If you go back to Mark chapter 1, we didn't cover all those first eight verses this morning. And I want to go back and read those again from the very beginning, the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. As it is written in the prophets, behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his path straight. John did baptize in the wilderness and preach the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. And there went out unto all the land of Judea and they of Jerusalem. and were all baptized of him in the river of Jordan, confessing their sins. And John was clothed with camel's hair and with a girdle of skin or of leather about his loins, and he did eat locust and wild honey, and preaching, saying, There cometh one mightier than I after me, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose. I indeed have baptized you with water, but he shall baptize you with the Holy Spirit. And if you look at the next verses there going on a little bit further, it says, and it came to pass in those days that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized of John in the Jordan. and straightway coming up out of the water. He saw the heavens open and the spirit like a dove descending upon him. And there came a voice from heaven saying, thou art my beloved son in whom I am well pleased from the father in heaven. But going back to verse one, one of the things that you see in this gospel of Mark, I said it this morning, Mark is believed to be the oldest of the gospels, so it was written before all the other gospels. Probably because of the influence mostly of Peter, because John was not an apostle, he was an evangelist. He was influenced greatly by the apostle Peter and Paul, but mostly Peter. But it says here the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Well, if you go back to the beginning, in the beginning, was the word, or if you go back to the beginning in the book of Genesis, it says that God, in the beginning, God. So in this beginning, if you actually look at the gospel, it goes all the way back, and it's still the gospel of Jesus Christ, even in the book of Genesis. And you can see that when you actually study this, because when it came to the temptations of Christ, and it came to whenever the devil whenever he tempted Adam and Eve. And the Bible says there that he will bruise there the heel, but that the son, actually Christ, would bruise his head, the gospel. And that's the way it is. See, Satan is defeated by the gospel. whenever a person is changed, is saved by this great gospel, then that person is taken out of the snare of the devil himself and he's changed and the devil is defeated. And see, that's what our goal is. That's what we, our calling is in this great gospel is that we're called to go rescue men out of this snare that are in this snare of Satan himself. So the beginning of this gospel began not here in the book of Mark, not after the ascension of Christ, but it began from the very beginning. It actually began before that. It began in the mind of Christ, in the mind of God, the Godhead, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit before the beginning of time. Because I heard one man say, one man told me actually that he believed that that Christ died on the cross or that God created man because he was lonely. Well, see, that can't happen. That's not true. Because if God was lonely, then that would be a sin on God's part. He would not be a sinless God. He was not lonely. He chose to do the things that he did because of who he is, because he's a God of love. He's a God of grace. He's a God who gave to man exactly what man needed to change men, to change those that he's called according to his purpose, and he gave us purpose. See, we're not just living lives that have no purpose, but he gave us this great purpose. Now, one of the things that you see in all this, as you see, let me get to my notes here, you see that that what God has done always has purpose. He's not done anything without purpose. He's the perfect God. I believe it was Matthew Henry that said that God has never destined anything in time. Now think about that. Here we are. We're in time. But when God destined things, He predestined those before the beginning of time. So we have to understand that. And that's like Brother Carey said many times, when we pray to God, we don't pray to change his mind because God's mind was set before the beginning of time. So we have to understand that here. But Mark didn't write about himself. Neither did Paul preach about himself. He did some, Paul probably more than anybody, telling about how horrible of a person that he actually believed that he was the worst of all sinners. But the Gospel of Mark here, Mark wrote about Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the deity. So what does that tell us about this great Gospel? It tells us that men are going to be saved by the calling of God. Ephesians 1 says that. It says that he called us, the ones that are Christians, He predestinated us, and he's going to go on and sanctify us, and he's sanctifying us now. If we are Christian tonight, we're being sanctified by this grace. He never leaves us alone. We're constantly changed by this gospel. It never ends. It's a never-ending, it's an infinite thing that God has put into motion before the beginning of time, and it's by the Son of God, Christ Jesus, who is deity, he's on the throne, and we have to understand that. And we've heard that preached to us many times. But it's not about us. But here's what the gospel does. It supplies the deepest need of man, the deepest need. What do we need more than anything else? Mankind. You just think about this a minute. If we had a great revival in this country, And 75% of the people in this country were Christians. What kind of difference would that make? You know, I'm old enough to remember that we didn't lock our doors at night. I don't even know if our vehicles had locks on them to lock vehicles. Matter of fact, Vonda and I, we moved to North Carolina, and it was a great experience for us, because one of the first things that happened was we got out of our car, we went in the grocery store, and we came back out, and there was a man standing by our car, and he said, I just ran a guy off. He was in your car trying to steal your tape player, because back then, cars didn't come with a tape player. Had to put them in. A learning experience. From that time on, we had to lock our doors. But I remember growing up, we had a screen door going out of the house. We didn't have air conditioning. And even the screen door was not locked. We never worried about somebody coming in our house. We'll see if this nation was a Christian nation again, we wouldn't have to worry about that still. What a glorious thing that would be. You don't have to worry about anybody stealing your stuff. You don't have to lock your shop or you don't have to lock your tractor or whatever. And see, that's by grace. That can only come by grace. And even God said to the nation of Israel, keep my commandments. People won't even want your land. I'll make people not even desire your land. Well, see, that's what we desire today. But see, God's given us this great ministry. He called us to. We're, as I said this morning, we're runners for Christ. John the Baptist was the forerunners. We're runners for Christ. In other words, we're taking this gospel wherever we go with us. That's our calling. But see, God gave us that commission before he ascended back into heaven, the great commission, Matthew 28, 19, and 20. Go ye therefore. Teach all nations. baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost. See, he gave us that. He gave us this great commission. And see, that's not changed. God is not a changing God. See, that's something that most people can't understand is God does not change. His word does not change. Now, there's all kind of new translations. There's hundreds of them, by the way. But we stick with the King James Version or something close to it because We understand that you cannot change this gospel. But the other thing that's important about this gospel is this. We have no ability. God's called us to go ye therefore and teach, to teach this gospel to our neighbors, to our friends, wherever we are. But we have no ability to save them. Seems kind of hopeless sometimes. We can go out here when we had faith and we'd go out and we'd visit. Some people let us in their house, some wouldn't. But we saw no effect, very little effect from that, even though I think we did. But we did what God led us to do, to go out and share the gospel of Christ. We did see a couple of people say, which is miraculous, just to see that. But see, that's not our job. Our job is to take this gospel, It's not our job to save people. That's the job of the Holy Spirit, the works of the Holy Spirit in a man's heart. Without that work of the Holy Spirit, people cannot and will not be saved. Now, we understand that very well, but we still have this great commission. The other thing that's important about this, too, as you get on down, this was written there in verse two. This was written in prophecy. Now, the book of Isaiah. Way before 400 years, Micah or Malachi in 3.1 was 400 or something years before Christ. But here's what it says in 3.1, it says, I will send my messenger and shall prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek shall suddenly come to his temple. Even the messengers of the covenant whom you delight in, behold, he shall come, saith the Lord." See, this was predestined by God, and it happened. So when it comes to the church, here's what we have to understand when it comes to this gospel. As God has predestinated, The goal or the predestinated, the end of what's going to happen to Bethlehem Baptist Church. We can't change that no matter what we do. But yet we're commanded to pray for that. We're commanded to go and take this gospel wherever we go. We're commanded to live this gospel. But yet the effect is left up to Christ. See, he is the one. Only by the works of the Holy Spirit are men changed. So you see that here. And I said this morning, as you look at this voice, the one crying in the wilderness, this was a new thing. It was something that did not happen. But here's what James Snowden wrote. James Snowden was a Presbyterian writer, and here's what he said. The apostles went forth preaching the gospel, though they had none of the gospel writings. Now think about that. When these guys went out, the evangelist and the apostles, went out to preach the word of God, they didn't have what we have. They're the ones who were inspired to write it later. They didn't have it. So what were they preaching from? They were preaching from the Old Testament. See, they didn't have the New Testament. They didn't have this part of the gospel. And it's important that we realize that, that the Old Testament is just as important as the New Testament. Now, there's many Baptists today, and I've heard men say this. Well, you can't go by that Old Testament. That's the Old Testament. Well, no, it's not. It's the Bible. And the Bible is made up of two parts, the Old and New Testament. They're the same. And so we have to understand that as Christians. We have to understand what this gospel is. It's the Old. It's the Bible itself. the gospel from the very beginning, as I said a minute ago, the beginning whenever Adam and Eve sinned. The other thing we have to understand, especially later on when we get into the temptations of Christ, is that Adam and Eve sinned from perfection. Now think about that just a minute. Adam and Eve sinned, and they had everything that a man could ever want or a woman could ever want. They had it all. Perfect life, perfect place that they lived in. There were no bugs that bit. All the animals were tame. They walked with God every day, and they sinned. So here we are. We are born into sin. Our parents were sinners. Our grandparents were sinners. And people think today that they can save themselves by whenever they decide to come to God and just say this prayer. Well, we understand differently than that. This gospel is brought about and happens by the works of the Holy Spirit of God, not ourself, and nothing that we do. But the prophecy of God, there's nothing that we can do to stop it. There's nothing that we can do to change it. But yet God demands that we pray for this church. We pray for each other. We pray for our country. And we pray for other countries. We pray for Africa and our pastors there. We pray for other countries that they would come to Christ because The things that we see in this world, the sin that I mentioned this morning, that we should not be a part of because John the Baptist was not a part of that world. He was a different person as we should be different and we should live differently. But the thing that we see in our own country, and you saw it in the Old Testament times, you saw God destroy nations. He destroyed cities. He destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. because of great sin, homosexuality being one of those sins, sexual perversion, because what does that do? If you get to thinking about sexual perversion, I don't know if y'all been watching this governor that's running against Sears there in Virginia. Sears is a dedicated Christian for all that, for what I know about her. I know she stood for Christ and she stood against all this stuff that this homosexuality and all this lesbianism and all that stuff that's going on. But what does that do? See, this is what, and I don't understand their thinking, and this is how twisted, this is how the devil leads people to think. What's happened to the democratic, political part of our country? They believe they're right. They honestly believe that they're right, but in that, you bring about the destruction of the family, you bring about the destruction of your own society. They had on Fox News here the other day that it's a great concern for many people because the population of the world, instead of increasing, has come to the point that it's beginning to decrease. Well, we understand why. There's abortion rampant throughout the world. You've got the Muslims that are killing people by the thousands. I mean, it's going to have to decrease. But see, when you get into all these things that are against God's word and against God's law, that's what happens. A society begins to decline. During this time when Mark wrote this and when the other gospels were written, The Roman Empire was beginning to decline from those very reasons because abortion was rampant. The government had become to the point that they were so wicked, even the Jewish government was wicked, and the Jewish religion was wicked because they had defied God, and it was destroying their nation. It was destroying and eventually totally destroyed Rome. And we understand that from the history that we see. But verse 7 says that John the Baptist preached saying, there cometh one mightier than I that's after me that the latches of whose shoes I'm not worthy to stoop down and unloose. Now, here John puts himself in a position that as Christians we must put ourself in. the position of total humility. See, when it come to Christ, he realized who he was. Now, if you look at some of the scripture, Matthew 11, 11 says this about John the Baptist. Christ said this, among them that are born of women, there is none, there is not any risen greater than John the Baptist. But yet John the Baptist considered himself to be not even worth, not even as mighty as a slave, because that's what slaves did in this time, is they would put shoes on, clean a person's feet that they were slaves to, and they would put their shoes on or off, or their sandals. John said, I'm not even worthy to do that. See, that's the thing that we have to understand, that we're called, we're predestined And the Bible says there in Ephesians 1 that we're adopted into the kingdom. We are sons of God, but yet we're not worthy when it comes to Christ. We're not worthy as John was to even bend down and lose his shoes. That's us. I mean, this is where we are. We're sinners. We're vile. I'm vile. I have to realize that about myself. I'm vile and everything about me is vile. So I constantly need help. And that's what this gospel does. When I come to this gospel, I constantly come to this gospel. I constantly, continuously come to Christ for forgiveness of who I am. Now here's what happens. Every once in a while, it slips out. Every once in a while, We have some kind of something that comes out of us and we realize at that point, Lord, did I just say that? Or did I just do that? Or did I just think this ugly thought that came to my mind? Was that me? And we have to admit, oh yeah, it was me. Because the flesh just came out, the real person. that just came out in the book of James says that whatever comes out of our mouth is what's in our heart. Now that's the point we have to come to. The other point is this. Do I really love my enemies the way the Bible commands that I do? In the book of Romans, the Bible commands that we love our enemies. We must feed our enemy. So is that really me? Is that really us? So here John was. He knew who he was. He understood who he was. There was a Puritan, I can't remember his name, that said that he was aggravated with Paul because Paul wrote that he was the worst of sinners. He said, I'm aggravated with Paul at that point because he's trying to take my place. In other words, he said that he was the chief of sinners, not Paul. And that's the way we must look at ourselves. We must understand that we are. the chief of sinners. Well, when you look at what Mark wrote here, I'll get that right straight in a minute, what Mark wrote in this that John the Baptist said, he said that I am not fit to do anything for Christ, but yet God called him and God sent him on this mission to preach this gospel of forgiveness and repentance of sin. So when you look at this, you have to understand that this was something, this was the will of God. It was not Mark's will, it was not John's will, but it was the will of God. It's what God called him to do. Now we're all called to be something in the church. We're not sitters, we're not people who do nothing, but we're people who are called of God and we're given a calling to do something for Christ. Verse 8 says, and indeed have I baptized you with water, but he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, meaning this one Christ coming after him. He's going to baptize you with the Holy Ghost. I'm baptizing you with water. Vonda and I went several years ago when our granddaughter was born. Our son was a member of Westminster here in Laurel. And if you know, this is one thing that we as Baptists refuse to believe and refuse, it was never put in any Baptist confession about baptizing children. Now, our granddaughter was a couple of weeks, I guess she was a couple of months old. I can't remember the age that they do that baptism. Well, they don't baptize, they sprinkle, put water on their head, sprinkle a few drops on their head. Well, the interesting thing that happened was, is afterwards, That pastor or the pastor that was there, he spent the first 15 minutes of his sermon explaining the fact that this salvation did or this baptism did not lead to salvation. Well, tell that to the child when they're 15 because what do they believe? They were baptized as an infant into the church. Well, it goes right back to what Martin Luther and these guys fought against because what does the Catholic Church believe? They believe that their salvation is in the church, not in Christ, but in the church. So why the Presbyterians ever picked that up? I don't know. Now, Brother Carey might could tell you the history, but it's not something that is biblical. It's wrong. And we do not and would never do that, this sprinkling of children, baptizing them as infants, because infants do not know and do not understand. But yet, I believe there's many of them that sit out there in Presbyterian churches believe that they are safe because they were baptized as an infant, even though the pastors are saying, no, you weren't. Well, the other thing I don't understand, if he stood up there and preached that, why did he do it? He preached against it. Why did he do those things? See, that's how we get twisted up real easy in the Word of God. But John said here, I indeed baptize you with water. Water baptism is not a baptism of salvation. When you look back here and you see our baptistry, we all know exactly what that means. You go under the water and you come back up and it stands, it's symbolic for the fact that we're buried with Christ and we're raised with Christ to new life. Our sin is buried symbolically in this baptism. It does not save us. There's no saving ability in water. I'll never forget going into Catholic Church in Jackson, actually in Madison, Our grandson was taking guitar lessons from a guy, and they let him use their sanctuary, and he was not a Catholic either. But going in that Catholic church, one of the things that you saw was the very beginning, when you walk in the door, there was this really elaborate fountain, and it had a sign on it, holy water. The first question that came to my mind is, how did that water become holy? See, that's impossible. But anyway, that's the Catholic Church. See, that's not us. This water has no power in it. It's symbolic, totally symbolic. But he said there's one coming after that's going to baptize with the Holy Ghost. Now, that's a different type baptism. That's not the baptism of water, but that's baptism of Christ. Now, if you read the commentaries, here's what you're going to read, is there's multiple beliefs about what this means. Number one is it may mean that in the Book of Acts, at the beginning of the Book of Acts, whenever the Holy Spirit came and was on them like tongues of fire, because if you look at the Book of Matthew, it says that. that he will baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire. So they believe and possibly that's true. But however it is, whenever a person is saved, the Holy Spirit comes and dwells in them. And that's what John, I believe John, meant here is by the power of the Spirit, men are saved because the Spirit gives men faith to turn to Christ. See, the works of the Holy Spirit, that's what the Holy Spirit does. It gives us the ability, it gives us the knowledge, and it leads men, he leads men to Christ. We have to understand that the Holy Spirit is God, God the Holy Spirit. It's the works of God. And that's what I believe that John meant here is there's going to be one coming that is going to save you. And when he saves you, he's going to baptize you with the Holy Ghost. In other words, you're going to be totally consumed by the Holy Ghost, the third person in the Trinity. That's the reason we live different lives. That's the reason when this sin pops up in our life all of a sudden is the Holy Spirit burdens us immediately sometimes that we did what we did, we thought what we did. See, that's how the Spirit works. Now, the other thing is, too, is I believe as Christians we need to be praying that the Lord lead us by His Spirit and that he leads us to the point that if there is any sin in our life, that he reveals that to us. See, we should not, we have to understand that we're human, we forget things, and we do things that we don't realize when it comes to sinning as Christians. And you can see that in this scripture. He said, I'm going to sin the Holy Ghost. And I want to look at that just a minute. And the thing about this is, when it comes to the baptism of Christ, and we're going to talk about that in just a minute. But this is also very much misinterpreted, especially by the Pentecostals. The Pentecostals believe that this baptism is a second blessing, some of them call it. They believe that you have this second blessing of speaking in tongues. Well, as I said this morning, you can't find that in scripture. But if you turn to Romans chapter six, I got some verses there that I just felt like we needed to read in reference to this, and there's many. When you start searching the scriptures for this, you'll be searching a lot when you look at some of these things that are in the gospel and that Christ said, because some of them are very deep, even though they seem shallow, which none of it's shallow. But I'm going to read the first six verses there in Romans chapter six. In Romans chapter 6, here are the apostles. Again, Apostle Paul, and he was inspired to write this, but the care of the Christians. Now, one thing that you notice, too, in all the gospel is Christ had a great concern for Christian people, for people and those that he called. But in verse 1, it says, and I'm going to read the first six verses there. Well, let me read the first five. But it says in Romans 6, let me get to Romans. I'm in Acts. But in Romans 6, beginning in the first verse, said, what shall we say then? Actually, let me back up just a minute into chapter 5 and verse 20. Let's back up there. It says, moreover, the law entered that the offense might abound. So the law entered. that the offense might abound. In other words, the law is going to show us where we're wrong, the offense, the sin. He says, but when sin abounded, grace did much more abound, that as sin hath reigned upon death or unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord. So righteousness very plainly points out there is through Jesus Christ our Lord. We have no righteousness in ourselves. The righteousness that we can say that's within us is by the Spirit that indwells us. But he goes on, verse 1 of chapter 6, what shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? God forbid, how shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein? Know you not that so many of us as were baptized unto Jesus Christ were baptized unto his death? Therefore, we are buried with him by baptism unto death. that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also shall walk in newness of life. For if we had been planted together in the likeness of his death, we also, or we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection, knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. See, now there it is. This describes this baptism that John's talking about very well, that we should no longer live in sin because we have, as verse four says, this newness of life because we were baptized with Christ. In other words, The spirit fills the Christian. The spirit leads the Christian. The spirit leads Christians out of sin, away from sin, keeps us from sin. See, that's the Christian life. Now we're still sin. And that tells you the wickedness of our own selves is that we still sin in spite of having this new life and in spite of having this indwelling spirit, we still sin. But he said here, we cannot say that sin is greater than grace because it's not. We still have grace, but that didn't give us any reason to sin. And there's men that have said this. There's men that says, well, I can go out and do whatever I want because God's going to forgive me. That's not true. We're led to do things differently than that, to live different lives. He said, God forbid that we should live that way. We should not even desire to live that way as Christians. Christians should hate their sin and be very careful not to be caught up in sin. And he goes on and says that, God forbid, how shall we that are dead in sin live any longer therein? We cannot live any longer. in this scene. See, we cannot be led astray, as I read this morning in the book of Ephesians. We cannot be tossed to and fro in our belief, but we must live for Christ. We should live in this newness of life that Paul talks about here because we're baptized. We're buried with Christ in baptism unto death, the death of this body. Paul wrote in many places and said that we're crucified with Christ. In other words, we die with Christ. And one preacher said, as I said this morning, that the Christian life is a life that we throw ourselves away for Christ, for the sake of Christ. That's how we must live. So when he writes this, he says, back in the book of Mark in verse 8, John the Baptist said, I indeed have baptized you with water, but he, shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, newness of life. And that's what he was talking about here, this newness of life, that we must live as Christians. It's a great challenge, isn't it? But it's a great comfort to know that he has baptized us in Christ, that we're in us not thrown away. He doesn't just save us and leave us alone. but we're changed by this new life that he's called us to. It's a glorious thing. It's something that we should praise the Lord for every day, not for our sin, but that we are forgiven. Now, as we get into the next part of this, and this will be next Sunday, in verse 9 through 11, again, he says there, he said, and it came to pass in those days that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee, and was baptized of John in the Jordan. Now, if you go to the book of Matthew, it says that Jesus came to be baptized, and John said, I deserve to be baptized of you and not me baptizing you. And Jesus said this. He said, in order to fulfill righteousness, this has to be done. So remember that. Next week, we'll get into that, and we'll get into this baptism of Christ. Why did Christ have to be baptized? He didn't have sin. He never sinned. Why did he go through the things that he went through? And verse 12 begins the temptation of Christ. Why did he have to be tempted? Why was he tempted to sin? He never had sin, had no ability to sin. So never let anybody tell you that, well, he had the ability to sin. But anyway, we'll get into that next week and Sunday morning. But you can read that and study it because it's very interesting. There's a lot of questions there that you have to answer when you study this scripture. Why did he need to be baptized? Why, by John, was he baptized? So as we get into that next week, you'll see why, I hope. But anyway, let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you.