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Welcome to Bibleline with Dr. Ralph Yankee Arnold, pastor of Calvary Community Church in Tampa, Florida. Clearly declaring the Gospel of Jesus Christ through the radio and the Internet. Your regular prayers and monthly support make it possible for Bibleline to continue on the air. You can reach us toll free at 1 800-576-3771. One-line donations may be made through the Bible-lined website at calbryoftampa.org. We pray that you will enjoy our commitment to the clear gospel of Jesus Christ and that today’s first part of this two-part message will be a blessing to you and your family.

I have a very interesting message, I believe, this morning. I don’t want you just to listen. I want you to see it in your Bible. So make sure you follow me in the scriptures. So turn in the Bible to the book of Matthew in chapter three. It is very, very important to know what God says about an issue. Because how are you going to know what position to take, whether you should do this or not do this, if you don’t know what God says about it.

And you don’t want to just do something because, well, somebody says you should. Or because the preacher said it, do you have to be baptized in water in order to go to heaven? Now, a lot of people say yes, some people say no. In verse one, in those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judea, and saying, repent ye for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. For this is he that was spoken about the prophet Isaiah, saying, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare you the way of the Lord, make his path straight, and the same John had his raiment of camel’s hair, and the leather girdle about his loins, and his meat was locust and wild honey.

Sounds like real macho man, don’t he? Then went out to him, Jerusalem, and all Judea, and all the regions round about Jordan. So he went to the river Jordan, and he was baptizing. In verse 6, and were baptized of him in Jordan confessing their sins, but when he saw many of the Pharisees and the Sadducees come to his baptism, he said to them, Oh, generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come. for their for fruits, meet for repentance.

And think not to say within yourselves we have Abraham to our fathers, for I say unto you that God is able of these stones to raise up children and to Abraham. And now also the acts is laid into the root of the trees, therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is you down and cast into the fire. I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance, but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear and shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire, whose fan is in his hand and he will thoroughly purge his floor and gather his wheat into the gourner, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”

That’s a lightning bolt. A man shows up on the scene and lo and behold does something that nobody’s been talking about or doing anything about for over 400 years at least because God had been silent from the Old Testament to the New Testament. And all of a sudden this man shows up on the scene and he’s the forerunner of Jesus Christ. And he says, get your house in order, the Lord is coming. Make straight your paths. Get ready. Get right.

So he goes to the river. Jordan and people will come in from all around to be baptized by John in the Jordan River. Do you have to be baptized to go to heaven? But look what he says in verse 11. He says, I indeed baptize you with water. So he baptized with water unto repentance. So what does that mean? If they believe the preaching of John the Baptist, they were to be baptized in water. Look what else he says, but he that cometh after me is my ear than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to be.

He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost. So John baptized with water and Jesus is going to baptize with the Holy Ghost and fire. somebody says, I want to get the baptism of fire. You can have it. Now, fire here in the baptism of fire is not the one you want. Stop and think about it. Would you like to be baptized in fire? Just think about it. Does it sound warm to you? Look what he says there in the verse 12, who spanned his in his hand and he will thoroughly purge his floor, gather his wheat into the goner.

That’s the wheat. But he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable what? Fire. The chaff is not what you want. There’s believers and there’s unbelievers. One group will be baptized by the Holy Spirit. One group is going to be baptized in fire. Which one would you like? Well, enough said. I already know which one did your other have. And so John the Baptist laid it on the line. He preached hard. In Mark chapter 1, pretty much the same thing as said here.

But I want you to see this. In verse three, you had pretty much the same thing that was said over there in the book of Matthew. Verse three, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare you the way of the Lord, make his path straight. John did baptize in the wilderness and preach the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. The baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. You see how some people can get the idea that you have to be baptized in order to go to heaven.

So that looks like that’s what it says. But when he said that he also made the statement of here in verse 8 again, I indeed baptize you with water, but he that he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost. So there’s two baptism that are mentioned in the book of, a three over there in the book of Matthew, but here just the two. Baptism and fire is not mentioned here. What do I have to do? Now here in the book of Acts in chapter 19, and look there in verse 1, it came to pass, the wall of Paul was at Corinth.

Paul, having passed through the upper coast, came to Ephesus, finding certain disciples. He said unto them, have you received the Holy Ghost since you believed? They said unto him, we have not so much as heard, whether they’re being any ghost. He had no idea what in the world they’re talking about. So he says in verse three, he said to them, under what then? Where are you baptized? So baptism is unto something, it’s to illustrate something, it’s a picture of something.

But what was it? So when John the Baptist baptized, what was it for? What was it unto? What was the purpose of it? What was it a picture of? Well, it did illustrate. There has to be a reason, and it should be simple. So he says, under what then were you baptized? They said, under John’s baptism. So we remember when John baptized, it said it was the baptism of repentance. Look in verse four now. Then said Paul, John, barely or truthfully baptized with the baptism of repentance.

See it’s still there? But we know he baptized with water, because he said it several times. Sayin’ unto the people. Now this is what John the Baptist said to the people, that they should believe on him which should come after him, that is on Christ Jesus. So John the Baptist preached that they were to believe on the one that was to come. And that water baptism was a picture that you believed on him. You say, I believe on him.

Then they were baptized in water. Now being baptized in water is not what saved. I’ve done a lot of weddings, and they usually hire a photographer to any of them, and all the pictures to be looking pretty. I have never seen yet where the taken of a picture has ever married anybody. It’s only a picture of the wedding. It is not the wedding. It is not the marriage. It’s only a picture of it. Water baptism is a picture of something.

John says, I’m baptizing you in water, but he that come up after me is going to baptize you with the Holy Spirit. So the water baptism was the picture of the Holy Spirit baptism because Paul just asked him, he says, have you received the Holy Spirit? So we haven’t even heard. Well, what was your baptize for? Well, just John’s bapt. Otherwise, they didn’t get the store. They didn’t get the whole picture. And so it says, area in verse five, when they heard this, they were baptized.

I want you to take your Bible and turn to the book of Acts in chapter eight. The book of Acts in chapter eight. Philip had been involved in a evangelistic campaign. It was doing real good. A lot of people trust in the Lord. A lot of activity going on. And the Lord says, I want you to go talk to this guy. So in other words He left a revival, took off across a desert, went about 100 miles, and he’s running along and he catches up to this guy in a chariot.

And I mean, here you go. Isn’t it amazing how God can bring that together in the middle of a desert? He didn’t have GPS. But if I walked up to him, he said, hey, do you understand what you’re reading? He says, how can I, unless some man should guide me? And so he says here in verse 3, and he said, how can I accept some man should guide me? and he desired Philip that he would come up and sit with him.

And the place of the scripture which he read was this. He was led as a sheep to the slaughter like a lamb dumb before her shear, so he opened not his mouth. In his humiliation, his judgment was taken away and who hath declared his generation for his life is taken from the earth? And the unique answer to Philip and said, I pray the of whom speaketh the prophet this, of himself or some other man. Then Philip opened his mouth and began at the same scripture and preached unto him, Jesus.

So the man was riding along, he was reading from the book of Isaiah, and he didn’t understand what he was reading. He said, do you understand? He said, I don’t understand what I’m reading. Let somebody could guide me. So I’ll sit there and explain to him this scripture that you’re reading in the Old Testament written 700 years before Jesus Christ came. And this is what it’s about. and he explained to him the good news of how to have eternal life, how to be saved, how to know that you’re going to heaven whenever you die.

And so he explains him, you cannot earn eternal life, you cannot work, but you cannot buy it. It’s only by accepting the payment Jesus Christ made and that Jesus Christ was led as a lamb to the slaughter. He did not defend himself and he allowed them to do whatever they wanted to. He was cut off out of the land of the living. Who shall declare his generation? He had no wife, he had no children, and who can claim the throne of Israel if Jesus Christ, who was the only one, the last one, who clad the right to claim to be the king in Israel?

Israel will be forever without a king, unless the king comes back. Evidently somewhere along the line, he had to explain to him about being baptized in water. So he says here in verse 35, He says Philip opened his mouth and began the same script and priests at the hem Jesus and as they went on their way They came under certain water and the eunuch said see here is water What does hinder me to be baptized? What would be the thing that would keep you from being baptized?

Because not everybody can be baptized that you can be dumped in water But scripturally, you can’t be baptized unless you believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God and died on that cross and paid for your sins. And you have trusted Him as your only hope of going to heaven when you die. So baptism is only for believers, only those who believe something. You have to believe. Look what He says. In verse 37 Philip said, if thou believe us with all vine heart, you may.

So the only key about being baptized is you have to believe. Do you see why it is totally impossible to baptize infants? Because they’re not at the place where they can believe. It gives a false hope and the child has only been sprinkled with water, but that child has not been baptized. Baptism is only for believers, only those who have trusted Christ as their Savior. You must believe He did it for you and you believe it with all your heart.

And you’re trusting Him as your only hope of going to heaven. You can’t be saved because you trust in your good works to get you to heaven. Good works won’t get you there. That’s why Christ died and paid for all the sins of the world so that you could by faith accept him as your only hope of going to heaven. And notice what he says. He says, and he answered and he says, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.

And talking about Jesus Christ being the Son of God, you’re talking about his divinity. Who he is, he is God in the flesh. And I believe it. And he told him about the death and the burial and the resurrection of Jesus Christ because that’s all taught in Isaiah 53, the chapter that he was reading. So he understood about the death, the burial and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And he was baptized in water. And that is a picture of what you believe.

You see, when you stand in the waters of picture of Christ on the cross, when you go under the water as a picture of your burial, when you come up out of the water is that a picture of your resurrection. So being baptized is not a picture of the death, barrel and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Does anybody can do that for him? But it’s a picture of your death, your burial, your resurrection. Because I believe he did it for me, and this is an outward picture of what I internally believe.

I believe that he did that for me, that he died on that cross died on that cross that he was buried, that he came back from the dead. And so when you’re placed under the water, it’s a picture of your burial. And when you come up out of the water, it’s a picture of your resurrection. And in the book of Romans in chapter 6, it talks about that we have been brought from the dead that you and I, as a child of God, might walk in newness of life.

So baptism is a very important part of the Christian testimony. You see, and I’ll show you this later, the great commission to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature is also the great command. Now, I want you to take your Bible look there in the book of Acts and chapter 16, Acts chapter 16. Paul and Silas been preaching and got into some trouble, and so they were thrown in jail. So while they’re in jail midnight, they decided to start singing an amazing grace and a few songs like that, you know.

So while they were there singing in prison, there was a problem. There was a little like an earthquake. 26, suddenly there was a great earthquake. Here he says in verse 27, and the keeper of the prison awaking out of sleep. Seeing the prison doors open, he drew out his sword and would have killed himself. Supposing that the prisoners had fled. But Paul cried out with a loud voice saying, do thyself no harm. We’re all here. Then he called for a light and sprang and came trembling and fell down before Paul and Silas.

And in verse 30 he says, and brought them out and and said, sirs, what must I do to be saved? What do I have to do to be saved? This is a perfect chance for them to really say what you have to do. So he asked the question, he ought to get a decent answer. Look at the answer. It says in verse 31, and he said, you must be a member of Calvary Community Church, pay 50 percent inflation. Well inflation, you know That’s not what he said He says Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ He didn’t say anything else he had to do to be saved Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ you see that’s all that I’ve ever done to be saved 49 years ago in a little old living room.

That’s all I did I believed Christ died for me me. If he died for me, then I don’t have to. If he paid for all my sins, then I don’t have to pay for them. He said, but what about all those bad things you’ve done? I don’t have to pay for them. Well, that don’t sound right. I know it don’t. That’s grace. Grace is unmerited favor. God will save you and give you eternal life as a gift because he loves you that much.

It’s not because you deserve it. You see, in the back of our mind, we still think that people deserve to go to heaven, and there’s people that deserve to go to hell. I’ve got news for you. We all deserve to go to hell. None of us deserve to go to heaven. And I don’t care how long you’ve been safe. You still don’t deserve to go to heaven. It was because of God’s grace. It’s a gift. It’s free. He loves us that much.

He’d go to all the world and preach this good news to every individual. That’s somebody good news. But look at the last part of the verse. He says, Andine house, it means if your house believed they can be saved because you can’t get there without being saved, without believing. And then notice what he said. And verse 33, he took them the same hour of the night, washed their stripes and was baptized. He and all his straight away. In other words, his whole family heard the gospel, his whole family believed, and his whole family got baptized.

Isn’t that good? You see, they didn’t get baptized to get saved. They got baptized because they were. They believed it. And he says, if you believe, what does the hinder me? From being baptized, if you haven’t believed, you can’t get baptized. I don’t care. A preacher can dunk you every day of your life or the rest of your life, and it’s still not being baptized because you can only get baptized one time. And that’s when you really have trusted Christ your Savior.

I could say, well, I was baptized when I was a luteum and I was 15 years old. I was sprinkled on, but I did not believe. Only a believer can be baptized. all these so-called baptism that people have had over the years. If you never trusted Christ as your Savior, you got wet, but you didn’t get baptized.

And it wasn’t a picture of your death and your burial and your resurrection because his death, burial and resurrection, is not put to your account because you believe he did it for you. So yes, after I trusted Christ as my Savior, I was baptized at the Northside Baptist Church. I baptized a lot of people over the years. All kinds of strange things can happen. And in one year, it was in the winter time. And I had about, I don’t know, 10, 15 of them that I had to baptize.

Well, it was freezing outside. The church was nice and warm and toasty. But the deacons forgot to turn on the heater for the baptistry, just put the water in. Well, nobody knew it. So I got on my change of clothes, I go into the thing, all the people out there watching. I broke it and I started down in it and one of my foot hit that ice water, it was ice water. I went, hoo! And I realized it’s too late now, there’s no turning back.

I went down into that water and the coal kept creeping up. Have you ever touched the water in a little coal and you got to get in a little bit inch by inch. Well, if I’d have done that, it would have took all day. So I went on in there like nothing was wrong. And I stood there and I looked at the people, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, they could not see me up close.

I was freezing. And I looked up there and they had the ladies on one side and the guys were on the other side and saw I was taken and rotated me on. And so they came down there. When that girl, when her foot hit their water, She goes, people thought this church has got the spirit. I said, this is just a little t-shelly. She said, she came down and I want to… Now, whenever I do it, I always take them back.

And then I bring them up. You know, when the ice cold, well, she got ready to take her breath of air. Ha! You know, I’m fixing to take her. What she thought I was gonna go forward. So she got prepared to go. And I went, and so when I took her back to her, took her under the water, I could still hear her holler under the water. I didn’t keep her there long. It was the fastest baptism I ever did in my life.

And when I brought her up, she came up gloriously. Everybody was, they didn’t know we had cold water. They just thought, this is really the spirit’s moving. Well, one girl she found out about it, named was Stephanie. She went and she got on her from clothes. She had on sweater. She had a hat on. She had a coat on. She was totally bundled up. And I thought, water will never touch her. You know, we’ll close way more when they’re wet.

I almost didn’t get her up. But it’s still a great experience. It’s a great experience to know that I am having a picture taken of what I inwardly believe. And then you know what? It’s a great thing to do because it’s the Word of God. It’s what God will. It’s the first step of obedience. Every child of God. If you trust that Christ is your Savior and you have not been baptized, I would not want to face my God.

Been disobedient in that thing He called me to do. He said, because this is a testimony to everybody else. I believe this. And this is a picture of what God wants me to do. How were they baptized? Well, some people believe it’s by sprinkling. Is this is this been baptized? Being baptized is your planted in the likeness of his death. And you raise them up out of the water. Acts chapter eight and verse 38. And look what he says here.

in Acts 8, verse 38 says, and he commanded the chariot to stand still, and they went down both into the cup of water. No, they went down into the water, both Philip and the Eunuch, and he baptized him, and when they were come up out of the water, the Lord caught him away. So they went down into the water and he baptized him. Now I’ll be honest with you. Why do both of us got to go down in the water?

But there’s preachers that tell their people this and they believe that their child is safe because he’s been baptized. And a child grows up thinking, well, I’ve baptized as though that’s some kind of a security blanket, but I can hope and trust in like it did something for me. It did absolutely nothing except give false hope to the parents and to the child. This hand represents you and me. The wallet represents all the bad things that we do. It’s our sins.

And the Bible says that God loves us but He hates our sin because see our sins have to be paid. Since we committed the sin, we have a debt. We have to pay for it. Wages means I earn the right to pay for it. I did it. The wages of sin is death, eternal separation from God. So everybody in this room has earned the right to go to hell, but not one person in this room has ever earned the right to go to heaven.

But we’ve all earned the right to be eternally separated from God because we’ve all sinned and consort of the perfection of God. So God says that you cannot save yourself. You can’t get there by what you do. So all of our goodness, regardless of how good they may be, God says they’re filthy rags and that you’ll never be good enough to go to heaven because that’s the perfect place. And so that means you’d have to be perfect here in order to get there.

And you don’t know anybody like that. So God says, you cannot save yourself. So it’s not by going to church. It’s not by giving money. It’s not by promising to stop being bad and you’re going to start being good. Or I’m going to get baptized. See, is going to church a good thing? Yes, been baptized? Yes. All those are good things, but they don’t get you to heaven. There’s a death payment that God only accepts. And He took all the sin of all the world upon Himself and died on the cross.

He was buried and came back from the dead. And God says the only thing you and I can do is to believe. You’ve been listening to Bibleline, a teaching ministry of Calvary Community Church in Tampa, Florida with Dr. Ralph Arnold. We pray that you were blessed by today’s message. Our two of this teaching will conclude with tomorrow’s broadcast. If you have enjoyed our commitment to the clear gospel of Jesus Christ, you can reach Bibleline and pledge your support to keep us on the air in your area by dialing toll-free 1-800-576-3771.

That’s 1-800-576-3771. If you wish to hear today’s program again or would like to download a free MP3 of today’s or any previous Bibleline program, go to BibleLineMinistries.org and click on the spinning globe in the upper right corner of our home page. If you’re in the area, we welcome you to visit us. The address for Calvary Community Church is 4811 George Road, Tampa, Florida, 33634. Our Sunday morning services begin at 10 30 and at 6 o’clock on Sunday evening. Live broadcast of our services may be seen by going to our church website, calvaryoftampa.org.

Thanks for joining us on Bible Live and now a closing thought from Pastor Arnold. Friend, one day it will happen, the trumpet will sound, we will be changed, hot up to meet the Lord in the air. So live today and everyday, believing that the Lord is coming soon, just keep looking up.