 Well, good evening, Radiant Church. You guys doing well? Good, you ready for a brand new series? Tonight we're starting Heroes. How many remember last year when we did Heroes of the Old Testament? All right, it was awesome. Had so much fun doing that, kind of working our way through several of the different Old Testament heroes of the faith. And back by popular demand, we decided, hey, this year, let's move into the New Testament because there's some good stuff in the New Testament. So I'm excited to kick that off tonight. If you have your Bibles, you can turn with me to Mark chapter one. And we'll get there in a moment. I just wanna highlight for everybody. I know it was in the Radiant News, but this Wednesday, everybody say this Wednesday, is gonna be a powerful, powerful night and you're not gonna wanna miss it. If you've ever been to prophetic presbytery that we have hosted here, you know that there's some incredibly powerful services. We decided, even though we're not doing presbytery this year, we wanna have a night where we have different prophetic ministers come in and minister and teach on that. So that's this Wednesday night. So Wayne Drain, Pastor Tom Lane, who's one of our overseers are gonna be here and you're not gonna wanna miss it. So that's at 6.30. It's probably gonna rain anyways because every day in Michigan rains. So you can't do yard work and literally games are gonna be canceled. It doesn't matter. So just plan on being here, all right? It's gonna be awesome. Everybody say, okay, pastor. See, I feel better already. So here we go. In Mark chapter one tonight, our very first hero that we're gonna talk about in this series is John the Baptist. John, I call him, I grew up calling him John the Baptizer, but we call him John the Baptist. It's, he's way more ecumenical than that. He's not just a Baptist. He's a charismatic. He's a Baptist. He's a presbyterian. He's a Methodist. He's a forerunner of the Messiah who would come. John the Baptizer. And so look with me here at the introduction of Mark's gospel. Mark, unlike many of the other gospels, Matthew and Luke in particular, start right off at the beginning of Jesus' ministry. And before we get to Jesus stepping onto the scene, John the Baptist steps on the scene, beginning in chapter one, verse number one, it says, in the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, as it is written in Isaiah the prophet, behold, I send my messenger before your face who will prepare your way, the voice of one crying in the wilderness. Prepare the way of the Lord and make his paths straight. John appeared baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And all the country of Judea and all of Jerusalem were going out to him and were being baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel hair and wore a leather belt around his waist and ate locust and wild honey. And he preached saying, after me comes he who is mightier than I, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down into untie. I baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit. So you can actually look in Luke's gospel and Luke will give you the backstory, both on the birth and the announcement of the birth of Jesus, but also the announcement and the birth of John the Baptist. And it, you know, obviously his parents were of the priestly line, Zechariah is his father. If you remember the story, he's serving in the house of God as a, as one of the priests at that appointed time of the year. And when he goes into light, the altar of incense, which was one of the priestly jobs, an angel of the Lord appeared to him, told him, your wife, and by the way, they had been barren most of their life. And even though they served the Lord in the house, they were way past child rearing age. But the angel said, you're gonna have a child and he's gonna be a servant of the most high God and you're gonna name him John. And you know, Zechariah, like most of us probably would ask the question, I don't know how old Zechariah was, but he's older. He's probably 60, 70, 80, 99 years old. He's got his AARP card, let's just put it that way. And he asked the angel, how can this be? You know, we're old and the angel didn't have any mercy for him. He says, you know what? You're gonna be on mute until the day he's born. So literally he didn't speak until the day that John the Baptist was born. And you know the backstory, Mary goes and visits Elizabeth, they're relatives when she's pregnant with Jesus and there's this connection that takes place even at the point of being just children in the mother's womb. Mary's carrying Jesus, the incarnate word of God that's conceived by the Holy Spirit. Elizabeth is carrying John the Baptist who will be the announcer of the coming of the Messiah in fulfillment of all the messianic scriptures. And when Mary and Elizabeth come together, they meet up, John the Baptist who's just three, four, five months old in the womb, conceived in the womb leaps within her because he's filled with the Holy Spirit. If you don't believe that children in the womb are living persons, things that are just clusters of cells are not filled with the Holy Spirit. But just like God promised in Psalm 139 in your mother's womb, I intricately and delicately created you and wove you together. And that's exactly what happened in John the Baptist. He was conceived like Jeremiah before the foundations of the world being raised up to be a prophet, to announce the coming of Jesus. And he knew in his heart when he was in the presence of the Messiah. He knew in his heart, even when he's in his mother's womb that there was something special about the presence and the proximity that he was in the midst of. And so we don't really hear from John the Baptist for very much more until the ministry of Jesus is about to begin. That's where Mark picks up. Let me give you some things about John the Baptist that maybe you need to be refreshed or reminded of, but maybe you didn't know before. Number one, Luke chapter one verse 60 when it tells the story says that John was actually named by God. It would have been the tradition to actually name him Zechariah after his father. But the angel said, no, you're gonna name him John. He was named by God. Number two, Jesus said in John chapter 11 that John the Baptist was the greatest of all the prophets. Think about all the prophets, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Elijah, Elisha, Moses. But Jesus said, of woman, there has not been born a greater one than John the Baptist. Why? It's because his assignment was the greatest assignment of all time. It was to be the forerunner, the one as we just read from Malachi chapter three verse one in Isaiah chapter 40, is to prepare the way for the coming of the Messiah. Maybe what you don't know is that John the Baptist was a cousin of Jesus. I just mentioned that he was of the priestly line. But in Luke chapter one verse number 80, there's this really interesting scripture. It says that after he was born, it says, and the child grew and became strong in spirit. And he was in the wilderness until the day of his public manifestation to Israel. So John the Baptist for much of his life was hidden in the wilderness. So he didn't grow up like most kids. He grew up in the wilderness. He grew up in hiding because God was preparing him. We'll come back to that in just a moment. John the Baptist was a man who probably was under a Nazarite vow. In Luke chapter one again, it says that the angel said, he will be holy unto the Lord, but he is never to drink the fruit of the vine. And if you read the Old Testament, there was a vow. Samson was under it and several others. It's called a Nazarite vow in which you don't shave, cut your hair or drink anything that is of the fruit of the vine, the grape, whether it's wine or grape juice or anything like that. So they don't shave, they don't cut their hair. We would call them hipsters, but in his day, he was a Nazarite. He was hidden in the wilderness, even in his youth. Took a Nazarite vow. As I said, he was filled with the Holy Spirit. And here's the greatest thing that you need to know about John the Baptist is that he was the trigger, the trigger that brought to the public eye, the ministry of Jesus. He was the, when he stepped on the platform, when God spoke to his heart, we don't know when that moment came when he was out in hiding in the wilderness. We don't know what it was, but there came a moment in John the Baptist's life. We know that Jesus appeared on the public scene at about 30 years old. So John the Baptist was probably about 30 years old. Some point in his 30 year journey, God decided that John was ready to put into motion the plan of redemption. Remember, there had been a 400 year chasm between Malachi and Marx, Gospel chapter one. There had been a 400 period of time when God did not speak through a prophet. 400 years. Malachi ends, remember when we went through Malachi, he ends it by saying, behold, before the great and the incredible day of the Lord, I will send Elijah and he will turn the hearts of the fathers back to the sons and the sons back to the father and he'll restore all things. So God gives this promise about sending Elijah and then he goes quiet for 400 years. Well, what we know is that when John the Baptist steps on the scene, he comes in the spirit of Elijah. It's interesting if you go read Second Kings chapter one, I think it's verse number seven, it says that you wanna know what Elijah wore? Elijah wore camel skin or fur hair garment with a leather belt. John the Baptist even dresses like him and he comes in the spirit of Elijah. Somewhere in the wilderness there came a moment when God said, the time is right, John. And John began to go to the Jordan River at the north part of the Dead Sea and he began to baptize people, calling Israel to repentance. And it was that ministry of baptism that actually triggered, set in motion, the manifestation of Jesus, the Messiah. Because we know that Jesus was actually baptized by John the Baptist. You can read the rest of it in this chapter. He appears and when he appears, John the Baptist looks at Jesus and he says, behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. John the Baptist was the only one who knew who Jesus was. And it's because he knew the spirit and the anointing that was on him. He knew the call of God that was on him because he had been for 30 years being prepared by God in the wilderness. Think about that, that's pretty amazing. And then when Jesus comes, he says, you should be baptizing me, not me baptizing you. How many think if Jesus showed up to church, it would be inappropriate for us to baptize him? And that's kind of the attitude that John the Baptist had. It's kind of like, well, you know, you're the righteous one, I know who you are. You should baptize me. And Jesus' answer was this, he said, no, he says, do it so that all righteousness is fulfilled. Because listen, John the Baptist was a priest. He was at the priestly line and he was also a prophet. So the priest was responsible for the cleansing of all vessels that God was going to use in his house. And it takes a prophet to announce the word of God. John did both at Jesus' baptism. I call John the Baptist God's wild one. Because he's wild. I mean, I grew up watching Hollywood's versions of the gospels. Anybody watch like Jesus of Nazareth when you grew up or, you know, Passion of the Christ is another one, but there's really old ones like the Ten Commandments and different things. I was obsessed with watching those movies. Not because I thought that they were well done. I just love seeing the portrayal of the gospel. And I remember, I think it was specifically Jesus of Nazareth when they portrayed John the Baptist. I just remember watching him thinking, this guy is wild. He would like call people out. He's calling people a brood of vipers. And typically that is not attractional. Typically by calling people a brood of vipers, which in biblical language to call Jews a serpent was the lowest thing you could call them. Because remember it was the serpent that deceived Eve. So they associated a serpent with the devil. So basically here's what John the Baptist was saying. You're not children of Abraham, you're children of your father, the devil. And it says that people came from all over Judea, all over Israel, they came out to him. And where did they come to the Jordan River? What was significant about the Jordan River? How many remember in the Old Testament the role that the Jordan River played? Before they were able to go from the wilderness into the promised land, Joshua had to lead them across the what? The Jordan River. But in order to cross the Jordan River, God had to do what to the Jordan? He had to part the waters. Do you remember that? It says in Joshua that God tore open the Jordan River so that they could walk across. Now here comes John the Baptist and he's standing in the Jordan River and he's calling Israel to repent and to be cleansed of their sins so that they could be prepared for the Savior when He comes. Where John the Baptist baptized is the exact spot that Israel crossed from the wilderness into the promised land. What he was calling them to was to reaffirm and to recommit their lives to the covenant before they could inherit the promises. He was saying, you guys have dwell in the land but you're dwelling in the land but you're not dwelling in the promises. You're captives, you're oppressed in the promised land. Come back and let's do it all over again. Let's get wet in the water and change our way of thinking and prepare our hearts because God is about to bring a new Joshua. The name Joshua and Jesus in the Hebrew are the exact same word, it's Yeshua and it means Yahweh saves. He says, prepare your heart for a new Joshua who's to come. At this time, God doesn't tear open the Jordan, God tears open the heavens. And he speaks out of it as Jesus steps into the water and he says, this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased in the Holy Spirit comes upon him and immediately Jesus begins his earthly ministry. And John the Baptist was his wild one because here he is, a guy walking around in camel hair, garment, nobody wears camel hair. It was not in then, it's not in now. The buckle doesn't carry it. How many regret pictures of yourselves from maybe 10, 15 years ago? You see what you thought was really in then and now you know that it's not. It's like bell bottoms. Remember when everything was like boot cut bell bottoms? And then I remember when they were talking about skinny and slim jeans, I'm like, nobody will ever wear that, now everybody wears it. And everything was a plaid, remember that? Everything was plaid, do you guys remember that? Okay, let's take it way back. Anybody remember mullets? Anybody remember wicked mullet, business in the front, party in the back, anybody remember that? Check your heart, you know. You see pictures now and it's like ooh, ooh. Can I just tell you, camel hair garments will never, will never be in style. John the Baptist was wild. Long beard, crazy hair, lives out in the hills and you know what his diet consists of? He eats locust and wild honey. That's a mess. Somebody said well, it's date honey. I don't care if it's date honey, bee honey, it's just honey. I mean, a guy walking around with a big old beer with a handful of honey and a handful of grasshoppers wearing camel skin and a leather belt. If he shows up to your church, security's all gonna be like, we got that guy, we're watching him? Where's he going, where's he sitting at? And he's calling people a brood of vipers. He was God's wild one. But while everybody looked at his external appearance, it wasn't his external appearance that made him wild. Let me tell you what made him the wild one of God. It wasn't his external appearance, it was his internal defiance. He was counter-cultural. He was prophetic. He was confrontational. That's what it means that he came in the spirit of Elijah. You might remember the greatest story of Elijah is when he confronted the prophets of Baal. Right before the showdown on Mount Carmel, Elijah says to the nation of Israel, how long will you be divided between two opinions? If God is God, if Yahweh is God, serve him. If Baal is Lord, serve him. And the whole showdown was to expose the lie and the demonic deception of Baal and to demonstrate that God is a God who saves and he's a God of power and he's a jealous God. It was that spirit that John the Baptist comes in. He's standing in the Jordan River and he's saying to God's people, stop being divided. Prepare your hearts, because God is about to move. God is about to show up on the scene. Jesus is about to show up on the scene. Prepare your hearts for it. Prepare, prepare, prepare. Order the wood on the altar. Rebuild the altar of the Lord so that God can answer by fire and God answered by fire and he sent the one who was furious in his zeal for the house of God in his passion for his father's house. It was Jesus and John the Baptist set the stage for it. Now, I wanna ask you a question. If John the Baptist came in the spirit of Elijah to prepare people for the coming of the Lord, then is it possible that God will call a people to step and to walk into a John the Baptist Elijah anointing to prepare a generation for the second coming of the Lord? I believe that with all of my heart. I believe that the spirit of Elijah that was on John the Baptist is the same spirit, same prophetic spirit that God is calling his church to in the hour in which you and I live because we are approaching the coming of the Lord. There are many that have no idea that Jesus is returning but as the church, our blessed hope is the return of the Lord. We believe that God is a God who answers by fire. What does God need? God needs a people who will be a prophetic voice to our generation that stands as it were in the Jordan rivers between the wilderness, exile and wasteland and the promised land found in Jesus and will call people to be baptized in Jesus and step into the promises of God preparing our hearts. God's, we're just not looking back at a John the Baptist. I want you to know today, God's actually calling you to walk in the same spirit that John the Baptist walk in. This last week we, one of the things that we occasionally do with our staff and some of our key leaders is we'll bring church leaders in from sometimes around the country, sometimes around the world. And we had the privilege of having, I can't name the nation that they were from, but two leaders from the underground church in Asia let the hearer understand. It's the largest populated nation on the face of the earth. In 1950, the leader of the Communist Revolution in that nation decided he was gonna eradicate Christianity and at one time they brought it to less than one million Christians in that nation. They estimate that at one point there may have been only 100,000 Christians left. Today there's 98 million Christians in that nation. And we had two leaders from two different streams of the underground church there who came and met with our leaders. Their English names are Joe and Paul. It's another real names. They did that for us and they couldn't speak English. We had a man who's an American who's worked there with them for several, several decades who brought them to us and we met with them. One of these guys, his name's Paul, when this friend of ours met him in this nation, he was 16 years old and leading 20,000 people. Today he has a network of house churches they can't meet in public of over 250,000 Christians. He personally has led over 10,000 people to the Lord. I mean he gave me stories just about miracles, things that God has done. The other man is a fifth generation. He dates all the way back to Hudson Taylor. Every single family member for five generations has been prayed into the kingdom of God and loves Jesus, serves him with all of their heart. And he leads almost 200,000 believers. Between the two, somewhere between a half million and a million believers they represent. Number one, number one thing, number one thing when you ask them how is in the middle of an environment where Christianity is outlawed and where the church can't meet and believers are thrown into prison. One of the guys, check this story out, he complained to the Lord. He said, you know Lord, I'm so tired from doing ministry. I never get a break, I'm always on the run, I'm changing addresses, I just need a break. And so he said, the Lord answered my prayer. I was arrested and thrown into prison for six months. And while I was in prison and after sitting there for a couple of days I said, Lord, this isn't fair. He said, oh, you wanted a break. So now I put you into a place that you can't leave. I have people that bring you three meals a day and they actually wash your clothes and fold it for you. Consider this your vacation. I mean, think about that. And I asked him, I said, what's the number one thing? How is the church growing like that? He said this, he says it's a spirit of boldness. Spirit of boldness. And I would say it's having this John the Baptist wild one mentality. That in the middle of a generation that's just kind of laissez-faire towards spiritual things and kind of a la carte when it comes to the Bible and when it comes to Christianity I believe that God is going to call forth leaders, call forth people that are sitting in the pews that don't have any titles, that work in cubicles and in factory floors, hospital waiting rooms and in classrooms. And he's going to put a spirit of Elijah and John the Baptist on them to be prophetic voices to their generation. It's not gonna be people that stand on platforms. I pray to God that God if Jesus were to come I pray that he wouldn't be doing baptisms in the Jordan he'd be baptizing pulpits because there's a lot of things coming off of pulpits that need to be cleaned up. But I'm telling you when Jesus returns it's not just gonna be power in the pulpit it's gonna be power in the pews. There's gonna be believers, Stevens and Phillips and Debra's that God is raising up marketplace ministers that are John the Baptist in their time and in their generation. I believe it with all my heart. So I wanted to share with you three things about John the Baptist's life that we can draw on if we're gonna become some of the wild ones for God. I believe that's what he's looking for. He's looking for some of us to stop being so polite in our faith. I'm not talking about being rude but I'm talking about the aggression level, the zeal, the urgency level in our faith. Some of us are just way too polite about it. It's like, well, I wanna keep that to myself. My faith is very private. Your faith was never meant to be private. Jesus can be your personal Lord and Savior but he's not your private Lord and Savior. We're meant to go public with this thing. Okay, I didn't preach last week so I'm a little wound up, here we go. Number one, John the Baptist, his identity was shaped in secret and revealed in public. His identity was shaped in secret and revealed in public. Luke chapter one verse 80, I made reference to it a moment ago. It says, and the child that's John the Baptist grew and became strong in spirit and he was in the wilderness until the day of his public appearance or manifestation to Israel. What that means, church, is that for 30 years, nobody knew John the Baptist. Nobody even cared about John. He was in the wilderness. I don't know if his mom brought him care packages. I don't know what the situation was. I just know that he was in the place of private, secret, hiddenness with God. But while he was there, the message that he would bring to Israel was being shaped in his heart. When everybody else was just going about their life, he was being shaped for a moment. You know what's interesting? When we talk about identity, he was able to be a wild one, a prophetic voice call people to repentance. He was able to do that because he wasn't dependent on public opinion about his message. He wasn't checking out the number of Facebook likes as he felt the waters with his message by shooting a couple of lines from his future sermons. Seeing how much reaction he got. The message was being shaped on the inside of him because he was alone with God. You know what, I fear that in our day, we're not being shaped in private, but we're being shaped by public. We're being shaped by public opinion, our identity, who we are. You know, so many of us care so much about what people think about us, especially on social media. And I know we keep coming back to this, but listen, as long as the average person is spending five to six hours a day on social media, we have to talk about it. Because it's the first generation that's ever emerged where insecurity is being birthed by a mass of people that we've never met. Our insecurity, our identity, our beliefs are, is being crafted by a nameless, faceless consensus of people that we only know on a touchscreen. And on top of that, maybe it's being reinforced in other places, but I wanna ask, here's an important question for us tonight, is where is your identity being shaped? Is it being shaped for culture or is it being shaped by culture? Because there's a difference. Arthur Wallace, who's the great revivalist from England, said this, he said, you will either become a prophet to your culture or you will become a product of your culture. Who's shaping us? Are we being shaped in private so that in the given moment, at a given time, in a given day, there is an appearance that we make, there's a moment, a chai roast moment in our life where we step forward, and what God has been shaping in the secret place is actually what comes out of us. Or are we living our lives like malleable clay where we're allowing everybody to shape us and form us and conform us to what they think we're supposed to be, because at the end of the day, what we really want is to be like and we have to be accepted. Wasn't just John the Baptist who lived like this, Jesus lived like this. Listen to these words that Jesus said in John chapter five. He said, truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise. Where did he see what the Father was doing? Well, he gave us an inference when he taught on prayer in Matthew chapter six, verse six. When you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who sees in the secret place and will reward you openly. Who's in the secret place? The Father is. The secret place is the place of hiddenness. When we pray, God shapes us. When we spend time with God and God alone, when there's no accolades, when nobody can click alike, when nobody can shape us, when nobody can speak into us, but it's just us and God. God's promise is that he, the Father, will speak to us. He will show us what he's doing. He will give us discernment and sensitivity to the movement of his spirit so that we can walk and step with his Holy Spirit. We can step out of the secret place into the public place, having our identity shaped by the Father, by his word, by his spirit, and stand against the currents and the winds of culture that are all around us and not be moved and not be shaken by them because we've allowed God to define us. But listen, if we live prayerless lives, when we live prayerless lives, when we live wordless lives, we walk around with our hearts looking for somebody to tell us who we are. We are, prayerlessness leads to insecurity. And when we're insecure and we, listen, if we'll step into the public arena and the public arena, we all know this is a spiritual battle zone. If you step into the public arena without a strong biblical identity that is shaped and crafted by the Holy Spirit, you step into the battle zone without your armor on, the enemy doesn't even have to think twice about taking you out, it's easy. It's easy. None of us would ever step into an MMA ring, mixed martial arts ring, having not trained. Can you imagine that? Stepping into the octagon or whatever and it's like, well, you know, I did the elliptical machine about eight months ago, but I've been on a diet of pudding pops and pizza. And tater tots, and I don't have a six pack, but I got a six gallon. And you step into the arena with some guy who's got teeth growing out of his nose, muscles that you didn't even know there were places in the human anatomy that muscles could grow like that. And he's aggressive and he's all wound up on Red Bull and all he wants to do is punch a hole through something and he's looking at you. He doesn't even have to train to take you out. He's just like, and you're gonna fall down. But when you've trained and you know what you're capable of and you know who you are and you know who you belong to and you know what God is doing, here's what happens when in the secret place you see what God's doing and then when you lead the secret place you do what you've seen the Father doing, you have confidence that you're not blazing a trail on your own, you're just stepping into steps that he's already ordered. John the Baptist had that identity. That's why he could stand in the face of religious leaders and say, you're a snake. You're a viper. Why did you come out here? You don't want to get baptized? And do you think that was popular? That wasn't popular. Nobody was like, he's being mean to us. They're just like, let's take this guy out and John's like, argh. It was like, oh, he's a little, mmm. He wasn't apologizing. Was that a little rough? Was that a little hard? Did that hurt your feelings? Here's what I believe. I don't have a scripture to support it but it is thus say at the pastor. And I think I can make a biblical case for it. When John saw Jesus, he knew who he was by the spirit. And I think when John the Baptist saw the people that were coming out to be baptized, he saw the hunger and the desperation. But when he saw the religious people, he also saw a religious spirit. He evaluated people by the spirit, not by the flesh. How different would our lives look if we evaluated situations and circumstances and people by the spiritual influence that we discern as opposed to what it looks like in the natural? I mean, it's just some food for thought. Just think about that for a moment. Number two, his life message was convicting instead of conforming. Matthew chapter 11, Jesus speaking about John the Baptist. It says as they went away, Jesus began to speak to the crowds concerning John. He says, what did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken by the wind. What then did you go out to see? A man dressed in soft clothing. Behold, those who wear soft clothing are in king's houses. What did then you go out to see? A prophet, yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. Jesus said this about his life. He said, what did you think you were gonna go see when you went and saw John the Baptist? A reed shaken in the wind. A reed is like a cat tail. Think of a cat tail that you see out in the swamps. He says, what did you think you were gonna go see? Did you think you were gonna bend and be shifting and moving by the wind of contradiction and the wind of resistance that he was getting? He says, what did you think you were gonna go? Did you think you were gonna go out there and see a guy dressed in soft clothing? Were you offended at how he looked? Because you wanna find somebody in fine clothing, then you go into a king's palace. In other words, John the Baptist didn't come to find pleasure and to find comfort and luxury. John the Baptist didn't come to be shaped and to be moved by what other people thought. John the Baptist was a prophet, which means, thus saith the Lord. He came and his lifestyle was all about conviction, not conforming. And there's so much pressure today for us to conform, to just, come on, go along with it. Just be like everybody else and just do what the rest of society is doing. Romans chapter 12, verses one and two, some of Paul's greatest words. He says, I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, that you present yourselves a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. And then verse number two, he says, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind so that you might prove what is the good, the acceptable, and the perfect will of God. Paul says, don't allow the world to squeeze you into their mold. That's what we like to do. We like to squeeze people into our mold. We've got a mold of what we think people should be like. Even in a church, we've got a mold, all kinds of different molds of what we think Christians should be like. But we're not called to be conformed to the image of the world. We're called to be transformed so that our life is a prophetic statement. Number three, he laid down his life so that his generation could encounter Jesus. Why don't you think about that one? He laid down his life so that his generation could encounter Jesus. John 1.31, it says, I myself did not know him, but for this purpose I came baptizing with water that he might be revealed to Israel. John said, I did everything that I've done so that he would be revealed. He wanted his generation to have a revelation of Jesus, not just be able to read words that God promises about a Messiah or a Savior, but to actually see him, three-dimensional, in the flesh. He so desperately wanted people to see him. And when he saw him, he says, behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, he pointed them out. He pointed them out and says, there he is. Listen to these words of Luke talking about John the Baptist that says, when he comes, he will go before him in the spirit and the power of Elijah to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just to make ready for the Lord a people prepared. A people prepared, for what? To encounter Jesus. When Jesus steps on the scene, John was there to go, there he is. He's the one. Do you know that before John the Baptist was beheaded by Herod? Here was a statement about Jesus. His disciples one day came to him and said, a paraphrase, aren't you upset that Jesus is more popular than you? I mean, you started off, John. You had the franchise, baby. I mean, you were out there. People were coming to you, you were baptizing people. But now Jesus, you're in prison and Jesus got all of these followers and multitudes and crowds that are coming out to him. Aren't you jealous of that? Here's John's response. He must increase and I must decrease. He must increase, I must decrease. John was saying, I'm willing to become nothing so that people will see him. Is our life making much of Jesus? What's your life pointing at? When people get around you, what's your life pointing at? Is it pointing to Jesus? If people get close enough to you, here's a serious question. If people get close enough to you for long enough, will their face turn in the direction in which they will see and encounter Jesus? Or is it pointed at something else? If people get close enough to you for long enough, what are they gonna get immersed with? What's gonna splash off of them? That's what John, you got close enough to John, he's bloop, you're getting immersed. I baptize you. Concerned about your salvation and stuff. Nacho Libre, you should watch it. You got close enough to him, you got wet with repentance. People get close enough to you, what do they get wet with? See, here's what I know. The scripture that out of this whole thing is probably the most overlooked scripture out of Mark chapter one, the most overlooked part of the verse. Here it is, ready? Verse number five. And all the country of Judea and all Jerusalem were going out to him and were being baptized in the river Jordan. You can read that and just think, oh, it's not a big thing. No, listen, what attracted people to make a 10, 15 mile journey? What attracted them? They didn't go out there and get an inspirational message. He was dealing with their hearts. And the reason why John did it is because he wasn't angry. It was out of a purity that was produced in hiddenness and a zeal for God and a zeal for his people to be saved. And his passion came through him. His zeal came out of him and pointed to Jesus. There was something supernatural on what he was doing. And I believe with all my heart, God wants to do this in churches and God wants to do that in individuals that when people get close enough to us, the presence of God splashes off on them and there's a conviction. It's like, man, I need to get my life right with God. That God wants to raise up Christians who aren't being contaminated by the world, but when the world gets close to them, they're getting contaminated by the Holy Spirit. There's like, Jesus, tell me more about Jesus. Tell me more about grace. Tell me more about this one because it's no longer just a religious set of instruction. It's encounter with the living lamb of God. Listen to these words in closing from Leonard Ravenhill. The greatest, one of the greatest revivalists of the last century. He said these words. He says, you never have to advertise a fire. Everyone comes running when there's a fire. Likewise, if your church is on fire, you will not have to advertise it. The community will already know it. And I want to tell you, listen, I want to tell you tonight, if your life is on fire, you don't have to advertise it. If your heart is on fire for Jesus as a true disciple of Jesus, following hard after Jesus, not conforming to the world but being transformed in your thinking to be like Jesus. If you're responding to the call of Jesus to follow me, to abide in me and to buy from me gold that's refined in the fire, the three commands of Jesus, follow me, abide in me and purchase from me, gold refined in fire. If our response is yes to that, somebody's gonna get close to you and they're gonna find themselves baptized in the presence of God. They may not even know it. They're just gonna be, what's different about your life? Where did this come from? You're different than any other Christian. You don't seem to compromise. Man, seriously, you actually pray? You're not like doing Tai Chi and yoga and trying to find yourself in peace and whatever that oil is that TC, whatever oil, you're not doing all that to try and find your peace? No, where do you find your peace? I find my peace in the presence of God. I know who I am. I knows who I am. I know why I'm here. I know the presence of God. I walk in the peace of God and if you get too close to me, God is gonna contaminate you with the radioactive presence of God and your life will never be the same. We need a generation transformed because they've been pointed to Jesus and they've encountered the living God. Come on, somebody, that's worth clapping for right there. Do you stand up with me all over the room? Lord, make us living encounters with Jesus. Make each one of us walking prophetic wild ones who've been shaped in secret, who are being influenced by the wind of your spirit and not the wind of this present age. Lord, make us baptizers, calling our generation to encounter Jesus, the glorious, beautiful lamb of God, Savior of the world. Lord, we're tired of complacency. We're tired of being torn between two decisions. Lord, help us to rebuild the altar in our generation. Help us to point people to Jesus. Help our lives to give off the fragrance of life and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, God. Lord, we don't wanna be people that are looking for somebody to do what you've called us to do. We wanna be prophetic signposts that when people get around us, Lord, our life gives off the fragrance of salvation. Lord, the people are immersed in the goodness of God. Lord, make us convictional. Help us to not be conformed, but to be convicting. Tonight all over this place, here's what I felt led this afternoon to pray for. I believe that there are many people right now. It's like something's burning on inside of you. As I'm speaking, it's like deep is calling under deep in your heart. You know, it's like, this is what I wanna be. This is what I wanna do. God, I wanna be a wild one for you, not by my outward appearance, but by my internal defiance. God, this is what I'm called to be. It begins by us, number one, repenting ourselves and saying, God, I'm sorry for living compromised. I'm sorry for being asleep in the light. And then it continues by saying, Lord, I'm committed to living my life in a state of hiddenness and shaping by you alone, so that my life will be a prophetic voice to my generation. Tonight all over this room, I believe that there are many of us that God is tapping on saying, this is your call. This is your life. This is what you were meant for. If there's something burning on the inside of you and you say, God, tonight I'm repenting, which means I'm changing my mind and I'm saying from this night forward, I wanna be a wild one. I wanna be a prophetic signpost in my generation. God, I don't know how, I just know that if I'm with you, I'm gonna see what you're doing and I'm saying I wanna be radically obedient to what you're saying and doing. If that's you, I want you to just raise your hand all over the room. God's moving in your life. Lord, tonight you see the hands all over this room. I pray right now for a release of the spirit of grace over every life in this place that's saying yes to you, Jesus. Saying yes, God, here I am. Lord, change my mind. I will no longer be torn between two opinions. I will no longer bow at the altar of leisure and comfort and complacency. Tonight I am declaring the altar of the Lord is gonna be built back up in my life. The secret place is gonna be open for business once again. Father, I'm drawing near to you. I want my life to be a living conviction and confession, not confirmation. Lord, do that in us tonight. Lord, give us holy sobriety of the hour that we live in to prepare a people for the coming of the Lord. Jesus, we know you're coming soon. And when you do come, you ask the question when the Son of man comes, will he find faith on the earth? As for us at Radiant Church, we declare, Lord, I want you to find faith and faithfulness here in us and in this place. Jesus, move in our lives, move in our lives, move in our lives, God. Lord, we're willing to lay it all down so that we will not be reeds shaken in the wilderness. We'll be those who prepare the way, prepare the way for the Lord. Prepare the way for an encounter. Do it in us, I pray tonight, in Jesus' name, amen. Amen, amen, amen.