Understanding the Need

Pastor Stan Mons

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Sermon Transcription:

This morning I, uh, have a word for you that is titled Understanding the Need. Understanding the Need. And I find in people's lives, when they have their needs clear, their decisions are, if you will, logical. They follow their beliefs about their needs. There's people that believe that they need way more stuff in life than they actually need, but their understanding of their needs is leading them to purchase or to own so much stuff that the husband has to focus so much on working for money that he has no time to work for Jesus, no time to be in ministry, no time to be a spiritual leader of the home. And often you can all trace it back to an understanding of the need. What do I actually need? And I want to read to you a Bible verse of somebody that got it right. Matthew 3:14 says this about John the Baptist: And John tried to prevent him. Jesus comes to John the Baptist. John the Baptist is preaching away. He's baptizing away. And here comes Jesus to visit him. And Jesus says, "I also want to get baptized." And here's the verse: And John tried to prevent him, saying, "I need to be baptized by you, and you are coming to me?" Understanding the need.

Allow me to pray once more before we get into this word. Lord Jesus, only you by your Holy Spirit can really speak to our hearts. Lord, by your Holy Spirit, you seek to bring things to our mind, and you change everything about our life by your Spirit—who brings to us everything that Jesus bought on the cross, who fulfills unto us every promise the Father has made. And so at this time, Lord Jesus, we want to submit to your ministry. Lord, if you are seeking to do anything in my life, I want to give you the room to do that work. Lord, I want to learn how to come to you with all of my heart. Lord, I pray that we would understand the need, that you may have your way, and that your will may be done in every single one of our lives. In Jesus’ name, amen. Amen. Thank you, worship team. Let's get into this word: Understanding the Need. I will read that verse, Matthew 3:14, to you one more time: And John tried to prevent him, saying, "I need to be baptized by you, and you are coming to me?" Now, this is really a verse kind of at the end of this story. And so, what I want to do with you today is go and backtrack a little bit and start at the beginning of that story and see everything that goes down right before this moment. It's going to allow us to really see the need that John so clearly understood for himself—and the need that he understood for all of the people that were coming to him at that time for a baptism in repentance.

What that really meant—and we're going to see that in the Word—is that people were acknowledging that they were not good enough for God, and they were doing wrong things, or they had done wrong things in the past. And so they would come to John the Baptist, and they would be baptized in a baptism of repentance, a baptism of turning away from sin. And there wasn't a Messiah at that time being preached yet that they could turn to. They were turning away from sin, and they were turning towards expectancy. That’s what they were turning towards, because John was foretelling that the Messiah would come. And based on that expectancy—that, okay, God is going to do what he had promised, the Messiah is going to come—based on that, people were saying, “Well, then I better get ready, because when the Messiah shows up, I need to be turned away from my sins, waiting for this Messiah to come into my life.” Let’s start in verse one: Understanding the Need. Verse one of Matthew chapter 3—we’re going to read the first four verses. In those days, John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea and saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

He was saying, “Turn away from your sins, because God is about to do something in our generation.” And he was in a prophetic way foretelling: it is in our generation that God is finally bringing the Messiah to his people. Now, the Messiah was going to do something only the Messiah would do. The Jews would have understood this the moment John talked about it. But the Jews knew that God had promised: one day, when the Messiah comes, he’s going to restore the kind of special relationship that I had with humanity in the Garden—before there was sin, before people were disconnected from me and separated from me, and found all of their self-worth and their purpose in walking with me and walking out what I prepared for them. Before all of that was broken and people had a good relationship. When the second Adam—he’s also called that by the Bible—when the second Adam comes, he’s going to restore the relationship the first Adam lost. That second Adam, the Messiah or Jesus Christ, was the only one promised that could bring that new relationship—where people can hear the Lord’s voice clearly again, and pray and get their answer, and talk to the Lord and see a difference instantly, and come to him and open the Word, and all of a sudden the Holy Spirit just causes a verse to jump off the page and your heart rejoices and he pours understanding on it and the light of your whole day is changed. That word from the Lord—speaking from God into our lives continually. Only the Messiah was going to be able to restore that situation. And all along, for generations now, the people of God had struggled with this thing called sin, which really came from me just doing what I want to do—even though God may have a slightly different opinion. Me doing what I just want to do—even though God has a different opinion—in the end, we can always trace that back to sin.

The Bible takes it a step further, where the Word actually tells us: if you know to do good and you don’t do it, it is also sin to you. Now the Messiah was going to come and do something incredible. Somehow—people didn’t fully understand how—but somehow he was also going to deal with this sin problem. And here John is telling the people. They’re coming from everywhere. He’s in the desert. They have to walk quite a bit. They have to adjust their day in order to be able to be a part, if you will, of one of John’s services where he shares and he baptizes and he talks about the things that are going to happen. And he tells them this: You need to turn from your sins because the kingdom of heaven is about to come into your life in this generation. In verse 3—for this is he, talking about John, who he is: For this is he who was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah, saying: “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord; make His paths straight.’” That’s talking about John. That was his ministry. He lived in the wilderness. He ate in the wilderness. He was dressed pretty wild. And he was calling out for people to prepare for the ministry of Jesus. And then verse 4: Now John himself was clothed in camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist; and his food was locusts and wild honey.

That's a grasshopper. A locust is a grasshopper that has been through a rough life. And they have the ability to change who they are. And they go from a pretty timid, mild, and somewhat harmless grasshopper, and they turn into locusts—especially if there's a drought—and they become devouring locusts, the Bible also calls them. The locust has gone into survival mode and will just ravish the land, eat everything that it can get to, everything it can get its hands to. This shows you in what kind of a wilderness John lived. He wasn't very near to where people had their little farms and they were making their food. He was living in the wilderness—20 years. He lived in the wilderness by himself before he really started his ministry. Twenty years of just seeking the Lord, waiting on God, before he opened his mouth. And now he finally opens his mouth, and an incredible amount of people at that time is coming to him to hear.

Verse 5: Then Jerusalem, all Judea, and all the region around the Jordan went out to him. It doesn't say a thousand people showed up. It says different regions—they all came out and went to him. Verse 6: And they were baptized by him in the Jordan, confessing their sins. What they were doing was they were bringing things into the light. They were not keeping their sin a secret. They were not keeping it hidden from people. They were not keeping it hidden from, in this case, John.

They were baptized by him in a baptism of repentance. And wholeheartedly the people came. They didn't care what anybody thought of them. They didn't care if their spouse heard the kind of sins they were confessing. They believed that the kingdom of God was about to come into their life, so they had to get themselves ready to be able to receive the ministry of the Messiah who is now coming. And so their response is: they all come, confessing their sins, John baptizing them into a baptism of repentance. Verse 7: But when he—that is, John—when he saw many of the Pharisees and the Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them,"Brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Therefore, bear fruits worthy of repentance." We see this heart shift. John talking about Jesus. John talking about, "Get ready because the kingdom is coming. God is going to do something in your lifetime, in your generation that we have been waiting for for generations." People are responding. There's a lot of people that show up. And then he notices a Pharisee or two. But those Pharisees and the Sadducees—they weren’t coming confessing their sins. They weren’t coming to be baptized. They were showing up to watch what’s happening. “What’s going on here? Does he have anything good to share? Is it so-so? Is this guy legit?”

These Pharisees and Sadducees were not showing up because they wholeheartedly believed they couldn’t be right with God unless a sacrifice was made. They didn’t wholeheartedly believe they needed to bring their wrongs into the light. They were Pharisees and Sadducees. They were the examples to the people. They weren’t there to confess anything. They weren’t there to be baptized. They were watching. And John says, “Therefore, bear fruits worthy of repentance.” He points out the difference between the people coming to that place to await Jesus, and to prepare for Jesus to fill their hearts with His Holy Spirit so that you can never be alone again—and God fills up the desires of your heart and washes you clean and makes you not only understand but even feel right with God from that day on. The people come to prepare. These Pharisees—they were not there wholeheartedly. They were spectators, not participators. They were watching and listening, but there wasn’t a wholehearted desire. There was no confessing of their sins.

“What if Brother So-and-So comes to my synagogue? What if he hears me confess my sin? What’s he going to think of me?” That’s where they were. They would rather do that in private than in public—if they were doing it at all. And what they were really saying, by the way they were showing up, is: “We don’t need this baptism.” Whatever move of God is going on here—clearly there’s people showing up, the Word is being preached, this John, he seems to be preaching that the Messiah is coming, people are responding, people are preparing—but we don’t need this baptism. This is for other people. “I’m already with God. I’m already good.”

And they show up, and they may be even curious. They may be even critical of how John does his thing—how he dresses or how he goes about his ministry. But this is the people: they do not come wholeheartedly to what God is seeking to do in their life today. They show up as spectators to what God is doing in someone else’s life as they move forward into it, but they’re already showing up with a reservedness that says: “I’m not going to be going forward.I’m not going to end up needing this move of God.I’m not going to end up needing this baptism.”

And what happened to these Pharisees and Sadducees is that they missed the God-given moment of repentance. God had sent John the Baptist. They missed the God-given moment of repentance that would welcome Jesus’ ministry. Now, we recently talked about first—putting first things first. But that is the order of how things go. God shows us a picture of our own life and our own heart. We first acknowledge that I have sinned. I have done my will, not God’s will. And because God is King, I am wrong. And not only am I acknowledging it, I am humbling myself. I am confessing it for anyone to see and hear, because I’m awaiting a Messiah that is going to make the difference in my heart and in my life. These people—they were not coming wholeheartedly to the point of repentance, and so they were setting themselves up to miss what Jesus would do in the lives of many. Verses 9 and 10: Still John addressing the Pharisee and the Sadducee. He says: “And do not think to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’” That’s what a lot of these people would do. In other words: “My great-great-grandfather, how he walked with God—I go to the same church, or I pray the same, or I bear the same last name. Like, we have a lineage of Christians. We are Christians. We are the people of God.”

That attitude was surrounding and residing in a lot of the Jewish leadership. They believed they were going to be right with God just because of who their great-great-great-great-great-granddad was. And he says, "Don't think to yourself that just because you come from a lineage of people that knew, trusted, and understood God that you're on the right side." Do not think to yourself, "We have Abraham as our father." For I say to you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones. And even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Therefore, every tree which does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown in the fire.

John speaks up to this religious crowd, and he warns them that they can actually miss out on the ministry of the Messiah. He warns them that unless they prepare their heart and they prepare their life for Jesus, there comes a time where the fruit of their life will continue to stay evil. Remember, the Messiah will have the only ministry of bringing people back into relationship with God the Father. And only the Messiah will have the ministry that somehow allows people to no longer deal in the same way as before with the issue of sin. Only the Messiah was able to do that.

And here John paints this picture for them as they're listening. Imagine all the crowd is standing by going, he's addressing them personally. And he tells them there's an axe laying on the tree.

Again, Jewish people—they would have known he's talking about me. The Word tells them the righteous is like a tree planted by water. Says the axe lays at the tree, and if the tree doesn't bear good fruit, the Lord is ready to chop that tree down like a good keeper of a vineyard would, or the good keeper of a garden would. If that tree is planted to bear apples, and year after year fertilizer is put down and water is put down, but that tree—there's something wrong with that tree—it will not bear fruit. That tree is going to make room for a better tree in the yard that it may bear fruit. And he paints this picture for them, helping them understand: Messiah is coming. He can change the fruit of your life. But if you don't prepare your heart and get ready for the ministry of Jesus, then the fruit is going to stay the same—or the lack of fruit, if you will, is going to stay the same in your life—and your very life will be at risk. And we know that later on Jesus would say, "You will know those that belong to me. You will know them by their fruit."

Because Jesus causes people that only were barren, that had nothing to give, nothing good, nothing lovely, nothing kind, nothing with patience, nothing that pertains to true love—we always run out—Jesus said, "When they get plugged into me, you're going to know because the fruit is going to start growing in their life. It's going to change their input. It's going to change their output." But it requires a wholehearted response to the Lord. And this is what John was fighting in his day with these religious crowds showing up. There were people that were wholeheartedly responding, and they didn't care who was listening or what was going on. They confessed everything they'd ever done because they believed, "Messiah is willing to make his home in my heart, and he is coming. I need to get ready for that." And then there were people showing up—Pharisees, Sadducees—they were people. They believed in God. They had respect for God. They talked about God an awful lot. But in their heart of hearts, they were not wholeheartedly willing to acknowledge how sinful they are and how in need they are of a Savior.

They didn't want that. They believed it would just make them look bad. They believed, "Other people will remember my sins when I confess them." They believed, "Other people are going to hold it against me. It's going to cause me to lose my influence or my renown." And they found reason in the way that other people look at them. They found reason enough in that to turn away from preparation for what Jesus would have done in their heart and in their mind.

Verse 11: I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance, but He who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I'm not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clean out His threshing floor and gather His wheat into the barn; but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire. Now John begins to address the whole crowd, and he begins to share the gospel. He says, "This is the one that I'm preaching. This is the one that I'm telling you is about to come into your life. The Messiah is coming because He is going to baptize you with the Holy Spirit.

He's going to allow the Spirit of God to make His home into your heart. He is the one that is going to give you the relationship back that Adam and Eve lost through sin in the garden.

Even though you're still working out sins in your life, this Messiah will give you back the relationship. And this Messiah, the Word says, will baptize you with fire. This is a holy fire, a cleansing fire, a fire that burns away every single thing that God doesn't like to see inside of you—everything that God didn't make you that way. God didn't lead you to do these things.

Everything that is of the world, everything that is of sin—the Bible preaches, John is preaching with all of his heart—when the Messiah comes, everything you cannot change about yourself, but it's not presentable, everything will be dealt with by the baptism that Jesus will do. He will do something so miraculous that it burns away everything that is unlike God. Everything that is like the world, every desire to be sinful, every love for sin, everything you don't like about yourself, everything that has been corrupted by the world or that has been corrupted by sin—the Messiah is going to come, and He is going to burn all of that out of your life.

But—and here comes his warning again—that same Messiah is also going to make a separation between the usable wheat that can be baked into bread and the chaff that is good for nothing. Again, he is letting these Pharisees and Sadducees know: You can miss this messianic ministry. You can be here at the preaching of John the Baptist. I would have loved to attend one of those services. And he says, you can be right here. You can meet Jesus in the flesh. Some of these people here—they would have met Jesus in the flesh later on. And you can still be subject to the Messiah's other ministry of separating those that wholeheartedly come to God from those that are not completely in. They will show up to the service. They will faithfully attend. But they are spectators, not participants—not of this service here at Safe House, but at the heart of what the Holy Spirit, what God is trying to do in your generation. Some of it may happen in this room. A lot of it will not. At the heart of it, he's warning them and he's helping them see: When you have respect for men in a negative sense of the word—when you fear people, their opinion, the way they look at you, the way you have influence over them, the way that you are presented to them, the way they think about you—when you fear that, you will end up missing out on what God has for you.

Because God begins to move when we lay down our life, when we humble ourselves, and when we say, "You know what? I'm not all this. I'm not that great. I'm in need of this Savior. I'm in need of this baptism." When we understand the need, it changes the way that we respond to Jesus—or to the Spirit of Jesus—when He shows up. Let me read to you again verse 11: I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance. Step one: I've come to you, Lord, because I'm not perfect in myself, and I can't wash away my failures of the past. I can never do enough good to erase that memory. I can never wash myself clean. I'm here to confess that I have sinned. I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance. But He who is coming after me—after this moment, after this moment of repentance—He who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I'm not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. He will bring you back into relationship where you know God, where you know His voice, where you hear from Him. Nothing convinces you of your forgiveness and you being right with God as when God Himself personally whispers to your heart as you wait on Him.

When you hear His voice, there is not a voice in this world that can overpower it. There's not a voice of your sin, of guilt, that can convince you that you are not forgiven. When you have heard from God, everything has changed. And then He says also that baptism with fire will come. Church, when you turn wholeheartedly—that's the key. That's what John is addressing—wholeheartedly. You may look horrible to people for a season. You may not be proud of who you have become for a season. But I'm telling you now, you cannot turn to Jesus without losing face. You cannot turn to the Messiah without first acknowledging publicly. It's never private. You've tried it many times—privately confessing your sins to God—and you still feel like a hypocrite when you stand in front of your wife. When you publicly confess, you make way. It is the forerunning ministry. You make way for Jesus to now come in. He is mightier than the moment that you just had. And He comes in and He brings you into relationship. And He brings you to a place where things are changing inside of you without your help. Things are burning off of you without your help. Things are being changed—all in your mind and in your heart and in the way you do things—without you doing a thing.

And you become a preacher of Jesus Christ. When people ask you, "How come you changed?" you say, "I turned to Jesus with all of my heart. I did nothing, but He loves me. He's giving me all things. Somehow He's able to change someone like me. He's brought me into relationship with the Father. He has saved someone like me. Let me tell you everything I did wrong and what God can do for someone like me." You've just become a witness to Jesus Christ. Church, you will never have to change yourself for Jesus. That's not what John was preaching. You will never have to change yourself for Jesus. There are many scriptures that explain to us that we can never change a thing about ourselves. God does not expect from you what you cannot do. You will never have to change yourself for Jesus. But He does require every one of us to come to Him with all of our heart. And to come to Jesus with all of our heart, I'm telling you now, will always be a humbling experience. It will always require a step of faith. It will always be accompanied with a cost. Leonard Ravenhill always used to say, "An experience with God that costs nothing does nothing." And you see this pattern—there's a public confessing of the sins, a public repenting, and Jesus shows up on the scene.

You won't have to change yourself for Jesus, but you have to wholeheartedly come to Him. And there is no holding back. As long as you hold back anything at all in your heart—no one may see it on the outside; you're showing up—but as long as you hold back in the heart, you do not get the next step. You do not receive the next step. That repentance has to come. That wholehearted turning to Jesus as a sinner. I'm not turning to Jesus as a Christian. I'm not turning to Jesus as a good person. I'm not turning to Jesus as a dad. I'm turning to Jesus because I am a sinner and I am in need of the next ministry that only Jesus can bring into my life. We need to run to Him, flee to Him, and say, "Lord, I need all that You have to offer." Every single one of us has to come to a place in our life where we say, "Jesus, no matter the cost, I need everything that You have to offer." John understood it. John—who was, in a degree, family of Jesus and similar in age—he understood. Jesus comes on the scene and John says, even though he has everybody's ear, he's—if you want to call it that—the successful preacher of his day. Whole regions are coming out to hear him. But Jesus comes on the scene and John says, "No, no, no. I know what I need. I understand my need. I need the next step. I don't offer that. Preaching doesn't offer that. Baptism doesn't offer that. I need the messianic ministry. I need You, Jesus, to baptize me. I need You, Jesus, to bring me into relationship with the Father. I need You, Jesus, to deal with my sins, 'cause I cannot deal with them."

I can only exchange them. I can only replace them with another sin that is easier to hide or easier to be accepted by people—because everybody does it. I can do that. But I cannot abstain from being selfish. I cannot abstain from thinking evil thoughts about people. I cannot control every single one of my emotions. I grow tired. Lord, You need to burn those things out of me that were never meant to reside in a man or a woman made in the image of God. You need to do that. I cannot do it. I need You, Jesus, and I need all that You have to offer. For some of us online here and here in person, you've been fighting. You've been working so hard to be good. You've been working so hard to have your heart satisfied and fulfilled, and to be happy, and to be a good dad or to be a good mom—and you just cannot do it anymore. It's like you're bleeding life. You're drying up, and the source of life is not in you. You need to turn to Jesus with all of your heart. And when, with all of your heart, you cry out to Him and say, "Lord, I don't need all of this. Lord, I need to be baptized by You. Lord, I need to be brought into relationship with the Father by You. Lord, I need for You to change the way I feel and think and do. I need You to burn those things away. I must be made a new creation."

John the Baptist understood this need. He said, I must be baptized by Jesus. And he warns today in our lives as well. He warns the halfhearted spectator, the attendee. He warns them: you cannot be a part of God's saving ministry without a wholehearted public response. You cannot prepare your heart for Jesus without openly confessing, I am that sinner that Jesus needed to go on the cross for. I am that man that does not know God's voice, and I need Jesus to do His ministry. I am that woman that still struggles against sins that God clearly has not burned out of my life. I need the messianic ministry to deal in my life with what I cannot deal with. You have to openly confess your sin, and then you confess God's power to wash it away. You confess: This is who I am, and this is who my God is. You publicly come in alignment with what God is doing and what God is seeking to pull you into. God has good in mind for you. But it takes steps of faith. God did all of the work. And now He is, as a loving Father, getting in front of you and trying to get you to take that first step.

You've never taken steps yet, like a little baby. And He is trying to be so close to you that you would be willing to take that first step—but He's not quite so close that He's holding your hand. But you can sense that He comes near to you, but it's just not the way that it should be. He's waiting for you to take that little step that feels scary and dangerous. And the enemy may be screaming in your face, like he was with me, when God was kneeling—as a picture—in front of me, being that little infant on its way to hell. And God was inviting me to take that first little step: to trust that even if I fall, He'll catch me. To trust that if He thinks I'm ready for that step, then surely I can go ahead and try. When I first was invited by Christ Jesus to publicly bring all of my sin into the light, the devil was right there—so present—screaming at the top of his lungs like I've never heard him before, and never since. And he said to me, "The things you are about to speak, the secret acts that you are carrying in your heart, that you are about to turn into words and bring into the light... this kind of darkness is not made to be turned into words. If you turn this kind of darkness in your heart—this kind of sin in your heart—if you turn this into words, it will destroy you. It will cost you everything in life. It will absolutely make you lose all of your face, all of your reputation. This will kill your life. You cannot turn these things into words. You cannot come into the light. There's no room for you in the light. You will lose everything."

But the Holy Spirit invites you to do this. And the way to step into it is a tiny step of faith that says, "But Jesus is here." And if I lose everyone and everything, but I get Jesus, I still want to come. I need Jesus. I need His ministry. I need Him to make me right with God. I need Him to deal with all of the stuff in my heart that I cannot deal with. Church, you cannot even recognize Jesus—you cannot even recognize that He is at work—when you worry more about people watching you than about your actual need to participate in this baptism ministry of Jesus, where He brings you back into relationship and He deals with the sin in your life. But when you turn to Him with all of your heart, when you say, "God, it may cost me all things,"—and trust me, church, it will feel like it's going to cost you all things—but when you say, "Jesus, I want You anyways. I need You this day. I'm turning to You with all of my heart." When you make that decision, He will fill your heart with the Holy Spirit of God. And though you are still on this earth, you will have relationship with the Father.

I want you to see it in the Scriptures. Let me take you to John 16:13–15: "However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth." Some of you are experiencing that right now. The Holy Spirit wants you to come into the light. He wants you to speak the truth about some of the things you've hidden away in your heart. Some of the things you've never told anyone. You've never confessed them publicly. You've never said, "These are the things I've done. This is why Jesus needed to go on the cross for my life." When the Spirit begins to work in your heart, He begins to pull that truth out of you. He brings it to mind. Tries to get you to speak it out loud. And there's the devil yelling in your face, "This will cost too much. It'll break too much. It'll hurt too much. It'll damage too much. You'll do it again." "When the Spirit of truth has come, He will guide you into all truth. For He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears, He will speak. And He will tell you things to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you. All things that the Father has are Mine. Therefore I said that He will take of Mine and declare it to you."

Church, the Spirit of Jesus will make known God to you. Not just you as the general church. Not just me. Not Ella. Not the people on the worship team. The Spirit of Jesus will make known God the Father to you—just like Adam and Eve walked with God and knew who He was. They knew what His voice was like. They knew when He showed up. And they were able to walk with Him. And they were walking around in their calling, in their purpose in that garden where they had something to do that God gave them to do. They had something to eat that God gave them to eat. They had someone to enjoy that God made for them—for one another. And they were living in a sinless situation. And Jesus says, "When My Spirit comes to live in your heart, He's going to tell you about the things of God. He's going to make known what God is speaking to you." Because He won't speak of His own accord. He will speak what He has heard. He's going to declare to you everything that is Mine.

In other words, Jesus is saying, "Everything I really purchased for you on the cross, the Holy Spirit who comes to live in your heart—He'll explain all of it to you." You won't need a pastor forever. You need Jesus to baptize you. You need Jesus to bring you into relationship with the Father. You need Jesus to burn everything out of you that He never intended for you to go through, that He never intended for you to partake in. And you and I need to trust wholeheartedly that His fire can burn those things out of us and remove them. Very few things in this world are as powerful as fire, as consuming and devouring as fire. And He wants to turn to ashes—which is virtually absolutely nothing—He wants to turn to ashes everything the devil built in your life. Everything sin built in your life. Everything guilt that has built up in your life.

He wants to burn it all away. Oh, what a joy to have God's fire burn in your heart.

The Spirit of Jesus will teach you the things of God. Not your neighbor—you. He will teach you the things of God. And today, John the Baptist has preached a little bit through the Scripture still to us, inviting us to wholeheartedly repent in saying, "I'm the reason Jesus had to go on the cross. I'm the reason Jesus had to carry this messianic ministry because I don't really know God's voice yet, or I really haven't been burned clean yet." You may have come to Jesus for your forgiveness, but you've maybe never come wholeheartedly to Him saying, "God, I need your fire to burn things clean in me." The baptism with fire is such a vital part of the gospel for sinners. If you're good at sin, this will be so joyful for you, because you won't have to fight your sins anymore when you turn to Jesus. When you wholeheartedly turn to Jesus, there won't be a fight anymore for you to somehow conquer your sins or to somehow try to be good enough for God and stay away long enough or deep enough from your sins. There's a baptism that John preached. It wasn't his own. It was the baptism of Jesus. And Jesus—when He comes into your life—you’re not just turning away from sin anymore like we were with that first step of repentance.

We're turning away from sins, and sometimes we kind of get stuck at John's baptism. We already got baptized there one time. We turned away from our sins, and now we keep showing up to that same service as a spectator. We know everything about it. We've taken that step. We've done it. But we've never really moved on to Jesus’s ministry. We've never wholeheartedly turned to Jesus to say, "Jesus, it feels like it will cost me all things, but I still want you. I'm still going to take that first baby step forward. And what it costs me—it may cost me—but I'm coming to you, Jesus." This baptism of fire—it burns you clean. It will change everything in you. And you're not the one doing it. This is Jesus's job in your life. It's His job to baptize you with fire so that the things that need to go are burned away. It is a cleansing fire that turns to ashes the things of the flesh, the things of Satan, the things of the world—so that only what God made remains. The things of God do not get burnt up by this fire. It is all the things that we brought into our lives, other people brought into our lives, the enemy, the world—whatever it may be.

God did not bring it into your life. Everything that God didn't bring will be burned by the fire. This is what Jesus does for sinners, church. And the Bible speaks of it happening inside of you and inside of me—where we no longer have to fight sin. Let me read it to you in Ezekiel 36:25–27. The Lord speaking through the prophet: "Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean. I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you. I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them." He's saying—He's not telling you anything there that you have to do. He's telling you what He's going to do when you make it from John's baptism to Jesus's baptism. He's telling you it doesn't matter what's in your heart. I'm going to take your heart. I'm going to give you a new one. It doesn't matter what has been done to your mind or the kind of memories that haunt you. I'm going to take it. I'm going to give you a new mind.

It doesn't matter how damaged your spirit may be inside of you. I'm going to take it from you. I will give you a brand-new one. And I will burn up everything that is not supposed to reside in you as My—My—My son, My daughter. I love you, and I will be a Father to you. And I will do for you what you cannot do. I will pick you up when you can't pick yourself up. I will clean you up where you cannot clean yourself up. Would you take that first little step and come to Me?

Matthew 3:14: "And John tried to prevent Him, saying, 'I need to be baptized by You, and You are coming to me?'" Do you understand the need, church? Do you understand the need you have for Jesus to baptize you? You can be baptized in the tank here when the wall is open a hundred times—it may never do a thing for your life. But when you wholeheartedly come to Jesus and you say, "Jesus, I need You. Whatever the cost, whatever I need to do, however I need to respond, whatever first step I have to take—Jesus, I need You." When you come to Him with all of your heart, church, I’ve never seen Him turn anybody away. I’ve never seen Him turn the worst of sinners away. I’ve never seen Him tell somebody, “Go clean up your life first.” He will send the Spirit to come and live in your heart and bring you in relationship. He’ll send the fire that cleans you up. And He’ll give you a story to tell this world that says, “God asked nothing of me. He showed me that everything was already done on the cross.”

-Pastor Stan Mons