Sermon on the Mount 
Fifth Sunday Song & Scripture Service

Baxter T. Exum (#1743)
Four Lakes Church of Christ
Madison, Wisconsin
June 30, 2024

Good morning and welcome to the Four Lakes congregation! If you are visiting this morning or joining us online or on the phone, we want you to know that you are our honored guests! We are especially glad to have you with us, and we’d like to ask that you fill out a visitor card – online if you can, or if you are here in person, you can use one of the cards from the pew in front of you and give that to me on your way out this morning. We would love to hear from you, and we invite you to pass along any questions or prayer concerns.

We have assembled together this morning to worship and to thank God for saving us and to share this good news with others. We know from scripture that God sent his only Son as a sacrifice. He died, he was buried, but he was raised up on the first day of the week. This is the good news, and we obey this good news through faith, repentance, confession of Jesus as the Christ, and baptism (an immersion in water for the forgiveness of sins). And this morning, we are sharing several examples from all around the world, starting with a post from Pedro Mario, who baptized his wife Micaela in Benguela, Angola, on June 23. Angola is a nation on the western coast of the southern half of Africa, and they are pictured together as a family on the lower right.

This next one comes to us from the Pinewood congregation down in Nunnelly, Tennessee. They posted a few days ago and say, “A great night! Zoie chose to become a Child of God!”

This next one comes from some friends down in Washington, Indiana, who used to live up in Owatonna, Minnesota – Paul and Amy Wiens. They posted a few days ago and say that, “We are so excited and proud to watch our sweet Nora proclaim Christ this day in baptism. Praise God and His goodness!” Back in April 2015, when my dad was getting ready for heart surgery at the Mayo Clinic up in Rochester, Minnesota, Paul and Dan Mayfield (the preacher and one of the elders up there, I believe) both drove nearly an hour to meet with our family the night before the surgery. They drove an hour just so we could pray together. I will always remember the feeling of relief seeing these two walk in the lobby of the hotel across from Mayo Clinic. Who prays for the preacher? These two! And we are thrilled to see Paul’s daughter obey the gospel.

This last series of pictures comes to us from the Fishinger Road congregation over in Columbus, Ohio. They are asking us to, “Join us in welcoming our new brothers and sisters in Christ! What a week! Juliette and Cora Spencer, Matthew and Bella Coyle, Charis Deacon, JD Helsel. God is truly good! Overall, 13 put on Christ through baptism at Fort Hill Christian Youth Camp this past week (and the following days). God is good!” And keep an eye on that guy in the bottom right…because we have another picture of him right here – perhaps the happiest person I have seen all week!  Now, before we move forward this morning, some may wonder: Why emphasize baptism like we do?

I would suggest that every step up here is important.

    • Without hearing the gospel and believing it, nothing else up here would make any sense.
      
    • Without turning away from sin, we make a mockery of confessing Jesus and being baptized. And repentance is probably one of the most difficult steps in God’s plan. In a sense, it’s ongoing over a lifetime. But in another sense, there’s a decision we make when we decide to follow Jesus: This thing that I’m doing is wrong, and I need to stop it, so I’m making a u-turn. And that’s hard. It may involve making a decision about a habit or an addiction. It may mean ending a relationship – moving out if you’ve moved in with a boyfriend or a girlfriend, removing yourself from a second marriage if that marriage is not really a marriage in God’s eyes, any number of things. Repentance is hard.
      
    • And confessing Jesus: We cannot follow Jesus privately, but we must speak up, “I believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.”
      
    • And baptism: Paul explains (in Romans 6:3-4) that we baptized into the Lord’s death. This isn’t an outward sign of the salvation that’s already happened at some point in the past; no, baptism is the moment that we are united with the Lord in a reenactment of his death, burial, and resurrection. Baptism is how we obey the good news, and it’s how we call upon the name of the Lord. We are not calling out, “Lord, Lord,” but we are calling out through an act of humble obedience. We aren’t earning anything but we are simply doing what God has told us to do. In 1 Peter 3, Peter describes how Noah and his family were saved by water, with the water separating them from a sinful world, and he says (in 1 Peter 3:21), “Corresponding to that, baptism now saves you – not the removal of dirt from the flesh, but an appeal to God for a good conscience – through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” Without the resurrection, baptism means nothing, but with the resurrection, baptism is everything. In Colossians 2:12, we find that God is working at the point of baptism. We aren’t performing some kind of work, but God is working through our obedience.
      
    • And so also with living for Jesus (the last step up here). All of what I’ve just said would be in vain if we turn away from following the Lord.
      
      So, I hope we understand that everything up here is important. We cannot take one or two of these and scrap the rest, but we trust and obey. So again, we share these examples every week as part of our invitation to you: If you would like to do what these people have done, or if you would like to learn more, let us know. We invite you to get in touch using the contact information on the wall up here, or if you are joining us on the phone, you can send a text or give me a call at 608-224-0274.

This morning, we are doing something rather unusual. Since this is a fifth Sunday, we are having what we sometimes refer to as a “Song and Scripture Service,” and today, we will be listening to the Sermon on the Mount, in its entirety. We will sing two songs together as we partake of the Lord’s Supper, three of our men will read straight through the Sermon on the Mount (each taking a chapter – Matthew 5, 6, and 7), we will sing two more songs based on what we’ve read, and then we will close with an offering and prayer. If the sermon goes too long today, you can take that up with the Lord himself, but I think we’ll find that it takes less than half an hour to read the Lord’s words this morning, and I am guessing that we will wrap it up by about 11:30, as we usually do. But, I’ve been looking forward to this, I am thankful to our men who’ve been so flexible with this. 

As we enter worship, let’s go to God in prayer:

Our Father in Heaven,

You alone are the great and all-powerful God. You made us and everything we see around us. And we know from your word that you love us and want what’s best for us. We are thankful today for your word, delivered to us today through your Son. We pray for open and honest hearts as we listen to what he has to say. We are thankful for these ancient words.

Today, we ask you to be with Patsy as she recovers from surgery, and we also ask your blessing on Jane as she recovers as well. In these earthly bodies, sometimes we stumble and fall, and we hurt. But we know that you are a God who heals. You feel with us. You understand what we are going through. And so we ask for your help and comfort.

We come to you this morning in Jesus’ name. AMEN.

Let’s worship together...

To comment on this lesson: fourlakeschurch@gmail.com