God, do you know how frustrating it is to have a whole lot of things to say in such a short time in which to say them? I want to thank you for being such an appreciative group of people. You've made it very easy for me to open my heart and even say some things ill-advisedly. You do that when you're with friends. Do you know that? You're with a bunch of strangers. You're very careful what you say. You get with friends, you can get loquacious.

As I look out here this morning and have done during these few hours together, there's so many people that are wrapped up with me in the bundle of life that have been so very dear to me, and I have just been able to nod at them. There's so many here that I'd like to sit down and have a day with. I haven't even had five minutes with any of you, and I won't have. And that's the nature of my life right now. I'll have to make up for it over yonder.

But thank you so much for being here and being supportive and helping me and disgorge my burden. A little unfinished business before we plunge into our new material. The issue of baptismal regeneration has come up. And as many of you know, this has been a discussed, a custom discussed subject for centuries. Roman Catholics and the Lutherans, I believe, they believe that an infant can have faith and that at his baptism as an infant he's regenerated.

That is one form of baptismal regeneration. I don't hold to those views. But the very fact that it's controverted and that anyone could suggest that baptism carries within itself the generational power, the fact that they could do that... indicates that there is biblical data that they think could support that. They can't make that out of a whole piece of cloth. They've got to have some biblical support.

And the biblical support that they have for that is the prominent place that baptism has in the initiatory act. Now, I'm a reformed man. See, my theology is reformed, and some of you would be very upset if I told you what I think regeneration is. Well, may as well tell you. Nothing like getting you upset.

Because I believe salvation is entirely of the Lord, I believe a man has to be regenerated before he can believe. Oh, thank you. I got some support. Let me give you, you know, we all want proof texts. Jesus said, except a man be born again, he cannot see. So he doesn't see and get born again, he gets born again and sees.

Now, James says that God of his own will begat he us. Oh, I can't pursue this much further. We have fallen into the error of decisional evangelism and decisional conversion. And we've got all kinds of people who say, I decided for Christ. The point is, did Christ decide for you? Jesus said, you've not chosen me, I've chosen you.

And ordained you. I started this whole business. You were in the belly of the whale. You had no chance of getting up. I affected the whale. I got you out of there. See, that's what Jonah, when Jonah was down in the belly of the whale, he looked north to his whale, south to his whale, and he looked east to his whale, west to his whale.

He looked up to his whale and down to his whale. He said, I'm the whale of a mess. He was a real problem. And he did the only thing he could do. He said, if I'm going to get out of here, it's got to be the Lord. And so he hollered in the belly of this great fish, Salvation is of the Lord! Fish said, I agree.

I don't believe in baptismal regeneration, obviously, but I do believe that baptism is the God-ordained means whereby you express your faith. You don't express it by raising your hand. You don't express it by going forward. You don't express it by signing a card. If you are going to express your faith legitimately, biblically, and godly, you'll be baptized.

And if I had time to deal with that, I would say you'd be baptized the same hour, immediately, the same night, now. The Philippian jailer didn't wait to be catechized, nor did the Ethiopian eunuch. Now, I know that for some of you theologians, that's not totally satisfactory. You'd like to ask me a lot of sophisticated, esoteric questions, but we just don't have that kind of time.

Now, I talked to you a great deal about transition. Permit me just to read, and then we'll get into our new material. Let me read to you something that I think will hopefully condense what I meant by transition. And please lend me your ears now and listen to this carefully, because I'm not going to have time to expound it.

It is impossible to regard the experience of the apostles throughout the transition period as a possible pattern far less the norm for experience today. With Pentecost, the transition phase came to an end. The old stage of salvation history was wholly past and the new stage wholly in operation. Henceforth, entering into the blessings of the new dispensation is immediate.

Whereas for the apostles, it was staggered. You understand that? Apostles first met Jesus and said, Who is he? And then he developed and grew on them. And they said, We think maybe he's a great prophet. And then it developed and the cross came along. And they said, Oh, boy, we hadn't figured on this.

They went through the whole staggered transition. We don't go through that. We have delivered to us now the finished product. The apostles had to live through that transition. Now, the mistake we make is that we plug in at some point of the transition and say, We ought to be experiencing that.

How many understand me? So anxious to be understood. A set of experiences whose order and depth was determined by an utterly unique and unrepeatable set of events, those from Bethlehem to Pentecost, cannot be the pattern for the regular experience of conversion and Christian growth after Pentecost.

Only if Jesus were to live, die, rise, and ascend again and again could the experience of the apostles be described as normative for later Christianity, since their experience was determined by the relation to the historical ministry of Jesus. Now, listen to this. I'm going to tell you now. I am reading a synopsis by one of the outstanding New Testament scholars in the world today, who is not himself a charismatic as we understand it, but who has written one of the finest scholarly books on the Holy Spirit.

And this is his writing. I'm not reading your mind. I'm reading his. But listen. See, this is where scholars are forced to come to. So you're not in such bad company. People say, oh, they're just a bunch of dumb heads. No, we're not so dumb.

Now listen, if a norm is desired for the gift of the Spirit, we have it not in John 20, 22 or Acts 2, 4, but in Acts 2, 38. It's terrible to gloat, isn't it? All right. Open your Bibles on your laps to Matthew 18.

I have a series that I teach, and this is part of it, and I entitled it simply, How to Get In, How to Stay In, and How to Grow In. Up until now, we've been dealing with how to get in. This morning, I want to talk about how to stay in. After Jesus announced He was going to build His church in chapter 16, the next time He mentions the church is in chapter 18.

And it has to do with how to stay in the church with integrity. Now, let's put this up against our general understanding of getting saved. We get a fellow saved, and we put him into the new converts class. And we teach him doctrine. And he's saved and fully indoctrinated, but he doesn't know figs about relating to people.

And so after about six months, he decides he's so individually brilliant that he's going to set up his own little personal cell. And he comes to the church and sits there in all of his profundity. Doesn't relate to anybody. He's saved and indoctrinated. But for all practical purposes, he's not a member of the church.

Now, I don't know how to say this. I've been asking God to help me to say it, not just to you, but everywhere I go. After Jesus said, I will build my church, the next thing of importance to Jesus was relationship. Is that not doctrine? No, no. Relationship. Doctrine comes processively over a period of time.

But you are now baptized into Christ. And when you talk about Christ in the New Testament, you always have to be sure that you're talking what you're talking about. Are you talking about the personal Christ, the Son of God? Or are you talking about the corporate Christ, the body of God's Son?

You've got to watch that. Because the body of Christ is called Christ. It's Christ's body. My body is Baxter. Christ's body is Christ. And when you are baptized, you're not only baptized into an identification with the personal Christ and all the other things that go with baptism, but as you're baptized into Christ, the person, you're baptized into Christ, the people.

Let me put it very bluntly. At your baptism, if you understand it, you are baptized into people. Now, this is where the Anabaptist background of our faith is so important. They understood that. They understood that one of the great significant things that happened to you in baptism was that you became a member of community.

You were a member of the koinonia. You were a member of the agape circle. You belong in this whole new thing. It wasn't the Elks Club. It wasn't the Moose Lodge or the PTA or the Women's Sewing Circle. This is that distinctive body in the earth which is an outpost of heaven.

This is the colony of God's people. The body of Christ. Paul wrote his letter to Timothy and he said, Timothy, if I don't get to see you again personally, I want you to know how to behave in the church of God. Is he saying how you behave in a building? No. He said, I want you to know how you're to behave and how you're to teach the people to behave in their relationship to one another.

Now, let's put it very bluntly. If Jesus is going to build a church, the first thing he's got to be sure about is that the church is going to stay together so he can indoctrinate them and use them. So the most important thing is relationship.

Now, this is very painful for me. I'm sure it's painful for you. But as we look out across contemporary Christianity to say nothing about the past, it's marked by splintering and competition and division. And I almost despair sometimes as I see the cavalier fashion in which all of us treat the body.

And treat our fellow Christians. I'm as guilty as anybody else. Although I have tried desperately in recent years to atone for my own schismatic tendencies, I would like God this morning to build into us a deep sensitivity for the whole matter of relationship, quite apart from whether you're a Calvinist or an Armenian, premillennialist, a postmillennialist, a lamillennialist, or panmillennialist.

That first of all we see the worth of each other. I come into this meeting, I don't know a lot of you, but I sit here and worship and I say I'm with my people. Just that simple. I may meet you and intellectually sparks would fly. You're a dyed-in-the-wool Armenian and you'd tear my Calvinism all up to pieces.

Or you're a hard-headed pre-millennialist and you wouldn't like my... Optimistic amillennialism. Well, that's fine, but I pray God I can honor the worth of you as Christ's child.

Now, we're talking about something that's very subjective, but it's very essential. If Jesus said, I'm going to build my church and it's scattered all over God's half acre, how's he going to indoctrinate it? If I'm embarrassed and hurt and chagrined and humiliated by the division in the body of Christ, can you imagine how Christ feels?

You doing all right? That's good. You're awake. Okay. Had a good night's rest. All right. Let me say something else here. I'm trying to ease my way in. I don't know how you are up here in Canada. Well, I'm a Canadian. I live in the States.

But we've got a tendency in the States for a lot of Christians to equate republicanism with the body of Christ. So that if you're a conservative, you're a republican. We don't think of a conservative Christian as being a Democrat. He's a Republican. It's a bad equation.

Now, I wouldn't know what the parallel is in Canada. I'm a little out of touch. But we cannot make those kinds of equations because when we come into Christ, we are in something that the world has no definitions for.

Now, I'm an avid news hound, and I'm a voracious reader, and I read news magazines, and I subscribe to all kinds of intelligence digest and so on. I find that I have a social consciousness even beyond my church consciousness.

I have a view on abortion. I have a view on various things. I do have a social view, and I do have a political tendency. I do see things like that. But I find myself in those terms when I come most consistently out of a kingdom culture, which is neither left nor right.

It's neither Democrat or Republican. I find that on some issues, I would be Democratic. On other issues, I would be Republican. Simply because I'm neither, I'm this. Because I'm this, I look, I judge things. You say, well, where do you think you are? Well, since you've asked me, I'm a son of God.

And I have been born again, and I have in me the life of the Almighty. And it has quickened my mind, and it has provided me with a book. In which I can read that mind and have it permanently inscripturated for me.

And I am now equipped with a high level of revelation knowledge that the natural man doesn't have. And Paul tells me that because I have the mind of Christ, I can judge all things, but I myself am judged of no man.

I can evaluate everything, not from the standpoint of Baxter's intellectual preeminence, but from the standpoint of a biblically informed mind that knows things from God's standpoint. And I can evaluate all things, but the world can't evaluate me. The world says, what's with that guy? What's with him?

Well, if they really ask, I'll tell them what's with me, and maybe they can get with it too. But we have got to understand that in our churches, we have to develop a kingdom culture that is not democratic, it's not republican, it's not progressive, conservative, MDP, whatever.

Nothing to do with it. This is kingdom culture, and we relate. To a transcendent authority center. You understand me? All right, let me go on.

We've got Matthew 18 open. I said it's not left or right, this kingdom community, but it's up. Let me just drop this in your mind and you might develop it. Revelation 21.2 says, And I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven.

Prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. Now that's been going on for 2,000 years. The city is coming down. It's coming down. It's just coming down. It's constantly coming down. And that is the increasing influence of King Jesus, who must remain in heaven until he makes his enemies his footstool.

And when it says the... city is coming down, it means that you get your directions from up, not left, not right. We take our directions from up. Now, I'm going to talk to you this morning about relationship. Because this community is a community, a congregation, it must have relational guidelines.

Let's go back to Acts 2 just for a moment. After the impact of Pentecost and the first community is being formed in Jerusalem, and it says, and I quote, And they continued steadfastly. What's that? Acts 2.42.

And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' teaching, didite teaching, and in fellowship, koinonia. Let me stop for a moment on koinonia. Koinonia was a word that the Greeks used to describe marriage. Koinonia was a word that the Greeks used to describe the relationship between two businessmen who transparently with each other pool all the resources together for a business project.

It is one of the most intimate, one of the most binding, one of the most transparent descriptions of a relationship that the Greeks were capable of expressing. And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' teaching, and in Koinonia, and in the breaking of bread, the Eucharist.

I'd like to have a week with you on the Eucharist. Boy, are we missing the bus there. Let me give you just a little thing. God took six days to create, and then the seventh day he evaluated the creation and rested. The Eucharist... is the rest after six days. On the seventh day, you rest and evaluate what you've done.

Not only that, but the Eucharist is the judgment seat of Christ in the midst of the church. So that every Sunday morning as you break bread, you are updating the covenant and you're working out all of your relational situations because you don't dare take that cup if your relationships are screwed up.

And as you sit at the table, you relate in two directions. You renew your covenantal vow vertically, and you renew your covenantal vow horizontally. And if you don't maintain the horizontal relationship for this cause, many are weak and sickly among you.

I like to break bread every Sunday morning, and we do it in our little house church down yonder. I don't want to go too many weeks without getting current. Now, I know that's a bombshell to some of you, but think about it. The Bible says, as oft as you do this in remembrance of me.

Some of us remember them once a year. That's jolly decent of us. And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' teaching and in Koinonia and in Eucharist and in prayer.

Now, they continued steadfastly in Koinonia. You say, bless God, I hold steady in doctrine. How are you doing with relationship? Ruth and I have learned something, that in the normal course of our lives, we don't starve a day without sitting together, reading the Word, and having our prayers.

If for some circumstantial reason that's interrupted, we'll do it later, but it's very

Here is the cleaned-up version of the sermon transcription:

Can't maintain an attitude between each other that's less than good if you have to pray together. Well, I've dropped two bombs, one right after the other, so let's see if we can get on to something a little more enjoyable, shall we say? Shall we have an altar call? Or maybe an offering? Maybe some of you want to make atonement. I'm going to work my way through this chapter, so brew your eyes on the scriptures. Matthew chapter 18.

At the same time came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, "Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?" And Jesus called the little child unto him and sent him in the midst of them and said, "Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted." Before I go on, let me say, I'm not preaching at you, I'm preaching at us. There's nothing I preach that doesn't dig me, and that's the way it's supposed to be.

Paul said to Timothy, "Timothy, when you preach, Don't preach the level of your experience. Preach the ideal, for in doing it you'll save yourself and those that hear you." Every time you and I read the Word of God, we're in a process of self-salvation. Processively, okay? Verily I say unto you, except ye be converted and become as little children. Don't put it the other way around. He shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.

Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Here's the human question. It has no place in the kingdom of God. But here it is, because we import it. Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? That is the most damning thing, and it's right in the body of Christ.

Who's the greatest? Who's the greatest preacher? That's got no place among God's people. Every servant of God is what he is by the grace of God, and thank God for the grace that he's got, and go on. But don't fall into the category that Paul scores when he says they that compare themselves among themselves are not wise.

How dare you compare God's products with each other in human terms? Who is the greatest? This is a biased understanding of the kingdom at best. And it's the importation of a worldly religious ambition, and it doesn't belong there.

And Jesus gives us the answer by a symbolic act. He calls a little child, and he pits the little child against the big man. Now, I'm talking about the big man as the man who says, "I'm the greatest." One of the most distressing things is to see Jesus in the... in the torture of his soul.

Because, remember, he's a man. And he knows what he's going to. And he's walking in this great heaviness of spirit as he approaches the cross. And he's on his way to the Last Supper. He's going to officiate at the last Passover meal with his disciples and at the same time inaugurate the Eucharist.

And his heart is heavy. And the disciples are trailing along with him, and he overhears them. And they're angrily disputing with one another about which of them is the greatest. Right on the eve of Jesus' passion.

And then they get to the room that has been prepared for the Last Supper. And the disciples... had all gone in, and as the custom is, there at the door of the room was this great, huge water pot with a small basin and a slave's towel, a long towel that the slave would wrap around his waist with which the ends dangling over, and he'd use that to dry the feet.

And as the disciples came in, full of this business about who's the greatest. One by one, out of the corner of their eye, they saw the water, and they proceeded to sit at the table with dirty feet. Now that's a social faux pas on somebody's part.

Number one, in those days the custom was that you either had a servant, or you couldn't afford to serve it, and you were hosting a guest, you did it yourself. By taking the sandals off his tired, hot feet, soiled by the road, and washing his feet. Now, if you had a servant, a servant did it. If you didn't have a servant, you did it. But you did it.

Something was missing in this room. A servant. That hymn that adheres to here, there was a servant missing. The disciples couldn't afford a servant. So the disciples came in and saw it and went over and sat down with dirty feet.

Now all the disciples are in and Jesus comes in and takes in the whole scene just like that. Every one of those disciples said, "I'm greater than the rest, they ought to wash my feet." Now the greatest comes in, Jesus, God's dear Son, my Savior. He who created the worlds and sustains them. He in whom all things consist.

If anybody's great, he's great. But he's already said, "I'm among you as him that's servant." And that word serve is not a... Nice word. It's a word that attaches to a slave. A servant is a doulos, a slave.

Jesus comes in and he takes the whole thing in. He's very considerate and he goes and sits down himself. Apparently nobody offers to watch his feet either. So they're even vying with him for greatness.

The Bible says that at a certain point in the kneel, Jesus rises up. This is a beautiful tableau picture of the whole act of redemption. Jesus rises up, takes off his outer garment, reveals nothing but his undergarment. And the disciples are watching this. Oh no. Oh no. Yes.

And he proceeds over to the great... Water container and he takes the basin. First he's taken the towel and he's wrapped it around his undergarment. And there he stands like any common ordinary slave in a Roman home. He takes the water basin. And he starts for the disciples and he heads for Peter.

Can you imagine the atmosphere? All these great pygmies in the presence of the great God who has now become their servant, their doulos. You're not going to wash my feet, Lord. Well, if I don't wash your feet, Peter, you have no part with me. Not in me, with me.

Watch your prepositions. We don't have fellowship if I can't wash your feet. Well, if you're going to wash my feet, wash me all over all, he said, Peter. Don't spoil it. I'm trying to teach you something. I already bathed you with a word. You already had your total bath, but your feet are dirty.

What is Jesus getting at in this 18th chapter, John? Listen, nothing has changed. Let me just talk to some of you ministers for a moment. One of the beautiful things about this conference that is so different is that this conference is so blessedly lacking in bravado and swagger. There's no big shots around here.

This is one of the best conferences I ever go to. You go to most conferences and the minister, she'll tell you, it's a swagger contest. Every minister wants to go to the conference with a new car. The first thing they ask is, what are you driving this year? How many have you got in Sunday school? Do you have two Sunday morning services?

What's all this? Who is the greatest? Now, translate that into a thousand situations. You and I have to be exorcised. We have to have that demon of self-importance driven out.

I am what I am by the grace of God. Let's say it all together. I am what I am by the grace of God. I'll tell you, when you humble yourself, you don't have to fuss with competition. I am what I am.

And so Jesus brings the little child over. The little guy's totally dependent on his parents. He's a newborn babe. No matter what chronological age, when born again, we're all newborn babes. So we qualify. We never cease being little children.

John, in his epistle, calls us little children. Come on, kids. Wise up. You're not as big as you think you are. Now Jesus pronounces the answer. He says the big needs to turn from his bigness and become as a little child and be totally dependent on the father.

Born again with a little child dependence. And notice what he says. He said, except ye be converted and become as a little child. So we've got our regeneration thing in the right order. You'll never become a little child until you get converted. But if you don't become a little child after you're converted, you're sick.

Something happened to you. Now, here's a pretty blunt statement. And the radicality of the gospel sometimes we pass over. But men talk about radical discipleship. The Sermon on the Mount is a radical application of God's law.

God didn't say, I want to give you a little course correction, mister. No, he said, I want to kill you and resurrect you. Somebody says, I've been converted and I've had a little course correction. Don't smoke anymore. Goodie for you. That will save your lungs, probably.

It won't do a whale of a lot for your soul, but it may save your lungs. You've got to understand the radicality of conversion. God kills you. You talk about baptism. I can understand people not wanting to be baptized. When you go down under the water, that's kaput. It's all over.

Your whole history is under there. I don't know how many of you are old enough to remember H.B. Taylor. You remember H.B. Taylor? Remember the story he used to tell about the big cowboy in Texas?

He said they had a big tent down in San Antonio and they just had a perpetual revival going on. H.B. Taylor had a gift of faith. And he believed in baptism this way. And he'd baptize his congress right there.

He'd just call them forward and baptize them. And they were having a tremendous visitation. And he said, this night this big cowboy was standing in the doorway with his 10-gallon hat and his shoes and the whole regalia.

And he said he was tough. Boy, he was tough. H.B. said, I preached that night with my arm, that big guy. He just stood and didn't take his hat off, just stood there.

And then he said, I called people forward and he said, I was in the tank and I was baptizing. He said, suddenly I look up and that big old cowboy is glaring down at me.

And he said, Preacher. You don't know who I am, but those notches on my gun represent the man I've killed. He said, I'm a bad man. You tell me that if I believe in Jesus and get in there, that God will forgive me.

H.B. says, that's right. He said, okay, preacher, I'm coming in. Taylor said, well, you can go back and they'll help you with, never mind. He said, I'm coming in the way I am.

And he dropped into the tank. It was level with the floor. Chaps and boots and hats and everything. Taylor said he was scared. So he got ready to baptize him and the old cowboy stopped and he said, listen preacher, when you put me down there, don't bring me up until you see my finger come up.

Because he says, I'm going to stay there until I know God's forgiven me. So H.B. says he put him down and he said, it seemed like he told him. He said, at last his finger came up.

You see, he pulled that old cowboy up out of that water, and he came up talking in tongues and splashing water everywhere. That, dear friends, is radical.

Now, some of you are too nice to be radicalized. At least you think you are. You're as rotten as the cowboy. Some of us just haven't discovered how rotten we are. If you want to know how rotten you are, read Romans 1.

Jesus makes this very radical. He says that except you're converted, and become as little children, you can't get in. That's radical. He says, unless you go through this death process and become as a little child, you can't get into the kingdom.

What he's saying is, and are you listening, you can't come into the kingdom on your terms. Let me say to you preachers, who authorized us to change the contract? Have you ever signed a contract? Have you ever read the contract?

And understood that you were assigning certain things and that you couldn't change them? There are two Greek words for covenant. One is suntheke, and the other is diatheke. You notice that the main body of the word is the same, but the prepositional prefix is different. Dia and sun.

Suntheke is an arrangement between two equals, where two men sit down and work out a mutual contract. That word is never used of the covenant of grace. God's covenant is not a suntheke. Diatheke is the imposition of the will of a superior on an inferior, and that's the word that is always used for covenant.

And this is the bottom line of a diatheke. You can receive it, you can reject it, but as the Englishman says, you can't change it. Did you hear me? You can receive it, you can reject it, but you can't change it.

Somebody, I don't want to repent. Couldn't you find something? I'm a businessman. I'm a big show. I can't afford to humble myself. It means dollars. You see that kind of reasoning.

Now what have we done? We have lowered the door. And we have tampered with the covenant. And we have adjusted the contract. And none of it was ours to deal with.

I can't change Acts 2:38 if I try. I'm sorry, I can't change the contract. Well, I don't like repentance. That's humiliating. Sorry, buddy. It's a contract.

Now, that baptism thing, that's very humiliating. I have a big shot in the community. I don't want to go up there in a white gown and get my hair all wet and come up looking like a drowned rat. That's hard on my prestige. Sorry, buddy. Can't change the contract.

I call this first one humility. Rather, you can itch under it, you can hurt under it, you can protest under it, but you can't change it. You've got to come to the point where you bow your head and say, I'm worthy of death. And the sword comes down and decapitates you.

And if God doesn't raise you from the dead, you're a gone gauze. But the beauty of this is that when I submit to death, I become a candidate for resurrection.

Now the second thing I want to talk about, or Jesus wants to talk about, is He's leading up to something here. You understand that? I could go right to the pith of my point this morning, but I want to do what Jesus did.

Jesus is leading up to something. And the first thing He hits us with is humility. If you and I can't handle the humility clause, forget the rest.

The second thing is responsibility. Matthew 18:5-7 now. And whosoever shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me, but whosoever shall offend, that's the second operative word, one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.

Remember that millstone. Row unto the world because of offenses, for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to them by whom the offense cometh.

Now, the little child in this story is a symbol of any child of God. And Christ so identifies with his children that receiving them is tantamount to receiving him.

I don't see your red shirt. I don't see your blue sweater. I don't see your green dress. I see Jesus. I see Jesus. I see Jesus.

Now, you don't look like Jesus, I'm sure, but you are. You are to me, Jesus. And when I'm receiving you as my fellow Christian, I receive him. Boy, you say that. Never thought of that. That's radical.

I warned you. We are talking radicality. What do you think that the scribes and the Pharisees and the Sadducees and all these other leaders, what bugged them about Jesus? He was so radical.

They wanted to kill him. This, dear friends, is basic to relationship and ought to determine how we deal with God's children.

Now, if you're feeling badly, and I know this is a heavy word at the moment, so am I. I have not always treated my fellow Christians as Jesus. Oh, no, I haven't. No.

And if it wasn't for the precious blood of the Lord Jesus and the whole covenantal factor of the forgiveness of sins, I could drown in an abysmal swamp of despair this morning. I have mistreated God's people. I should have had a millstone hanged around my neck.

Make your own confessions. I have not always treated my brothers and sisters as Jesus. Have you?

Now, there needs to be a process going on here this morning, and I knew, and I planned to take this, that it was going to require some subjective action on our part as we walk our way through this, because probably, I don't want to make one more important than the other, but this is almost as important as chapter 16.

It's important that you know how to get in, but it's sure jolly important that you know how to stay in. And if you're feeling a little wobbly now, the worst is yet to come.

So let's expose ourselves and just say, Holy Spirit, we don't want to be legalistic, we don't want to get a religious jag on, but we want to be real. And we just want you to talk to us this morning, Lord, and we'll, by the grace of God, we'll take our lumps and we'll make our adjustments.

See, I'm not preaching this to you out of a... In fact, about 80% of what I preach, I preach out of pain. And if we're honest with one another, as we read the Bible, many times, just reading it gives us a lot of pain.

And if we're good charismatics, we have no room for pain. That's one of the weaknesses of a good charismatic. He lives in a realm of euphoric faith. All right?

The severity of the penalty in how we deal with one another is the measurement of the seriousness of the question. He said if we offend one another or offend God's people, it's better that a millstone were hanging about our neck and we were thrown into the sea.

That's what he says. That's what Jesus said. How many of you are glad for the grace of God this morning? How many of us have ever

Here is the cleaned-up version of the sermon transcription:

Ellfire. Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones. For I say unto you that in heaven their angels do always behold the face of the Father which is in heaven.

Now, do you think Jesus literally meant that if you do something offensive with your hand, you cut it off? No, I don't think so. I don't think he meant you reach up and gouge out your eye. No. The Hebrew, the Oriental speech patterns are full of symbolisms. And what he is saying here is what Paul says in a different way.

He said, you must put to death the deeds of the body. Now, he's talking about the radical dealing with those areas in your life that are offensive. You don't palliate them. You don't accommodate them. You don't say, well, I'm that kind of a person. We don't have room for different kinds of persons here, just Christians.

Now, you have to understand me. I have this little failing. There are no little failings. They're all big ones. And if you're causing... and cuddling, that darling failure, that could kill you. This is radical. This isn't shouting time. This is douging time.

See, we all like to go to conferences to get titillated. We don't want surgery. But I'm saying to you this morning that right now the body of Christ, the people of God, at least across this continent, better submit to surgery.

Now, what he is saying is that we must put to death the deeds of the body. That thing that rises up and asks for recognition, you pop it on the head. This is the radical side of sanctification.

Mr. Wesley took one of his young ministers. Mr. Wesley was a very fetid and much-desired guest. The great official banquets in England, and he used to attend as a matter of policy many times just to say his word for Christ. And he'd come in with this young minister, and the young minister saw the tables groaning with all kinds of Epicurean goodies.

And the young man wanted to impress Mr. Wesley. He said, Oh, Mr. Wesley, not much crucifixion of the flesh here, is there, sir? No, Mr. Wesley said as he looked at the young man, but a great opportunity to practice some.

That young minister's attempt to impress rebounded on him, all right. God is not only for the godly. God is not only for you as you walk in God, but you've got an angel working for you. You believe in angels? Most neglected species in the cosmos haven't received the attention they deserve at all.

They're here this morning. You say, what are you doing? Just greeting my friends. Say, you believe in angels? Oh, I believe in angels.

I was preaching in Australia one night in a big conference, and suddenly I became aware that there was something near me that wanted to kill me. And I thought, well, there isn't a better place to die, I guess. I kept preaching, but with this awful sense of this unholy presence.

And then I left. And I went on, and when I finished the service, two young girls come up to me. Well, one was a little more mature woman with a young girl, and she said, Dr. Baxter, this is Mary or Judy or whatever, and she's a new convert, and she would like to tell you something.

And I looked at this little thing, and she was trembling and crying. Oh, she said, Mr. Baxter, I'm just new, and I don't understand these things, but I would like to tell you what I saw. Well, I said, go ahead, dear. What did you see?

Well, she said, Dr. Baxter, while you were preaching, she said, I was watching you, and behind you there was a great dark being, a person. I guess it could have been an angel, dark. And he was wanting to get at you.

And she said, I was so frightened for you because it looked like he was going to kill you. And then she said, suddenly there was a great, beautiful, bright angel who came up and... pointed his finger at the black one, and he disappeared, and the great white one stood behind you.

And she said, I heard him say something. He said, we love you, Aaron Baxter. She said, Dr. Baxter, I don't know about that. Is it all right that I told you? Oh, I said, thank God. I believe in angels.

Let me give you one more. In 1977 in Great Britain was a high mark. And I don't know, is Peter here this morning? Peter Hill? You there, Peter? I don't think, I think you were in Canada at the time.

Okay. Well, we were up in the big shoal. The Dales, that's right. And the big, where the queen used to go to. See the horses parade and all that. There's a seat at about 8,000 people. And we're having a tremendous meeting.

I knew six months before I left America what I was going to be teaching on in Great Britain. That's great. It's when the Lord doesn't let you know until he introduced you. That's the impossible. You know about that, brother, yeah.

I went over there with tremendous confidence, and we had churches all over the grounds, and they were all tented in church groupings. It was like the tribes of Israel come up to the Feast of Tabernacles. It was tremendous.

And every meeting was a victory. The worship was so powerful, I thought we could have been raptured. Literally. I'm not fooling. It was powerful.

And this one night, as I was preaching, I felt I was ten feet off the ground. And when I got finished, they'd always take me off quickly so that I could avoid the involvement with all these people and get me off the grounds to my hotel.

This night I slipped back and I sat down in a chair and the Holy Ghost came on me and prayed or said something through me. Never had it happen before or since.

And what the Holy Spirit said was, there is going to be an outstanding event on this grounds tonight. And boy, I knew there was going to be an event if I knew anything.

Now, the man was leading the closing things and I just slipped up beside him. I said, look, I need to register this with you. I don't want you to mention it. We're not going to set the law of suggestion afoot here. I just had a supernatural word that something is going to happen tonight.

And I want you to be aware so that if I come tomorrow and it's happened, I say, I knew it last night. I want you to know that I know it now. But don't tell anybody. He didn't. I usually come back late morning and the next morning, and as I come back, I said, what happened? Oh, they said, you won't believe it.

I said, two o'clock this morning, the most magnificent choir singing came out of the great empty hall. Everybody on the grounds heard it. The neighbors heard it. The hall was empty.

And then people began to see angels. And the children in the children's meeting this morning, 750 of them, saw angels gambling all over the room. Young people saw angels. And most of the time when they saw them, they were skipping for joy.

And that night, a little boy had got lost. And they were going to organize a posse to go out and hunt for him. And as they were going out the door, the little boy came back.

And they said, where have you been? He said, I was lost. They said, how did you get here? He said, a kind ghost brought me.

Some of the people were annoyed. They said, the people on that grounds are inconsiderate. They had no right singing at 2 o'clock in the morning. But there was one man in that vicinity, an unbeliever, who was in charge of that grounds, and he heard it, and God impressed it on him as the most beautiful thing he ever heard.

And they were going to threaten, some of the neighbors were going to threaten them that they would never get that grounds again. And this man went to bat for them. They said, no, sir.

And he saw to it that they stayed on. But there were sightings of all kinds of things that night, and the newspapers picked it up, and it was reported in the press.

I believe in angels. And that all comes back to our text. You better be nice to me or my angel will get you. We're supernatural people. We belong to a dimension the world knows nothing about. We have access to the throne of the universe. We have celestial beings watching over us.

Isn't that comfortable? Praise God.

I've got five more minutes. Hold, stay. All right. That was number three, renunciation.

I've called number four, particularism.

For the Son of Man has come, verse 11, the Son of Man has come to say that which was lost, how think ye? If a man hath an hundred sheep, and one of them be gone astray, doth he not leave the ninety and nine, and goeth into the mountains, and seeketh that which is gone astray?

And if so be that he find it, verily I send you, he rejoiceth more at that sheep than of the ninety and nine which went not astray. Even so it is not the will of your Father which is in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish.

Point. No sheep is inconsequential. Point, no sheep is inconsequential. Point, no sheep is inconsequential.

Now, let me make an ecclesiological point here, a pastoral point. How do you know if a sheep has gone astray if you don't know the sheep? So let me make a little pitch for church membership. Or it doesn't have to be formal.

But as one who has pastored through the years, I always find it a bit difficult when somebody who chooses not to come under a pastoral oversight in the care of a shepherd disappears for a couple of weeks and you find out they've been in the hospital and they raise cane because nobody from the church visited them.

And I've made it very clear in pastoral situations. I want to know who here is expecting me to pastor them. For them, I'll be responsible. But I can't be responsible for you if you don't want to get in the fold.

Now, if you know who's in your fold, then you know what sheep has gone astray.

One of the things we have in the States, we have these great, huge, charismatic, nondescript churches where all the backslidden sheep can hide and nobody finds them. And they do their religion enough to palliate their conscience, but not enough to get involved. And they could go to hell and nobody would know they'd gone.

Oh, boy. Every sheep should have a shepherd. I wish I'd brought my books here. I have a book that I've written called The Chief Shepherd and His Sheep.

Every sheep should have a shepherd.

Now let me say to you pastors, did you know you're a sheep too? Every shepherd's sheep should have a shepherd.

I have a pastor. Have you got a pastor, preacher?

I was taking Bob Mumford's Bible class in Fort Lauderdale in the Baptist Church one Monday night. And after I was finished, a big old guy, about six foot five, came up on the platform and he said, Mr. Baxter, would you lay hands on me and bless me?

I don't lay hands on people quickly, and I don't let people lay hands on me either. I don't want what some of them got to give me.

And I take the laying on of hands very seriously. And so I said, well, son, why would you want me to lay my hands on you?

He said, well, you're a man of God. I want you to bless me.

I said, son, where do you fellowship? Well, he said, I go to First Church in Miami.

This was a great huge thing with about 6,000, 7,000 members. Oh, I said, the minister there. Oh, yeah, Dr. So-and-so.

I said, I guess you know him. Oh, I don't know him. No, I just come in.

I said, well, is there nobody in that big church that looks after you or that you can go to? He said, no.

Well, I said, what do you do when you have a need?

And he gave me the religious answer. He said, well, I have Jesus.

Oh, I said, that's fine, son. That's great.

Well, I'm glad you came tonight.

And I started to walk away. Now, I had no intention of going, but I did it for effect.

And as I started to walk away, I looked back, and his big old face was all screwed up, and I thought he was going to cry.

And I turned back, and I said, son, that hurt you, didn't it?

I said, I want to say this carefully, but Jesus isn't enough, is he? I said, what you want is a Jesus with arms.

I said, come here. I took that big old fellow in my arms and he began to sob and I sobbed with him.

I didn't try to bless him. I prayed this prayer. I said, oh God, help this lonely boy to find a shepherd that can love him, take him in his arms, scold him if necessary, but be Jesus to it.

He said, that's blasphemous, Baxter. Oh, no, isn't he? Jesus has always been enough for me as he has mediated through those he has assigned to love me and care for me.

If Jesus, the chief shepherd, was enough, why did he appoint under shepherds?

And every sheep should have a shepherd.

And if Jesus could only take care of twelve, why are some of you donkeys trying to pastor five hundred? The Lord just rebuked me. I shouldn't call you that.

Now, boy, you talk about preaching out of pain. I think back to the tabernacle days when I tried to play God for hundreds of people, and there were shepherds sitting down there that were wanting to shepherd, and I didn't understand it because of my baptistic form of government.

I was the only elder in the church.

Now, God straightened me out in that. But I look back and I think of hundreds of people that have not had anybody to take them in there.

All right, I've blown it. Let's go.