
At one time, I was told that the
fire was hell fire, corresponding to verse 17.
Listen, verse 16, He shall baptize you with
the Holy Ghost and with fire, whose fan
is in his hand, he will throughly purge
his floor, and will gather the wheat into
his gardener, that's those who receive the Holy
Ghost, but the chaff he will burn with
fire unquenchable, that is the baptism of fire
for unbelievers.
Well, that sounds reasonable, but there's a flaw
in it.
For baptism is both given and received voluntarily,
otherwise it's drowning.
For baptism, the candidate comes forward of his
own free will.
I am told that the Emperor of Russia,
or the King of Russia, I believe it
was, in the 10th century, having listened to,
I believe it was Saint Boniface, ordered the
whole nation to be baptized.
And everybody in Russia in that day was
all baptized on one day, that is sprinkled,
and it wasn't a voluntary thing at all.
If you didn't get baptized, you had your
head chopped off.
But real baptism is undertaken voluntarily.
John's converts came out to him and submitted
to him.
So, I doubt if that is the meaning
of that he shall baptize you with the
Holy Ghost and with fire.
In the early days of Pentecost, folk were
singing, the fire, the fire, the Pentecostal fire,
and they thought it was all the fire
of enthusiasm in the Holy Ghost.
But I found that wore off after a
bit.
And the people who were doing all the
shouting about the fire were mistaking their own
natural zeal, which I often found rather trying,
with that fire that Jesus was talking about.
And so, I want to make a suggestion
to you this morning.
I don't know whether you'll like it or
not.
I believe that there is a double baptism
here, Holy Ghost and fire.
Not the same thing, but two balancing things
that God gives.
Jesus said one day to his disciples, I
have a baptism to be baptized with, and
how am I straightened until it be accomplished?
That's in Luke 12, if I remember rightly.
He wasn't referring to his baptism in the
Holy Spirit when God anointed him with the
Holy Ghost and power.
He was referring to something future which would
release him, which would get him out of
the straitjacket of his earthly ministry.
In his earthly ministry, he was straightened, he
was bound.
He was only to reach the lost sheep
of the house of Israel.
The others were beyond the scope of his
calling.
And he longed to reach the whole world,
and until his further baptism, he was straightened.
In his earthly ministry, when he was at
Galilee, he couldn't be down in Jerusalem.
He would have to walk with the others.
He looked forward to that time when such
limitations would no longer be upon him.
But as the God-man, he could reign
from heaven and be present with us here,
and present with our friends in Africa, and
those in New Guinea, and all over the
world at the same time.
And that baptism that he was speaking about
was the baptism of his own sufferings and
death.
On another occasion, two of his disciples were
brought forward by their mother.
Great big babies, they were too scared to
go themselves to their master, and so they
said, Mum, you ask him.
And so Mum asked for them, and there
were the two sheepish-looking disciples standing in
the background, while Mother said, Lord, will you
grant my two boys a very special favor?
May they sit on your right hand and
on your left when in your kingdom?
And Jesus looked past her to the two
disciples, apostles maybe, and said to them, Are
you able to be baptized with my baptism?
Are you able to drink the cup that
I shall drink?
And they said, Yes, we're able.
All right, he said, you'll have it.
But the reward you seek is not mine
to give, for that belongs to my Father.
There is a baptism of suffering which every
Christian needs to know, and it must be
entered into as voluntarily as folk entered into
baptism in water.
When Paul was converted, the Lord said to
Ananias, Go and lay your hands on him,
that he might receive his sight and be
filled with the Holy Ghost, and I will
show him what things he must suffer for
my namesake.
So that when Paul received the Holy Spirit,
he was immediately introduced to a life of
suffering, and he took it with great joy.
It was from the hand of Jesus.
Let me give you a few more scriptures
like that.
When Paul was stoned at Lystra, he was
raised from that critical condition by the power
of the Lord, went on through the other
towns, and presently came back through Lystra.
And he exhorted them, he appointed elders, and
he said that through much tribulation, we must
enter the kingdom of God.
They saw what had happened to him with
their own eyes.
No, he said, you must be prepared for
that yourself.
If you're going to belong to the crucified,
you must accept not only the comforts of
the Holy Ghost, but the baptism of fire.
In Malachi, he sits as a refiner and
purifier of silver, and he puts the fire
under it, and he purifies by fire, and
it is the fire of accepted suffering.
He said himself, if any man will come
after me, let him deny himself, take up
his cross, and follow me.
And that doesn't mean to say bearing a
little bit of rheumatism and not complaining about
it.
Something altogether different.
Those who bore their cross were often to
be seen in those tragic days in Galilee
and Jerusalem, driven by a cohort of Roman
soldiers on their way to death, carrying the
instrument of death on their own shoulder, as
Jesus did later on.
And the Jews utterly hated, loathed, and were
terrified of the sight of a man bearing
his cross.
Jesus said, if you want to follow me,
you take up your cross and follow me.
Accept a baptism of suffering, face up to
it.
And moreover, he said, unless a man does
this and forsakes everything, he cannot be my
disciple.
His words are strong and disturbing.
Let me quote to you from Matthew 10.
Wouldn't you like this bit left out of
the Gospels?
Verse 24.
Oh no, I'd better come back to verse
16.
Behold, I send you forth as sheep in
the midst of wolves.
Be ye therefore wise as serpents and harmless
as doves.
But beware of men, for they will deliver
you up to the councils, they will scourge
you in their synagogues.
Ye shall be brought before governors and kings,
for my sake, for a testimony against them
and the Gentiles.
But when they deliver you up, take no
thought of how or what ye shall speak,
for it shall be given you in that
hour what ye shall speak.
For it is not ye that speak, but
the spirit of your father which speaketh in
you.
And the brother shall deliver the brother to
death, and the father the child.
And the children shall rise up against their
parents and cause them to be put to
death.
And ye shall be hated of all men
for my name's sake, but he that endureth
to the end shall be saved.
But when they persecute you in this city,
flee to another.
Verily I say to you, ye shall not
have gone over the cities of Israel till
the Son of Man be come.
The disciple is not about his master, nor
the servant about his lord.
It is enough for the disciple that he
be as his master and the servant as
his lord.
If they have called the master of the
house Beelzebub, how much more shall they call
them of his household?
Fear them not therefore, for there is nothing
covered that shall not be revealed, and hid
that shall not be known.
What I tell you in darkness, speak ye
in light.
What ye hear in the ear, preach on
the housetops.
Fear not them which kill the body, that
are not able to kill the soul, but
rather fear him which is able to destroy
both soul and body in hell.
Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing,
and one of them shall not fall to
the ground without your father?
But the very hairs of your head are
all numbered.
Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more
value than many sparrows.
Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him
will I confess before my father in heaven.
But whosoever shall deny me before men, him
will I also deny before my father which
is in heaven.
Think not that I am come to send
peace on earth.
I came not to send peace, but a
sword.
For I am come to set a man
at variance against his father, and the daughter
against her mother, and the daughter-in-law
against her mother-in-law, and a man's
foes shall be they of his own household.
He that loveth father and mother more than
me is not worthy of me.
He that loveth son or daughter more than
me is not worthy of me.
He that taketh not his cross and followeth
after me is not worthy of me.
He that findeth his life shall lose it.
He that loseth his life for my sake
shall find it."
Perhaps we'd better cut it out.
Maybe we can find a dispensational way of
dodging it.
But there are Christians in Russia who can't
dodge it.
And there are Christians in China who haven't
dodged it.
And there were Christians in Chad who were
buried in the ground up to their neck
and the ant set their eyes out.
There are those all over the world in
this our day who have understood that there
is a baptism of fire, a way of
suffering.
And we poor, lopsided people have thought all
about the comfort of the Holy Ghost, and
a great deal too little about that which
identifies us with the cross of Christ.
And few of us are ready to take
the risk of losing out for God.
We want the blessings, we want the gifts,
but to suffer and die is something we'd
rather leave aside.
But he shall baptize you with the Holy
Ghost and with fire.
Says Peter, think it not strange concerning the
fiery trial that shall try you.
Oh well, it can't come to me.
I'm living in comfortable conditions, I've got a
good job, I shall be alright.
Well, never mind.
But the point is, have you given your
life over into the hands of Jesus to
the place of death in a very practical
way?
Have you really taken up your cross?
Have you really faced not only the baptism
of blessing, but the baptism of fire?
The early disciples knew it, the early church
knew it.
And we are told in Acts that they
count, they rejoiced that they were counted worthy
to suffer for his name's sake.
And we've gone through the scripture with a
kind of filter.
We've tried to filter out all the suffering
passages and retain all the comfort passages.
But it won't do.
May God deliver us, may God deliver me
from my natural shrinking from suffering and danger
for Christ's sake.
It's an ugly thing and it's no part
of the kingdom.
When you were first converted, beloved, you knew
that your Christian life was going to cost
you something.
Isn't that right?
And ever since then, other Christians have been
saying, now don't be so extreme, don't take
it quite so seriously as all that.
Modify your behaviour, just tone down a bit
and you know, you mustn't go seeking for
trouble.
And so we have so modified our practical
Christianity that we're almost worthless in this world.
I'm not suggesting that you should just become
fanatical and wild, but I am suggesting that
there is such a thing as receiving from
the same one who filled you with his
spirit, an identification with his cross, that will
enable you to go through any kind of
suffering gladly for his name's sake.
A complete change in our whole pattern of
thinking until we are truly his disciples and
not just charismatics.
I didn't mean to say that in a
derogatory way, but there is a case, a
tendency among all of us, I suppose, to
look for the sweetness of the blessings and
avoid the bitterness of the cross.
Paul wasn't like that.
He counted it all joy when he entered
into sorrows and his goal was that he
should be conformed to the death of Jesus
in every way.
Enemies put him in prison, Christians let him
down and he was trapped at Jerusalem.
Year after year he suffered as few men
have suffered, frustration and disappointment.
His heart was surging with the inspirations of
the spirit.
He longed to be out going as far
as Spain to preach the blessed gospel of
Jesus Christ as he had preached it already
as part of the lyricum.
And he was confined year after year unjustly
in the prison and all through other men's
wickedness and dishonesty, one was hoping to get
a bribe from him and kept him there
year after year.
And he could have got bitter, but when
he writes he says, Paul a prisoner of
Jesus Christ.
What had made a difference?
He had received his baptism of fire and
he was delighted to suffer with Jesus.
He knew who he was, a man who
had been identified with Christ's sufferings.
And nothing could scare him, nothing dismay him,
he had been through.
Now, trouble, tribulation, will come in every man's
life.
A man is born to trouble as the
sparks fly upward.
You can't avoid it.
We think, we used to think as kiddies
that, you know, we could get through without
any of the troubles that other people moaned
and groaned about.
But it can't be avoided.
Trouble's bound to come.
Some trouble we pull upon ourselves through our
own follies.
I've pulled a lot on myself through my
own follies, and I dare say I'm not
the only one here who's done that.
And we have to suffer.
But what a blessed thing to be baptized
by Jesus to such a degree that you
are identified with him in his sufferings, and
you can take the bitter as happily as
you can take the sweet, because you are
identified with him in his death.
He has baptized you not only with the
comfort of the Holy Ghost, but with the
fire of the fellowship of his suffering.
That's what made the early church.
And it is the lack of this balance
which is what is wrong with the Lord's
people in this our day.
He shall baptize you.
Will you let him?
Will you say, Lord, I've got awfully selfish
and lazy and inclined to look after my
own comforts, but I want you to baptize
me with the fiery trial and to be
ready in my heart and eager to suffer
for your sake.
You know, the early church martyrs actually were
eager to suffer.
And there were, although they didn't understand everything
in the third century of our era, there
were many who competed to be thrown to
the lions or burned at the stake.
They counted it the highest privilege to die
in agony for Jesus.
Why?
He had baptized them into suffering.
Hallelujah.
Put the iron into them so that they
were able to stand triumphant.
When Paul Cranmer was serving the Lord in
Britain, he was a double-minded man.
He was a double-minded man.
Archbishop of the church, favourite of King Henry.
He compromised him point after point, but in
his heart he really loved the Lord Jesus
and really loved this book.
He was in great favour with Henry that
later on, after the brief reign of a
little boy King Edward VI, he came under
the power of Bloody Mary.
And Cranmer, under pressure, gave way and signed
a recantation of his Protestantism and signed submission
to the great persecuting church of Rome.
But he could not be happy about it,
weak man as he was.
And in the prison, the Lord gave him
the baptism of fire.
And he realized that it was better to
die with Jesus than live with his compromises.
And when at last he was tried again,
because he had shifted his ground and he
was led away to the stake somewhere in
London, he stretched out his right hand into
the flame.
Oh unworthy right hand that had signed that
paper of retraction.
And the flames consumed it while he watched
it.
And he went up and sacrificed the gar.
Hallelujah.
And the Lord calls every follower of his
into the twin baptism of the Holy Ghost
and fire.
That makes men and women of God who
will go through for Jesus, whose hand is
in his hand and he will thoroughly purge
his flaw.
The harvest was brought in from the fields
and brought to the flat top of a
high hill, which was the threshing floor.
There the oxen would drag round the threshing
sleds and they would be closely followed by
the winnowers, who would take their great wooden
shovels called pans, here in this passage, and
throw the mixture of chaff and wheat into
the air.
The wind would carry away the chaff and
the wheat or corn would fall to the
ground and would be gathered into the garner.
John had tried to purge the floor of
Israel, but he said, there's coming one after
me and he will thoroughly purge his flaw.
He'll divide the chaff from the wheat without
any mistake.
Praise God he's in our midst this morning.
Chaff has the same shape as the wheat.
You know that, you who have plucked corn
and rubbed it in your hands as we
did as boys, that's the threshing.
And here comes the wind, you blow through
it and then the chaff is separated.
You know how the chaff and the wheat
look almost the same.
In fact, the chaff is a bit bigger
than the wheat.
But the chaff, although it has the right
appearance, has nothing in it.
And when Jesus purges his floor, there's a
lot of chaff that will go and only
the wheat will remain.
And if there's someone here who you realize
that you're chiefly outside profession and there's nothing
very, very real inside in relationship to Jesus
Christ, remember that he is the judge, the
fan is in his hand, and he prefers
to purge his flaw here and now and
to leave it until that great judgment day.
But whichever way he does it, he will
make no mistake, he will thoroughly purge his
flaw.
He is not only savior, he is judge.
And then the last thing that John said
about him was that tremendous occasion when he
saw Jesus standing clear from all the others.
And John, the evangelical writer, is the one
who records it twice over, that mighty declaration,
behold the Lamb of God which taketh away
the sin of the world.
When we've seen it all, when we've faced
the tremendous challenge of what he is, there
comes within us that dread awareness of our
own inner corruption.
The light, the truth, the direct challenge of
Jesus Christ is such that everything in us
which is corrupt is exposed.
Even our self-protection, even our timidity, even
our weaknesses, even our inner greed and secret
corruptions, they're all exposed in the light of
his countenance.
And we know not where to turn, but
thank God at the close of John's testimony,
before they took him away to prison and
to ultimate death, he was able to stretch
out his indexed finger and pointing hand and
cry, behold the Lamb of God which taketh
away the sin of the world.
Notice once again that when they heard what
he had to say, there was nothing to
be seen except an ordinary-looking carpenter.
There was no lamb there, only an ordinary
-looking man.
You need the eyes of faith to respond
to God's beholds.
When the Word of God says behold, he's
asking you to see something you can't see.
He's calling to a faculty in you which
perhaps has lain dormant, or which God has
to give to you, when he opens your
eyes that you might see who Jesus really
is.
Behold, says John, the Lamb of God.
Have you noticed too that even when Jesus
was crucified, there were both friends and enemies
around the cross who saw him there in
his agony and suffering, his wounds, the crown
of thorns, the distress of his tortured body.
They saw it all, the agony of his
countenance, but they didn't see the Lamb of
God.
They didn't understand a thing about it.
But the Holy Ghost comes to testify to
Jesus and reveals to your heart and mine,
when we are broken and needy.
He reveals to us the Lamb of God,
and what does John go on to say,
who taketh away the sin of the world.
Doesn't just expose it, doesn't just describe it,
doesn't just reform it, but takes away the
sin of the world.
Thank God.
The whole lot of it, including mine, he
takes away the sin of the world.
The Holy Spirit comes and he shows us
our sin, he penetrates our heart, we see
how far short we have come of God's
high calling, and the whole thing is labelled
sin, and we dare not label it anything
less, but then he shows to the broken
and contrite heart, the Lamb of God who
takes away.
Blessed be his lovely name, the sin of
the world, and even those sins which have
surfaced in your conscience this morning and mine.
He takes away the sin of the world.
Hallelujah.
That cry, it is finished, means the finish
of me and my sins too.
He takes away the sin of the world.
The evangelist goes on to say, John was
not that true light, but was sent to
bear witness of that light.
That was the true light which lighteth every
man that cometh into the world.
He was in the world, and the world
was made by him, and the world knew
him not.
I just pause for a moment to look
at that phrase, that true light which lighteth
every man.
Now isn't that odd?
You know perfectly well that Jesus has not
been preached to all men.
How can he light every man?
To tell the truth, I don't know.
But I am told that all things were
made by him, and I believe he has
an interest in the remotest heathen in this
world who has not yet heard the gospel.
And I believe this, that somehow Jesus, who
in a way that we know not nor
understand, was involved in your being, even before
you knew him, in some way or other,
sent a shaft of pure light into your
darkened being, so that you could never be
satisfied totally with sin and corruption, no matter
how much you tried.
There was a little shaft of light.
He lighteth every man coming into the world.
When we go into heathen villages and we
preach Christ, we know that he's been there
before us.
And those who have heard the still small
voice will recognize what we are saying is
true.
Hallelujah.
The gospel reveals the one who has been
operating beyond our consciousness from eternity.
He is declared unto us in this precious
word.
And when with all my being, I come
back to my Lord Jesus and accept his
cross, and all as it means, I'm coming
home to that which my Creator destined for
me before I was born.
Hallelujah.
And you can never be satisfied with anything
less than a total yielding to the mighty
baptizer who baptizes with the Holy Ghost and
with fire, who gives you both blessings and
sufferings.
And that means a total yielding to him
at any cost and at any price.
I just opened to a hymn by dear
Francis Ridley Havagum, who understood these things very
well.
Thou, Lord, hast borne for me more than
my tongue can tell Of bitterest agony to
rescue me from hell.
Thou suff'rest all for me, what have I
borne for thee?
And thou hast brought to me down from
my home above Salvation full and free, Thy
pardon and my love, great gifts thou broughtest
me, what have I brought to thee?
Oh, let my life be given, my years
for thee be spent, world fettered all be
riven, And joy with suffering blent to thee,
my all I bring, my Saviour and my
King.
He couraged to possess you wholly.
He doesn't want just to give you the
comfort.
He wants you to have the whole significance
of the cross.
Will you yield to him his kingly right,
His fan is in his hand and he
will truly purge his floor.
Make no mistake about it, no double dealing
with him.
He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost
and with fire.
And he is the greatest one of all.
And he's the Lamb of God who lifts
your burden of guilt and disobedience and rebellion
and brings you right back to God.
Hallelujah.
And he's right here now.
What do we say to him?
Lord, give me the comfort and not the
suffering.
It won't even satisfy you.
You know it won't.
Will you take the whole, the whole challenge
of his relationship?
Oh God, I have, I'm looking back over
my life, I realize how far short I've
come of this.
It's only just recently that God has shown
me that this is the truth that I
was evading.
Thank God it's here now.
Will you accept this challenge?
Let's bow in prayer, shall we?
And we find it's not in us.
We weren't made heroes, were we?
We weren't born that way.
But in new birth, in the baptism in
the Holy Spirit, he intended us to be
wide open to the fellowship of his sufferings.
Praise the Lord.
Will you take that now?
Will you say, Lord, I'm not capable of
it, but you are.
You're able to baptize me into this area.
Amen.
And I don't know how you care to
signify such a surrender before I say anything
about that.
Maybe there's someone here who's not even born
again, not even Christ's, still outside.
You can receive him now, if you will.
Will you believe him, this blessed lamb of
God who takes away your sin?
Bless him, all your sin, if you believe
that.
Will you accept him now?
It would be good if you stood to
your feet where you are, as an indication.
You do that.
Stand to your feet, taking Jesus now.
Thank you.
God bless you.
Anyone else coming from darkness into light?
Oh, out of a load of guilt, into
forgiveness.
Behold the lamb of God which taketh away
the sin of the world.
See him there.
He's the end of that struggle.
Blessed be his lovely name.
He receives everyone who comes.
Anyone else in that same position needing to
come to Jesus now?
Will you stand also?
And those of you who feel that God
is challenging you to an out-and-out
relationship with Jesus, in which your consecration is
sealed not just by your own efforts, but
by his baptism into the fellowship of his
sufferings.
You may not agree with all theology, but
you know the reality of it, don't you?
Well, you, if this is a moment of
decision for you, you stand to your feet
too.
Praise the Lord.
Thank you.
Oh, Jesus.
Jesus.
Lord, with timid hearts we come, and knowing
our limitations, knowing that we can't make it,
but you who baptize, you are the one
who enables.
We've found no satisfaction in being any other
kind of Christian than one who is in
total involvement.
Take us now, Lord.
We accept the meaning of the cross and
the fire and the suffering.
It might make big changes for some of
us, but we accept it, Lord, at your
hand.
We don't want our own foolish choices, we
want your choices, Lord.
Take us now.
Oh, thou great baptizer, hold us close to
thyself, that we might know thee, and the
power of thy resurrection, and the fellowship of
thy sufferings, being made conformable to his death.
We want it lifted from the Word and
the page, and made real, Lord Jesus.
Receive us now according to your promise, Lord.
Amen.
Thank you.
You may be seated.