Let's grab our Bibles and stand together. Turn to Acts chapter number 2. Acts chapter 2. Sorry, I'll try not to mumble too much. Acts chapter number 2 in your Bible. Hmm. Huh? Yes. It's all good. As long as I don't lose a paper in my Bible, I'm good to go. But you know what? Look at this. I printed this ahead of time in preparation and then I probably should have checked to see if everything was there before each message because it's not there for this one. So there you go. Acts chapter number 2. I just looked down, I'm like, yep, totally missed all that. Let's look at verse number 41. Then they that gladly received His Word were baptized, and the same day were added unto them about 3,000 souls. Let's pray. Sorry, that's Acts chapter 2, verse number 41. We'll read that again. Then they that gladly received his word were baptized, and the same day were added unto them about 3,000 souls. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you so much for your word. We thank you, Lord, for the opportunity to open it tonight. And Lord, we thank you for the opportunity to talk about our Baptist distinctives. Lord, we just pray that you'd help us to take these things carry them with us, help us to know why we are Baptist. Lord, we just thank you again for this opportunity tonight and pray that we would apply what we learn in Jesus' name. Amen. You may be seated. All right. So, I've been going through the eight Baptist distinctives, and so far, what have we done? I need you all to chime in here with me. Letter B, what was the first one? The Bible is our authority for life, right? Letter A. That's the next one. Say again. Autonomy of the local church. That is, each individual church answers to God and no one above them, between them and God. Letter P. The priesthood of the believer. Very good. Letter T. The first T. Two ordinances. Very good. Two ordinances. What are they? Baptism and the Lord's Supper. Yes. There you go. And last time we looked at letter I. Individual soul liberty. Very good. And then tonight, does anybody already have it? There you go. Saved, baptized church members. Now you said saved Baptist church members. That works too. In a Baptist church that is. But yes, saved and baptized church members. So we believe that every member of a Baptist church must be born again. They must be a born again believer. And we believe that they must have subsequently, or after the fact, been baptized Right? By immersion upon evidence of salvation and that by public profession within the local body. That's why, by the way, the public profession we do, when somebody gets saved, right? We say, hey everybody, so-and-so just got saved. And everybody says, whoo, praise the Lord, right? But then that public profession goes to full public profession. Baptism. Right? And so they profess that they've trusted Christ and they show in symbolism that they are in Christ. And so they then get baptized. And so when they're baptized, they are then joined to that body. That's why I took you to Acts 2, verse 41. If you remember in Acts 2 what took place, right? Just to kind of give a little bit of a history lesson here. Jesus, about... 50 days before this day, was crucified. He was buried and He rose again 3 days later, and then He was around people. Did you all know that He walked the earth for 40 days after Forty days after he was risen from the dead. Forty days. And I watched a video this morning. I don't know if it's true or not, so I'll start it out with that, okay? But I watched a video this morning that somebody said that they had record of the high priest Caiaphas had in his journal that during that forty days Jesus showed up and and like said thou art the man kind of thing you've you've condemned me and here I am something like that I don't I don't know the exact details but interesting he would have been around long enough forty days in fact it was causing quite a stir among the people around Jerusalem and so he was and what's interesting his ministry was in Galilee right there was some time that his ministry was in was in Jordan and then you know we did some things in Samaria we talked about right back in well on Wednesday night and we we see that he is that his ends up his ministry ends up in Jerusalem he ends up giving his life just outside the city on Golgotha and and then he tells the disciples at the end of that 40 days he says to the disciples Terry here right Terry Terry here, amen. Terry wasn't left behind tonight. Terry here, amen. That's not what he meant though. Terry here means to wait here, right? And so he said to do what? He says, Terry here, or Terry in Jerusalem, right? until the promise is received." I'm just paraphrasing, okay? So then he tells them to do that, and the next thing you see, and then he goes on to say, of course, the famous passage that we don't want to leave out, and that is verse 9 of chapter 1 of Acts where he says, Verse eight of chapter one of verse X. He says But you shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost has come upon you and you shall be witnesses unto me in Jerusalem and in all Judea and in Samaria and under the uttermost part of the earth and so He told them stay here and wait the promise is coming the promise of the Spirit is coming and then he took off didn't even count down from 10 just off he went right and they and they watch the sky like a bunch of people watching a one of those things that take off from from Cape Canaveral space shuttle right so that he they watched him go up into the sky and then he sent a couple messengers in some some some nice clothes And they said to him, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? In other words, get to what he told you to do. Now, he told them to go into all the world and preach the gospel, but he told them first, wait here. wait here in Jerusalem. Now, that command to wait in Jerusalem was not for every generation of Christians. Just so you know. That was for the apostles. Well, the close disciples. Because you'll find that when they were in the upper room, how many people were there with them? Say again? Brother Wilhelm wins the prize. 120. That's in verse number 15. And then we find that the Lord shows up as the Holy Ghost. And He then baptizes them. They are then baptized with the Spirit. Or rather, in the Spirit in that sense. And they had over their heads tongue, cloven tongues of fire, right? Now, I'm not afraid to talk about this because it's the Bible, right? Amen? Amen? The Day of Pentecost doesn't belong to a certain group of Christianity. It belongs to the Lord. Alright? And by the way, there's no group of Christianity practicing what they practiced on the Day of Pentecost. There's none of them doing that. Now, could God maybe do that again? That's up to him, not me. But the fact is, I'm really trying not to go into that subject tonight. But if you look at the context, if you look at the verses after this, they're not speaking gibberish. As a matter of fact, they understand what they're saying, and so does everyone else. Everybody understood in their native language, the language wherein they were born. There was not confusion in that sense. It was understood. Now, that being said, quite a stir was caused. They what is it that they heard by the way did they hear what what are they here? Did they hear something about a purple bowtie or a Nissan and a Honda or what they hear? They heard the wonderful words of life. Amen. And that's exactly what Brother Wilhelm said. He says here, we do hear them speak. Where'd that go? I lost it. There it is. Verse number 11. It says, we do hear them speak in our own tongues the wonderful works of God. Amen. So they preached that, and then Peter stood up, and he began to preach the Gospel to them. He told them about Jesus and what He did, and what they did concerning Jesus, and then what God the Father did. And he says, let me freely speak unto you. And then he goes on to talk about David and all of that. But then he goes on to talk about how this was an answer to a fulfillment of the prophecy that was to come. And by the way, that's the only fulfillment of that prophecy there. That's the final fulfillment of that prophecy. We'll put it there. And so. What happens next? Verse number 37, Now when they heard this, they were pricked in their heart. What do we call that? Conviction, that's right. And said unto Peter and to the rest of the apostles, Men and brethren, what shall we do? Now, I'm going to propose to you something here. And I believe it's correct. That is that those three thousand. They get baptized later here. Got saved. In. Verse thirty seven. Because believers ask what shall we do. On believers. When they ask, what shall we do? They're not believers yet. You all with me here? If they ask, what shall we do? They're not believers yet. Why? Because once they've understood the Gospel, they understand that everything has been done for their soul to be saved. Peter had already gone through and told them about what Jesus did. Right. And so they understood that and they said now what do we do. They understood the gospel they believe the gospel and now what do we do. And so Peter responds by saying. Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost." Now, I don't fully understand that end part there. I have to be honest. My understanding of it is that it was a transitional thing. They hadn't received the Holy Ghost until that day. So, there's a slight transition there. At least on that day, okay? So, what takes place? Oh, by the way, we'll say that in a minute. Alright. Just so that we're clear, that phrase, for the remission of sins, is not what you would initially think. Like, oh, you've got to repent and you've got to be baptized so that your sins can be remitted. That's not what it says. It says, for the remission of sins. For the remission of sins is the same thing when you say, Brother Phil is wanted for murder. We're not looking for Him because He's so good at murder and we need somebody to commit it. Right? Just the same, you're not getting your sins remitted because you did those things. You're doing those things because your sins were remitted. Right? If we're looking for brother Phil for murder, it's because he's committed it, not because we're trying to get him to. Right? Amen. And if we ever try to get you to commit murder, don't do it. Okay? So, anyhow, he says, he goes on there, and he says, "...and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost." And then he talks about the promise and all these things, right? Referring back to that there. Oh, by the way, verse number 41, "...they gladly received His word." They that gladly received His word. Interesting thing to think about here. How many of those 3,000 then spoke in tongues? It doesn't. You're right. It doesn't. It doesn't say that any of them did. Now, it doesn't strictly say that they didn't, because it probably doesn't need to say that they didn't. But it does go into some other details, right? They received His Word, then they were baptized, and they were added unto them. By the way, after they were added unto them, fear came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were done by the apostles. Then they believed, and they were together, they did things common, Now this isn't something that we do today, but they sold their possessions and they took care of making sure everybody had needs, so they had everything common, everybody that had need had what they needed. And then notice here, this is something that we somewhat should probably practice at least a little bit. That is, he says, they are continuing daily with one accord. Now, we are not going to do that in the temple because it's not there anymore. But with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house. They did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart. Amen. That, by the way, did not end that week. There was still a common practice of believers They would have their time that they would meet together for service, but then when they part from one another, they would still have fellowship throughout the week right. We believe that that's necessary for believers to have fellowship throughout the week. Now I know everybody's busy and everybody has jobs and everybody has to do things right. But we have technology. So at the very least we can text each other or call each other and say hey I'm thinking about you or hey I'm praying for you you know we can have that fellowship there now. There's no fellowship like the fellowship of having a meal together. That's it's just it's it's a thing you know it's a big thing we're going to do that here in a little bit. I may or may not eat with you I might just watch you eat. I'll just sit around look at all you guys eat. But. But this Baptist distinctive we believe that members of the church are saved and baptized. That is a Baptist distinctive it is a it is an historic Baptist distinctive. In other words, Baptists throughout the ages have believed this doctrine that members of the church are saved and baptized. Now, let me ask you a question. If somebody and I've got to be I've got to be clear on this without trying to open the can of worms. If somebody is not a member of our church, are they going to heaven? If they're saved, yes. Yes. If somebody's saved and they're not a member of a church like ours, are they going to heaven? Okay, let me get more specific. Somebody's saved and they're not a Baptist. Are they going to heaven? Yes, if they're saved, they're going to heaven. If they've trusted Christ as their Savior, they're going to heaven. Period. Whether they ever become a Baptist or even know what one is. Okay, just wanted to make that clear because we do believe in local church only. We do believe in the Bride and all that stuff. But we do not believe that only Baptists go to heaven. Absolutely positively do not believe that only Baptists go to heaven. Just to be 100 percent clear on that. Because we're talking about baptism. We're talking about church membership. We're talking about salvation. OK. You cannot be a Baptist without being saved. That's why if someone's a member of our church and they get saved. Well. That's good. They weren't saved. They got saved. But then we say, okay, we realize that your membership is invalid because you weren't saved. You should have been saved already. And so we remove them from membership and then we offer them the opportunity to be baptized into the membership. Easy peasy, right? If that's such a thing to say, right? What's that? Yeah, they were just dunked before, right? That wasn't scriptural baptism. Scriptural baptism takes place after you've been saved, right? Not in order to be saved. After you've been saved. Your baptism doesn't take you to heaven. Your church membership doesn't take you to heaven. Your membership in any organization, visible or invisible, will not take you to heaven. It is only the blood of Jesus Christ that takes you to heaven. Does that make sense? Alright, just so we're all clear on that, there was a recent, not among our church, but other churches, that somebody was a Baptist Bride or so-called, and they said, well, they believe that you have to be Baptist to go to heaven. That is an incorrect position of Baptist Briders. They do not believe you have to be a Baptist to go to heaven. They don't believe that you have to be baptized to go to heaven either. They believe that you have to be baptized Baptist to be a Baptist. Alright. They also believe that you have to be a Baptist to be in the Bride. But they also do not believe that you must be in the Bride to go to Heaven. That's where you get Catholic doctrine. Catholic doctrine is you must be in the Bride to go to Heaven. Crickets, worms, everything, everywhere now. We've just opened the can and we've thrown them all over the place. Okay, so those are some real technical things that we spent weeks and weeks and weeks talking about and I just gave them in statements. Alright, so just so you know. The the important thing is what we're talking about tonight is we're talking about church membership church membership takes place based upon your salvation and baptism that's not your heaven and hell that your church membership if the salvation is real then heaven is already your your destination Now. Since we're talking about that church membership and church. All that right with a lot of these studies just cross back and forth don't they. So we've been talking in our Sunday school through our church statement of faith. And the section on membership. We say that we believe that church members are those who have been saved as described in section G. Salvation. Sorry, I have to go back to section G so you know what we're talking about. We believe that salvation is the gift of God given to man by grace and received by personal faith in the Lord Jesus Christ whose precious blood was shed on Calvary for the forgiveness of our sins. We believe that God is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. We are neither Calvinistic nor Arminian if you want to know what that is ask later. All right. So. We believe. That. Church members are those who have been saved as described in Section G. We already talked about it. And baptized in this church. Or, as described in section H, which I turned the wrong way. I need to learn my alphabet. Baptism. We believe that all who have received Christ as their Lord and Savior should be baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and Holy Spirit. That baptism is by immersion in the likeness of the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. We believe that baptism publicly identifies with Christ and adds the individual to the local church under whose authority they are being baptized. So back to that part on church membership so that you have those two in your in your mind there. So this is baptized that is by a Baptist church whose doctrines line up with the doctrines of the Bible as lined out here in this statement. Pretty simple. We believe that. Membership transfers are possible based upon the authority of the sending church and the acceptance of the receiving church upon declaration of agreement with the statement of faith and church covenant. So there's there's the position are just a simple simple statement on the position of saved baptized church members. Is that all clear? I know I dragged some worms out of the can. But does that make sense? All right. We're going to cut the live feed. I know that was really fast. That was like a short...