Hey guys, this is the New Heights Church podcast, and we just want to welcome you and thank you for joining us today. We hope this message inspires and encourages you. Here at New Heights, we exist to love people and point them to Christ. Enjoy today's service.
Oh, let's pray. Father, we thank you in the name of Jesus for your word. I'm asking that your people would hear your voice today and not mine. Let your Bible shape us, change us, and mold us like only you can.
In Jesus' name and all God's people said, amen. Please be seated in the house of the Lord and open your Bible to Acts chapter number 8. Acts chapter number 8. To be honest, I don't know if we're gonna get there, but it's a good place to start.
Praise the Lord. Acts chapter number 8. Let me just start with this. You know, there is a lot of different communication around life itself.
It seems like everybody is looking for, you know, what is it that, thank you, what is it that brings hope or peace or satisfaction? So many times we look for it from our jobs, from our education, from a family member. We put an unjust or undue amount of pressure in areas of our life that cannot give us the thing or things that satisfy indefinitely. Only God and a relationship with him, an active relationship with him, can only he can give you peace that will surpass your understanding.
Surpass means to outrun, to be in front of. So it doesn't mean that you shouldn't have understanding. On the contrary, wisdom is one of the most primal or most primary things that you should actually seek to attain. However, there is actually a peace that can outrun all of the understanding that you currently have or do not have.
Does this make sense? So our job as believers, if you are one, is to find out what the recipe is, not to go try to make a recipe. I've heard this enough times in my life that I could be sick to my stomach if I wanted. I hear about people getting involved in a lifestyle of sin and then God rescues them out of that and they act like God led them into the sin so he could rescue them.
That would be like you taking your baby and laying it in an ant bed so you could knock the ants off. That's child abuse. God doesn't abuse his children. If you made choices that took you away from the will of God and the things of God, the number one thing you need to do is own up to those choices and thank God that he rescued you out, rescued you out of that scenario, not try to act like God must have led you to the bar and put the Miller Light to your lips.
Or the Bud Light. Or the Jim Beam. Have a hit your jet. Or the wacky tabacky.
I know it's not right, but I've always liked to say that. Wacky tabacky. God didn't lead you into sin. The devil is a liar.
The devil led you into sin. Or if you're really honest, sometimes you led yourself there. You're like, come on, self, let's go. This looks fun.
So a lifestyle that has the opportunity of peace that will outrun, surpass your understanding is not a lifestyle of trying to create a recipe for yourself. It is trying to determine what the recipe for success and the abundant life is in the kingdom of God and then applying those ingredients to your life. And today, everybody say today, I'm going to give you one of the most important recipes of the abundant life that is found in the holy pages of God's Bible. If you've never been water baptized and you're trying to figure out why do I keep having this problem and that problem?
Why do I keep hearing the clanging and clamoring of sword and spear behind me? Maybe it's because you haven't been through the water and the Pharaoh's army that has been plaguing you and following you your entire life has never had the opportunity to be drowned off of your circumstances. God did not say be baptized because you needed to get wet. God said to be baptized because some things only break off of your life when you get in radical obedience to his word.
Christianity is not a decision one time. Christianity is a converted life. And if we really want to get with it, it's a lifestyle of threatening the devil when he threatens you. So when you decide to follow God in being water baptized, a lot of things happen.
I'm going to give you a really quickly a beautiful type and shadow. If you didn't know, the Bible is filled with types and shadows for us to look at as examples. I'll give you one really quickly. Abram, who became Abraham, had a son named Isaac.
If you've ever heard that, just nod your head at me. He had a son named Isaac and he was born in his old age. In other words, Abraham was not supposed to be able to have children. Sarah was not supposed to be able to have children, but they had Isaac.
In other words, Isaac was born out of an impossible situation. And God says, here's what I need you to do. I need you to offer your only son that is begotten. Begotten is King James speak.
It means came out of you. Now that word begotten means came out of. Now, God had already told Abraham that the son of the promise that's in your life is going to come out of you and Sarah. But the Bible says that whenever it took too long for this to happen, that they conjured up a plan.
They brought in a lady named Hagar and Sarah said, Hey, Abraham, I want you to make a baby with Hagar and then we'll be able to fulfill the will of God because God told us we're gonna have a kid. Now we make one this way. But if God tells you to have a kid according to his recipe, so you can't go making your own recipe and asking God to bless it. So anyway, they ended up having a baby in their old age and the Bible says his name is Isaac.
And the Bible says one day God says, I need you to offer Isaac to me, Abraham. And Abraham with a heavy heart says, Okay, I'll do that. And the Bible says that he rides him on a donkey. And then he takes him to a place where they're gonna go up on a mountain, AKA a hill.
And he puts the wood for the sacrifice on Isaac's back. Sound familiar? And he carries that wood up the hill and looks over at daddy. He says, Daddy, he says, I have the wood and we have the mountain.
He said, But where is the sacrifice? And Abraham with a heavy heart, not knowing how God was gonna do it. He said, Son, God is going to provide a lamb. Sound prophetic?
Get him up on the top of the hill and he says, he says, Dad, I don't like what's going on here. And Abraham says, I don't like it either. And all of a sudden, right before the moment when he's literally gonna offer his son to God, the Bible says there's a ram caught in the bushes and his head or his horns are caught in the bushes. Did you know Jesus is prophesied as the lily among thorns?
Did you know Jesus was the lamb of God that was slain from the foundations of the world that the Roman soldiers decided they would be cute and they crafted a crown of thorns and they put it on his head? And I'll bet you Abraham from heaven when he was watching this happen was saying that's just like that ram in the bush. All of a sudden Isaac was rescued because God provided. This is a type and shadow.
It tells of something to come. Does this make sense? Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father but by him.
He is the door. There is no other. The ark had one door. In other words, there's one way to salvation.
Type and shadow. So I wanna tell you about another little type and shadow. When the Israelites were in captivity to the Egyptians for about 400 years, the Bible says that God delivered them by the blood of the lamb. They all that were in obedience took the blood of the lamb and they put it on the door and when they walked through that door, they were free from captivity.
One of the next things that happened is God teaches them how to tithe. He tells them the next thing you guys need to understand is you gotta make sure and bring the firstling of every one of your flock to the men of God because what's gonna happen is we're gonna actually need a place to worship. Did you know the tabernacle in the wilderness was built with skins? This is why God told them to do this so that his house could be built as well.
Then the next thing that happens is he leads them to the water and the Red Sea is sitting there and all of a sudden, Moses speaks to the Red Sea and when he speaks to the Red Sea, the Bible says it splits in half and God had told Moses, tell the people to go forward. It could also be said, God said, take the next step. Maybe you've been serving God for a while but you've never taken the next step in being water baptized. The Bible says as the Israelites walked through on dry ground that the Pharaoh and his army, his heart being hardened, followed after them.
Now that takes a certain amount of gall. When you watch water stand up like walls on both sides and you still have the wherewithal to follow them into this situation. Nobody ever said the devil was smart. The Scripture says that when the Israelites got through the Red Sea, when they went through the water, all of a sudden the water crashed on Pharaoh and his army and everything that had been trying to kill and pursue the Israelites stayed in the drink.
God's people went through the water and came out without some of the things that had plagued them for Challenges you'll run into is if somebody that you love actually prays for you enough to have you feel the convicting power of the Holy Spirit from time to time. But if you decide to serve the Lord your God, there are some things you got to understand like David, you might be called to be the next king of Israel and not even be invited to the ceremony. Like King David, you might be anointed, the next king of Israel and be asked by your daddy to deliver pizza to your brothers. If you serve God, you might be like young King David and find out that everybody else is staring at a giant, wondering what to do while you know what to do.
If you decide to serve God, you might find yourself like King David, having served somebody faithfully only to find out that that same person wants to cut your throat. If you want to serve God, you may find out that the only person in the room that can actually encourage you is you. If you want to serve God, you're going to have to find out there's challenges and trials and tribulations and issues. I love how the disciples used to talk.
They said, I count it all joy to be a partaker of the sufferings of Christ. Because some of you, you realize you were made and built and formed to fight. You've just been fighting the wrong things. We don't wrestle against flesh and blood.
There is a spiritual war taking place on a constant basis. Jesus himself, when he was water baptized was led by the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. I don't know about you, but if you don't understand God, that can be a challenge to, to kind of stomach. But the reality is God is considering you a prizefighter in the army of the Lord.
In other words, he's not looking for the mice in the corner that are going to cower down when the devil comes and gives a bad report to you. He's looking for the ones who will stand up and say, though he slay me, yet will I serve him. He's looking for the ones that when, when somebody comes at you with an army and swords and spears, you say, if all I got's a slingshot, I'm still going to war today because I'm not going at you in the name of a slingshot. I'm going at you in the name of the Lord of hosts.
I'm talking about a change coming in your very being when you serve God, but understand your service to the Lord actually has service involved. There's a shift. When you decide to follow him in baptism, you understand that my, my future days are going to be filled with conflict, but God doesn't just fight for you. He wins for you.
There's an element where you get, you get addicted to the understanding that God cannot fail. He will not fail. He's anointed me for this day. He's anointed me for the battles that are mine.
And I don't want somebody else using my rocks. I want to kill the giants in my life and then let my children have their own. I don't want my offspring killing mine. That was my job.
That puts us a generation back. So there's an element there where as a believer, you have to understand this is a converted lifestyle and it's a converted lifestyle of conflict, but it's not a conflict like the world. It's a conflict where we recognize there are bigger pieces in play than whether or not somebody cut us off in traffic, took our parking spot. God help us in church.
Took our seat. I've been saved a long time. There's a difference. Jesus was led by the Spirit in the wilderness to be tempted and he defeated the devil with three scriptures.
If Jesus used the scripture to defeat the devil in the wilderness, how much more so ought we use the scripture to defeat the devil? Can you give God a hand of praise right there? Acts chapter eight, verse number 26. We're going to pick up here.
This is after the resurrection. This is after the baptism in the Holy Spirit. And one of the disciples, Phillip is being led by God to have an encounter. Acts 8 and 26.
The angel of the Lord spoke to Phillip saying, Arise, go towards the south unto the way that goes down from Jerusalem unto Gaza, which is desert. And he arose and went. I can stop right there for about an hour and a half. God said, do something, and he did it.
Don't let it be said of you, yeah, God told me to do it. I just never did. I've heard that enough times in my life where people are living in radical regret because God has spoken something into their spirit and either fear or concern has stopped them from doing it. If you can't hear anything else I say this morning, if God tells you to do something, do it.
And everybody's not going to understand. Nobody understood why David stood out in the crowd and decided he was going to face the giant until the giant fell. He rose and went. And behold, a man of Ethiopia, a eunuch of great authority under Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who had charge of all her treasure, had come to Jerusalem to worship.
So we see somebody from another country of Ethiopia. And the Bible says he was returning and he was sitting in his chariot, reading the prophet of Isaiah. So the book of Isaiah, effectively the writings of Isaiah. That's what he's reading.
Verse 29. The Spirit said unto Philip, Now go near and join yourself to this chariot. And Philip ran there to him. Somebody say run.
I love the fact that Philip, not only did he do exactly what God said in the beginning, but he actually ran when God told him to get there. Philip ran there to him and heard him reading from the prophet Isaiah and said, Do you understand what you are reading? Now, first off, I like the fact that God points out, let me give just a clarifying statement, even though I don't like doing that very much. God can speak to you in the bar.
But we do not have a bunch of examples. Too much. We do not have a bunch of examples of God going and finding you in your sin and snapping his finger and making you sober so he can talk to you. Usually when that happens, that's actually the answered prayer of your holy grandmother.
It's not you. Usually that is the prayer of a mother, a father, a friend or otherwise that is either kept you or keeping you alive in hopes that you would convert to Christianity and serve the Lord Jesus Christ. But I can tell you time and time and time and time and time again, there was a short man up in a tree that wanted to see Jesus. And Jesus walked up and said, You know what?
I can see you're putting in some effort to see me. I will come all the way to your house and eat dinner. There was a woman walked around with an issue of blood for 12 years that pushed through the crowd, even though she wasn't supposed to touch anybody, pushed through the crowd just to grab the edge of his coat and stop Jesus in his track. There was another man named Jairus whose daughter was sick and he went through everybody he could get to to get to Jesus to make sure that he had a conversation with Jesus, that his little girl who was sick and then ended up dying was raised from the dead.
I can tell you about another little boy who said, I know there's 5,000 people here and I can't do much, but I do have this bread and this fish. If you can use that, you can have it. And I've known many, many, many people in the Bible that have a radical encounter with God, but very few of them have it while they are rolling in sin. Most of them, it's something like this.
The dude is reading his Bible and the Bible starts talking to him. He says, he says, he says, Can you understand what you are reading? And the Bible continues to say, he says, How can I except somebody would guide me in it? Remember, they didn't have eyes to see or ears to hear.
The Bible, it can be a confusing book, but it gets a lot easier to understand when you become born again because now we're looking for the scarlet thread from Genesis to Revelation. We're looking for where is Jesus in Genesis? Where is Jesus in Exodus? Where is he in Leviticus and on through the Bible?
We understand that we are searching for our Savior, even in its divine holy pages, we are looking for him the entire time and it becomes easier to understand because the scales have come off of our eyes. You see, the Ethiopian hadn't had that happen yet. He said, How can I understand unless somebody would guide me? And he desired Philip that he would come and sit with him.
The place of the scripture which he had read was this. He was led as a sheep to the slaughter, like a lamb dumb. That doesn't mean unintelligent. It means he wasn't saying anything.
He's like a lamb that was not making noise before its shearer. So opened he not his mouth. In his humiliation, his judgment was taken away and who shall declare his generation? For his life is taken from the earth.
And the Bible says that the eunuch answered Philip and said, I pray you, of whom is the prophet speaking of? Is he talking about himself or is he talking about another man? And Philip probably jumped up, took two laps around the chariot, and said, Let me start from the beginning. He's not talking about Isaiah himself.
He's talking about the Lord Jesus Christ who has risen from the dead. He said he began to preach unto him Jesus. I don't know why God chose the foolishness of preaching, but I sure am glad he did because something happens when a man or a woman of God starts talking about the goodness and the power of God and the believer on the inside of me starts getting stronger and starts getting built He didn't say you got to serve God 20 years, then you can be baptized. He said, the bottom line is you've got to believe with your whole heart.
This is happening in one encounter. This is not 16 years later when you completely stop cussing. We could have never baptized Jake. Or Jamie.
And he said, what would stop me? He said, what would stop you is if you don't believe with your whole heart. So my question is this. If you've never been water baptized, do you believe with your whole heart?
Maybe you're like me, see, I was baptized as a very young boy. In theory, it was my decision. But when I decided, that's it, I'm serving God the rest of my life. I knew that I knew that I knew that I wanted it and known God.
I am following you in this. Because I don't want to go the rest of my life based off what somebody said I ought to do. I want to go the rest of my life based off the fact that I'm doing it because your Bible said to do it. The qualification is to believe on the Lord with all your heart.
If that's you, you're qualified. If that's you, you're not just qualified. There's a new element of freedom that you're going to taste today. Because when you go in the water, you're buried with Him.
You're connected with Him in His death. This is the only death you will taste. And then according to the book of Romans, you're raised to walk in new life. I hope you enjoyed the podcast today.
If you did, there are a couple of things that I'd love for you to do. Number one, subscribe to our show. That way, the most recent episodes will always be in your feed waiting for you, ready when you are. And secondly, follow us on social media.
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