The following message was given at Emmanuel Baptist Church, Coconut Creek, Florida. It's good to see you. We have a special treat today. As many of you know, this weekend was our youth conference, the ninth youth conference that we've had. It's hard to believe that many years have flown by, but the youth conference went very well and all the reports have been good. And our guest speaker for our youth conference this year was Pastor Ben Carlson. and I first met him it's been quite a while back when I used to be on the board for Covenant Baptist Theological Seminary and he was a seminary student and was there studying in the church that is the overseeing housing church of the seminary in Owensboro, Kentucky where Sam Waldron labors as well and he was a student there then and he's after progressing through his studies, and he's now a pastor there at the church in Owensboro, Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Owensboro. He's been a pastor there now since June of 2017, and he was our guest speaker this weekend, and he really chose what I thought was an excellent topic for a youth conference, the topic of honor, and it was very, very well done, very helpful, and so we're delighted to have him with us. He has been married to his According to him, lovely wife. She is a lovely wife. I've met her. It's been a long time ago. And he's been married to her. Her name is Allie. They've been married since September 2011. And they've been busy during that time. They have five children. And in his spare time, he enjoys playing with his kids, coaching Friday night family nights. The other one I'm reluctant to mention that he enjoys doing because this will be bad for us men when I tell you this, he enjoys doing yard work. So, but we're delighted to have Pastor Carlson with us. Let me lead us in prayer and then he'll take us from there. Let's pray together. Our Father, as we come before you, it is such a joy and delight that another Lord's Day has come and that we are here with your people. Just seeing one another's faces again is a great joy and delight and encouragement to us. And as we think of the day that lies ahead, we pray, Father, that you would help us. We pray that you would pardon all of our sins, that we might enter into your presence today with a full assurance of faith and joy in our hearts because of what Christ has done for us. We pray for all of the Sunday school classes that are still meeting today. Those that are, we pray that They would know the help of your spirit, that your word would be effectual and work in their hearts, Lord, to bring forth saving and sanctifying fruit. Now for Pastor Ben, we thank you so much for his willingness to take time away from his family, from his church and from his busy life to prepare and to a series and to come and minister the word of God to our young people. Thank you so much for that ministry. We pray that the fruit of that ministry would be lasting and multiply even more over time. And now as he comes to share with us, help us to be receptive, give him grace, fill him with your spirit as he tells us about your dealings with him and your saving work in his life. And we ask this in Christ's name, amen. We send you greetings from Owensboro, Kentucky, from Pastor Sam Waldron, Joe Wilson, myself, and the brethren there. It's been a wonderful time down in Florida so far. My family is actually here with me. We were kind of getting late, getting ready, so they should be here pretty shortly. So my wife and my five kids will be here. But it's been a delight to be with you guys so far. I've been asked to share my testimony during the adult Sunday school hour. This has something to do about me, so I'll be talking about myself some, but hopefully not pridefully. It only has something to do about me because God has saved my soul. And as Psalm 66, verse 16 says, come and hear all you who fear God, and I will tell you what he has done for my soul. I think that's the essence of a testimony. And so that's what I'd like to do this morning. So I've got some pictures of myself growing up and just some other things concerning how the Lord saved me. So that's kind of why I thought it would be appropriate to have a PowerPoint slide this morning. So what are your dreams? Maybe as a little kid, you had all different kinds of dreams and aspirations and pursuits about what you wanted to be as an adult. Maybe some of these pictures might fit what you wanted to do with your life. Maybe some of you guys are doing that even now. But this was my dream. I wanted to be a professional baseball player. That's Aaron Judge right there. I don't know if anybody doesn't like the Yankees here. I'm somewhat of a closet Yankee fan, but I really like Aaron Judge. But I wanted to be a professional baseball player growing up. That was my dream. Those were my aspirations. That's what I wanted to achieve in life. So I'm from Topeka, Kansas, born and raised there. I have three other brothers. We're all two years apart. And we were all very, very competitive at a young age athletically. So we played all the sports you could imagine, but we especially We're good at baseball, football, basketball, but particularly baseball. So from a young age, we were kind of raised and bred to be baseball players. There's a picture of all four of us boys when we were young, all on four different teams, and my dad tried to coach all of them at the same time. I don't know how he did it, but he loved us, he cared about us, he wanted to see us excel. I'm on the bottom left right there, there's my Yankees jersey right there. So my oldest brother is top left. That's Chris. He's four years older than me. Then across from me to the right was Nick. He was two years older than me. And then Zach is up there at the top right. He's two years younger than me. So that's just a picture of us boys growing up. Like I said, we were pretty successful playing baseball. That's me holding some guy's head after we won the state championship in baseball in high school. But again, just we did well in high school. We won two state championships. My brother won a state championship. My other brother won a state championship. Things were working out athletically for us. That initial dream of me being a baseball player seemed to be within reach, actually. In college, I went to Missouri State University in Springfield, Missouri. I played for the Bears there. I played three years of college baseball there. And I was drafted then by the Cleveland Indians in 2009. I know Manny Ramirez has been at this church recently. I'm a poor, poor version of Manny Ramirez. I think he was also drafted by the Indians. or signed by the Indians. But in 2009, I was picked 185th overall by the Cleveland Indians. So, yeah, things, again, were tending in the direction of, hey, I'm going to achieve my goals, my dreams, my aspirations in life. And there's a couple pictures of me playing professional baseball. My first team was the Mahoney Valley Scrappers. It was near Youngstown, Ohio. It's not a team any longer. The minor league system has kind of been gutted, and one of the teams they got rid of was this team. But there was a major problem with my life, and that problem was I was going my own way. So maybe I was living the American dream, maybe I was doing what everybody else was doing around me, but I was going my own way. As Isaiah 53, six says, all we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way. And that was me. So maybe I looked like a good kid and I was, again, doing what everybody else was doing, trying to pursue my dreams and my goals, but I had no thought or conception of God in my mind. I didn't care about the glory of God. I didn't care about doing God's will. I didn't care about seeking first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. All I cared about was myself. I was selfish. I was a sinner, dead in my trespasses and sins. And so, we were raised in a fairly moral family, but church was not emphasized. Of course, when you're playing competitively in sports, you're mostly on travel teams, and you're playing on the weekends, and you're especially playing on Sundays because that's Championship Sunday. And so, we would hardly ever go to church. And so that was just kind of our life. Life revolved around sports, revolved around family, but it did not revolve around God. So even with all this success and prosperity, God was not in the picture. I was doing my own thing and going my own way. But then God shattered my dreams. But he did so graciously. He powerfully intervened when I was playing professional baseball to bring me to my knees and to the end of myself. And so this is how God did it. Early in September 2009, I hit a foul ball into the stands that struck a little boy who was four years old in the back of the head. So when I was playing for the Mahoney Valley Scrappers, it was towards the end of the season. I'm a big left-handed first baseman. And I crush a ball, pull it, foul. And a little boy who was sitting in the second row of the stands right by the first base dugout wasn't paying attention to what was going on in the field. And he got hit directly in the back of the head. So, I mean, it was one of the most quietest moments I'd ever experienced. Here I am on home plate with thousands of fans there and you could hear a cricket chirp because of what happened. Doctors were uncertain if he would even live throughout the night. So he just went immediately limp. All I saw was his parents put him over their shoulders and run out of the stadium. And we were kind of getting updates throughout the game about what was happening. But he had aspirated on the way to the hospital. So he was without oxygen for a period of time. His brain swelled up so much that they had to put him into a coma. And the doctors did not know if he would live throughout that night. That's what we were told by my manager that night after the game. This was the first time I really began to consider the weighty issues of life and death and the vanity of my own pursuits. So this whole time, all I cared about was my stats, how many home runs I hit, my RBIs, my batting average. It was all about me. And yet, here's a little boy who had just turned four, wanting to go to a baseball game with his family, dying in a hospital bed. because of something that I did. And so it really struck me that night, is this game of baseball so important? I've put everything into this. I've worshiped this thing. This is my idol. And yet there's something so much more important going on in my life right now, and that's this four-year-old boy. So here's some pictures of the boy. His name's Luke Holko. And this was days after the accident. So he's all hooked up to all different kinds of tubes and machines in the hospital. They had to air flight him to Akron's Children's Hospital in Akron, Ohio. And then here's me visiting him for the first time with Travis Fryman. He was our manager. I don't know if any of you know Travis Fryman. He played in the big leagues for many years. But Travis Fryman shared his testimony with me when we drove to Akron's Children's Hospital together. So he was my manager. He was the one who told us that he didn't know if Luke was gonna live throughout the night. He volunteered to take me to Akron, Ohio. I don't know, maybe a week or so after everything happened. And on the drive there, he shared his testimony with me and told me that he was like a first round draft pick out of Georgia Tech and the Lord saved him when he was in his early 20s. And then he prayed with me before we went inside to the hospital. That was the first time anybody had ever done something like that for me. So that was very important in my life. I was so thankful to have him in my life. But yeah, that's Luke, so he's not looking very good right there. He's in a coma there, so he was not responsive to anything that we were doing. But I was thankful to be there. I thought the family would reject me and forsake me, but they actually embraced me like a family member. I was overwhelmed by their love for me. But God in his mercy kept Luke alive. And slowly but surely, he began to regain all of his functions again. He essentially lost all of his motor skills, so he had to relearn how to walk and talk and eat and all that stuff. But this was just one year, almost one year after the accident. That's Luke and I playing baseball at his uncle's house. So he goes from this to this in about a year. So praise God for his mercy. That was the first time that I saw him out of the hospital bed and doing fairly well. And then, 12 years later, this was taken last year, we were at Great Wolf Lodge in Cincinnati, Ohio. He's 16 years old now and he's almost as big as I am. So we've remained friends to this day. We try to see each other once a year. He lives about eight hours from us. Sometimes we try to meet in the middle. Sometimes we'll go all the way up there. But yeah, Luke is 16 years old. He's got a big scar on the back of his head. He limps a little bit when he walks. But other than that, he's a normal high school aged boy. So I'm very, very thankful to God for sparing his life and bringing us together. But through all this going on initially, like I said, it really made me question the meaning and purpose of my own life. Because I had invested so much in baseball, and I had made it my God, and it really was not blessing me back. And so God really crumbled and crashed my foundation to show me that my life was vanity without Christ. So about 10 months later, nine months later, the Lord saved me after that accident. I'd kinda lost, I had kinda lost my zeal and desire to play baseball, and then I went into a big slump, and if anybody's ever played baseball, going into a slump is not fun at all, especially when you're playing professional baseball, and they've given you a lot of money, and they have all kinds of expectations upon you, and you're just failing time and time and time again. So I actually got really depressed that next year, but through all of that, the Lord saved me. A lot of, at least when I played, a lot of the minor league teams had a chaplain that was assigned to them. And so there was a man named Brian Walls who was our chaplain of the second team that I played on, which was the Lake County Captains, right outside of Cleveland, Ohio. And he immediately befriended me. And he would take me around the city of Cleveland. We'd go have lunch together before games. He would talk about the Lord with me. And I started attending some of his chapel services before games on Sunday mornings. And then all of a sudden, I'm carrying around a Bible with me. And then one day in early June, before one of our games, I went outside the clubhouse, I fell upon my knees, and I cried out for Jesus Christ to save me. I came under conviction of sin, knew that I was a sinner headed for hell, just absolutely miserable with my life, and I knew only Christ could save me. So that was in 2011, June of 2011. My world was turned upside down. And I praise God for every second of being a Christian since that time. Now that doesn't mean that baseball worked out for me. I still continue to struggle throughout the summer and then the next year during spring training I was released. but it almost felt like a burden and a yoke was taken off of my neck, and I didn't have to identify simply as a baseball player anymore. I was a Christian, I had a higher purpose and meaning in my life. So I actually felt free, about as free as I ever felt, besides being freed from my sins the year before. So, yeah, I could let go of the game. I still love it. I still coach three of my kids in baseball, but I don't have to worship it anymore. But that's what I was doing. So, yeah, baseball didn't work out. The health, wealth, prosperity gospel is not true. God saved me and then took baseball away from me, but he gave me something better. He gave me Christ. So as 1 Peter 2.25 says, for you are straying like sheep, but have now returned to the shepherd and overseer of your souls. All by God's grace. So then after that came my new life in Christ. That's a weird picture of me preaching. I couldn't find another picture. I'm not sure what I'm saying there. But it's been about 11 years since the Lord saved me. and oh, how have things changed in my life? I used to think Christianity was a crutch that people, weak people, would just lean upon and make excuses for. I remember back in college, there were some college kids on my baseball team that wanted to have Bible studies every week or every other week, and I just thought that was so lame. I thought, I don't need that. I don't want to be a part of that. That's embarrassing to associate with Christians and meet together and read the Bible. That's not for me. What is for me? Again, if you would have asked me 15 years ago, you're going to be a pastor of a Reformed Baptist church someday, I would have said, no way. And here I am. So went to seminary, went to Covenant Baptist Theological Seminary, graduated from there, and have been a pastor now for a little over five years at Grace Reformed Baptist Church. Met my lovely wife, Allie, and we have five kids. That was kind of the most recent picture I could find. She gave me permission to share that picture. We've got five kids, Liam's the oldest, he's 10, Luther's seven, and then our three girls, Cosette, she's five, Maisie, she's three, and Naomi is six months old. So they're all sitting, well some of them are sitting right over there. So yeah, the Lord saved me, and then he put it in my heart to become a pastor, and he paved the way to this very moment in time right now. So lots of things have changed in my life. I went from speaking like a sailor through all my sports days to preaching the holy word of God. And again, all by God's grace. So here's just some things hopefully you guys can take away from what God has done for me. First, a successful and prosperous life without Christ is absolutely worthless. Vanity of vanities all is vanity, even pursuing a life of playing professional baseball. You make millions of dollars and have all your dreams fulfilled, and yet it is a big pile of dung in the sight of God if it's without Jesus Christ. And that was my life. I thought it had meaning and value and purpose. And God just had to simply take the rug out from my feet to show me that no, this was built upon sand. Secondly, God must break you before he builds you back up and saves you. You gotta be humbled in order to be saved. You gotta be brought low in order to be lifted up. And God will do that in various ways to us, but sometimes he really has to break us. and crush us into pieces in order to build us back together again. And so that's maybe you have a similar conversion story. Maybe God just sweetly and calmly and peacefully saved you. Praise the Lord for that. But for some of us who had lived in the world for so long, he had to absolutely crush us and shatter our dreams and our goals and our aspirations and make us absolutely miserable in and of ourselves. And that's really what happened to me. And I invested so much into this game and all of a sudden it was just taken away from me. But God gave me so much more. But he does, he has to crush us in order to build us back up. A third, God can save the worst of the worst. I mean, all of us as Christians should consider ourselves the chief of sinners, but, you know, I thought I was a pretty good kid growing up, but it was only a matter of time before I really began to see what a moral monster I was and what a hypocrite I was. I mean, part of me being saved was I had to really look at myself in the mirror and say, who in the world am I? Kind of come face to face with reality, and it was an ugly thing to see. But God can save people like me. He can save Gentile pagan baseball players like me. He can certainly save anyone and everyone. He has all power to save. And so praise God that the Church of Jesus Christ is made up of all different kinds of people from all different kinds of backgrounds who share that one same story of salvation. So maybe you're out there and maybe you're just like me. Loving sports, idolizing sports, living for sports. Well, God can save you too. So repent and trust in Christ now before he has to break you in order to bring you to Christ. Do it now. Have that sweet and calm and peaceful transition into the kingdom of God instead of a violent one that will cause all kinds of scars and bruises upon your soul for the rest of your days. But God can save the worst of the worst. And lastly, living for Christ and his eternal kingdom is far more satisfying than living for the fleeting pleasures of this world. Again, I thought I was living for something great, but I had no idea the riches and treasures that are found in Jesus Christ. I mean, that's what sinners think. They think it's foolish to follow Christ. They think it's dumb to follow Christ. They think it's meaningless to follow Christ, but it's not. Right? You get a taste of the world and you think it's offering you something, but it's really offering you nothing but death and misery and despair. It's the fleeting pleasures of sin. It only lasts for a brief moment in time. But the eternal riches found in the kingdom of God will last for all eternity. And I've been tasting of it for a little over 10 years, but I look forward to tasting it for all the days of my life. There's nothing that can compare to being a Christian and following Christ. Well, I'm done with sharing my testimony. If anybody has any questions about that, feel free to ask. Yes, brother? Yeah, sure. So I met my wife in St. Louis. She's from St. Louis. I'm from Topeka. I think we were both recently converted, though very, very young and dumb in the faith. She was a waitress at a nice restaurant in St. Louis, so I don't advise any man to simply go up to a waitress and ask if you can have her number, but that's basically what I did. I tried to impress her by the fact that I was a professional baseball player, and I found out she didn't care much for professional baseball anyways. But that's how we met. I think she ended up losing my number, maybe not on purpose, but we reconnected through Facebook and from long distance and we began talking. We found out that we were both Christians and nine months later we got married. So God was kind and merciful to us and patient. I mean, I was saved. I didn't know where to go to church. I didn't know what to do. I was ignorant of a lot of things. In fact, the very first church I joined was a health, wealth, prosperity gospel church. So I was a charismatic for a brief period in my life. And God was patient through that whole time to lead and guide and direct me and my family to where we're at right now. So I still had a lot of baggage hanging on me from my old life, but God has been faithful to cut off that throughout the years and mold and shape and fashion me into the image of Christ. Yes, brother. situation, did he accept the law? So he has been baptized, he was baptized several years ago. I can't say with absolute certainty how genuine it was. I am thankful that before the accident his family hardly ever went to church. And after the accident, soon after the accident, Luke's father, Chad, professed faith in Christ. And we've actually had very encouraging conversations throughout the years about the Lord. So I'm really thankful for that. So there's some encouraging things with the whole family and with Luke. And every opportunity I have, I try to speak to them about the Word of God and point them to Christ. So yeah, definitely, at least if you're looking at from where we were before to where we are now, God has done a great work in all of our lives. Yes, ma'am. So it was kind of a similar situation before this all happened. We hardly ever went to church, like I said. Now my parents almost faithfully go attend a broadly evangelical church back in Topeka, Kansas almost every Sunday. And I only know things kind of from afar, but there are some encouraging signs that God has done a saving work in their lives. Right after that, my youngest brother got saved. And he goes to like a John MacArthur type church in Wichita, Kansas. My second oldest brother professes faith in Christ, and there's some encouraging things there. So yeah, I think at first my family was kind of like, Okay, this is kind of helping him cope with all of his problems and issues in life, so we're happy for him, but it's not really for us. Or maybe it's just a thing that might wear off after a certain period of time, and then they realize, no, this thing was here to stay. I had been changed and I wasn't going back. And then I think there was kind of a period of kind of confusion that went on in their minds, but then I think they slowly but surely began to see, hey, my son is a different son now. He's not like he used to be, and I actually like him the way he is now. So, yeah, I mean, I used to argue and fight with my parents all the time. So kids, when I was talking to you about honor and honoring your father and your mother, I was preaching to myself, because I was one who loved to argue like a lawyer to my mom. And it was absolutely sinful looking back upon it. But now we have a very good relationship. I'm really thankful for that. Yeah, Carmen. What catalyst or what event took you to think that you should go into the ministry? Well, I mean, right after the Lord saved me, He just put a great desire in my heart to share the gospel with people. So I started telling all my teammates about Christ. But it was a really weird period because I didn't really know how to... I mean, you're in the locker room with these guys every day. You're living life with them. You're on the road with them. You're in hotels with them. And I didn't really know, like, how to... Be with them, but not be with them, you know what I mean? Be in the world, but not of the world. It was really a strange period in my life. So I went to different extremes sometimes, like totally isolated myself from them, and then was totally with them. But I had that chaplain who was with me. We had actually a little library in our clubhouse that the chaplain would fill with some pretty good books. Some of the first books I ever read were by John Piper. And he actually took me to church one time, and his church was Alistair Begg's church in the Cleveland area. Now, I had no idea who he was or who John Piper was, but I mean, I was getting good stuff early on in my life. But yeah, I just, I wanted to preach the gospel to people. And then I was given more and more opportunities. When I went back to college, I played college football after I was done with baseball. And I was the president of our local FCA for two years, Fellowship of Christian Athletes. So I was given a lot of opportunities to preach. And then I was even like a kind of a chaplain for our football team. So on Saturday mornings before games, sometimes I would preach sermons. And so through that, I was kind of like, okay, I enjoy doing this. I at least enjoy preaching and have a desire to do it. But I didn't really understand what it meant to be a pastor really until I got to Owensboro. And it's not just about preaching. So it's about shepherding the souls of God's people. So yeah, I was probably pretty naive when I first came to Owensboro. I was kind of newly converted. I hadn't been in very good churches. I just newly came to Reformed Baptist Convictions. But I'm really thankful for Pastor Sam and Pastor Joe and the professors at CBTS who really grounded me. and what it was like to be a pastor. Pastor Sam gave me some of the best advice. He said, I'm training you to suffer. She's like, whoa, I'm not sure I want to get into this profession. But it was very realistic and sobering. And I can say, yeah, being a pastor is one of the most glorious things you can ever do, but it's also one that you will suffer greatly for. Anyone else? Yep. How did you learn about Reformed theology and end up going to Reformed Baptist Church? Yeah, so we became disenchanted with the Health, Wealth, Prosperity Gospel Church. We actually got married in that church. But my wife's mother was going through a very severe illness kind of during that time. And of course, in the Health, Wealth, Prosperity Gospel Church, you're always told that it's God's will for your life to be healthy. And it's the devil who brings all these things. And God is not sovereign. He is not the one who's in control of all of these events. So we were trying to help my wife's mother by giving her some of the stuff that we were hearing from the pulpit, and she was really kind of repelled by it all. And just kind of thinking through that whole thing, because actually God used that sickness to save my wife's mother. And so we just began, you read the book of Job, and it's like, yeah, I'm not sure how those guys deal with that. But just slowly but surely, we just began to see so many holes in it. And then we left, and then we were like, well, where do we go? So we went to like Fundamentalist Baptist churches, Arminian churches, Southern Baptist churches, you name it. I mean, we were pretty convinced on believer's baptism, but other than that, we didn't really know where we fit. So right after I graduated from college, we went back to see my wife's family in St. Louis, and I just wanted to see what a seminary looked like. I had no idea, never been on campus of a seminary. And so we went to Covenant Seminary in St. Louis and went to the bookstore there because I wanted to see what textbooks they use for seminary classes. And when I was in there, there was a man who had come in and he tried to buy some Bibles for some people that were doing work on his car, and his seminary credit card wasn't working. And I had overheard him speaking to the cashier, so I had just stepped in and said, hey, I'll pay for the Bibles for you. Well, he said, hey, let's meet together sometime soon. And so we met like the next day or the day after that. And I come to find out he's a Reformed Baptist. And then he tells me to read all these different kinds of books. And one of the books I read was Fred Malone's book, Baptism of Disciples Alone, which really, it's not just talking about believers' baptism, but it's teaching covenant theology and proper hermeneutics. And after I read that book, I was sold. I was like, this is who I am. So I get the boldness to try to call up Fred Malone on the phone. I'm thinking, there's no way this guy's gonna talk to me. But I call up his church, and they actually give me his home telephone number, and I was blown away by that. And then he had an hour-long conversation with me. He didn't know me at all. And then that's when he just opened up my eyes to, Reformed Baptist World, he said, hey, you need to make it to the next ARPCA General Assembly, which was held in Bremen, Indiana that year, which is where the RBNET General Assembly will be held this year. And there, that's when I met Sam Waldron, that's when I met a whole bunch of folks, and I felt like I was in heaven for about three days. So we had started attending a Reformed Baptist church in Kansas City at that point in time, and then we had decided to move to Owensboro a few months after that. So really, I mean, it was just God's providence bringing me to this guy at the right time. Because that bookstore at Covenant College, it doesn't exist any longer. It shut down soon after that. So yeah, just God's providence knitting everything together in perfect harmony. So you never know when you meet somebody at a bookstore what might come from it or a coffee shop or whatever it might be. Okay. Yeah, well, let's pray together before we are dismissed. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes. Thank you for your mercy and grace upon my life and my soul, and bringing me out of darkness into the marvelous light of Christ. And we thank you for all here who have a similar testimony, that you have done great things for their souls. We pray that these things would encourage us and stir us up to worship you this morning and this evening. that you'd help us to set aside this entire day so that we might focus all of our efforts and our energies and our thoughts upon your greatness and your goodness and your grace toward us in Jesus Christ. We ask this in his precious name, amen. We hope you were edified by this message. For additional sermons, as well as information on giving to the ministry of Emmanuel Baptist Church and on our current building project, you can visit us online at ebcfl.org. That's ebcfl.org.