Ep 023 || New Beginnings

Well, hey, Pando family, welcome to our Southeast Christian Church Pando exclusive podcast. My name is Derek, this is Brandon. We're excited to be back with you guys this week. If you've been tracking with us for a while, welcome back. If you're brand new, we're glad to have you. If you're looking for a place to grow in your faith with Christ, then this is the place for you. Each week, we kind of just discuss the sermon from Southeast Christian Church that you'll see on the Pando app that we post each Sunday. And so hopefully you've had a chance to watch that from this past week, which was Easter, Brandon. Yeah, Easter. Can't believe it's April already, but this week we're going to be talking about Noah. All right. And so Kyle's message, as we kind of jump in today, is coming from Genesis chapter six. So we are continuing, even though it was Easter, right, we stepped out a little bit talking about the resurrection of Christ, right, and why we celebrate that. But Brandon, maybe for those that didn't get a chance this year, or even this week, to be able to dive in a little bit more to Easter or what that means, give us a little short summary of like, why do we celebrate Easter as Christians? Like why do we celebrate Easter? So well, I mean, we celebrate Easter because it's the cornerstone of everything we believe. And we celebrate Easter, the events of that first Easter weekend with, we have Good Friday that we celebrate on Friday, where we remember Jesus' sacrifice on the cross, right, that He died our death in that moment. Paul says that God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, so that we may become the righteousness of God. And so we remember on Friday, like Jesus went to this place of death and took all our sin, took all our shame, and took it to the cross and destroyed it. Saturday, we don't talk too much on that because...

It's a somber day. Yeah, it's a somber day. I've heard it called Silent Saturday, just the idea of, there's really nothing we have from that day of what the apostles were doing or anything like that. It was the Sabbath, so it was a day of rest, where they just kind of have to sit in this uncertainty and you think about it from their perspective, not knowing what is coming. And to think like, oh, just yesterday, they saw their entire world fall apart. They really thought Jesus was the Messiah. They thought He was the hope of Israel. And so they have to sit in that for an entire day and just kind of wonder, well, what's next? What's gonna happen? And then Sunday comes around and we celebrate Christ's resurrection, that the women went to that tomb early that morning, found it empty. And the gospel writers differ a little bit on exactly how they present those events. And I think it's because they're all kind of seeing it from their own perspective of that morning. You have Matthew, and then Mark's account is normally considered to be the preaching of Peter, and then John, who's the apostle John, has his own. So three of the gospel writers are exact eyewitnesses of it, and I think they're kind of showing us a little bit of the hecticness of that day. Because all they know at the beginning is, hey, Jesus's body is gone. The tomb is empty. Did someone take him? Yeah, one of them. Yeah. Right, yeah. So what has happened? As it slowly dawns on everyone through the day, what has happened? Mary Magdalene goes back to the tomb after this initial wave, she sees the resurrected

Jesus. You have the disciples on the road to Emmaus in Luke's gospel, who Jesus walks alongside them for a time and explains, this is what the Messiah had to do. And when they realize it's Jesus, they run back to Jerusalem. You have Jesus appearing to the disciples Sunday night, all except Thomas, who wasn't there, and sharing a meal with them. And you just see, they go from this Saturday of just depression and gloom and darkness to a Sunday where at first everything seems insane. And then they realize the greatest thing that's ever happened in human history happened on that day, that Jesus came back from the dead, that He rose from the grave. And as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, that is what is of first importance, that Christ died, was buried according to the scriptures, was raised according to the scriptures, and then He appeared to over 500 people, that everything we believe... Which is a lot of people. Yes, yeah. This is not just a few guys getting together and formulating this story. We have the gospel writers and those firsthand eyewitnesses of this, but to over 500 people, it's crazy. Yeah, yeah. And so we just see that everything we... we believe hinges on on that weekend, that this is who Jesus was, this is what he came to do, and this is what he ultimately did. And you know, probably in terms of what Easter means, right, the best chapter on that is probably 1 Corinthians 15, where Paul really gets in and unpacks, this is exactly what the resurrection means, and basically it comes down to if Christ has not been resurrected, then we're to be pitied above all other men. Yeah. But Christ indeed has been risen from the dead, is how Paul says it, and he just really tells us this is what the resurrection means, this is what Easter is about. And if you haven't looked at that chapter in a while, I just encourage you to do that. Open up 1 Corinthians 15, Paul writing to this church in Corinth that

is so messed up, and saying, hey, this is the resurrection, this is why it gives us hope, and this is how we live out of that reality now. Well, and Sunday changes everything. Yeah. You know, Sunday changes everything, and I can imagine for those disciples that had been following Jesus for, you know, what, nearly three years, walking with him hand-in-hand each day, seeing him perform miracles, for him claiming to be God, to having this, like, really unique, you know, Passover supper experience with him this night before, then the teacher, this rabbi, their friend that they've been following, right, gets arrested, and then he's beaten and flogged and almost ripped to shreds, being unrecognizable by these beatings that he's getting, and then being made to carry this heavy wooden cross up to this hill, where his hands and his feet would be nailed into this cross, right, so that he would do that in our place, right, he would do that in our place, and even that, right, is incredible to think about. But yet, you know, you can just imagine what the disciples had to have felt, like, to witness that after they have kind of just left him after he's been, you know, arrested and put on that cross that Saturday. My gosh, talk about all hope being lost. But then Sunday, like you said, like, I can only imagine the confusion of, like, well, hold on a second, like, what do you mean his body's gone? Right. But then for it to turn out to be their wildest dreams fully realized, that Jesus has actually risen from the grave and is there with them. It's mind-blowing. Yeah, and the change in them is remarkable when you think about it, and oddly enough, it's probably best illustrated by Thomas, right, because Thomas, like I said, he's not there that first Sunday. He doesn't see Jesus, and he very famously doubts, like, come on, you guys. Right. Like, apparently, like, groups of men have always been the same, where it's like, they're trying to trick me. They're trying to pull my leg. They're making a joke out of this whole thing. And so Thomas just, he gets a lot of flack for it, but he's absolutely in the right, like, hey, because the text tells us in John, like, Jesus showed them the wounds on his hands. And so Thomas's line is, well, unless I see that, unless I can put my fingers in the wounds, I'm not gonna believe. So he spends a week of just doubting, and these guys are

just, they're goofing with me right now. And it's not till that next Sunday that Jesus appears while Thomas is there, and gives Thomas the proof that he wants. But Thomas's immediate response, according to God's gospel, John's gospel, is to say, my Lord and my God, that he goes from this place of intense doubt to, no, like, this is absolutely true, and this is who Jesus is. To public declaration. Yes, yeah. And we see that in the rest of the disciples, that they go from, on silent Saturday, they are scared of the Sanhedrin and the Pharisees. They're hiding out away from them, to just weeks later, Peter and John stand before the Sanhedrin for preaching Christ, and they're like, we're gonna preach Jesus anyway. We don't care what you guys tell us. Well, they've seen their risen King in the flesh. So the change that Easter Sunday makes, even in their hearts, and their attitudes, and their actions, is remarkable when you read through the narrative of the gospels, that they go from being scared and insecure, to being bold and confident in proclaiming the risen Jesus. Yeah. And so, just knowing that, like, I think no matter, whoever is watching this today, where you may be at, you know, what maybe your experience is with the Bible, or reading it, or maybe even hearing for the first time, like, that may have been the first time that you're like, that's, I've never heard that, right? I've always kind of heard about Easter being the day that Jesus, you know, rose from the grave, but walking into that, didn't really know much about it. I hope, and I pray that that's helpful. That, you know, what we believe in, like, it is faith, right? But what we would believe is that it's faith based on real eyewitness testimony of what... what happened that has been carried down from generation to generation to generation, and it is what we can put an anchor, the anchor of our lives in, that because of Sunday, gosh, everything changes. Right. Right?

Everything changes. And one of the kind of the parallels that we'll get into here in a few minutes is that we were talking about 1 Peter, right? We were talking about 1 Peter. What was that? 1 Peter… 321? Yeah. Pulled out, right? Pulled out. Yeah. Let's find that because Kyle brought this up and he used this verse or this passage to be able to tie the Easter message into baptism and into Noah. Yeah. So Brent, would you read just that short little passage there and we'll kind of tie that into what… Yeah. So I'll pick up in verse 18 because Peter is kind of painting a picture of a little bit of silent Saturday, I guess, in what he's talking about. But he says, Christ suffered for our sins once for all time. He never sinned, but he died for sinners to bring you safely home to God. He suffered physical death, but he was raised to life in the Spirit. So he went and preached to the spirits in prison, those who disobeyed God long ago when God waited patiently while Noah was building his boat. It's a little complicated passage. Right. I think you're thinking like, whoa, hold on, what? Yeah. I think he's just saying that, you know, the freedom that Jesus's death provided, you know, the freedom from sin is that, you know, he's painting a picture of like,

this is for everybody, like throughout all time, right? So only eight people were saved from drowning in that terrible flood. And that water is a picture of baptism, which now saves you, not by removing dirt from your body, but as a response to God from a clean conscience. It is effective because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And I think that's one of the most, some of the theological particularities aside, I think that's one of the most concise passages about why baptism has power, right? It's not because of the water. It's not because the water is special or consecrated, or we flew it in from the Jordan River. The water has power because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is because of the faith we have in Jesus's death, burial, and resurrection that baptism is effective, right? And so Peter's just painting this picture of, hey, this baptism is a picture of what happened in Noah's day, that the water was a symbol of judgment for those outside the ark, but for those in the ark, it was washing away everything that was outside. It was making the world new. And like Kyle said this weekend, when the door to the ark opened back up, everything was brand new because of what the water had washed away. Well, no pun intended, but let's dive in to the story of Noah, and then we'll kind of land with talking about baptism here in just a little bit. I think that'll be kind of a great next step and something to think about for you watching this, talking about baptism, what that means, what that means for you in your relationship with Christ. But, so we're going to go all the way back to the first book in our Bible called Genesis, right? And as we've been going through this in a sermon series, Kyle brought back up Genesis 6. This is kind of where we've been landing. So the story with Noah kind of goes from what, chapter six all the way through nine, ten, nine or ten.

So several chapters. So several chapters. Brandon, but I remember growing up, and I even think for our kiddos now at home, we've bought them books on Bible characters and Bible stories, and it's just one of the ways they're introduced to scripture at a young age. But oftentimes, you know, the books that our kids have, and I had some growing up too, talking about Noah or even some of the like kid stories about Bible stories, it's this kind of picture of like, there's this flood and Noah is so kind to invite in all of these animals to be on this ship that he built, that God had him build so that he could save these animals. And then when the storm subsided, when the water subsided, that God chose Noah and his family and all of those animals to kind of repopulate the earth. And then everybody's happy. Everything is all good. And in a certain degree, right? Some parts of that are true, but there's some really important details of that story that can be left out kind of in children's books, maybe for necessary reasons. But I'd love to dive into some of that today. And so Brandon, kind of talk us through a little bit of like, what is that story of Noah? What state was the world in, especially how it kind of relates to the sermon? Yeah. So it is, you know, it's funny, when you were talking about the books your kids have, when my kids were little. someone had given us a, like the Little Tykes figures. We had a Little Tykes Noah's Ark for them that was like Noah and his wife and an ark and like two of every animal kind of thing. And it's really, like, it's cute. I think it's probably still somewhere in our basement,

but it's one of those things that it's like, this is not really a children's story. This is a pretty- Should have brought that in. We could have put it right here on the table. We should have, we should have seen if it floated. I don't know. But like, it is a very dark story. Yeah, yeah. I think last time we talked about the escalation of sin, that we go from eating this fruit of the tree to the first murder to two chapters after that. Now the world is terrible. Yeah. Like sin has done its work. It has spread throughout the creation. And it talks about how, let's see, it's in 6-5, that the Lord observed the extent of human wickedness on the earth. And he saw that everything they thought or imagined was consistently and totally evil. So we become so warped by the presence of sin that we cannot get our head on straight, right? That we're just thinking about sin. We're thinking about meeting our own desires. It is constantly on our mind. And so God sees just the depravity of man spreading across the earth and comes to this heartbreaking conclusion. Because it says God's heart is broken over it, right?

That he, God comes to regret that he has ever created man. And I don't think we need to think of it in terms of like our regrets. I think what Moses is doing when he's writing this is he's putting kind of our emotions on God so we can understand what's happening here. Like this is heartbreaking to God. Sure. That what mankind has done. So God decides that he is going to wipe out the population of earth with a flood. But in the midst of that decision and God's plan to do that, we see that there's one man who's found favor, who's found grace in God's eyes. And it's Noah. His name is actually pretty telling for who he is. I think Noah's name means rest or relief. Interesting. Yeah, that he's gonna be a rest or relief from the wickedness, the evil that man is doing. So God reaches out to Noah and he gives him a command to build this large boat. And it's actually, I just heard this on Bible Project this morning. They were talking about the story. That the Hebrew word that's translated ark is more commonly a box, like to build this huge box. Interesting. But in the Hebrew language specifically,

it's most commonly used for a coffin. So like build this giant rectangular box. Right. There's a lot of symbolism there. Yeah, because you think about, one of the things Paul will later talk about with baptism is baptism is participation in Christ's death, right? Like go to this place of death. And so he's telling like this symbol that you guys associate with death is gonna become one of life. And so he has Noah build this gigantic box, this gigantic ark. And you get the dimensions there in 615. Make the boat 450 feet long, 75 feet wide, and 45 feet high. This is a- That's an undertaking. Yeah, and you gotta think like, guy doesn't have power tools or anything. Like he doesn't have a power saw or anything. Like he's gotta put in some work to build this boat. So he begins to build this boat, and it is, I don't even know, it's somewhere in there. Like it's a hundred years sort of undertaking. Like it takes a long time. It's a long time. It's not like he's doing this in a matter of like six months or a year or two years. Like it is many, many, many, many decades. Yeah, just build this whole thing, man.

And what's interesting is scholars are a little divided on this. Earlier in Genesis, it talks about how in those days, like the earth was watered by springs. So there are some scholars who think that what Genesis is telling us is at that point in time, it hadn't even started, it had never rained. Wow. And so God is telling Noah, hey, go build this boat because it's gonna rain and flood. So like Noah is building something for a phenomenon he doesn't even know about. Well, I'm imagining for other people, think of the pressure, like to continue following what God has told you to do when to others, it may seem absolutely absurd. Like man, here's this crazy dude again, building this huge boat. Yeah, what even is a boat? We don't have any concept of this, yeah. And so he builds it, God brings the animals. It's not just two by two, by the way, there are some other, there are different quantities for a couple of different animals. But God does specify to know like, hey, make sure you at least have a male and female when you have the two of each animal so that the earth can be repopulated after this. So God shuts the door to the ark. The waters raise up, the rain begins, and we're told that it goes on for 40 days, that

it just continues to rain and pour for that point in time. And after the 40 days, it stops. But there's still, I think the NLT translates it as, you know, the rain goes, it's what, 22 feet higher. Yeah. Then above the highest peaks. So after that much rain over that much time, you got to wait for it to subside, go away. And so Noah and his family spend the rest of their time on the ark just waiting, waiting for the dry ground to reappear, waiting for the earth to kind of get back to normal. And then once all of that rainwater dissipates and disappears, they come out of the ark and everything is brand new. All of the sin, all of mankind's wickedness has been washed away. And they kind of get a new start from that point on. Noah comes out of the ark. He builds an altar, offers a sacrifice to God, and God confirms his covenant with Noah through a sign that we all know pretty well. He confirms his covenant through a rainbow. It says that the rainbow is this sign that he will never again flood the earth. He'll never destroy the earth again by flood. And it's really interesting if you go to the last book of the Bible, you flip ahead to Revelation. One of the very first signs in John's vision of the heavenly throne room is the rainbow throne. There's a rainbow in God's throne room, the sign of the covenant that God's never gonna flood the earth. And to be sure, Revelation is full of some pictures of destruction and some things of the world getting just overrun by things, but there's never any rain. There's never any flood. Interesting. Yeah.

That God keeps his promise to the very end that he's never gonna destroy the earth in that way. And so this is a sign of the covenant that continues through to the end of history, that God even has it in his throne room as a sign of who he is. Yeah. And kind of the devastating part of this story is that everything in the world other than kind of what is preserved in this ark dies, right? It dies. And that's, you know, unfortunately a result of something we talked about, I think it was last week talking, or maybe a couple of weeks ago, just talking about the fall of man, talking about sin, about how, you know, especially as we, as we look at Easter and we especially look at the cross, like there will always be payment due for sin, always. And right, like that is one thing that always blows my mind about Easter and what it makes me to so appreciate what Jesus did for us is that, gosh, like the sin that we have in our lives, like God doesn't just like, ah, I'm just going to look past that, forget that you did that. No, like there is, there is a payment due on all of it, right? There's payment due. And here in the story of Noah, right, like people experienced that, like their payment was due in the waters and the floods came and the beauty of Easter, the beauty of what Jesus did for us is that He was the one that paid that price for us on the cross, which is just wild to think about. It's just, it's just wild to think about. But as we kind of go back to this story with Noah, one of the things that Kyle had talked about that I'd never really thought about was kind of the parallels to baptism that we saw there in first Peter, how, you know, we, through baptism, right, that you had talked about a few minutes ago, like when we are being symbolically buried with Him in His death, right, and risen with Him in His resurrection, explain that to us, like explain what that means. How do we kind of correlate the two of those things together?

Yeah. Well, I think explaining it is probably easier said than done. There is a, you know, there's a passage that Paul kind of gives us in Romans chapter six where he talks about what baptism means, right? And it's a very clear picture of, you know, dying. Because when you... I spent baptism by immersion, right? When you go down under the water, you are submerged in it, you are under it. Sure. And then you come back out of it and are, you know, raised back to life metaphorically. So there is a, there's a very clear object lesson sort of picture and like we're putting this person in this watery grave and we're raising up someone who is new. But Paul talks about this in Romans chapter six, talking to a church that is kind of dealing with some sin issues, says, well, then should we keep on sinning so that God can show us more and more of His wonderful grace? There are people arguing, well, the more I sin, the better God looks. Right. And Paul is like, no. Missing the point. Yeah, you're missing the point. Missing the point. we have died to sin, how can we continue to live in it? Or have you forgotten that when we were joined with Christ Jesus in baptism, we joined Him in His death? For we died and were buried with Christ by baptism. And just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious power of the Father, now we also may live new lives. And since we have been united with Him in His death, we also will be raised to life as He was." And so Paul is just saying that when we are baptized, we are given this very clear picture of... We have participated in Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection, that we have gone down to the grave like He did. We've identified ourselves with what Jesus did. And I think there's a great mystery there, because again, there's nothing special about the water, right? It's about...

It's not holy water. We're not doing anything special to it. It hasn't been specially blessed or anything like that. It may be chlorinated. Sure, yeah. Safety reasons. Yeah, you gotta watch out for that. It's rashes, you don't wanna... But there is this mystery that Jesus takes that act of obedience, that decision as a marker of... No, they're pledging themselves to me. They're pledging themselves to Christ. And I think it's interesting when you look back in Scripture, there's so much imagery around water and it being a marker of things. You have Noah, this is a marker of a new earth and new life. You have... Baptism in and of itself is a little bit based off some of the purification rituals in Leviticus, that you would rinse with water to come out of your uncleanliness and things like that. There's also in the book of Exodus, when God calls the Israelites out of Exodus, what does he lead them through? He leads them through the waters of the Red Sea. He parts the waters and lets them go through on dry ground. And it's interesting that when you look through the Old Testament and you look through the Psalms in particular, that becomes a moment of identification for all of the nation of Israel throughout time. How do we know that we are God's chosen people? Because he led us through the water. And I think that baptism serves a similar purpose for us as Christians, is that how can I know that I've made the choice to follow Jesus? How can I know that I'm made new? Because he led me through the water. Yeah, that's good. And I can look back at that moment, I can look back at that time and say, I identified myself with Jesus there, I met him in the water, and my life has changed since then. Yeah. And I think that is so important for us to understand as Christians, because baptism can be one of those things that we can kind of put off, right? We can kind of push down the road. We can kind of be like, yeah, I thought all I had to do was follow Jesus. I thought all I had to do is declare with my mouth that he is Lord and try to follow him. And what I would argue is that one of the first steps, one of the greatest acts of obedience we have, or we get to have, is by being baptized, is by stepping into the water as God led us through the water to be a part of God's people. And we participate in his death, burial, and resurrection. And that's symbolically what we're doing there physically in the water. You are lowering somebody being buried into the water, and then you're pulling them up out of the water. And what's

interesting is that in the same, in sort of the same way back in, for Noah is that, you know, the old earth, the old world was buried beneath that flood, right? Buried beneath, and as those waters subsided and as it decreased, right, new life began, a new creation began. And scripture also tells us that we will become a new creation in Christ. And it is this mystery of like, there's nothing special about the water, but that act of obedience is so important for us as Christians. Yeah. Well, and it's the very first response that Peter calls for in the book of Acts, right? That after he preaches this first Christian sermon in Acts 2, the crowd, it says, is cut to the heart. Like, they believe. We believe that we have done this to Jesus. We believe that Jesus is the Messiah foretold by the Old Testament. We believe He is the Savior of the world. What should we do? Yeah. They're convinced. They're ready to go. And Peter's response is, Acts 2, 38, is, repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. That he immediately says, hey, if you want to be a part of this, number one, you got to repent. And that's simply, in the Greek language, was a military word, basically meaning an about face. Like, you got to turn around. Yeah. Go the other way. You got to realize, like, I am walking in a way that is apart from God. So you got to turn around. Repent and be baptized. Submit yourself to this. Go and be baptized. Go get dunked in the water." And we see on the first day of the church, 3,000 people, well, 3,000 men, so who knows how many total people, but 3,000 men are baptized as a result of that first sermon. And we talk a little bit, I've heard people say throughout the years, well, doesn't that make baptism like a work? And I would argue, I guess, that baptism is the one element of... I shouldn't say the one element. Baptism is an element you cannot do for yourself. You can pray and ask God for forgiveness, you can repent on your own, but someone else has to dunk you. You can't do it yourself. Did you ever see that viral video of the kid who got really cannonballed into the baptism? I mean, it's kind of... I guess you could, but... You could, but there is that element of like, I need to submit myself, I need to let someone else do this for me and baptize me into the water so that I can step through this. Yeah. And I think it's... I hate to use the word requirements, because I think there are

certain circumstances that... I think of like the thief on the cross next to Jesus. I was reading that the other day. I think maybe it's in Luke, one of the gospels of him kind of arguing with the other thief that Jesus is in between on the cross, and this guy's kind of giving Jesus a hard time, and this guy's basically saying, hey, you know, shut up. Like, we deserve to be here, but this guy doesn't. Lord, remember me. Jesus, remember me when you get into your kingdom. And he says, hey, today you will be with me in paradise, right? Well, at that moment, he didn't have the opportunity to step through that door or step through that act of baptism, that act of obedience, but what he did was he, for whatever reason in that moment, had decided like, no, this guy is who I think he is. He is who he says he was and who he is, and I'm going to place my faith in his ability to save. That has nothing to do with these nails that are in my hands right now, but has more to do with my soul, and I'm going to place my faith and my trust in him. But for those of us that have the opportunity to be baptized, y'all, Pando family, like we, that is a decision that I believe, we believe, we believe Peter in Acts is encouraging you to make, is encouraging you to make, to step forward and say, hey, if I am going to become a citizen of this kingdom that Jesus is leading, I want to participate in this symbolic death, burial, and resurrection that baptism shows us. And you may be saying right now, you know, I don't know how to do that where I'm at right now. I would see who your chaplain is at your prison. I would ask them. I would say, hey, I've been reading my Bible. I've been watching this podcast. I've been listening to this church, and I want to take that step to get baptized. Right? You know, and so I would hope and pray that you would take that step, that you would talk to that chaplain in your prison, you would, you know, and be able to do that. And, you know, I think that just may be, for some of you, the right next step in your relationship with Jesus. You've been learning a little more each and every week. You've been watching our sermons. Maybe even in your heart, like Brandon just talked about there in Acts, like, hey, like, okay, I believe, like, I believe that Jesus is real. And not only that, like, I want to make him the Lord and Savior of my life. Well, like Brandon said about in the first part of Acts is that, okay, we need to repent, believe and be baptized, right? To repent, meaning to go a different way than we've been going, you know? And Brandon, one of the things is that if we're following Jesus for the very first time, oftentimes, if not all the time, he's going to cause us and call us to go a different direction because the way we've been living isn't the way that God wants us to live, right? And so

it's to repent and go the other way and to live a different life, but it's also to be baptized. And I should say, like, repentance does not mean you got it all figured out, right? It doesn't mean like, oh, I, like, I've heard so many people over the course of my ministry say, well, I can't get baptized because I'm just not ready yet. Like I haven't, I haven't cleaned my act up. And it's like, brother, you're not going to clean your act up. But repentance is that acknowledgment and that commitment of like, hey, I'm going to follow Jesus where he leads. And right now I know that he's leading me away from myself. I know he's taking me a different direction than where I'm going now. So I don't want anyone to hear this and think like, oh, I got to get everything together. Like, no, that's not what repentance means. Repentance is like, I'm just acknowledging and I'm committing to going. whatever direction Jesus is taking me in, and the first place he's taking me is into the water. That's... Brandon, that's a great point. And as we kind of conclude having this conversation with you right now and being frank and upfront is that, like Brandon said, like our encouragement would be, baptism is not the finish line for us as Christians, right? If anything, like it's the starting line of a marathon of life, of running in a different direction than we have before. And the person we're following, like the pace setter that's running with us is Christ, right? The author and perfecter of our faith. And baptism is oftentimes that starting line where we take that first act, that first step of obedience to step into what God's calling us to do. And you may live in Texas or Florida and like, you know, I wish that I could step in and get baptized at Southeast and we hope and pray that maybe one day that'll be a reality for you. But what I would also say is don't wait. Don't wait. Make that decision today. Find out who the chaplain is that's near you, wherever you're at in your prison and make

that decision. Take that step. But y'all, we are grateful that you join us each week. Again, if you are new, we try to release one of these podcasts every single week. Sometimes it'll be Brandon and I, sometimes it'll be both of us and some other guests, because we want to continually help you follow Jesus, learn more about scripture, because we know the way that we try to live our life doesn't work. It just doesn't. But the way that Jesus is calling us to live does. Y'all, so for Brandon, for myself, for those behind the camera running everything today, we appreciate y'all and we will see you next time. Amen.