Baptism: A Clean Start, A Lifelong Journey - Zack Morgan

Welcome, and I want to extend a special welcome to Micah. This sermon is going to be mostly directed at you today. And I want you to look at this day as a very special day.

And what makes it so special? It's because today, part of you, or you, are going to die.

You're going to be buried with Christ, and you will come out of the waters a new creation. So you won't just die, but you will become a new person, a new creation. This is going to be the first step in a lifelong discovery of the upside-down nature of the kingdom of Jesus.

It may seem counterintuitive, but death to self, death to the old man, is actually your salvation. So as I speak on baptism today, one of my favorite verses when it comes to—actually, my favorite verse when it comes to baptism is 1 Peter 3:20.

Which sometime we're disobedient, so we're jumping in here, but which sometimes we're disobedient when once the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah while the ark was preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls, that is, eight, were saved by water.

The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us. Not the answer of a good conscience toward God, but the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

So what's really interesting is in these verses it talks about—and we've discussed this here before, but I think it's really important—that the water, they were saved from the water, or they were saved by water, excuse me. They were not saved from the water. Noah and his family wasn't saved from the water, but the water was the means to their salvation.

So the narrative right before the flood opens in Genesis 6, and it starts talking about the sons of God coming down and taking wives of the daughters of men. The earth had descended into a downward spiral of destruction.

So the sons of God, many people believe that the sons of God were fallen angelic beings.

And these demons, these angelic beings, were taking women as many as they chose to. Their human wives bore them children who became giants. The earth was becoming populated with a mixed race of half-human, half-demons that had incredible strength.

In order for God to preserve His creation, He needed to stop this process of destruction.

He needed to stop this mixed race from populating and destroying the pure humans, His creation. He needed to cleanse the old world, which had been corrupted by the Nephilim, and have a new creation take place with a renewed humanity.

And this is why Noah was not saved from the water. He was saved by the water. The water was the means to his salvation. If it wasn't for the water coming and the flood destroying the earth, Noah and his righteousness, Noah and his righteous family would have eventually been destroyed.

The water saved him from the old creation.

So I'm going to go off on a little bit of a tangent here. We had discussed this a little bit over our Sunday school a couple of months ago when we were in Genesis.

And so one thing that has baffled many people, and there appears to be no attempt to save the dinosaurs. You'll figure out where I'm getting to in a little bit. It's pretty apparent that the dinosaurs wouldn't have been able to fit on the ark. Some of them were close to 50 feet tall.

And as far as I know, even contrary to YouTube clickbait, there's no dinosaurs that survived until after the flood. And one of the questions that people may have is, and this is actually I brought this up to Terry, and my question was, why didn't God care about all His creation?

And so why did He just decide that the dinosaurs were going to die? Was it just the fluffy bunnies and the cuddly cats that had a ticket to get on the ark?

So one theory, and like I said, this goes to my man Terry, but one theory is that the dinosaurs were not a part of God's original creation.

So the sons of God came down and intermingled with the humans, which created giants, which were a corruption of the human race. The Bible also says that the earth was also corrupted. The theory is that the sons of God were not only trying to corrupt the human race, but had intermingled with the animals of God's creation.

The theory is that the dinosaurs were also the offspring of the sons of God. This is just a theory, not Bible truth. But I want to use this as an analogy, and I want to create a picture. It doesn't really matter if this is right or wrong, this theory is right or wrong, but there's a picture that I want to create.

The old man, and as I'm going to put it, the dinosaur, is the offspring of the devil. Before you become a Christian, before you become a child of God, you are a child of the devil. But when you go into the waters of baptism, that offspring of the devil, the dinosaur, dies.

And you are born again. You come out of the waters a new creation.

So Noah lived in this world where some crazy stuff was going on. The angelic beings were taking as many wives as they chose. There were giants, and we can imagine they weren't the nice kind of giants.

And there were the dinosaurs. And also, this was the time before God gave the fear of man to the animals. Of course, it wasn't until after the flood where the animals received the fear of man. I saw in the news, it was a couple of months ago, where there's a town in Florida where the squirrel population has exploded. And there's quite a few concerned citizens because of this exploding squirrel population. I don't know if people are feeding them or what's happening, but they're becoming domesticated and losing the fear of man. And so people are concerned because you're walking along the beach and the squirrels will just come up to you.

And I guess it's disconcerting to have a flock of squirrels surround you.

And if it's worrisome to have squirrels surround you that don't have the fear of man, just imagine living in a world where there are dinosaurs, these evil animals that had no fear of man.

All I'm trying to say is that imagine living in this type of world with giants and dinosaurs. And I used to think that the flood would have been disruptive to Noah and always hailed Noah as a faithful, and he is a faithful, righteous man. But always commended him for his faithfulness in building the ark and how disruptive it would have been to have to spend 100 years building an ark, then going into the ark and having the whole world wiped out and starting all over again.

But he lived in a very scary world. It was a very scary place. And I believe that Noah welcomed the flood. It would have been a relief to step out of the ark without the fear of an evil dinosaur breathing down your back.

Micah, I want you to know that death to the old man will also bring you relief and peace.

So I know you haven't helped me pour concrete, but Steven has helped me quite a bit. I know you've heard stories. For those of you who don't know, pouring concrete can be stressful, aggravating. Actually, just this past Friday, I poured seven yards of concrete, and this was in Carlisle. And after I bowl-floated it, it started raining. For about 20 minutes, it rained. And then for about another 20 minutes, it just absolutely poured. Lightning was striking close by. We probably got a good inch in about 20 minutes.

So that kind of thing can completely ruin a pour, which thankfully I had plastic up. I covered everything with plastic, and I had a squeegee with a handle on it, and I was walking across the plastic, and I was squeegeeing the water off. And we were able to save it, but it's stressful and expensive. It can be very expensive mistakes.

So yeah, it's a difficult thing. So I want to show you me five minutes before the concrete truck shows up. That's me. And then I want to show you me five minutes after the concrete truck shows up.

Or at least you could say this is where the cross in my life is.

When I pour concrete, I have a choice either to be a faithful witness and stay calm and not get angry, or I can breathe life back into that dinosaur and let it rear its ugly head. Micah, salvation is a process. Today, you are being saved from the old man, from the dinosaur that wants to destroy you.

But from here on out, it's your choice to decide whether you want to breathe life back into the old man or not. You will have a clean start, a fresh slate. But what will happen is that the dinosaur will want to rear its ugly head. You will daily have to put the old man down. This is not a once-and-for-done deal. This is the beginning of a new walk with the Lord.

I love the analogy that Jesus uses in John 3 when he refers to baptism as being born again. We've heard being born again so often, we forget how shocking maybe that term was to Nicodemus. But it's so true. You have a fresh start. You are born into the real humanity that God intended for you to be.

The main point after the new birth is not that you keep yourself from returning to the old world. The purpose after the new birth is to grow into the full measure of the true human, the man that represented what real humanity looked like, to grow into the image of Jesus Christ.

Now, in order to do that, you will need to turn your back on your old life. You will need to take up your cross. You will need to die daily.

But if your only goal after the new birth is not to return to the old man, you will stay a baby. Your goal should be Jesus and becoming like him.

So there's a word that the world despises, but the Christian loves. We love this word. And the word is surrender. Surrender is tied up in the cross. The cross is where your will and God's will intersect.

When you choose God's way over your own way, that is what we call taking up your cross.

The cross is the ultimate symbol of self-denial. Jesus left us the perfect example of what it means to deny our own desires and walk in humble obedience with God. And then he said to them, "If anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me.

If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, his own life also, he cannot be my disciple."

The journey that you have begun is a process. There are things that I still need to surrender to God and let go. But each time I continue to make those decisions to surrender, it gets easier. And as you continue to trust God and let go, it will get easier to surrender the next time.

You are building a relationship with your Father. And as you see his faithfulness, you will be able to look back on past experiences and remember that surrendering to God's way always was the best.

Let me go back. And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands for my name's sake shall receive a hundredfold and inherit eternal life.

Jesus is speaking in the context of eternal rewards, but as you discover the joy and the peace of surrendering your will to the Fathers, you may find unexpected blessings as well.

There is freedom in living completely surrendered to Christ. Micah, you will be called to do difficult things. In fact, you are doing a difficult thing right now. It's difficult for a young person to say, "I don't like the way I'm going. I want to change. I want to be baptized."

It's much easier just to just keep doing what you're doing and not change. But this is just the beginning. This is just the start. The Lord will call you to make many sacrifices. Today, you start your life with death to the old man. Someday, you will physically die.

We are not guaranteed that we will end our life faithful, but if you wake up every day and decide that God's way today will be first and your own will will be last, I can confidently say you will finish your race well.

Jesus also speaks on this, and I want to jump back to Luke 9:23. "If anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me.

For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it." And as you begin this journey, remember that you are more than a conqueror. How is that possible? How can you be more than a conqueror?

Well, how can you take from someone who has given up everything? How can you kill someone who has already died to self?

And I want to end with this: that you have everything. You have to give up everything, but in comparison to what you gain, the sacrifice is nothing. God bless you, and I'm looking forward to the baptism.