Welcome to Gateway Church's podcast. Wherever you're tuning in from, we hope you're encouraged by today's message.

We're actually going to talk about baptism this weekend, so let me kind of remind you of where we are in the series.

We're talking about the story of Moses, and we start with an element of the story of Moses, and then use that to connect it to something that's taking place in the New Testament.

And it all correlates with our walk with Christ, it all correlates with our journey with Christ as we step into salvation.

So the first week we talked about the curse, the curse that we're under, the next week we talked about the salvation, that was last week.

This week we're talking about water baptism, and the next week we'll talk about baptism in the Holy Spirit.

And so this follows the path of our walk with God and our entry into salvation.

And so we'll get to in a moment how this story of Moses teaches us these things about water baptism.

But let me remind you as well that what we're talking about is that the movement of God through the Israelites, as Moses was leading them, was an attempt to help man get back into the garden.

So we remember that in Genesis 3 is the follow man.

That is where Adam and Eve were living in the garden in perfect harmony with God. They were living there in that garden, and they sinned.

But the sin was that they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

And because of that we know that we are impacted by that every single day of our lives.

That our temptation is to step outside of the authority of God and instead to choose for ourselves what is right and wrong, to choose for ourselves what we want to do and not do.

And that is our temptation that we continue to struggle with. And God's movement towards us, his perpetual movement of grace towards us, is to pull us back into the garden.

So we want to remember that we are to eat of the tree of life, which is Christ.

We are not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

So I give you in a little example of a way that you could remember that every week.

And this week the example is a little bit strange, but I've got a question for you.

How many of you have ever eaten at the cheesecake factory?

Go ahead. It's okay. Don't be ashamed. Raise your hand. I see your hand, sir. I see your hand. I see that hand.

This is a safe place. You could just admit it. You could just say that.

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