Welcome to the Valley Baptist Church sermon podcast.
We're so glad you're here,
and we hope this message inspires you,
builds your faith,
and moves you toward a deep relationship with God.
Today, you'll find great insight into the Bible
and learn how you can apply it straight to your life.
So welcome and enjoy the message.
If you have your Bibles, open to 1 Peter chapter 4.
We'll begin reading there in just a moment.
I want to welcome our friends at the Olive Drive campus.
I am one of the associate pastors at Valley Baptist Church.
I've been at Valley 13 years.
As a pastor, this Christmas season has been really a blessing.
Amen. A valley.
This is kind of a different Sunday.
I like to think of this Sunday between Christmas Day
and New Year's Day as being kind of like intermission Sunday.
So let's see what God has for us.
First Peter Chapter four, beginning in verse 12.
Beloved, do not think it's strange concerning the fiery trial,
which is to try you.
as though some strange thing happened to you,
but rejoice to the extent that you partake of Christ's sufferings,
that when His glory is revealed, you may also be glad with exceeding joy.
Let's pray.
Father, we thank You that we can have joy in Christ that supersedes circumstances.
Father, we pray that we get just a refreshing, in the very least, and a taste.
of some of what that means through some of today's text by the inspiration of Your Spirit.
We pray You fill us and challenge us, and in Jesus' name we pray, amen.
Thank you, and you may be seated.
I am calling this message today a biblical response to bad things.
And I don't know if it's just because there is a lot of gospel or you could say prosperity
gospel type preaching in our culture these days.
But it seems like there are a lot of Christians that struggle with really responding biblically
and even have different kinds of unbiblical expectations about Christians and bad circumstances.
It's almost as if Christians sometimes think that because we know Jesus, we get a hall pass from trials.
I want to put it in a little bit of a lighter way.
We sometimes during this season raise expectations during the holidays that are
very unrealistic to Matt as if everything is just going to be perfect.
There's going to be sugar plums not only
dancing in our head, but dancing around the living room.
I don't know about some of you ladies.
I got permission to talk about this by my wife.
My wife watches these holiday movies
And if you know what I mean, holiday romance movies.
And I have noticed that over the years,
there is an increasing bar of expectation,
even just for the guys in these films.
I was noticing watching with my wife recently
that it's not really just good enough as a guy
that I own a bakery,
but at the same time, it would really be good
if I would also be a lumberjack.
I mean, I said to my wife, I mean, is this really what you expect?
I bake cookies.
I go out.
I cut some wood.
I come back in.
I bake brownies.
I go out and I build a Christmas log cabin.
Is that your ideal guy for the holidays?
And she looked at me and she goes, yeah, pretty much.
Yeah.
Now, ladies, if that's your expectation for your holiday guy,
you might want to bring it down to a place of more realism.
The Apostle Peter writes this epistle in a realistic way, which is so great.
One of the things I love about Scripture is the realism of trials.
And as you go back to first Peter chapter one, beginning in verse one,
it says that this letter was written to the Jews of the dispersion.
Now, if you know your Old Testament history, the Jews of the dispersion were
those who were outside of Israel
because they had been dispersed because of persecution.
In fact, the northern kingdom of Israel,
the ten tribes were conquered by Assyria in 722.
And then the world was under Babylonian rule and then Persian rule.
And in the midst of that, they dispersed outside of Israel.
They never came back to that region.
And so as part of their culture, they set up things, specifically synagogues.
And then in the first century, when the gospel was spread,
they went out first to those synagogues and they witnessed the gospel
to those Jews, and many of them became Christians.
But it came to a point where they had sort of some competing tribes.
There were the Gentile Romans, and then there were also the Jews.
And then there were the Christian Jews.
If you know your Bible well, you'll know that very often
the Jews didn't think very much of the Gentiles.
The Gentiles didn't think very well of the Jews.
But one thing they had in common at this point is that neither of them
like the Christians very much.
And these are the group that Peter's writing to.
It sort of reminds me when my wife and I went to seminary in New Orleans, Louisiana.
If you know New Orleans culture, you know that there's a lot there that's not very friendly to Bible-believing Christians.
But not only did we move as Christians to New Orleans,
but in the seminary, there were a bunch of people
from a lot of the rural South,
and they didn't think too highly of Californians.
So here we are, Californian Christians in New Orleans.
If there's such a thing, it was like a three-edged sword.
It reminds me a little bit of Bakersfield.
Throughout the rest of the country,
our country doesn't think too highly of California.
California doesn't always think too highly of Bakersfield.
And then being a Christian in Bakersfield, California,
that's almost like a three-edged sword.
But 1 Peter is written to people
that are not just being socially ostracized,
which is much of the way that we experience it,
but they were being full-on persecuted.
Sometimes we overlook the fact that persecution is going on all the time
globally. Even today,
I read a statistic recently that roughly 380 million Christians are at the level
of either high or intense persecution. I mean,
really at the point of threat on their life.
That is one in seven professing Christians globally.
We look at that, though, and we ask, well,
how should we respond to that?
What should we think about that?
I want to start with a framework that I think can help you
to think biblically about this, something
that I read many years ago.
And the first two are some traps that we can get into.
And then the third one represents
a more biblical view.
The first one is this, that pure agnosticism says
that we can't know anything.
And sometimes we just give in to the futility of just throwing in the towel,
case or whatever will be.
Maybe there is no meaning.
Well, no, that's not the biblical view.
But sometimes we can go to another extreme.
The other extreme is pure dogmatism.
Pure dogmatism says that we can know everything.
A lot of Christians get tripped up with this.
Sometimes we think if we don't have every single answer
to every single finer point of trial
of every single individual going on,
then maybe the Bible's not true.
Maybe even there's no God.
And yet the Bible itself assumes this truth.
In fact, in 1 Corinthians 13, it says,
for now, this age, we know in part.
So that leads us to the third part of the framework,
is that realism says we can know some things.
Sometimes Christians don't even seek to apply themselves
to the some things that we can know.
Now, what we're looking here today is not comprehensive about what we can know about trials.
It's just a section of scripture in first Peter four.
And what it's talking about is how to respond to trials in this one section.
So I'm calling this a biblical response to bad things.
And if you'll follow in your outline, some of these have some typos.
They don't even have the number.
One of those is number one.
You get to work hard today, so add your own number.
Number one.
Number one, responding to bad things is don't be so surprised.
In 1 Peter chapter 4, beloved, that's you, Christian, if you know Jesus.
If not, we're going to talk to you about that at the end.
Beloved Christian, someone who knows Jesus, do not think it's strange concerning what these trials.
And then at the end of the verse, as though some strange thing is happening to you.
The word strange from the Greek Zenitzo.
It means to be surprised or to be astonished.
It's very common that somebody will come to Christ.
Somebody will rededicate and really begin pouring in and believing and obeying God.
And then they just hit these trials.
And they just go, what is going on?
How could this happen?
This can't possibly happen.
Pastor, life teacher, friend, tell me what the Bible says about this.
One thing the Bible says is don't be so surprised.
In fact, it says don't be so surprised.
to new Christians. And,
and this is something that is actually permeates the scripture that evil exists.
We live in fallen creation. We live in a sin sick world.
And this is something that we have to continually repeatedly put before our eyes
because we somehow get the impression that becoming a Christian becomes this
perpetual Rose garden.
There's actually an author.
He's a seasoned disciple maker.
His name is Scott Larson.
He wrote a book called Fresh Start.
We're going to have a series of this on Valley Baptist University on our website
with a bunch of different pastors giving their perspective about his simple
chapters.
He has 30 chapters that'll be segments.
I notice that about every five or six,
he comes back to the subject of trying to teach
and encourage new believers
and recently rededicated believers
away from this surprise idea.
In 2 Timothy 3.12, there's a verse,
and it's a verse that's maybe not the most popular verse.
I want to challenge you that every time you go to a verse in the Bible
that we might take out of context that seems to say
that if we're faithful to Jesus, that we're going to live a life of ongoing, perpetual,
upward mobility, prosperity, and health.
There's another verse, another verse like 2 Timothy 3.12 that says, all who desire to
live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution.
Now that verse is a verse that we don't often find on coffee cups and pillows.
And yet it's there in Scripture.
And Peter is teaching people away from the coffee cup and pillow attitude that we can have.
So number one, don't be so surprised.
Number two, know that it serves a purpose.
1 Peter 4.12, it says, don't be so surprised concerning, notice carefully, concerning this fiery trial, which is to try you.
Fiery comes from the word porosis.
It's where we get the word pure or purify.
It's basic physics and chemistry that fire purifies, and that's the analogy.
In fact, not only does fire purify precious metals, but that's one of the reasons why we cook food.
Now my wife not only watches holiday romance during the holidays,
my wife often watches these cooking shows.
I don't know how many of you ladies watch cooking shows.
There's this one on that I watch sometimes with my wife.
It's called master chef and this master chef guy,
he can be tough on those cooks.
And one of the things I've noticed is if you really want to get in bad graces or displeased,
the Master Chef is present an entree that's undercooked.
I was thinking about that comparison to this.
Our eternal Master Chef wants us as Christians, His followers, to not be undercooked Christians.
So he allows the purifying fire so that we can grow in character.
He allows us to be cooked.
Several weeks ago on a Sunday night, we had an ordination service,
and Pastor Brian presented a really great charge of ordaining all these young men.
And he was very positive.
It was very balanced, but at least a segment of what he was saying is,
not only is God going to use you and you're going to be blessed,
but it's almost as if Pastor Brian said, rest assured, guys, you're going to get cooked.
When I was a pastor, I started serving as a senior pastor at the age of 25.
I was in L.A. County at the time.
And God used it, and God blessed, but I want you to know, I got cooked.
It was like Pastor Eric cooked to a fine crisp with a side of Cindy.
Those are some tough days.
But God used it to refine me, to refine us.
And that's what the Lord wants us to know.
In James chapter 1 and verse 4, it says,
we are to be knowing that the testing,
or you could say the cooking of your faith, produces.
It produces and refines and makes us into mature believers
that God wants us to be.
So number one, don't be so surprised.
Number two, know that it serves a purpose.
Now, number three, this is a challenging one.
Number three, rejoice.
Peter says, but
rejoice, don't be so surprised, but
rejoice.
Turn to the person next to you and say, Rejoice.
Now, that is a tough one.
You don't know what that person's been through.
The Bible does say weep with those who weep
and rejoice with those who rejoice.
But there is a place in the Bible for rejoicing
that's not really about rejoicing in circumstances.
In fact, the quintessential book on joy in the Bible is Philippians.
Even Philippians doesn't just say rejoice in a naked way.
It says rejoice in the Lord.
And what we have here in 1 Peter, Peter now elaborates or unpacks on what rejoicing in the Lord can mean in our life.
So if you'll follow, I'm going to do A, B, C, and D on this.
Letter A, rejoice in the Lord because you relate more deeply to Christ.
1 Peter 4.13, rejoice to the extent that you partake from the Greek koinonia, you fellowship in Christ's sufferings.
That was an old praise song.
I want to know you.
I want to know you more.
I imagine someone leaving worship and then going, how come I'm having all these trials?
God says, because you said you wanted to know me more.
Right?
And that's why we rejoice.
2 Corinthians 1.5,
As the sufferings of Christ abound in us,
so our consolation abounds through Christ.
The more pain and trial, the more consolation in Christ.
Also, letter B, we rejoice
because there will be a final glory and joy.
It says that when His glory is revealed,
you may also be glad with exceeding joy.
Sometimes we miss the implicit truth in Scripture that the experience of heaven is not the exact
experience for every Christian.
We're only saved by grace through faith in Jesus, but there's a difference of greater
and lesser rewards.
There's passages like this that seem to suggest that the more trial and suffering in Jesus'
name, the more exceeding and great joy we have in the eternal kingdom.
I love it when we read through the Bible as a church.
We did that last year, and this year when I was reading through that, going all the
way from the major prophets, all the way to the end of the minor prophets, going all the
way from Isaiah, all the way to Malachi, there are two things that just kept jumping out
at me.
One of the things was there will be final justice.
The other one is there will be final comfort.
I mean, it's almost every book except for maybe Jonah from the major prophets to the minor prophets.
In fact, it almost got redundant.
I'm going to confess that I was reading that going, okay, there will be final justice.
There will be final comfort.
I'm kind of going, Lord, this is redundant.
I get it.
And it's as if God said back, do you?
I wonder how many times as Christians we have forgotten what God has finally promised for us in the glory and joy when we see him face to face.
All right, letter C.
One of the reasons we rejoice in the Lord is that we are blessed.
1 Peter 4, 14a, if you are reproached for the name of Christ, blessed are you.
I love that word blessed, and that word reproach means, that means to be insulted or to be
belittled.
It might be because of social media, but it seems like more and more Christians are being
insulted and belittled and done so publicly.
And we sit and pray and we think, how should I think about this?
One of the things Peter says in the Spirit, think about how blessed you are.
Because you are blessed, it says that you have Christ's Spirit resting on you.
That word blessed, we sometimes use it in the Sermon on the Mount in the Beatitudes as happy.
But it really doesn't make sense in our cultural understanding of happiness because happy are those who mourn is like a contradiction.
But blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
That makes sense, and it sits nicely over what Peter says here in 1 Peter,
because the Spirit of Christ rests on you.
The comforter is the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ.
And the more insult you take in Christ, the more blessed you are.
So rejoice.
The other reason to rejoice, letter D, is that we glorify God.
It says on their part, he's blaspheming, but on your part, he is glorified.
One of the ways we can describe glorifying God is sort of just like the life purpose of every human being.
We are to know Jesus, and we are to glorify God in everything that we do.
There have been some famous and very astute thinkers.
Not all of them are even Christians.
Even people like Viktor Frankl and Albert Camus,
who have understood that one of the greatest obstacles of life in the human condition
is not so much difficulty but futility.
Futility meaning meaninglessness.
There are many people I think you'd probably figure out that have not understood the meaning of their life.
The Apostle Paul is one who did in Philippians 120.
He says this, that Christ will be magnified in my body, whether by life or by death, my whole life, whether life or death, is to glorify Jesus.
There are many throughout history that have discovered that even though they can live worldly successful lives,
It seems like they're making money.
It seems like they're prospering.
It seems like they're on a perpetual path of health and upward mobility.
They get to a point where they realize that their lives are empty,
full of the world, but they have empty souls.
We have an entire book of the Bible that is dedicated to this.
It's called the Book of Ecclesiastes.
It's about life under the sun being meaningless.
I thank God today that in Christ, as Christ followers, we can have meaningful
lives and having meaningful lives.
I like to contrast the empty life with the full life of William Carey.
He's known as the father of modern missions.
William Carey was successful for the gospel, but he had
all of these crazy financial and health trials.
He lost numerous members of his family.
Even with work, he got to the point
where he was translating the Bible
into the languages of India,
and he poured his heart and sweat into it.
And at one point, his entire library
just burned to the ground.
But Carey kept prodding forward in the joy of the Lord.
He had a motto and attitude of this.
He said, I am not afraid of failure.
I am afraid of succeeding at things that don't matter.
People living for Christ always matters.
And so we can rejoice.
Now let's do a little bit of a recap going back.
A biblical response to bad things.
Number one is don't be so surprised.
You're not going to remember that.
You're going to leave here.
Something bad is going to happen.
You're going to be super surprised.
Don't be so surprised.
Turn to the person next to you and say, don't be so surprised.
Number two, know it serves a purpose.
Number three, rejoice.
No matter what the circumstance,
we can live a blessed life to the glory of God.
Now, number four, this is a challenging one.
Number four, examine yourself.
Peter now goes on in 1 Peter 4,
and beginning in verse 15, he says, but.
We'll stop there, here's the transition.
Turn the person next to you and say, but.
Up until this point, it'd be easy to read ourselves into this
as like a narrative of saying, Yeah, I'm going to live for Jesus
and I'm going to be blessed.
And even though it's hard, I'm going to rejoice.
And Peter says, it's almost like he says, Wait a minute, that's not all.
But let none of you suffer as a murderer, a thief or an evildoer.
It's very easy to just slip into a mindset.
I'm under spiritual attack. Pray for me. I've got spiritual attack.
Spiritual attack. Yeah. Spiritual attack. What's going on? Well,
the police keep showing up to my house. Yeah.
Why are the police at your house? Well,
I beat up a guy left him for dead and stole his car.
Yeah, that'll do it.
Not really spiritual attack.
That would affirm other aspects of the Bible, like you reap what you sow.
That's like a self-induced harvest.
Reminds me, you might know the story, an old story of a guy who was complaining about his lunch at work.
And every day he'd bring a paper bag lunch to work, and he'd look inside there, and he'd go, oh, oh, no, not bologna.
hate baloney. And then, so the next day he'd open it up again and baloney again,
can't stand baloney. I guess I'll eat it. And then the third day,
not baloney again,
if I could just not have anything else but baloney.
And finally his coworker got tired and said, man, we're sick of hearing this.
He said, why don't you get your wife to pack you something different for lunch?
And he goes, Oh, well I packed my own lunch.
Peter wants the first century Christians to not be thinking
they're suffering for Jesus if they're just packing their own lunch.
Pray for me. I lost my job.
Well, what happened? Well, I embezzled money.
That's the kind of thing that that happens
In fact, now this can apply. I want to pick on my own tribe a little bit.
I've noticed,
and I don't know if it's just because media promotes it more with internet and
other things.
I've noticed there's a lot of scandals in the lives of pastors these days.
In fact, I've noticed I can sort of categorize it on two subjects.
The subjects are money and sex.
Every time I see pastor losses, church pastor got fired.
You have a pastor who embezzled money. You have a pastor who had an affair.
He had a pastor who mismanaged. You had a pastor committing adultery.
It takes me back to when my main pastoral mentor,
who is my father gave me a little bit of a tutorial. Now,
if you know my father, my father is genealogically a German,
but he was also geographically an Oki.
And Okie Germans can tend to say less, but mean more.
And so he gave me simple words. He said, Eric, I was about 21.
He said, you're going into full-time pastoral ministry. Yes.
Then I got a couple of things to say, said, okay. He said,
there's guys that struggle in ministry. Yeah.
Let me give you two things to help you not struggle. I said, okay. He said,
number one, keep your hand out of the offering plate.
I said, okay. He said, number two, keep your pants zipped.
Yeah. Okay. You know, it was simple.
Now that's German Oakey pastoral mentoring right there is what that is.
But I come back years later and I look at this and what do we see?
We see money, sex, money, sex.
In fact, I was reading about this guy that was in one of these scandals.
He actually had an essay, his essay that he wrote for prestigious blogs and for ETS Society.
His essay was entitled, Form and Matter Plus Promise and Promulgation Equals Particular Baptist Federal Theology.
Now, that's a mouthful.
This is what his essay was about, published.
Form and matter plus promise and promulgation equals particular Baptist federal theology.
The kicker is the guy was having an adulterous affair.
If you're not just a pastor, but you're a life group leader,
you're just a church member, disciple, follower of Jesus,
growing in the Lord, you can grow to the pinnacle of your reputation
and acumen as a theologian, as in apologetics, homiletics,
hermeneutics, hydromagnetics, prosthetics,
If your pants are down and your hands in the offering plate,
your witness is going to go wash.
It's amazing how often, though, we sometimes think that it's just the 12-volt sins
that are going to be the challenge and the problem.
I want you to notice very carefully.
that in verse Peter chapter 415, he doesn't just say murderer, thief,
evildoer, he says, or as a busy body in other people's matters.
Now that's just everyday life stuff, isn't it?
You know what being a busy body means?
That means being nosy and rude.
Turn to the person next to you and say, don't be so nosy and rude.
You know, I'm going to date myself a little bit with this, but in pop culture history,
there was an old TV show that had the busybody, the nosy and rude character.
Her name was Gladys Kravitz.
And for Gladys Kravitz, it seems like she meant well.
She would bring a pot roast to her neighbors, Darren and Samantha.
But there was always a little catch.
I brought you a pot roast.
Who's this man living at your house?
Never seen him before.
Well, Gladys, he's a cousin.
He can't be your cousin because three months ago your cousin left.
You told me you only had one cousin.
Well, Gladys, it's one of Darren's cousins.
How come you didn't tell me Darren has a cousin?
Because Gladys or Glenn Kravitz, it's none of your busy body business.
You know, I can go through this passage.
I can go through my life.
I can look at the last three years, and I could say, you know,
in the last three years, suffering for Jesus, people don't like me.
It's crazy.
In three years, I've been in and out of
five significant other relationships.
I've been in and out of six jobs.
I've been in and out of seven churches.
I've been in and out of 18 life groups.
Nobody seems to like me.
Now, if I were to say that,
it may be that I don't need any quip class
on spiritual warfare.
It might be that I need to heed Peter's words.
Don't be so nosy and rude.
So let's do a recap.
We're talking about a biblical perspective on bad things.
One, don't be so surprised.
Two, know that it serves a purpose.
Number three, rejoice in the Lord.
There's reasons that go deeper than circumstances.
Four, definitely examine yourself.
Am I packing my own lunch with this?
Now, lastly, number five,
and you can just write five in on your outline.
Number five, surrender yourself completely to God.
In 1 Peter 4, 19, therefore, let those who suffer according to the will of God commit their soul to him in doing good as to a faithful creator.
Commit comes from paratithamine, means literally to place before or to set before.
There's two reasons we can do this.
Letter A in your outline, God is good because God is good and faithful.
This is what Jesus himself practiced.
1 Peter 2.23, even on the subjects of being reviled and insulted,
he said he didn't revile in return, but he committed himself.
He gave himself.
It's like throwing yourself to the mercy of the court.
But this court is the righteous, eternal judge, his heavenly father.
And that's the example for us.
Completely surrender, throw yourself at the mercy of God's court
because God is good.
Let her be. God is also all powerful.
He is not only good and faithful, but he's the good and faithful creator.
Maybe nothing we can say speaks to the power of God
is that he's the creator and sustainer of all things.
There's two errors that we can get into in the doctrine of God.
One error is that God is not good.
That's like a subset of deism.
He just wound up the cosmos and doesn't even care what happens.
Another one is that God is weak.
God really cares, but he just doesn't have the power to do anything about it.
Doesn't really know the future.
That's like a subset of what's called open theism.
The biblical view is that God is creator and sustainer of all things,
and he is the good and righteous judge.
Amen.
Thank God that's the God that we serve.
I remember when I was in seminary, I had a professor that used to walk up
and down the aisles and he'd like get in your face and he had a British accent
and he walked up in the aisle and the aisle and he would just say, who is God?
Young man, who is God?
And I never knew how to answer to that.
I wish I could go back and relive that.
Young lady, who is God?
I think about God being creator.
He is God who creates something from nothing.
One of my favorite questions to ask skeptics is,
why is there something instead of nothing?
Just a basic philosophical question.
Creating something from nothing assumes that there is an eternal cause, a first mover,
and eventually it infers that he is personal, that he is moral, that he is conscious.
Who is God?
God is the one who is the eternal creator who created something from nothing.
I wish I could have said that back to my professor.
Now, some of you today are maybe thinking to yourself, even coming into the building today,
I had expectations for life for this year.
I had expectations for Christmas, maybe a little bit.
And guess what?
It was like nothing.
It turned into nothing.
I looked to the new year and my expectations, nothing.
In fact, I have no prospects, nothing, no support, nothing.
It's just a big nothing.
Now, often we're exaggerating that at least just a little.
But I want you to know that even if that's true,
Friends, hear me out.
We serve a God who can create something from nothing.
He is God, that's what He does.
Now, what we're gonna do in just a moment,
we're gonna have a time of commitment.
And in our time of commitment,
there's a couple of verses that I didn't go through here
in 1 Peter 4.
One talks about those who are inside the house of God,
those who are believers in Jesus and those also who are outside the gospel,
those inside might need to go through some refining fire,
but those who are outside the gospel is simply that Jesus Christ died for our
sin and our place that he rose again and that by repenting and believing we have
eternal life and abundant life in his name.
In a few moments, we're going to have some people that are going to be standing up here at the front and you can come forward and make it known.
They will give you very clear directions on how you can be certain you have trusted Christ as Savior and Lord of your life.
But for those on the outside, it might be, or those rather on the inside,
it might be that we need to keep a Christian practice even of confession.
You could even come forward and confess, yes, I've been packing my own lunch.
Yes, I have a self-induced harvest.
And I want to get a jump start on the new year and get this right with the Lord.
Maybe today you'd be somebody who would reorient your thinking.
about a biblical view of responding to trials and say, even praying at the altar,
I pray that I will have a more biblical response and not be surprised by bad things when I'm walking in Jesus' name.
But maybe you would say, I'm going to surrender myself and throw myself at the mercy of God's court today.
And to surrender yourself completely over, there's some ways that we do that outwardly that show that.
One is baptism.
Baptism is like going public.
So I commit internally that I'm laying myself out completely to the Lord.
I'm all in for Jesus, and then we get you all in the water as an expression of that.
Maybe some today would say, I not only want to be all in for Jesus and go public, but I also want to go together with his local church.
And maybe you would unite with Valley Baptist Church and go together with this body of believers as we seek to glorify Jesus together.
Let's right now go to the Lord in prayer.
Father, we just thank you that you loved us enough to go on this journey.
cosmic mission trip to come to the world, God in the flesh, and die for our sins.
Father, I pray if there are those here today that have not trusted Jesus Christ as Savior,
that they will respond to the gospel message that we are all sinners, that we can't save ourselves
with the word Savior meaning rescuer.
Father, I pray that people will just throw themselves
before Jesus and say, rescue me because you died for me
and rose again.
Father, I pray for people today who
need to go public as you lead or need
to reorient their thinking, even just praying down at the front
as you speak to them about that.
Father, we thank you that Jesus went all in for us.
We thank you that he submitted himself completely to his heavenly Father's will.
Father, help us to follow in those footsteps in our daily life.
Whether things are good and we praise you for that, whether things are bad, we rejoice in the Lord in the midst of that.
Father, all these things we ask in the name of your Son, Jesus. Amen.
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If you feel the Lord calling you
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No matter where you are in your journey,
know that we love you, we're praying for you
and we can't wait to see what God will do in your life.