355 2 Longing for the Gospel

I'm here to be baptised tonight because I love the Lord Jesus and I want to obey his command to be baptised. I'd love to be able to say that I've always loved the Lord Jesus and understood him, but it was only about a year ago that I put my trust in Jesus and asked him to come into my life as Lord and Saviour. Before that I always used to say I was a Christian, because I used to go to church with my family from when I was very, very small, but then when I went to college I stopped going to church.

I was always too busy or too busy enjoying myself and church held very little meaning to me. When I left college it took me quite a while to get a teaching post and finally I came down to Port Slade and I found myself in a totally new area, new environment where I didn't have any of my friends or family around and I could have been very lonely, but immediately I was invited along to the tab and when I came here and saw everybody here I realised that there was something completely wrong with my whole understanding of the Christian life and almost straight away I realised that it was because I hadn't even considered that Jesus had died on the cross for me and it was because of my sins that he had suffered and died, but even after I understood that I still didn't make any commitment. I kept on finding any reason why I shouldn't, but gradually all my reasons for not becoming a Christian just fell one by one as I spoke to Christian friends and read the Bible and last September I went to an adventure centre with a group of children and everything seemed to go totally wrong there.

I couldn't seem to get on with the centre staff, the children didn't seem terribly happy all the time and everything seemed to be going wrong and I was criticising everything around me and then one evening I realised that I was as bad if not worse and that in fact I wasn't going to get any better until I committed my life to the Lord and that evening I asked Jesus to come into my life and direct me into all paths in my life. Since then I found all the joy, peace and strength that living a Christ-centred life instead of a self-centred life can lead. I still try to do many things in my own strength and then I try to remember a verse that's been written in the front of my Bible by some friends of mine which says that to trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding, in all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your path straight.

Now that I've trusted in him I know that when I pray to him he will guide me in everything that I should do and what I want to do now is to obey and work for him in all that he requires of me and one of these requirements is that now I've trusted him that I should be baptised. Now a young lady who was present at our baptismal service last time but may not then have realised that she will be baptised this evening, I'd like you to meet and her name is Claire Middleton. At the age of five I started to go to Sunday school at Baptist Church.

I attended this church on and off until I was about ten but by this age I realised that my friends at school didn't spend their Sunday mornings at church so why should I? I ended up not going. I started to rebel at school, my last school when the RK lessons, I didn't pay any attention to the lessons, instead I joined in with the others, not paying attention to anything being said. Then I'd obviously heard of but didn't really know about Jesus and of his forgiveness of my sins.

It wasn't until the 24th of February this year that my friend Karen brought me along here. It was after I'd been asking what am I here for? I was feeling depressed and Karen's answer was I was on earth for a reason. He had a plan for me, I didn't laugh at her in unbelief, I felt as though I was willing to accept this fact, perhaps I had a purpose.

As I said I came to the evening service of the 24th. Some of you may remember it was a baptismal service. Each of them came and gave their testimony, expressing their feelings of what God had done for them and there was I in the balcony taking in all that they were saying.

As I took it in there was a strange feeling within me as though I was being moved by some strange unknown force and who'd have believed, especially me, that I'd be in the same position just three and a half months later. There was no definite steps, one, two, and three, but more gradual movements working towards me becoming a Christian. I started to come to track two meetings on Saturdays and then to the Wednesday Bible studies.

I was becoming eager to learn more from the Bible. I wasn't satisfied with what I already knew. I was being handed booklets from every angle to help me grow spiritually and it was at the meetings though I felt I was standing on one side of a brick wall and the others were the other side.

It was because they knew of one person that I didn't, Jesus. I too wanted this knowledge and I knew that it meant pulling down the brick wall, brick by brick, and so also putting my faith in him. This I was soon to do.

It had been arranged for track two to borrow an edited videotape of Jesus of Nazareth. I'd seen parts of it on TV but hadn't paid much attention to it and so was able quite easily to turn over to one of the other two channels, but this time I was a changing person. I was on the verge of making a commitment.

Video was shown over two evenings. This time I paid great attention. It then came to the part of Jesus' crucifixion as he was mocked and hung on the cross, so a lump came to my throat.

I dared not blink in case I missed anything. I was so taken in by it, especially by the acting, and I thought those actresses and actresses are acting, but this is really what happened. Jesus went through all the pain and agony on that cross and later he rose from the dead and is alive.

That night I prayed like I never prayed before, and as the tears ran down my face I didn't know whether they were for sorrow that Jesus bore all the pain and burden of my sins, or for happiness that I had found him. I guess they were for both. I've read in a book that I was a house, a large front door I had, and I was on the inside and on the outside was Jesus, who was waiting outside, waiting to be let in.

He wouldn't force his way in, and I was the only one who could let him in, because there was only a handle on the inside. At last I had opened that door. Since then I've attended the tabernacle regularly.

I wasn't satisfied with just coming to the evening service, I too had to come to the morning. And when I've no college homework commitments I'm to the Monday Fellowship. I'd like to end by reading verse 20 from Galatians chapter 2. Paul wrote it, but I feel it could apply to all Christians.

I'm crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live. Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. The life which I now in the flesh live, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

That's why I wish to be baptized tonight. Now as you see we have two very old ladies at the back of me, who've still got to give testimony. Praise God for, seriously for young people who trust Jesus Christ as Saviour.

I can go back in my thinking to about the age of four, I've only got snippets, just little bits before then in my mind. And I can't remember a time personally when I didn't know the Lord. He was real to me as a little child.

That's why I've got no hang-ups myself about baptizing young girls, or young boys for that matter, if they have established as far as one can ascertain the Lordship of Jesus Christ in their lives. First of all my young friend Frida, Frida Cook's going to talk. My parents are Christians and I'm very thankful for that, because they taught me to love God as well.

I was born in Africa and I went to Sunday school there, but I didn't understand the language, so I didn't really listen. I used to just sit there thinking what was for tea, and what I would do in the afternoon. When I was about ten years old, a war started.

We lived there about a week, and then we decided to go. In that week I was really scared, but even then I didn't ask God to help me, though I'd known about him all my life. We went to Holland and then came here to Worthing.

It was very difficult for me to get used to living here. I like Worthing now, but I still think Africa's best. This year our club went to Brighton, where a famous man, Nicky Cruz, spoke.

His story was very interesting, and for once I really listened. When Nicky asked us to come to the front, I went, together with my friend Alison Dean. That night I gave my whole life to the Lord Jesus, but I didn't feel happy.

Instead, I felt very sad, because I remembered all my sins, and I was sorry. That same night I thanked the Lord for keeping me safe in Africa, and not letting me get killed in the war. I also thanked him for many other things.

Since that night, I really believe that God died on a cross for us, that God sent his only Son to die on a cross for us. And though I still do wrong things, he can forgive me, and that's why I want to be baptized. Frida's the last of a family to be baptized, and we do believe in this church.

God, in his grace, gives us household salvation. Mom, Dad, boys and girls in a family committing their lives to him. We're very glad when a family is complete.

Not only is the Cook family complete this evening, but also the Hearns. Margaret's going to tell you a little bit about how she came to know the Lord. Not born in Africa, but in Rustington, I think.

Actually, I wasn't born in Rustington, I was born in Reading. You were born in Reading. I was lucky enough to be born into a Christian-oriented family, and brought up to go to church and learn Bible verses.

I was only four when I started to come to this church. When I was five, the whole family went to a Christian holiday camp in Farley. Sunday we came back was a youth service, and when we went home, my sister Janice and I gave our hearts to the Lord.

A couple of years later, after that, I thought, now I have my name in the Lamb's Book of Life, I can do what I want, and went away from the Lord. I only accepted him for Sundays. Until then, I thought I'd never be baptized.

That was when I came back to him properly. I just thought the baptismal service was a man who wore a long black dress, said long prayers, called himself Mr. Sergeant, made an occupation of drowning people in a church paddling pool. When I was ten, I had just come back from a holiday in Jersey, and Janet was baptized.

This meant a lot to me, and I thought she had a lot of courage, standing up and telling everyone what the Lord had done for her. I then went to a Catholic school, which didn't help me much. There was a lot of pressure to go to Mass.

Some of my friends stayed back, so I joined them. In January this year, I went to a concert, Our God Reigns, in Royal Albert Hall. At the end of a talk, Louis Palau gave an appeal.

I had a strange feeling as though God was saying something, but what? I took no notice. Again, when Dick Saunders came to the tab, he made an appeal, and I still took no notice. I was twelve by now, and this seemed to change me, because I finally realized what God was saying.

Three weeks ago, I went to a John Pantry concert in Southampton. Some of the things he said seemed to encourage my thoughts. The Lord said, Repent and be baptized, and this is why I'm here tonight, because I want to follow in his footsteps.

Then Peter went down to the men which were sent unto him from Cornelius, and said, Behold, I am he whom ye seek. What is the cause? Wherefore, ye are come. What is the cause? Wherefore, ye are come.

Father, we ask for your help as we come around this holy book, so many of us here believing that it requires the ministry of your spirit to break the word up and make it relevant and alive to us who listen to what is explained. So we invoke his aid and pray that your spirit may play upon our mental processes and woo our wills so that the objective of this word is fulfilled. Amen.

It only occurred to me this afternoon that in one sense you could say of the Bible that it is a book which records many a search, many a search. Some while ago I was watching a rather brilliant depiction of Scott of the Antarctic on his search, his expedition for the pole, and the fact that he was beaten to it by a Norwegian. But one could not help being impressed by the determination of Scott and his colleagues, though it turned out to be unsuccessful, to secure their goal and to be the first people at the South Pole.

Now, in a similar and yet different context, in a similar way we read of men in Scripture who search for something, who seek to obtain a specific goal. Some of the searchers are in modern years a little humorous, like the fellow who had to seek for a wife for somebody else. How about that for a task? He was Abraham's servant and he was trying to find a wife for Isaac and he was successful.

Move on into the later historical books of the Old Testament and you find some spies on a reconnaissance mission of Palestine seeking for information to feed back to the Hebrews who are ready to take again possession of the Promised Land. You move into the Song of Solomon and there you find the lovely story of someone who is infatuated by her lover seeking after him. In another historical book of the Bible, again perhaps humorous, you come across a man looking for some donkeys.

And in the New Testament, not so humorous, is a picture of three, or not necessarily three, but a group of wise men, of magi, seeking out, searching for the birthplace of the infant Jesus. And then you get Greeks who seek for the Lord Jesus and eventually have an interview with Him. But for our purposes this evening, how about this as an illustration, maybe of your circumstance.

What do I mean by this? Well, the context of this tenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, because here are three men who have been commissioned by an officer of Caesar's army to seek out somebody who can tell them more about the Christian faith. Here are people who have a hunger for the gospel. And I am encouraged, perhaps to some degree amazed today, to find that there are many people who also recognize a search in life.

They know that there's more to the phenomenon of existence than just seventy years, if you're fortunate, of living on this earth, followed by extinction. They believe within themselves, though perhaps they can't rationalize upon it, that there's a much greater objective than this. That the human soul is not bound to space and time, dimensions which imprison us at the moment, but rather there's a greater goal.

There's a bigger objective. We are here for an eternal purpose, made in the image of God, to fulfill His task on this earth, and ultimately those who have been brought into a relationship with Him, to fulfill a remarkable objective in an eternity that is yet to be. Now maybe you feel that within your own heart.

You feel it within your own mind. You may express it differently. You may express it carelessly.

But there, deep-rooted, is this inner feeling that there is more to life than can be explained just by the modern philosophers and by the modern teachers. Now, if that's the case, then I'm so glad before God you came this evening, and I don't say that immodestly, believing that I can resolve every question and satisfy every desire in the preaching from this pulpit. But in the name of God, I can set you at rest with this promise that comes from the Old Testament.

And it's God speaking, and He says, if you search for Me, you shall find Me. If you search for Me with all your heart. The seeking is twinned with the searching, and God says, if that's the sincere desire that is innate, that is deep within you, then that desire will be satisfied.

There is not, in the record of the Scriptures, anyone who sought for God who was frustrated. That desire that you have for the Lord is a natural desire. It's brought about by the Holy Spirit, although perhaps you're unaware of His existence.

And it's God's purpose to satisfy you, and to bring you to an end of your search, to an end of your quest. And to show you that real life begins with Jesus Christ. Well, let's go to this chapter, and quickly, and there's not time to spell out all the context.

But Peter is introduced to these three men. And he's been staying in the house of a friend of his. And he comes after a sleep, during the hours of the afternoon, he comes down the staircase, the outside staircase of the old-fashioned, flat-roofed home where he's been living for a while, having conducted some evangelistic campaign.

And when he espies these three men at the bottom of the steps, he says, in the words of the 21st verse, Behold, I am He whom ye seek. What is the cause? Wherefore, I come. Why have you turned up here? What are you looking for? Well, who were these men? They were men from a secular background.

Two were servants, and one was from the military. Caesar had a command post at Caesarea, a town named after him. And one of the chief officers, chief centurions there, was a man called Cornelius.

And he and a band of Italians grouped together, and they lived an honorable, but a secular life. Not only was their business respectable, but they were devout people. We read that in the second verse.

Cornelius was a devout man, and all his house are devout too. And what's more, we're told that they fear God, and they pray. And later on, you will discover that reference is made to the fact that they fast, and that the centurion Cornelius, the one who heads up the household, is a man of a good reputation, known throughout the whole of Caesarea as being an honest man.

Now, put all those nouns together, all those adjectives together. Here are a group of people, headed up by the one man Cornelius, who are devout, they are prayerful, they are charitable, they fast, they are held in good reputation, and the conclusion of the matter, hear me carefully, in modern terminology, the conclusion would be they're Christians. Because the Christian is a devout person, who says his prayers, who gives away money, and who now and again might even engage in fasting, going without food.

But you know, the Bible says that these men, though they were devout, though they were disciplined, they were dissatisfied. They didn't believe they were Christian. They didn't believe they were converted.

They had a desire to know more of God, although they feared Him. And I think that's a very important point. It needs to be repeated.

You see, because that type of person, and it strikes me from my decade here in Worthing, there are hundreds of them in this town, is the hardest to reach with the Gospel. Take it again. Devout, charitable, prayerful, of a good reputation, giving to days of fasting, fearing the Lord.

You might be all of those, my friend, and not a Christian. And the difference between you and them is that they recognize their lack. And there are thousands, thousands of decent, honorable, seemingly God-fearing people in the United Kingdom today, and they think they're Christian because they score good marks when you go down the list and tick off those qualities.

These men who come to Peter are dissatisfied with what they know and believe that God has more to reveal to them. It may be, however, tonight, that you too are dissatisfied. You're not so sure that you've really come to an experimental grip of the Christian faith.

You know something about it, and you live as best you can a decent, honorable life. But you know in your heart of hearts that there is no personal relationship between you and Jesus Christ. And if that is the case, then I pray to Almighty God that He might give you the same desire as two people whose stories I'm briefly going to relate to you.

One came into my life ten years ago, a young fellow, ex-RAF man. And he'd gone to one so-called religious group after another. As far as I could determine, he was devout, and he was disciplined, but he didn't know Jesus as Savior.

And the day came when he turned into this tabernacle, and he sat in that back balcony where we used to have our organ council, and he heard a message on the deity of Christ, and that Jesus had died for him. And he realized that despite all his seeming morality, there was a tremendous gulf that separated him from God. And he came to talk about it, and ask for more information.

And eventually in the room that's at the back of these curtains, he wept his way to Calvary and to new life in Jesus. Not so long ago, just a few weeks, a mother was telling me she came here into this church having been, as far as I could determine, a devout woman for a long time. And yet through reading Scripture, she'd come to a realization that there was a marked distinction between what she was and what God wanted her to be.

And after an amazing answer to prayer, she found herself here, listening to the Gospel message, and ultimately committing herself to Jesus Christ. Now, these men were in the same state as these two modern people whose examples I've just brought before you. And these men come to Peter, and he, on meeting up with them, asks, why have you come? Why have you come to see me in particular? And the reason is easy to determine.

They believe that though they knew a little bit about God, they did not know enough. And they had some divine intuition that if they asked Peter, who'd been staying in this place, Joppa, which was quite near to Caesarea, he could answer their questions. Now, Peter was a remarkable man.

The leading disciple, the leading follower of Jesus. In one sense, and literally true, he was a key man, inasmuch as he was the first that preached the Gospel to Jewish people and turned the key of salvation in their direction. And there were many who had responded to what Peter had to say about Jesus Christ, who came from the Hebrew community.

But he was also to be a key man in this respect. He was to come to the conclusion that the Gospel message was not just for the Jew, it was also for the Gentile. The Gentile term means anyone who's not a Jew.

And so these men come to Peter because they believe that he can help them find more information and satisfy a deep-seated longing in their hearts for Jesus Christ. And so they tell him. They tell him about their background.

They tell him about Cornelius. They say, you know, Peter, there's a ready-made congregation and it's just dying to listen to what you have to say. Now there's no preacher who wouldn't be hooked on that particular bait.

But it was late at night and the journey, although in modern terms was not far, when you're going it by foot it's a long way, so they stay overnight in Joppa and then they set off the next day and finish up in Cornelius' home the following day. And what they had told Peter was indeed true. Cornelius and all his house were waiting for this celebrity, this evangelist who's been preaching in their locality with such tremendous results.

How do you greet a holy man? Some people have had problems not knowing me. The first instance is how to address me. And I've been called everything from rabbi to father to the very reverend.

You name it and it's been on my letterhead at some stage or other, at least on envelopes, not on my own letterheading, that come into the tabernacle office. How do you greet a holy man? Well, Cornelius lies down on the floor, on the ground as Peter comes along, believing that somehow in doing this he will so honor Peter that Peter will disclose the secret that Cornelius really wants. The satisfaction will be granted and he will come to eternal life.

Peter says, get up, man. Takes him by the hand. Verse 26, he's embarrassed.

People don't generally do this to the fisherman, Peter. They don't generally fall down on the ground. I myself also am a man.

I'm not God. So he goes into Cornelius's home and faced with the soldiers and the rest of the servants, he starts to preach. And what does he tell them? He tells them about Jesus.

He tells them that Jesus was the Son of God, is the Son of God. And Peter has to disclose that he's come to the conclusion, because of a vision that we won't go into this evening, he's come to the conclusion that when Jesus died on the cross of Calvary, he didn't just die for the salvation of the Jews. Verse 34, 35.

Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons, but in every nation he that feareth him and worketh righteousness is accepted with him. So whether you're a Jew or a Roman, whether you come from Sussex or are more fortunate and come from Yorkshire, the gospel message applies to you because Jesus, in his death, has made an international atonement. His death has bought salvation for an innumerable company of people who were born in differing backgrounds and are prepared to acknowledge that he is Lord.

So this is what Peter says. He talks about Jesus, verse 38, the man whom God has anointed with the Holy Ghost and power, the man who went about doing good, whose life was completely different from anyone else's who ever lived in Palestine or anywhere else. And then he went on to say how one terrible, terrible day, Jesus was hung on a tree, verse 39.

He was crucified. But on the third day, verse 40, Peter says, God raised him from the dead. And as a result of that, there is the possibility that people who believe on Jesus and his gospel shall be saved.

Indeed, says Peter, in the 42nd verse, God has commanded us to preach unto the people and to testify that it is he, Jesus, which was ordained of God to be the judge of quick and dead. What did Peter mean by that? He means simply this, my friend, that the day is coming when all of us shall stand together before the judgment seat of God Almighty, and we'll have to answer for the things that we've done, for the way that we've broken God's law. Peter preached on the fact of Jesus, and he also preached on the fact of judgment.

And he went on to say this, that those who believe in the name of Jesus Christ shall receive absolution. Their sins will be forgiven. And before Peter had time to turn to hymns of faith, number whatever it is, and sing, just as I am without one plea, and invite people to come out to the front of the hall, of the room where he's been preaching, we discover that the Holy Spirit falls upon the assembled people, and they are converted as they trust Jesus as their Lord.

These were men who had a hunger for the gospel. If you have a hunger for the gospel this evening, you too can find that hunger satisfied as you acknowledge who Jesus is. I repeat in my last couple of minutes, these were ordinary men.

They were devout men. They were disciplined men, but they were dissatisfied. They lived what seemed to be an honorable life, but they realized there was something else that they had to do to enter into the experience of conversion.

There was knowledge that they required. So where did these men go? They went to Peter. Why Peter? Well, he'd had an experience of salvation, and he told them what he knew.

As I've told you this evening, what I know. And they opened their hearts, and they received forgiveness, they received the infilling of the Holy Spirit, and Peter is so convinced of their conversion that he says, why shouldn't these people get baptized? Why shouldn't they start telling others what's happened to them? So that's what it means to have a hunger for the gospel. Have you got this yourself? Have you trusted Jesus as the Lord? In these precarious days, when sometimes we hold our breath, wondering what's going to happen next, have you got security? Have you got stability? Turned on to the international news on the BBC early this morning to discover that one of the computers in America had gone wrong for the second time in just a few days.

There was a standby alert for World War III as the computers indicated that the Russians had already got missiles in the air. We just walk a tightrope, don't we, as a human race. I'm not trying to frighten you, I'm just being factual and objective.

I've never tried to scare people deliberately in my life to become Christians. But it is precarious. We hold our breath sometimes from day to day, wondering what's going to happen next.

But the Bible says that despite all the confusion as it gets worse and worse in the human camp, God has a purpose for everybody who'll trust Jesus as Lord. Is that your search? You're looking for salvation? You want to be linked up to God the Father through the Son and know the infilling of the Spirit? Then do what these girls did in their experience. Acknowledge that Jesus is Lord, ask Him to forgive your sins and come to the next baptismal class.

And let's have the privilege of witnessing your immersion in these waters and hearing of your testimony to Jesus' saving grace. Let's pray. Father, we're so glad that you have conceived a gospel that is easy enough for everybody here to understand.

Whether a young girl like Frida or an older man or woman in this tabernacle, we can all find sins forgiven and experience eternal life as we trust the Lord Jesus. We praise you for this good news. Now, Lord, whatever our circumstances are, particularly if we think at this moment that we're devout people, on the whole good people, help us to see that the goodness you require is far, far greater than that to which we've ever attained and even the best of us here have sinned in some way.

May we come to the cross, find the absolution that Jesus gives and enter into newness of life as He forgives us and places His Spirit in our hearts for His sake. Amen.