repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

For the promises to you and to your children and to all that are far off,

everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him.

And he testified with many other words and exhorted them saying,

Save yourselves from this crooked generation.

So those who received his word were baptized and that were added that

day about 3,000 souls and they devoted themselves to the Apostles' teaching and fellowship to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

What I'd like to do now in just a few minutes that we have before baptism is to present you a kind of bird's eye view of where

I think the practice of baptism came from and what meaning it has for us here at Bethlehem.

I won't be restricting myself just to that text that was just read and I simply urge you just to sit back and listen rather than trying to follow in any of the scriptures because I'm going to be citing many.

Just before Jesus came on the scene, another man came on the scene.

Jesus preached, the kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe the gospel.

This other man had come also, John the Baptist, preparing the way, also saying, repent and be baptized.

He came preaching a baptism of repentance in other words.

What does this baptism of John the Baptist mean?

I think it means that the Messiah has come and he is beginning to gather out of Israel a new people.

And what's characterizing this people is that they are responding to his message in repentance and faith.

And therefore, no Jew when they hear the message of judgment and the call to repentance which John preaches to the covenant people

should ever say, well, we have Abraham as our father.

We bear the marks in our own flesh of the sign of the covenant, circumcision.

John says, don't even start to say that. The people that I am gathering for the Messiah are people who repent.

And the sign of the covenant given beforehand doesn't make any difference.

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