One Baptism (1977) by GW North

Shall we turn to the word for tonight?
I want to read to you from the Ephesian letter and chapter four.
Just a few verses.
Verse four.
I don't know whether it was the fact that it has been announced we are to have a baptism
because before the weekend is through and also that it was hinted that it could be brought
to tonight, whether it was that that started my mind thinking along the great truth of
baptism.
I don't think it had anything to do with the fact that this was once a Baptist church
building, although we are very grateful that amongst all the rubble we found a Baptist
tray.
I was privileged to go down into it without any water in it before we left this part of
the world for colder climes.
But praise God for those who know the great truth and are moving into conformity with
the will of God fall on this man.
But already I have, I hope, announced unto you my subject that I want to talk to you
about one baptism.
There came a time in my life when I preferred to believe the Bible than the theories of
men.
It says one baptism.
To me it became final and immediately I preferred to believe God.
He started to show me what it meant.
And you may make up your mind that unless you choose to believe what God says in the
book, plainly and simply, he will not show you the truths that he's talking about.
Will you settle for that?
And every man who's been taught of God will testify to that truth.
Until you change your opinion, it is contrary to the Bible, as soon as you do that and you
believe what it says, God will become your teacher and he will lead you into the fullness
of the truths about which he is speaking.
No doubt you will become a marked person from that time on.
But that doesn't matter, for God wants us to understand what he's talking about.
Hallelujah.
So then, I want you to notice the fact that we're talking about the fatherhood of God
in this section.
That's a tremendous truth for us to understand.
And also that this section prevents us, if we do accept and believe what it's saying,
it prevents us from believing in the fallacy of the universal fatherhood of God.
That is a myth and it is certainly not true.
And I suppose that there would be many blasphemers who would say that they are quite sure that
God isn't their father.
They would be speaking true.
But God is the father and this is the great thing for us to understand.
Now, it's a wonderful thing that God has shown us this in all simplicity.
There isn't a person in the room that is a father, and of course you can't all be fathers,
we're sorry for you, but there isn't a father in the room but knows that what he begets
is a body.
Isn't that true?
That's right.
He begets a body.
There is one body, that's what it says.
That's what father does.
It's so glorious, isn't it?
The body in the natural that is begotten, well, it's just a little shape.
It's a little thing of flesh and blood.
But when God begets a body, it's a spiritual body.
It has neither flesh nor bones nor blood.
It's a tremendous body, spiritual, and it exists in absolute truth.
And it's so wonderful that once we're in this marvelous thing that God has for us,
we know the one spirit that's in the body.
Amen.
If you're going to be a member of this body, God says you've got to drink into that one spirit.
That's it.
You mustn't be an odd kind of body.
You can't just do as you want.
You cannot belong to this body unless you are prepared to drink in the spirit of the body.
You've just simply got to do that.
For you will know that a body without spirit is quite dead.
And so having breathed or drunk in the spirit from God,
we realize that we are called of God and that there's one great hope of our calling.
That we shall be like the blessed Lord of whom we read next,
one Lord and one faith and one baptism.
And I believe, and I hope everybody can see,
that the one baptism is the only means by which the one God and Father can make you a member of that body
and the only way whereby you can become His child,
by the one baptism.
That's as clear as anything.
The one Father that gets you into that spiritual body,
when the one Lord baptizes you in the one spirit,
you are made a member of that body.
Hallelujah. It's so simple.
And I wonder why people have made it so complicated
and why once upon a time I used to think in all the complicated ways that people think about it.
Now, praise God for all that He reveals to us.
And you will know that the one great baptism is the baptism of the one great Lord and God.
It isn't the baptism of men in water.
And perhaps it's that that I would like to emphasize and would have done especially
if some of us here tonight were going to be baptized in water.
Glory be to God, there is baptism in water in the Scripture.
It is a picture, a visual aid.
It is that means by which we can see what God is talking about.
It is a window into eternal things but not an entrance, it is not a door.
It shows us the great earthy that it was all about.
Glory be to the name of the Lord.
And so tomorrow night you come along and we'll be down there someplace, sometime,
and we'll witness this picture again, this great enactment of God.
Now, you may think that that could be a strange subject, baptism, on Easter Sunday.
But as a matter of fact, it is all joined not so much with Pentecost as with Easter.
That's what it is really linked with.
The great truth of baptism and the one baptism is Easter.
Glory, that's what it's all about.
You see, everything in this section has to do with Jesus.
For instance, in verse four, the body is his body, Jesus' body.
It is spoken about in the end of chapter one.
The church, which is his body, that's it.
It's all him.
The spirit, of course, in that one body can only be the spirit of Christ.
That's all it is. You can only have one spirit in one body.
Inside your body is your spirit.
And it's that spirit which is keeping the body alive, providing, of course,
to have air and food and do all the things you should do properly.
And again, the calling, the great hope of your calling,
is that you should be like Jesus in everything, in total conformity and utter fulfillment.
And, of course, the one Lord is undoubtedly Jesus.
And the one face is his face.
The face of Jesus Christ, you will remember, when Paul had undergone this one baptism.
He could preach and teach and, of course, did write these words.
I am crucified with Christ.
Nevertheless, I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.
And the life which I now live, I live by the faith of the Son of God.
That's it. It's his faith.
We have to live by his faith. It's the Lord's faith.
He loved me, gave himself for me. Amen.
It's the Lord's own faith, not our faith in him.
And, of course, when we exercise this one great faith,
we undergo the one great baptism.
And it's the Lord's baptism. Amen.
And it has nothing to do except pictorially with the baptism that he underwent at Jordan.
And when that has happened to us, Jesus, our Lord's own Father, becomes our Father.
And not until then.
Although we may learn to say from infancy, almost, the prayer which is called the Lord's Prayer,
and say repetitively, Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
And then pray for his kingdom to come, and whilst praying it, perhaps, wonder what it all means.
Well, hallelujah. Here is God's simple method.
It talks about his kingdom, his family.
It talks about his glorious method of new births.
Moving us out of our deaths, in which we exist, into the life of God.
What a glorious thing it is then, beloved, to first hear the call of the Lord.
This great baptism, after the Lord Jesus, as you know, had been baptized in Jordan by John Baptist.
He talked much later, and we can read it in Luke chapter 12, if we want to read the exact words,
and perhaps it's as well if we do.
In Luke chapter 12 and verse 49, Jesus said, I am come to send fire on the earth,
and what will I, if it be already kindled, but, and he knew that he had to put that but in there.
I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straightened till it be accomplished?
What a tremendous thing, accomplished.
He had to accomplish a baptism.
Nobody else could do it.
He had himself to do it.
You will remember that this is the kind of language that is used about the Lord Jesus when he nears death.
Remember that he was caught up, or went up, if you will, to that mountain which we call the Mount of Transfiguration.
We were referring to it earlier in this weekend.
And there, up that mountain, with his three chosen apostles going to sleep all around him,
it all seems they always went to sleep at the vital moments.
These three people, they have become infamous for it.
They slept in the Garden of Gethsemane as well.
They went to sleep, and then they woke up, and they found that Jesus was talking with these two great men.
Of old.
Praise God, as God says, he's not the God of the dead, he's the God of the living.
And these two were alive under God, and they spoke to Jesus.
And though Moses was there, that master of the ancient Exodus, they didn't speak about the old Exodus.
They spoke about Jesus' Exodus.
The Exodus that he should accomplish at Jerusalem.
It was a great accomplishment.
However, these heavenly ones looked at Calvary, it was an accomplishment.
Now that's a tremendous thing for us to take into our hearts.
Because we use the word suffering, we use the word crucifixion, and it's all true.
But so far as God was concerned, he was moving down a line.
And Jesus, God, manifest in the flesh, was moving on toward Calvary in the spirit of victory and of the overcomer.
And so when they nailed him on the cross, he was accomplishing something.
A, he had to accomplish an Exodus.
He had to do that.
And now you know what happened in the ancient Exodus.
We were thinking a little of it this morning.
When the blood was shed there and sprinkled on those houses.
How God saved those firstborn that were in those houses.
And because the firstborn were saved, the whole family came out.
The whole nation came out.
And God led forth this great multitude of erstwhile captives.
They'd been in bondage so long, they'd forgotten what liberty was like.
So God brought them out.
It was a marvelous thing.
And you will know, it is famous throughout all the Old Testament Scriptures.
They were always looking back to the occasion when God moved in such mighty power.
And brought his people out of Egypt.
They talked about it.
David, their great singer, wrote psalms about it.
It's been woven into their history.
God got a great name.
Hallelujah.
Well, you will also remember that it wasn't accomplished without a baptism.
As we were thinking this morning.
That they had to go through the Red Sea.
Where they were baptized unto Moses.
In the cloud there is the type of the Holy Ghost in the sea.
And they were baptized in the Holy Ghost, typically, at Easter time.
For, on Good Friday, as we say, Jesus was crucified, the blood of the Lamb was shed.
And on Easter Sunday, they arrived on the other side of the sea.
Baptized in the Holy Ghost.
The important thing about water, so far as God was concerned, was that it wasn't there.
He rolled it back. They didn't get wet.
They got baptized in Spirit only.
And that's what baptism is all about.
The water was just a picture.
That's all.
Agreed?
You can't help but agree.
It's absolutely true.
So then, beloved, we have to see what God is really saying to us.
Lest we be carried away by the artifices of men.
Who manufacture things so that they can exist in lower experiences.
But God wants us to be in all that He says, beloved.
And unless there gets fire in your bones,
and unless there comes a great yearning and longing in your heart,
as there was in the heart of Jesus, I've come to send fire.
I've come to spread fire.
He was a man of fire.
And He didn't put it out by going into water.
That's the tremendous truth about it.
And unless you and I get this great, burning, long sense
of wanting to be in everything that God has for us,
we really need some saving work to be accomplished in us,
even though we talk about being saved.
We need to be saved from this tepid, pale,
go to meaning kind of attitude once now and again or something like that.
We need to get moving in reality from God.
Jesus didn't come down here to institute Christianity
so that people could build big buildings and turn them into
mausoleums or warehouses or something after a time.
He came down here, beloved, so that He could have a living people like Himself,
and He knew no other method but that He should baptize them
into one glorious body burning with His own fire of love,
purpose, glorious righteousness, white-hot holiness.
That's what He's talking about.
And that's what He's going to do, beloved.
And if you're in this building tonight and you know that hasn't happened to you,
He proposes to do it for you tonight.
That's what has to happen.
Now, the baptism, beloved, that He was baptized with,
that He spoke about, was self-administered.
At Jordan, He had to submit to John Baptist.
And John Baptist dipped him in the water and he rose up again.
And I do want to distinguish in your mind,
in case you may have been one of these people who was labored under
a wrong understanding of it, that John Baptist didn't hold Jesus in His arms
and make the sign of the cross on His forehead with a few drops of water.
Now, let's get that absolutely clear
so that we can get the noxious poison out of our thinking.
Jesus was immersed as a man of thirty years of age
to make it quite clear to everybody the way God does it and is going to have it done.
That's as clear as anything.
I suppose this building exists because of those people called Baptists long ago
who separated from the established Church on this very issue.
What a glorious company of people they were and how persecuted they were
and what names they were called.
Because they saw a truth in the Scripture and went for it.
Praise God for every man or woman who's blazed the trail of pluck
and have gone as God has revealed it to them.
Step by step has the blessed truth come to light through the ages.
Year after year God has moved and God has purified His people on the earth
from all sorts of wrong doctrines and ideas.
God grant that He'll do some purging and purifying among us here tonight
so that we come absolutely clear on what God wants
and dare to believe it and dare to proclaim it.
For that is what God is wanting.
A people of pluck who've got backbone.
People who love the truth for the truth's sake.
As John the great apostle says so.
Love the truth for the sake of the truth.
Amen.
What a tremendous thing and you remember that Jesus went to Calvary on these issues.
Aren't thou a king? Thou sayest it.
The truth for the truth's sake.
That's right.
These are the reasons that led up to the cross.
Why he was nailed there.
If he'd have just let that slip, that would have been alright.
If he'd have just passed over that, that would have been fine.
For it was king against king.
We have no king but Caesar.
You see, he could have got away with it.
Just by letting that one thing slip.
The Jews wouldn't dare have brought any more against him.
But the truth was the truth.
He lived for it.
He embodied it.
God grant that every one of us will come there.
Hallelujah.
It'll mean a kind of crucifixion for you.
But you mustn't pay attention to that.
Only triumph over it.
Add it as one of your accomplishments.
That's what the Lord Jesus did.
And we honor and praise and magnify his name for it.
And so, when it came to the great, great baptism,
it was the Lord Jesus Christ himself who administered it to himself.
The one baptism was the triumphant death of Jesus Christ
followed by the natural event of the resurrection.
He just rose again as we trust the little lady that's being baptized tomorrow
will do when she's dipped in the water.
We hope she'll come up again.
As a natural consequence of going down.
Hallelujah.
Calvary, beloved, and the death of Jesus Christ was the baptism.
You see, there was no other way for the Lord Jesus Christ to reach you and me.
You must understand that when Jesus lived on the earth and moved amongst men,
he didn't, he hadn't ever reached men.
They were sinners.
He was sinless.
They had all their imperfections.
He was perfect.
He had a human body, but he didn't have human sin.
He didn't know exactly what it was to be a sinner.
He never really reached us as we were.
And though sometimes you may, as I used to once upon a time,
think that we were sort of robbed of something
because we didn't live in the age when Jesus lived on the earth.
You may think, well, it must have been absolutely marvelous.
You can think of all the people that you'd have rushed around
and collected them on their beds or off them
and taken to Jesus and get them healed.
And you can think of all the sorts of things that you would just love to have done
if you'd have lived on the earth when Jesus was on the earth.
But Jesus knew that that wasn't it.
Jesus knew that he hadn't really got down to men
and the state of men as he moved amongst men.
He had somehow to get down to men's real condition
of which the Bible testifies again and again,
dead in trespasses and sins.
Dead, absolutely dead.
Useless for him if he was going to accomplish his objective
just to raise a dead person here, a little girlie,
the daughter of Jairus or a widow's son
or even his great and dearly loved friend Lazarus.
That hadn't reached the situation either.
He could display all kinds of powers and bless his name, he did.
And that repeatedly.
But the moment had to come
when he should be baptized down into a state of death.
It went with the death of his body as well.
But he plunged himself into death.
The Romans couldn't do that
and the Jews couldn't condemn him to that.
He voluntarily hung on the cross sufficiently long enough
to bear away sin by the sacrifice of himself.
He hung on the cross long enough
to take the full and total deserts
and punishment of man's sin upon himself.
And he did that with joy and with pleasure
because he loves us.
And he, and only he, could do what he did.
There was none other good enough to pay the price of sin
they taught us to sing when we were children.
And it's still true.
It wasn't only that there was none other good enough,
but there was none other who had any idea
of what it was all about anyway.
There wasn't anybody else whose mind could embrace it.
There wasn't anybody else who could encompass it.
No one, nobody understood.
Nobody knew.
Eternal mind, intelligence and understanding
had comprehended it for long enough.
But you see, there had to come the time
when he should take sin upon himself.
Praise God!
And pay the price of sin as we sing
and shed the blood of eternal righteousness
stronger than all the sin of mankind.
And powerful enough to purge away the last pains of sin
from any living consciousness.
He hung there long enough, a short enough time
just to do that.
And then, having done that, having said this,
he said, finished!
Finished that.
And then, the baptism.
Now you must understand that nobody baptized him into death.
Nobody did it.
And you must also understand that there is no other way
into death but by a baptism.
Did you know that?
Death is a baptism.
All right?
You could be living one moment,
perhaps fall down those stairs and be dead the next.
Plunge straight in.
That's it.
Death is always a baptism.
And you come to that place, beloved,
when you may be ninety, you may be ten.
I don't know what age you'll be.
How can anyone tell?
Except perhaps you've already lived past the age of ten,
or twenty, or thirty, or forty, or fifty, or sixty,
or seventy, or eighty, or ninety.
It's almost certain you won't reach a hundred.
And then it'll come.
And you'll go like that.
And nobody in this world can prevent it.
We can hasten it.
But you can't prevent it.
So Jesus went plunging right down into death, beloved.
Glory.
Because that is where he truly reached man.
In death.
What a tremendous thing it is.
Now the invitation of God is this.
That you should come to the one Lord
who proved he was the one Lord
by the resurrection.
Hallelujah.
And that he should get hold of you
because you voluntarily, in total,
completely hand your life over to him
without any reservations
and certainly without making any excuses.
And don't plead that you've been,
well, quite a decent person, really.
Or anything like that.
And don't think that you're too awful
that Jesus wouldn't handle you.
Praise God.
You know, I read something that I understand
from my host who keeps the original copy.
Something that was discovered either up in the roof
or down in the foundations of this building.
I read it after I went home
or was it just before lunch or just afterwards.
And I was handed this sheet of paper.
It was a tract that was published in 1820.
Here it was secreted up in the rafters
so that the coming generations
should discover what they used to believe
and the sort of text they used to write
and perhaps take hints from them, I don't know.
But it was the story of a girl, a woman,
a prostitute that accosted a man
in the West End of London
when he had to take shelter from a terrible storm.
He was a child of God.
And he spoke, there were two of them,
and he spoke to these two.
One ran away because she was going to some dance
or play or something, or was a play.
And the other one seemed to be rooted to the spot
and listened to him.
And he told her that God loved her
and she had been told by her friends
that God hated her because of the life she was living.
And God didn't love her
and perhaps she'd been told it since she was a child.
For when she first began to go wrong,
you be careful, you parents.
Be very careful what you tell your children.
Don't you malign God in some kind of effort
to try and reform your children.
Don't you do that.
You leave God's character alone.
If you can't talk about it rightly,
he never hated anybody.
The Bible says he loves the world.
That's for you and I to understand
and get deeply into the fiber of our being.
God loves you.
Anyway, she'd been told that God hated her.
And she listened again and he pulled out his Bible
and he showed her the text
and the tears ran down onto the print.
And you know what happened, don't you?
I needn't conclude the story.
She heard the story of the love of Jesus.
His redeeming blood by her back
wanted to possess her
who thought that he wouldn't have wanted her
who was nearer than 10 million, million, million miles away from him.
But he loved her and he redeemed her.
She only lived two years.
She paid the penalty for her way of living.
But she was saved by the grace of God.
Well, I think that's rather a good tract.
It would be rewritten, you know, in not such a stilted way.
But glory be to God.
That was somewhere in the roof or down in the basement.
And I think you would have it framed and put out there.
Or out there. I don't know quite.
But glory be to God.
A testimony to the saving grace of God in here since 1820.
It's tremendous.
Let it go on.
If the world should continue and you reach 2020,
it's still there for 200 years.
Don't know how old some of you will be then.
I don't suppose I should come and preach at the Easter service.
I should be doing something better than that.
I must confess, I love doing this dearly.
And I don't want to be engaged in anything less than this while I have breath.
Amen. Yeah.
You see, it doesn't matter who you are.
You've got to come. You must come.
And you must know this blessed experience,
whereby the Lord Jesus Christ includes you into this body.
Though one baptism, there will be other experiences to follow.
Not baptism.
There's only one.
But glory be to God to be included by this great and wonderful act
of the all triumphant Lord.
Amen.
And brought into that wonderful body.
Belonging. Belonging Him.
So that you can't go wrong.
And you can't be missed over.
And you can't be left out.
When I came to Exeter, I brought every bit of me with me.
Every bit of me.
And I'm all here.
You may say, he's not all there, but I am.
I'm all here, beloved.
And that's Jesus, when He in the end reports to Father,
we'll all be there if we are baptized into His body.
We shall all have the glorious life.
We shall all know what it's about.
Amen.
And so the Lord wants to teach us.
Let me show you something that's in your New Testament.
In Romans chapter one, Paul, this great servant of Jesus Christ,
called an apostle.
He says, well, that's what they call me, but you know, really,
I'm only a slave of Jesus.
That's what he's saying.
I'm only a slave of Jesus.
They call me an apostle, but it doesn't make much difference.
You can have a highfalutin name for a slave, can't you?
For instance, the secretary of the royal household.
He's just a servant.
Marvellous.
Or Prince of Wales.
Ictin, I serve.
That's the tremendous thing for us to understand.
Amen.
All right.
He says, I'm separated under the gospel of God, verse three,
concerning His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord,
which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh,
and declared to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of Holiness
by the resurrection from the dead.
It was only this great and marvellous baptism,
this great death and resurrection,
that proved that Jesus was the Son of God.
We know He was the Son of God all the time He was on the earth.
Nobody believes that.
There might have been just a few men around who believed it.
I'm talking quite generally.
Nobody believed that.
Even though John Baptist announced that he was the Son of God,
I saw the Spirit of God descending on Himself.
And I testify to you that He that sent me to baptize with water
said to me upon whom thou should see the Spirit of God descending and remaining on Him.
The same is He that baptizes with the Holy Ghost.
And I saw and bear record that this is the Son of God.
That was at 30.
But it wasn't until that He rose from the dead
that He was proved to be the Son of God
and declared to be the Son of God by that great resurrection.
Amen.
When He had done what He said He came to do.
Hallelujah.
Now you know that John Baptist told us quite plainly.
He said now He's going to baptize with, it's the Greek word, in.
He shall baptize in the Holy Ghost.
What a tremendous thing.
And that is why He poured forth the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost
so that He could bring people into His baptism
by baptizing them in the Holy Spirit.
Like John Baptist brought people into His baptism by baptizing them in water.
The baptism in the Holy Spirit,
unless it is baptism into the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ,
is a fake.
And that's why you have all the anomalies
that some of these people say they're baptizing the Holy Ghost.
And then afterwards people are trying to cast devils out of them
as though devils could go through the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
They all fled Him long before that.
Amen.
This is the whole glorious revelation from God.
What it's all about.
Death, resurrection, out of the old, into the new.
Amen.
What a tremendous truth it is.
Me leaving my life forever, entering into His for eternity.
Me turning my back on my sin.
That's called repentance.
You can turn your back on your sin.
That is another word for repentance.
That is, you turn your back on your attitude to life and to Jesus Christ and His Church.
You turn your back on your attitude of mine,
the whole purportant intent of your living.
You turn your back on that absolutely.
And hand yourself over entirely to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Entirely.
Hold back on one issue and He doesn't believe you.
Blessed be the name of the Lord.
Oh yes, He'll forgive you much before that.
He'll draw you by many things.
Bless His holy name.
Men and women come under the drawings of the Father.
They hear the Gospel.
They start to believe.
Sometime after that they discover that really deep down inside they've got a heart that won't accept it.
It's a big thing when a man discovers that.
When they discover that they've got something inside them that just doesn't accept it and will not go this way.
That's right.
Now it's for this that God has devised the cross.
It's for that attitude Jesus had to be crucified.
It's for that kind of thinking that Jesus wore a crown of thorns.
Amen.
Glory be to the name of the Lord when a man or a woman comes to the place and discovers that this death that they have is a raging, fighting, unbelieving, unyielding, stubborn death they're in.
Will not go God's way.
And cannot be made to walk the ways of righteousness and holiness.
Though they hear a sermon twice a day, every day of their life.
What a glorious thing it is to come to the point of complete self-discovery.
And it isn't until a man or a woman comes to the place of self-discovery that they ever discover Jesus.
That's right.
They can learn a lot about him through many books, all the right ones.
They can learn this and learn that and learn the other.
But there comes a time when they see that their vision of Jesus is blotted out entirely by their vision of themselves.
And they're standing in their own way.
And you realize it isn't sin so much that's the trouble, but you yourself, the sinner.
And you cry and crave to be gone and crucified out of the way.
Amen.
God loves it when he gets a man or a woman there.
When they cry out to be gone.
Finished.
And they don't want another thing for themselves.
Lord, just thee.
Have you come there?
You're at the point where you can be baptized.
Glory be to the name of the Lord.
Oh, it's so marvelous.
Jesus went plunging down into that state of death, beloved.
And you know, so many glorious things happened when Jesus went down into that place of death.
Let's read what Peter says about it.
In 1 Peter and chapter 3.
Verse 18, Christ also has once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God,
being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit.
Now listen, by that death and quickening, he went and preached unto the spirits in prison.
You sometimes wonder, well, what did happen in those three days, whilst Jesus' body lay in the tomb?
He went and he preached the spirits in prison.
And we're told which spirits they were, the ones which were disobedient,
when once the long-suffering of God waited in the days of nerve, while the ark was not prepared,
wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water.
The like figure, or in the anti-type actually, whereunto baptism doth also now save us.
Not the putting away of the filters of flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God,
by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Amen.
Now that's one of the things he did when he went down by this mighty self-baptism into death.
He went down there, beloved, to preach the Gospel to people of a certain age,
what we call the anti-deluvian era.
People who'd never heard the Gospel don't let anybody in this room think that they get another chance
of salvation after they're dead.
It's only to a certain group he went and preached.
He doesn't say you are going to have a chance of hearing and being saved after you've parted from the body.
Those people, they were held in prison.
They did not have eternal punishment.
They were held there for the passage of some few thousand years.
And then Jesus went down, glory to his name.
These were not people who'd had a chance of righteousness under Moses' law.
These were not people who'd been acquainted with blood sacrifices for sin.
These were they, mixed up, marbled up.
All sorts of things happened during that time.
But blessed be the name of the Lord, Jesus went down in uttermost mercy to preach to spirits in prison.
Glory be to God.
In other words, beloved, let me put it this way very simply.
I want to bring it into our level.
The baptism in the Spirit has to do with people who are in prison.
That's right.
Oh, shut up inside.
Maybe that you yourselves, although you live in the twentieth century, have never clearly heard this Gospel.
You've heard the preachments of men, all kinds of muddled up ideas put over.
But you've never clearly understood this mighty work of Jesus Christ.
Now listen, beloved, if you're held in captivity and bondage by the devil,
if you're in a state of spiritual death, even if you're in total darkness,
and you're bound by sins and habits, I want to tell you that this great baptism that God is talking about will release you.
It will set you free.
Amen.
Hallelujah.
Let's continue this a bit further.
Peter loves this.
Oh, he takes up this great figure of the ark, you know, and the water.
Now you know that there were two great things there you and I can see so clearly.
You will know that when the flood came, that in this mighty flood of waters, people and animals, in fact all air breathing flesh, died.
There was a death, a complete extinction.
Amen.
You will also know that there were those who were safe in the ark.
Amen.
That's what you know.
And it's as primitive and as clear as that.
And so Peter brings out the truth that all those in the ark were saved by baptism.
That's what he said.
None of those that went into the water were saved, so it wasn't salvation by baptism in water.
Because none of them in the ark got wet.
None of them.
Hallelujah.
But what God is showing us so clearly is that it's this baptism which puts everything into extinction.
That isn't included in the Christ ark.
Everything.
It's utter.
Glory be to God.
I'd like to stand on a chair now and shout and shout and shout for the simplicity of the Gospel.
God save us from all these people who complicate us again and again and again.
The sheer simplicity of it.
That you can take that story and tell it to children.
And except you'll become a child, you'll not get into this.
You can't roll back the years.
But you can at least allow yourself the grace of becoming simple when you think about the truth of God.
Amen and amen.
Let's continue the great truth into the fourth chapter.
It says this.
That Jesus, God, in verse five, he's ready to judge the quick, the living and the dead.
Verse five.
And we have to give an account to him.
And it says that for this cause was the Gospel preached also to them that are dead.
That they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the Spirit.
Hallelujah.
It's a tremendous thing.
And once we get to this truth, Peter is telling us something.
Follow his simple mind.
Very simple man.
I don't mean to say that he didn't know anything.
His approach to truth was simple.
That's what it means.
This great simple man, when he starts to talk along these lines about baptism and about death and about quickening,
I want to tell you the end of everything is right at hand.
The end of everything.
It can be the end of sin and sinning in your life.
It can be the end of the old, old trail of marching through weeks of your own habits.
Up and down.
The same weary, grinding road that you've trod for years and years and years.
It can be the end of it.
Hallelujah.
It's right at hand.
Praise God.
Will you let Jesus preach to your spirit if you feel all shut up inside?
Let him talk to you.
Let him talk to you now.
There's no guarantee he's going to talk to you except as a judge after you've departed this flesh.
That's the tremendous truth of it.
That he's talking to you now as a Saviour.
And he wants to do this thing.
If you'll let him get hold of your life and do as he wants with it.
And don't put any limits on him.
And don't come with any excuses.
And don't hand over parts and try to make everybody believe you handed over all.
The completeness of this.
You've got to put everything into his hands.
Your hopes for the future.
Your fears about the past.
Your state in the present.
You've got to hand over everything to God in whose hand the future lays.
And in whose mercy the past abides.
You have to see that God is going to be faithful to you.
He's come to preach truth to you.
Now when Jesus preached to these spirits in prison, what happened?
Ephesians chapter 4, where we were reading.
We'll read at verse 4 again and we'll miss out verse 7.
Not because it's not important, but to get the continuity.
There's one body, one spirit.
Even as you're called in one hope of your calling.
One Lord.
One faith.
One baptism.
One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.
Verse 8.
Wherefore, he saith, when he ascended up on high, he led a multitude of captives.
Glory be to God.
Amen.
Hallelujah.
He accomplished the Exodus, beloved.
Moses could only bring an Exodus to, might have been a million slaves.
Jesus brought about an Exodus.
He accomplished an Exodus of departed spirits.
And he brought them out of their prison houses.
Wherever God had made them, I know not where they were.
I only know that it's so.
And he accomplished his great Exodus.
If we could have seen the train of shining spirits that ascended the skies,
on the day when Jesus ascended to his Father, we'd all be on our chairs cheering.
Hallelujah.
There goes the triumphant shining host.
Glory.
Liberated.
At last.
They must have thought the hour would never come.
They must have thought they were doomed for all eternity.
But merciful Jesus went down and preached to them.
Now I know not what he preached.
And I don't know what position they'll hold in eternity.
That, I fear, would only be venturing in, puffed up by a fleshy mind,
into things that angels don't even know.
We're not to intrude into those things.
But we're to believe what's plainly written in the book, beloved,
and know the justice and the mercy and the grace of God.
See, he accomplished the Exodus.
He is God. He is Lord.
Is it not lawful for me to do as I like with my own? He said.
To whom is God accountable?
You are accountable to God? Listen.
There's a calvary for you.
There's a grave for you.
There's a resurrection for you.
And don't try and dodge it.
And don't put your tongue in your cheek and start talking about
I believe in the blood or I believe in anything like that.
So does the devil.
But he doesn't know that baptism.
The great thing for us to see is that God has provided it for us.
In the person of his Son, one man went there, and hallelujah,
of course the Holy Ghost had to be shed abroad in a new and wonderful way.
The Holy Ghost had to come in a new, new phase of God's moving.
He'd been there in the beginning when God created the earth.
He was there in David's day who said,
Whither shall I flee from thy Spirit if I make my bed in hell?
He's there.
That's what he said.
But in a new way, beloved, so that Jesus could accomplish the effects of his baptism
in a people on the earth, the Holy Ghost was shed forth
that men might be plunged by grace of God
when they come to true faith into the Holy Ghost
wherein God by power can purge out of a man his sin and stains
and changes nature and making you glory to God.
We've got one great hope in our calling.
Amen.
We're fixed on God, the resolver of all our problems,
the answer to all our needs,
the blood that dissolves all sin right out of us,
the grace that meets us where we need to be met and changes us.
That's the baptism from which a man rises new in and out.
All over, all round, all through one God and father of us all.
He's over all, hallelujah.
He's through us all.
He's in us all.
How could that happen except by some new spiritual power and force?
How could that happen by talking to a man,
lecturing him, preaching him, teaching him?
It must be some great penetrated power,
some new marvellous thing that happens to a man.
To go all through him and leave in him not just the traces
but the reality of a new person.
Model him in the life of God.
That's what the baptism's about, not just to make you talk in tongues
or have a gift.
It's to God you with God and Christ you with Christ
and saturate you with the Spirit.
That's what it's for.
It's to change you man and woman.
Change you through and through.
Now what a marvellous thing it is.
Oh hallelujah.
A man and a woman when that happens to them.
Hallelujah.
One baptism.
One baptism for us all.
One and only one provided by God.
Men may talk about many others but God doesn't.
God doesn't.
Hallelujah.
No confusion in God.
Simple, straight, powerful, necessary.
Hallelujah.
How thrilling it all is beloved.
That the Exodus has been accomplished.
Hallelujah.
And I'm in this.
To me it was an Exodus from self.
An Exodus from sin.
An Exodus from the devil's power, orbit or ambit.
A coming out clean, new.
A coming out with life in me so that I could grow.
Amen.
A basic experience upon which God could work and develop in me naturally.
The things that he wanted me to be.
Without great over straining reaching after this or reaching after that.
A glorious conformity to the words of the New Testament.
Making in not only the image of Christ but in the image of the words.
The things that he said.
Amen.
So that the word becomes flesh in you and me.
That's what it's about.
One God, one father of us all.
So we have a good look round and we recognize our brothers and sisters.
So simple.
So real.
So eternal.
Hallelujah.
Now as we read on or could have read on through that Ephesian letter.
He gave gifts unto man.
He gave this and he gave that and he gave the other.
He gives so many things that I guess if all the books about them could be written as we feel ought to be written.
We'd have this place pull up with books.
But the important thing is this.
That God has put the foundations of it in his word.
The basic things.
The things you must have.
This is not optional.
It is basic.
You only have one choice in the matter.
Yes or no?
God grant it shall be yes.
Yes Lord.
Yes.
Amen.
Where you can come to an end of that old self of striving and fighting of wanting and having not.
Of white washing sepulchers and of dressing yourselves up in fine white linen over a bag of bones.
A whole great glorious end to all the pretense and all the struggling.
Hallelujah.
Amen.
The Lord raises up his joyful people.
He raises up his pure people.
He raises up his living people.
Amen.
That is the army that God wants to move through the lengths and breadth of this land.
That kind of people.
And throughout the whole wide world.
Men and women of this caliber.
Amen.
Alive with the life of God.
Being through the death and burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
And knowing how truly that blessed one came from heaven to make his mind.
By making mine his.
What a tremendous truth it is.
Are you there?
There's only one baptism bill of it.
Only one.
Could you stand up and say yes.
And it's happened to me.
Could you stand up and testify before God and all the holy angels.
That's happened to me.
So that we're not left swinging on this tenuous thread of I believe.
Hallelujah.
You don't have to believe you're in when you're in.
Do you?
Amen.
I hope to get to bed tonight and I believe I'm in it when I'm in it.
I should just go to sleep.
It's as real as that.
More real than that.
For I may not sleep after all.
But glory be to God.
When God's done the work.
Well, and if you're sitting there all hesitant.
And you're not quite sure.
Because of so and so and so and so.
Or if you're saying, well six months ago I was quite clear.
I'm not sure tonight.
Well get up on your two feet and tell the devil to get off.
That's the thing to do.
If he can whisper lies into you.
He thinks if he can do it long enough he'll hold you down.
You see.
All you do is know this.
That God has done the work.
If you have lived contrary to that.
If you for some excuse or another.
Run off at an angle into sin or into the world.
Or into the flesh or anything like that.
You've got to come back to the same glorious position.
You've got to do that.
Amen.
And you can.
For the good shepherd always goes out to find his sheep.
He'll leave the ninety and nine just persons that don't need any repentance.
And he will go after the one that does.
It's a lovely thing.
You mustn't think that Jesus was preaching against self-righteousness.
When he said ninety-nine people that don't need repentance.
There are ninety-nine.
Probably ninety-nine million people in the earth.
I'd like to think there were ninety-nine thousand anyway.
Ninety-nine thousand in the earth that don't need to repent.
But he's going after the one that does.
Do you see that?
They don't need it.
They're all right.
Hallelujah.
But that one does.
So lovey, you just repent.
That's what you do.
Lord, I want to live in this glorious life.
That's it.
And don't let sin come between you and its enjoyment ever again.
Abandon self utterly.
Have Jesus completely.
He immerses the light.
He does it.
He's the master of it.
I'm only sorry that we couldn't go on all night on this great theme.
Do you love the Lord?
Do you want to be right with the Lord?
Do you want to know this mighty baptism?
Have you never known it before?
You come and you submit yourself utterly under Jesus.
Don't worry if the devil's trying to tear your heart out or smash your brains in.
Don't worry about that.
He's always been a bluffer.
He can't do anything to hold you back from this.
Once you come to that place where you say,
Lord, I'm going to be yours, take me Lord, immerse me now.
Amen.
You know I've been dead, dead, dead to you.
I haven't had any feelings towards you.
I don't have any feelings about you.
I'm dead.
That's how you know whether you're dead or you're alive.
When I say feelings I don't mean whether you get hot flushes
or sort of sparks shooting off your fingers.
That's not what I'm talking about.
I'm talking about the feelings of the inward man.
Hallelujah.
Lord, I love you there.
Amen.
Now let's pray, shall we?
If you can't know the glory of it all, why not tonight?
Amen.

[raw whisper.ai output]

Original Audio at https://biblebase.com/download/12915/