Baptism, Part 1

This is the first in a series on baptism. To begin today, I'd like to read from Hebrews 6, in the first two verses. It talks about doctrines in the church that were well known to members back in the time that Paul was living. He reminded them of six fundamental doctrines of the church. And he says, therefore, leaving the discussion of elementals or elementary principles of Christ, let us go on to perfection, growing in maturity spiritually. And he says, not laying again the foundation, and now he begins to mention doctrines, the foundation of repentance from dead works, of faith towards God, doctrine of baptisms, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment. And he mentions in verse 4, the Holy Spirit. And those are really the framework of the aspects or the, you might even call it, the ingredients, the elements that are involved in what we call baptism. Baptism isn't just getting put under water. It involves those things. It involves all of those things. And it's interesting that we find two, three verses there that mention all of them. So in this series, we're going to be talking about repentance, and faith, and baptism, and the forgiveness of sin, and the laying on of hands, and the receiving of God's Holy Spirit. And growing as children of God towards being in His kingdom. There are a few topics that are more enjoyable to me as a minister and have been through the years than that of this process of baptism. Because it is so encouraging, it's so promising. The promise of eternal life is the ultimate reward and the ultimate focus. But there is nothing more serious either than the process of baptism as we would include all of those elements.

The blessing that the angel says of the firstfruits in Revelation chapter 20 verses 4 and 6 is huge. It's big. But at the same time, there are many that will miss out on that blessing. And Jesus said, many are called to that blessing, but few will receive it. Few are chosen to actually be resurrected and partake of it. So my goal and my desire is not to teach you technically about baptism, but to encourage everyone to be very serious in pursuing the kingdom of God and successful so that when Jesus Christ returns, we can all be part of that resurrection. We find an overview of the process towards becoming children of God, stated in Isaiah chapter 1 verses 16 through 18. Isaiah chapter 1 beginning in verse 16.

It says, wash yourselves. In other words, we are dirty. We need to be cleaned. We are in a state that God does not recognize as clean and white linen, righteous, fitting to be children in his family, which the bride has become there in Revelation 19. We begin somewhere else than that. And so he says, wash yourselves. Make yourselves clean. How do we do that? Put away the evil of your doings from before my eyes. The evil of our doings is what we do that makes us unclean. And those doings come from thoughts that we have that become actions.

Cease to do evil. You can't just cease to do that which you are, can you? You might not even realize what evil is as a human. So in verse 17 he says, learn to do good.

Seek justice. Rebuke the oppressor. Defend the fatherless. Plead for the widow.

Come now and let us reason together, says the Lord. Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool, if you are willing and obedient. So this speaks to the process of coming to understand what is right, coming to understand that I as an individual am wrong, and then going through a process where one is washed and cleaned and becomes white and ready to reign with Christ at his return.

In Mark chapter 1, in verse 14 and 15, it says, now after John was put in prison, Jesus came to Galilee preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God. This Sabbath is about the kingdom of God, in part. It speaks to a lot of things, as we'll discuss later on, but it is all about the kingdom of God. And he came preaching this kingdom. It sets in one sense a goal for all of us. The Sabbath becomes that rest that we desire to enter into, the ultimate rest of all eternity in God's family. In verse 15, how do we get there? He says, the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel. So the process is to repent and believe. Today we're going to discuss repentance and faith and their relationship to the baptismal process. This is part one in the series on baptism as a topic, and it's entitled Repentance and Faith.

At creation, we see that God offered man two ways of thinking. There were two trees available, and man was sort of created as a neutral thinking being. He just had life in him, and God put two trees there, representing two mindsets, you might say. One was a mindset of God. There was a tree of life. It was God's thinking, his processes that would lead to righteousness and eternal life. And the other, of course, was the choice where man would decide what was good and what was evil. It would be a self-directed life.

And of course, man selected that, and we've been on that track ever since in our carnal human reasoning. Essentially, you had God's way represented and Satan's way represented, because Satan was the author of self-choice, the author of rebellion to what God commanded. What was the result of this? Let's see in Romans chapter 3, beginning in verse 10. Romans chapter 3, beginning in verse 10. He now will quote Psalms and Ecclesiastes, and he writes, There is none righteous, no, not one. That's where we begin. Now, we thought we were pretty good. We thought we were religious people. You might say, when I was a kid, I believed in God.

And so I've just sort of made a few adjustments, and here we are. But there's none righteous. No, not one. An individual who comes to believe in God, as we'll see, must believe that he exists and that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him. And therefore, we find in comparison to what this God is that we now believe in, we are not like him.

We are not righteous. We are something else. It's not that he didn't say there's none that does righteousness. He said there are none that are righteous, meaning all are evil. No, not one. There is none who understands. That's another problem we have as humans. We thought we knew everything. Turns out we didn't really know anything of truth. There's none who seeks after God. Well, we thought we did. We had this religious concept. We had religion, and we believed, and we said, I'm about religion. But it wasn't really about religion, was it?

It was really about us wanting to get a reward and yet still do our own thing. They have all turned aside. They have all together become unprofitable. There is none who does good. No, not one. He talks about what comes out of the heart. In verse 17, the way of peace they have not known, there is no fear of God before their eyes.

Now that describes you and me. That describes you and me probably more realistically after baptism than we would like to think. Because we think, oh, I'm all cleaned up now, and I'm all perfect. Ready to go. Come on, Jesus. Bring on the kingdom. Only to perhaps be surprised when he returned that we are performers of lawlessness, deceiving ourselves somewhere along the way that we were in line with God.

But in fact, we had failed to keep repenting. We had failed to keep repenting. At some point, we had slipped back to deciding that my thoughts and my ways were the right way. And so this repentance begins when we understand that we are evil. I am evil. I am sin. That's who I am. That's what I am as an individual. And we work from there through a process of converting into a godly individual throughout our life.

We never quite make it. I don't want to say quite. We never get that close, probably, though we do make good progress. Repentance. This kind of repentance is necessary for us even to begin. In verse 23, it says, For all have sinned and fall short of the glory. It doesn't say all have sinned and fallen short. Back in my life, I fell short. It says, All have sinned and fall.

Currently, we all fall short of the glory of God. We have then a need, don't we? And that need is to get cleaned up. That need is to get involved in a process whereby we can become approved. We can be considered righteous. We can become the divine children of God and live in perfection forever. And that's just defined in verse 24, here in Romans 3. Being justified freely by His grace through the rejemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood through faith to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance, God had passed over the sins that were previously committed to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of one who has faith in Jesus Christ.

So the faith goes hand in hand with the repentance that goes hand in hand with the forgiveness. We must come to understand that only God is righteous. Only God is pure. He becomes our goal. We have to come to understand that we, as a thinking, living being, have become evil, the epitome of evil.

And yet we often don't recognize that. We say, well, I'm pretty good. I'm a nice guy. I'm a nice neighbor. I pet my cat. I don't kill anybody. And I don't see that I'm evil. So how do we get from where we are as an individual to the point where we can begin to fall on our knees and say, God, I'm worthless. I'm nothing. How does that happen? We have to begin with faith. Faith in God's way. Faith in God as a being. Faith in his commands, in the penalties, the rewards. Faith is an absolute trust and an absolute humility, humility, a trusting humility to say, yes, I don't know, but you do know how to walk, how to live, what to do.

It says in Hebrews 11 and verse 6, without faith, it is impossible to please him. For he who comes to God must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him. So our goal is to diligently seek God and seek to become like God. Where does this process start? Well, it begins when God gives a person spiritual gifts. The gifts that come from above are from the Father, and one of the first gifts, it's hard to put exact order, is faith.

That understanding that God is and that God is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him. And that gift of faith must be acted upon because faith without works is dead faith. You don't go anywhere with that. You just take it, you wrap it, you hold it, because you don't do anything with it.

The action that a faithful person will then have in comparing their life, their state, their mindset with God is a moving from where one is, a desire to transform, to convert into something different. And that comes from God as well.

Repentance means to transform or be transformed to a different way of thinking. I thought I was good. I used to think I was the greatest things in sliced bread, and that I was really special to God because I got these blessings and I was healed and things like that. Now I'm converting, I'm being transferred in my thinking to realize that I am really evil. And all those good things about me are really just things about me, and things I like to think about myself and self-promotion and my good deeds I do to promote me and to make me feel good and look good. And even the good that I do, I hate.

Those are concepts that you and I don't just come up with. We don't just sit down one day and say, okay, I think I'll go through repentance now. Let me beat myself up and see myself and things like that. These actually are gifts of God. Repentance is a change from me thinking the way I think. My version of good, you see, suddenly I realize is evil. Now, repentance is a change from my thinking how I think to how God begins to think. As I read and he begins to show me, he begins to make me think like he does a little bit. I have to ask myself, do I like that? Not really. I'll tell you the truth. Kind of like the old self a lot better. It's a lot more fun.

I felt a lot better about me than the new self where, oh, wretched man that I am.

So we have to think about that. What are we going to do with that? Jesus said in Matthew 18, verse 3, truly I tell you, unless you change, the word change there means in the strongs, to turn quite around, to reverse or to convert. Unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

So we have this about face that we as individuals who have sharpened our selfish skills. Suddenly we're to go back and be like little innocent children that are not self-promoting, that are humble, that are trying to become like their parents and very compliant and open-minded about what should I be, daddy and mommy? I mean, who am I? Tell me, I've got an open mind here. We have to put on that mind in order to even be in the kingdom of heaven. How can you do that? Thinking one way, then thinking another way. I can't do that. I remember when I went in for baptism counseling the first time at about age 17 and 18, I was age 18. I think I'll go get baptized. I see some other people are getting baptized. I talked to the minister, and he said, you need to ask for repentance. Repentance? Okay. And you need to mature.

So I went out the door. I didn't know any more than when I walked in the door. I had no idea what he was talking about. See, because I couldn't change my way of thinking, I thought the way I thought. That was pretty good. Been in the church all my life, kept all the commandments, blah, blah, blah. I was fine. At some point, you see, you have to have God give you the gift of repentance. I had a lady come to me years ago. She was an older woman, and she said, you know, I'd like to be baptized. And I said, well, have you repented of your sins? She said, what sins? And I described what sin was to her. She says, well, I've never sinned.

Well, you know, you need to talk to God about that. And she did for years. She would, well, I'd like to be baptized, but I just don't see that I've ever made a mistake of any kind. I mean, that's an extreme, but you see how we as humans, we don't necessarily see what God sees. And so we ask God for the gift of repentance.

James chapter 1, verses 17 through 18 shows that the gifts that come from God, they are gifts, all of them. And those are things we can't take for ourselves. It does you no good to go to somebody and say, and then about time you got baptized. What are they supposed to do? Give them self-repentance, give them self-faith, give them self-forgiveness, give them self-the-whole. These are all gifts of God. All we can do is encourage one another to ask God for these gifts. Jesus said, whatever you ask in my name, the Father will give you. This is the kind of thing he was talking about, not iPods and MP3 players. No, he's talking about the serious things in life. So we go to God and we ask for forgiveness. Let's go to Acts 5, verses 30 through 32.

Acts 5, beginning in verse 30. The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom you murdered by hanging on a tree. These people were getting a sermon here, message. Verse 31, God has exalted to his right hand to be the Prince and Savior, to give repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins. We are his witnesses to these things, and so also is the Holy Spirit, which God has given to those who obey him. So there we see repentance, baptism, forgiveness, and the Holy Spirit are all gifts that God, through Jesus Christ, is able to give. We can't steal them. We can't take them. We can't create them ourselves. In that sense, we are reliant on God to receive them. We see this again in Acts 2, verse 38, where Peter said, to them, repent, let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. These are necessities in order for a person to be involved in that conversion, purifying process that leads to salvation. They are gifts of God. So now that we've established this, let's focus on repentance. We've talked about faith now. Let's look at repentance. Repentance begins by realizing what one person is, more so than changing.

It's a realization of what you are. It's a realization that what I'm doing is not what I thought I was doing. Who I am is not how I used to define myself. That viewpoint is where repentance begins. Later on, the repentant person engages in turning their life in the direction that they're being given help to go from disobedience to God to obedience to God.

But that concept of repentance begins with understanding and realizing that I am wrong as an individual. When that hit me when I was a young person, age 19, it just dawned on me forget all those years I was in the church, forget where I'd grown up, forget all the good things I had done. Those things were as filthy rags. And I was not only a person whose engine inside produced the smoke of of sin that looked really good, but it was all selfish generated. I couldn't do anything about it. I couldn't do a thing about it. How did I know? I tried. I tried week after week and month after month, and I was still just as stuck as I was when I started. But at least God had shown me. God had shown me who John Elliott was, and that was a real important necessity. It's important for us all to understand that and come to that place. You know, many people who have been baptized, they've gotten wet, never repented. They simply came up with a process or got invited into a process or whatever, but they skipped repentance. They might have said, oh yeah, well, I used to keep Christmas and I didn't, so I repented. I used to eat pork and now I don't, so I repented. I've had many people come to me and it requests baptism, and I said, why do you want to be baptized? Well, I was a sinner and now I'm not. I've stopped sinning, and I want God to keep me like I am. That's a real good reason to be baptized. Stay like, keep me like I am God so that I won't change. Is that why we get baptized? But you see, it's easy if you don't have the understanding of the change that is needed to slip into, oh, well, I've stopped eating pork and I've stopped breaking the Sabbath and I don't kill anymore, and therefore my life has really changed. You know, oftentimes coming into this religion from another religion, you really think you can repent. I mean, I gave up cigarette smoking, that was the trial of my life. You know, I broke up with a family member, maybe my spouse. I've stopped these holidays and my family's upset with me. I lost my job over going to the feast and keeping the Sabbath. I have repented. No, you've just done what any other human being can do on their own. Right? You can stop smoking, you can change your day of worship, you can lose your job or keep your job and all these other things. That, of course, is ceasing to break certain of God's laws, but it doesn't necessarily mean you ever understood that you were evil. You just saw that, oh, one set of rules is different than another set of rules, and I'm therefore keeping the rules. The Pharisees kept the rules. Jesus said, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the Pharisees, you won't be in the kingdom of God. He wants to instill in us a different mindset right from the beginning, and it is a fundamental difference that runs very, very deep. Now, you might say, what should I repent of? What do I need to repent of? Well, that answer lies with God. He has to show you. You might come up with your own answer and come up with your own version of repentance. It might be something like, well, I was breaking God's law. Well, sure. Great. Anybody can figure that out. Hanamah Bible, they can figure that out. You can go on the internet and look in religions all over the place, and they will acknowledge the Sabbath should be kept. They will acknowledge that the Christian holidays are based on paganism. Anybody can figure this out that wants to. They can be regretful. They can be emotional.

What about having sinned? People can say, yes, I have sinned, and I'm sorry. I can look back and see events in my life. I made tragic mistakes, and now I'm cleaning that up. I want to be forgiven and feel better. Well, repentance isn't only about having sinned. What about that you are sinned, that you are evil? Now, oops, that one's tough for carnal human nature. When God begins to show that to you, you want to close the door and say, no, or okay, I saw that. You know, the little glimpse. Oops, I saw that. Yep, okay.

I'm a sinner. I ask people all the time over in Africa, are you a sinner? Yep. I ask my neighbor, are you a sinner? Yep. Pretty easy to come up with that. Are you a sinner? But are you sin? Are you, by your nature, by your mindset, by that engine that drives you an agent of sin? That's hard, and only God can really show that to an individual. But that's what true repentance involves, is coming to see who we really are. Jeremiah 17 and verse 9 is helpful in this regard. Jeremiah 17 verses 9 and 10.

The heart, the mind, is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Uh-oh. See, you and I are wicked. Our minds are wicked, desperately wicked, not just a little bit wicked.

Who can know the mind? I can't, you can't, because it's so deceitful. We just read that. It's deceitful above all things. So that which we think we know, we're deceiving ourselves.

But God says, I, the Lord, search the heart. I test the mind. We need to go to Him, in other words. We need to ask Him, God, I'm praying for the gift of repentance. And this isn't just for people who haven't been baptized yet. This is you and me, every day of our lives, as we continue in repentance, as the bride is cleaning herself up, to go ask for God to correct us, to show us, to open our deceived hearts, to understand the truth of who we are, that we are sinners.

1 John chapter 1 verse 8 verse 9 says, we're all sinners. If you say you're not a sinner, you're a liar. If you say you have no sin, you're a liar. If you just say, I used to have sin, but I don't now, you're a liar. It's pretty clear. Let's go to Romans chapter 7 verses 14 and 15. Here we find the Apostle Paul helping us out.

An apostle, baptized, converted. I like the term converting better than converted, because none of us are done yet. This is because, let's see, Romans chapter 7 verse 14, for we know that the law is spiritual, but I'm carnal, I'm physical, sold under sin. For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I don't practice. But what I hate, that I do. That's evil. We can say Paul is evil because he says I'm evil.

It's tough here. It's really tough to come to this understanding and then to proceed. Verse 18, for I know that in me, that is in my flesh, nothing good dwells. Nothing good dwells. You can go on down and look at some of the things that he says. Verse 24, finally, O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?

Then he thanks Jesus Christ for the process that will lead him and lead all of us towards the kingdom of God. When God opened your eyes to see who you are, are you brave enough? That's one thing that got me down. I actually got suicidal looking at myself because I was trapped and I couldn't change it. And I told God, I said, you know what? There is no reason for me to go on living like I am. You've got to do something about this. Otherwise, I may as well just die. And there is something. You see, like Paul says, who will deliver me from the body of this death? There's no reason. I can't go anywhere except die. But he says, I give thanks to Jesus Christ.

So with the mind, I serve the law of God and the flesh, the law of sin, but I've got Jesus Christ as a helper here. And so what comes after baptism, I'm sorry, what comes after repentance, can be very refreshing, very rejuvenating, very hopeful, very cleansing. It can put the sentence of death away and put a person on track to a life that is worth living and ultimately eternal. Who you really are and seeing who you really are needs to simmer a little bit, needs to soak, needs to be contemplated, mulled over. People look in the Bible and say, oh, on the same day this guy heard about the truth and got baptized. So I heard about the truth of the day, baptized me. You'll find that in the rush to baptize a lot of people, the apostles later on in the scriptures were lamenting that they were leaving the church, exiting in droves. You find that, as John the Baptist even said, bring forth first fruits that are commensurate, that are fitting with repentance. These things need to soak in. They need to be contemplated, studied, meditated about. Come to understand that we need to change from sinner to righteous. Now, if you come to see that, oh, I need to change from sinner to righteous, and in your pre-baptism repentance, you do that and you get rid of all your sins. You quit the poor Easter and Christmas and breaking the Sabbath and all that. You do that, you're all good. Then you come and ask for baptism and say, why do you want to be baptized? You don't need baptism. You're already perfect. So obviously the person didn't really understand.

You found all the sins and changed them all. Well, then you don't need the helper. You're not really looking for God's Holy Spirit to then help you the rest of your life. You're already good to go. Somehow you did that by yourself. So that wouldn't be valid repentance.

What is repentance? In repentance, God is continually showing you your sins all the time. Whether you're listening to him or not is something else, but he's wanting to show you your sins. And that is coupled with a constant fight to turn away from that mindset. Turn away from those deeds, from evil and disobedience, and perform what God wants you to, which is righteousness that takes power, his help. Now, if that concept of repentance is new to you, then you probably haven't repented yet. You probably haven't been baptized yet. So we have a fundamental concept. We'll call it fundamental concept number one.

That is that true repentance precedes a valid baptism. You can't do something else and have a valid baptism. Like John the Baptist said, get away from me. You people who came to be baptized, you know, you can't have a baptism if you don't repent first. There is only one baptism. Somebody might say, well, you're talking about rebaptisms or this or that or the other. No, there's only one baptism. Ephesians 4. That's one valid baptism. There can be a lot of getting wets. People will do this. They'll go from one church to another church to another church, and every time they'll get baptized into that church. And then they'll come along and say, well, I've already been baptized four times. Do I need to be baptized again?

There's only one baptism. Sometimes a person will have, and I've had this happen with several individuals. A person simply was invited to a discussion on baptism, and at the end they said, well, there's water. Anybody not feel like I've been saying here today? You can put your hand up. And one lady came, her very first time came to church afterward. The minister had baptism counseling. She never spoke to him, never spoke to anybody. She was sitting there terrified, and he said, if anybody doesn't feel repentant and ready for baptism, raise your hand. She kept her hand down. She said, okay, everybody in the pool. She said, I got baptized, and I never even spoke to a minister. And here, years later, she said, I've just never accomplished anything in life, and now I'm going through repentance. What do I do with that? Well, obviously she wasn't baptized the first time. She just got wet. So I hope you understand the difference. The false baptism includes getting dumped without having first received the gift of repentance. They had some other concept. I remember one lady who got baptized, so she said, I'll do something for God, and then he'll do something for me, which is cause this other man to divorce his wife and marry me. That's why she got baptized. So God would cause a divorce, and she would marry another man. I mean, there's a long list of reasons why people get baptized. Oftentimes, it's time I make a commitment, and I need to stay committed like I am, stay like I am, so I need to get baptized now. Before I do something really foolish, you know, that's not a reason to get baptized. As John said in 1 John 2, 19, about people who leave the church, they went out from us, but they were not of us. They didn't. They got wet. They hung around. They were in the church, but they were never of us. They didn't have God's Holy Spirit. They weren't really baptized. False baptism includes the dunked, we might say, who did not repent of sin. Some say, well, but I was baptized in another religion, another religion that broke some of God's laws, maybe just one, two, or three, but they broke some of God's laws. They didn't repent of breaking God's laws, did they? But they were they were baptized in a state of breaking God's laws. Or a person who didn't repent of breaking God's laws and was somehow baptized.

Again, Luke 3, 7, and 8, John says, bear fruits worthy or representing repentance before being baptized. We can see those who were not truly baptized because they never had any fruits in their lives. It's simply they thought they went through penance, the minister thought they went through repentance, they got baptized, but all these years they've been trying it on their own, they never understood anymore, they were never able to overcome, etc., etc. If we go to Acts 19, verses 2-6, we see an example of this. Acts 19, verse 2, Paul came to Ephesus, he said to them, did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed? And they said to him, we have not so much as heard whether there is a Holy Spirit. And he said to them, and to what then were you baptized? And they said, into John's baptism. John the Baptist baptism. And he might say, well, I had a valid baptism, I was baptized by John the Baptist. And he said to them, indeed, verse 4, John baptized with a baptism of repentance, saying to the people that they should believe on him who would come after him, that is, on Christ Jesus. And when they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus, and Paul laid hands on them, the Holy Spirit came upon them.

You can see individuals who were baptized, you might say, in the truth, and yet did not have a baptism of a New Testament conversion like we're speaking of here.

We see successful baptisms. These could be defined as Psalm 51-type baptisms. And we'll conclude from here. Psalm 51, here's what a person who is baptized will be going through, what their life will be like. Psalm 51, verse 2. Psalm 51, beginning in verse 2. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. This is before baptism. This is after baptism. This is every day in our life. This is what the Passover reminds us to do daily. This is what Feast of Unleavened Bread reminds us to do daily, to be looking for sin and being part of a relationship with God where He's showing us what we need to overcome. For I acknowledge my transgressions. God is showing them to us. My sin is always before me. There it is. Against you only I have sinned and done this evil in your sight, that you may be found just when you speak and blameless when you judge. Verse 6. Behold, you desire truth in the inward parts, and in the hidden part you will make me to know wisdom. God will reveal that to us. Verse 9.

Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me away from your presence and do not take your Holy Spirit from me. Totally reliant in God. So, repentance and faith of Jesus Christ in you. These are precursors to baptism. Acts 2, 38. Repent, which is a gift. Be baptized for the remission of sins. It's a gift. Receive the Holy Spirit is a gift. And then we have the tools and the helper to go on from there. In conclusion, I'd like to read an excerpt from page 14 in the booklet, The Road to Eternal Life. It says, if you sincerely desire to commit your life to God, ask Him for the gift of repentance. Ask Him for His gift of repentance. Tell Him your intentions in prayer. Seek His help. Don't rely on your own ability to perceive your sins and change them all by yourself. If you sincerely want to follow His commandments and instruction from the Bible, tell Him. So that concludes our first installment here on the topic of baptism. And next time we will be discussing the topic of baptism itself. And that will be on February 11th, right here at 1.30 p.m. And I'd invite you in the meantime to read these booklets, Transforming Your Life, which has a good section on repentance, baptism, the Holy Spirit, the Road to Eternal Life, which has an overview of the same, and also the fundamental beliefs of the United Church of God, which contains a section on repentance and faith. So I hope this is helpful to you, and if you have any questions, feel free to ask me or any of our elders. Thank you for attending the Bible study today.