Well, Brian, it's great to be with you. My name is Pastor John Sampson of King's Church, and we've had the delight of having Pastor Brian speak and preach for us at King's Church. And I wanted to do something of a follow-up because there are other scriptures to go to that I know Pastor Brian will wish to address, maybe answer some further questions people have. I wanted to just thank you, first of all, for this sermon you brought on why we don't baptize babies. It's actually a very important subject because it not only addresses that particular question, but it really is a reflection of how we look at our Bibles, and you were able to bring that forth so, so clearly. I know that there's much more in your heart than what you could fit in in the sermon. What was your assessment as to some of the things you would now wish also to say? Yeah, I think first that I wish I would have made a clearer point of framing this issue in terms of not just why we don't baptize babies, but why this issue is bigger than who we baptize, right? The issue itself of the covenant, who belongs in the covenant, is ultimately an issue about who we see as belonging in the church. And so as Baptists, we actually believe that the church is composed only of believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. So in that sense we would desire to have a pure church, and by pure church I don't mean a sinlessly perfect church, but I mean a church that is made up of only those who profess faith in the Lord Jesus and have the works to demonstrate that. And so in a sense We know that the church is always a mixed multitude, right? But the thing is, is that when we admit an unbeliever into membership, we do it on accident. Yes. Right? We do it because we don't have the omniscience to know that this person's not a real believer. The Lord knows those who are his, we often don't. Right. Yes. We do it on accident. In a sense, our Pedo-Baptist friends do it on purpose because they believe that the children of believers are, in fact, in the visible covenant, and that goes back to really what we were talking about this morning. I wish I had made that a little more clear, but... You've made the point now, which is great. Yeah, so who belongs in the church then? We're saying believers. Right, right, right. That would be our definition of the church. Yes. Of those who, in fact we would say baptized believers. Yes, yes. Right. Yeah, what we see in say the book of Acts chapter 2 is people in response to a sermon of Peter's obviously believe the message. They were told to repent, be baptized, And I'm sure we're going to go to that text, but they then became active members in the church. There wasn't this gap of three months or three years between one thing and another, which often happens in our churches today. It was very, very clear they were seeing baptism as the way into the church, which is really what, rather than an altar call, a call to repentance and faith. And should you have repented and believed in Christ, you'll be fully identified with him in baptism. And that means you become a functional member of the church. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So where else would you like to go as to scriptures? Do you wanna go to Acts 2? Yeah, yeah, let's go to Acts 2 because Acts 2 is, I would say, probably one of the top three New Testament texts that's used to support the practice of covenant infant baptism. And there's a reason for it. So can I just read the text? For sure. Okay, so I'll be reading from the New American Standard, 1995. Okay, so you can try to follow along. I'll do my best. So this is, of course, Peter's preaching on the day of Pentecost. And verse 37, and when they heard this, they were pierced to the heart and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, brethren, what shall we do? Peter said to them, repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you'll receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. And there's sort of a couple of interesting things just even in verse 38. And that is, Peter says, repent and each of you be baptized, right? So he's calling for an individual response. And then, and you'll receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. And then verse 39, and this is the text that's often used, says, for the promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off. as many as the Lord our God will call to himself. And so you can see the way that a proponent of infant baptism would use this text. They would say, look, the promise, at that point, what they may mean is the covenant promise, okay, is for you and your children. And so it's that text. In fact, I remember John Murray, in his book on Christian baptism, spends a lot of time. I have a quote here from the Directory of Public Worship, which is part of the Westminster Standards. So after going through Genesis 17 to you and to your seed, at the end it says, thus rather than rescinding the covenant promise to believers and to their offspring in the New Testament, God reaffirms it. He declares that the promise is unto you and unto your children. And what's interesting is that this The Directory of Public Worship, of course, was the guidelines for Presbyterian churches that adopted the Westminster standards. What's interesting is that the promise, very clearly, is the covenant promise, right? And yet in the text, that's not what the promise is. The promise is actually the Holy Spirit, right? And so what do we make of the promises for you and for your children? And I would say that just a careful exegetical analysis of the text does not lead us to believe that what Peter is saying is the promise is for you and for your children. I think that if you take the text and you look at it in its component parts, what you have is the promises for you, The promise is for your children. The promise is for those who are far off. And then here's the qualifier. Would that be Gentiles? I would say, yeah, that would be Gentiles. Yeah. And then the qualifier is this, as many as the Lord our God will call to himself. In other words, the promise is for you. And among you, who is it for? As many as the Lord God calls to himself. The promises for your children, how? As many as the Lord our God will call to himself. The promises for those who are, in a sense, outsiders, right? Who? Well, as many as the Lord God will call to himself. And so really, in a sense, instead of being a proof text of the promises for you and your children, the covenant promise, I think that really it's qualified by God's electing grace, his effectual call, and it's for you, your children, those who are far off. In a sense, he's giving us different categories and who is it that the promise is for, those that God calls to himself. And then, verse 41, which is a lot of times left out of the discussion, Just jumping in, I think oftentimes when I hear verse 39 quoted, it's often quoted without that last clause of whom the Lord our God calls to himself. the promise for you, your children, all who are far off. There it is. We'll read the rest of this because I believe that's an explanation of what comes before. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think I think that that's right. Um, verse verse 41 though, gives us the conclusion of the way that they understood what Peter had just said. So then those who had received his word were baptized. And that day there were added about 3000 souls and I want to be careful with arguments from silence, but it is interesting to me that if verse 39 is so emphatic of being a promise to you and your children, and they understood it covenantally, if you get to 41, who's baptized? Those who would receive the word, right? We have to ask the question, can infants do that? Yeah. If the promise is for you and your children covenantally, why doesn't the text tell us, and as many as received his word and their children were baptized? And of course, there's just simple emphasis on those that received the word, received baptism. Yes. Those who received his word were baptized. Yeah. Yeah. So rather than it being a slam-dunk text that says baptize your children, the actual text with more analysis and more just gazing at the text, that last phrase in verse 39 is key, and then verse 41 is certainly how they understood it as you put it. Yeah. Where else would you like to go? Well, I mean, I think that, you know, if we're going to be in the book of Acts, we should probably bring up the issue of household baptism. Oh yes, that always comes up. Because that always comes up. And there are other household baptism texts that are outside of Acts, but Acts contains the majority of them. And in a sense, Acts chapter 16 is just sort of one of those classic passages in a sense, we don't have to look at every household baptism text. We can look at, in a sense, an exemplary one. So, of course, you remember, you know, Paul and Silas are in jail, and they're singing hymns at midnight, and God sends an earthquake, and there's this and really, really dramatic, right? I actually love just how at the beginning of Acts 16, God just quietly opens Lydia's heart through the things that Paul says. Then you get to this part, and this is this is dramatic conversion, right? Lydia is sort of, you know, just sort of a quiet conversion. This is anything but quiet, right? So, there's this earthquake. And of course, the guard need to remember that prison guards in the Roman Empire were typically retired soldiers. And so, they would have been These guys would have been pretty rough guys, you know? And of course, shame-based culture, if you are a guard and your prisoners escape, better to kill yourself than to have your family disgraced because of your failure. So of course, he sees the prison doors open. He's about to fall on his sword. Now, Luke doesn't say this explicitly, but he'd been listening to Paul and Silas. all night. He had no choice. He's the captive audience, right? And so when he's about to kill himself, the Apostle Paul says, do yourself no harm for we're all here. And of course... Verse 28. Yes, verse 28. He calls for the lights. He rushes in trembling with fear. He fell down before Paul and Silas. And after he brought them out, he said, sirs, what must I do to be saved? And dramatic, in a sense, somewhat immediate. It's not as if he was a God-fearer like Lydia. And Paul says in verse 31, Paul and Silas, they said, believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, you and your household. Now, before we kind of press on, I think it's important that we realize that if this is a baptism of baby's text, then in a sense it proves too much. Because it says, believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, you and your household. So, Paul's not saying you'll be saved and your household will be covenant members. He's saying you and your household will be saved. And so verse 32, they spoke the word of the Lord to him together with all who were in his house. So we kind of move to this scene where now Paul and Silas are speaking the word. You could imagine the Philippian jailer bringing everyone in the house together, right? It's midnight. He's waking up his family, you know, and of course, extended family, maybe even servants, right? They're coming all in. And verse 33, he took them that very hour of the night, washed their wounds, and immediately he was baptized, he and all his, okay, all his household. And so our pedobaptist friends would say, well, you don't think that there were babies in the house, right? And I would say, well, I don't know. It doesn't say. But the rest of the text is clear enough to know what this means. Because verse 34, he brought them into his house and set food before them, and then notice this, and he rejoiced greatly, having believed in God with his whole household. Yes. So verse 34, in a sense, gives us a clarification of what it meant that he was baptized with his whole house because verse 34 tells us that the jailer believed in God with his whole house. I think that it is just far too much of a stretch to say, well, of course, his faith was the faith of the infants or what. I think that the narrative is clear. He hears the word with his household. You've got to be able to hear the word. He's baptized because he believes and his household is baptized because they believe. And so far from being a text that in a sense just says household baptism, babies must have been there, therefore babies were baptized. I think that the qualification ends up being they heard the word and they believed. You know, and so what does that mean regarding infants? And the answer is really nothing in a sense, right? If they were there, I don't, I don't assume that they were baptized. But there's nothing that actually, you know, I mean, the guy could have been my age, right? And, you know, we don't have any babies in our house. So, So anyway, I think that the effort at using household baptism, in a sense, proves too much. Because it's, believe in the Lord Jesus, you'll be saved, you and your house. The assumption is those in your house who believe. Yeah, I think that's clear. Or are there any others in Acts you wanted to go to, or maybe go to Colossians 2? What are your thoughts? Yeah, yeah. The Colossians 2 passage, I think, is significant one for us because our Pato Baptist brothers would say, you know what, you have a text in the New Testament that equates baptism and circumcision. And they'd point to Colossians chapter 2. And so I want to know, you know, okay, let's take a look at this. And I think just for the sake of picking up the context, Paul starts in Colossians 2 9 for in him all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form and In him you've been made complete He's the head over all rule and authority and in him and then this is this is where we we get into The text in him you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead. Now, one thing is true, and that is you have circumcision in verse 11, and you have baptism in verse 12, all right? So in terms of just the proximity of these two things. They're close. They're close. The question is, is the assertion that this text teaches that baptism replaces circumcision, is that assertion true? Is it provable? And what I see is verse 11, so in Christ, and there's a lot of exegetical detail in this text that really is pretty intricate in some ways, but in him you also were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands." Now that phrase, made without hands, of course means God did it. Yes. Right? It's a spiritual circumcision. Yes, absolutely. So that very terminology, right? So Was it Hebrews 9? There's the heavenly tabernacle made without hands, right? The stone in Daniel 2 is this kingdom that's made without hands. That's just simply imagery that it is spiritual and it's divine. God has done it. It's an act of God. It's an act of God. So in verse 11, there's a circumcision that is an act of God. And I want to just stop for a second and just say, okay, well, so Paul could have simply said that you were circumcised with the waters of baptism or something like that, right? In other words, he could have made the connection a little more obvious. At this point, the connection is not obvious. It's in a sense like what we were talking about this morning. What Paul's emphasizing is in a sense the spiritual significance of what circumcision pointed to, right? Regeneration. Regeneration. And so then the next part, in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ. Now this last line in verse 11 is absolutely fascinating. And time would fail us if we went into all of the juicy exegetical detail. But there's a sense where I believe that Paul uses the expression, the circumcision of Christ. So we just get a little bit technical. I think that Paul's using that as an objective genitive. In other words, the circumcision of Christ. But I think that the imagery, so in other words, it's not Christ's circumcision of us, which actually might fit in the context. But I don't think that's what he's getting at. I think that he's talking about the circumcision of Christ, but not Christ's. physical circumcision when he was eight days old, but that rather he's using that imagery as a, in a sense, a bloody imagery of Christ's death. And for those that want to look this up more, for instance, Peter O'Brien's excellent commentary on Colossians. He makes a really good defense that that's what he's talking about. All right. So, The idea then is in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ. So through Christ's atoning death, we end up having, in a sense, the putting off of our sinful flesh, which of course is the circumcision made without hands. It's the cleansing part of the regeneration. And so the language, for sure, this is not, we'll just say this is not real common language with Paul, okay? But it's certainly vivid, and it's redemptive historical language, right? But verse 12, having been buried with him in baptism, and so our pedo-baptist friends go, ah, see, there it is, right? And I'm gonna say, okay, one of my primary rules of Bible interpretation is keep reading, okay? So, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with him, and then here's the key phrase, through faith. through faith in the working of God who raised him from the dead. And so let's just speculate for a minute and say, okay, well, Paul really is making a connection between circumcision and baptism. Even if that were true, I don't see that, all right? But even if that were true, that little phrase, through faith, right? In other words, the person who is being baptized who is in union with Christ and is buried with him, this of course is Roman six language, buried with him in baptism, is raised up with him through faith. So in other words, that that one who has been circumcised with a circumcision without hands He's had, through Christ's bloody sacrifice, the body of flesh, as it were, removed, right? In other words, the very imagery of circumcision, which is vivid and graphic in the Old Testament, that very significance is now true of a believer who's in union with Christ and has been buried with him in baptism, raised with him through faith. And so I want to say that whatever the exegetical nuances are of this text, that what ends up happening is it ends up being a text that actually underscores the importance of faith, right? And so again, I don't see this as a warrant for baptizing our children. Yeah, through faith, whatever it is. and it is so, so clear when you explain that and yet I think a lot of people are trying to hold on to a framework and it's only by the biblical text that we can test the framework. Yes. A framework stands or falls by exegetical encounter. Does that stand up to scrutiny? If you've got the real thing, you don't mind looking at it. If you've got real gold in your father, and his father told you you've got a gold watch, and you actually believe that, if someone questions that, you're not going to say, well, no, we're not going to have this scrutinized. You don't mind it being scrutinized, because you believe you've got the right thing. And the real thing, the genuine thing, and then When you take it to a jeweler and he confirms it, you're affirmed in your faith that it was genuine. But if he tells you this isn't the real thing, you'd rather know. Yeah. You'd rather know. Right. Right. So we know our framework, whether it stands by going to the text and say, can we take a look at this? Yeah. So Colossians 2 is certainly a big one. Yeah. Yeah. Did you want to go to 1 Corinthians 7? Is that another one? Well, yeah, we could. Yeah, that would be another text that's used. I can't remember if it was R.C. Sproul and John MacArthur's debate on baptism, but I remember, and maybe it was Sproul, that it admitted that this was not one of the best texts, but it's often one that's used. The context, of course, is in the context of marriage and divorce. And so the apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 7, 12, but to the rest, I say not the Lord, which all he means by that is I don't have a direct statement from Jesus about this, which he did in the previous section. He's still speaking for Jesus. He's still speaking for Jesus. We're not red-letter Christians, right? All scriptures, God breathe. that if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever and she consents to live with him, he must not divorce her. And a woman who has an unbelieving husband and he consents to live with her, she must not send her husband away." So Paul sets up this scenario which would have been fairly common maybe in the Corinthian assembly where you have one spouse that becomes a Christian and another spouse that doesn't. Paul says if the unbeliever, whether husband or wife, consents to live with them. You could look at the phrase as they're well pleased to live together. Paul says don't send them away. And then he says in verse 14, for the unbelieving husband is sanctified through his wife. and the unbelieving wife is sanctified through her believing husband, then Paul says, for otherwise your children are unclean, but now they're holy. And I just want to say, you know, First of all, we have to ask, what does Paul mean by sanctification here? The believing spouse sanctifies the unbelieving spouse. Then we have to ask, because the word holy of course is the noun form or the adjective form, of the verb to sanctify. We've got the same idea with the children. Now your children are holy. Otherwise, they'd be unclean. In other words, if they were the children of two unbelieving parents, they'd be unclean. But now, through the influence of one believing parent, the children are holy. Everything rises and falls on what that word sanctified means. Yeah, so if it's sanctification in any way that entails Salvation. We're in trouble. We're in big trouble. Yeah. And this text ends up making a mess of Paul's doctrine of salvation, right? So you have a believing husband and an unbelieving wife and now it's like sanctified with the Spirit of God is working in them and working out salvation. Not hardly, right? So we have to ask them, what does Paul mean by sanctified here? And I think that you have to conclude, first of all, that he's using the term sanctified in a way that is not in a sense generally consistent with the way that he uses the word. Now that actually should not be a surprise to us. It should be no big deal to us because to assume that we mean the same thing by the same word every time we use it just in a sense defies basic linguistics. We just don't do that. And so Paul is making a point here though and that is, listen, believing spouse You have a sanctifying influence on that unbelieving spouse. What would that influence be? The unbeliever is married to somebody who is in union with Christ, who is a child of God, who has the Spirit of God in them, who's justified. So is there a sense in which, let's say, the unbelieving spouse has now, by virtue of their marriage to a believer, been set apart? And the answer is yes. Not set apart for salvation, but set apart because of the influence of the gospel. So when the appeal is made so that your children are now holy, to somehow assume that that entails baptism actually boggles my mind. I don't see how in the world, and if you work your way backwards, it creates a huge problem, right? Because if your children are sanctified through a believing parent, and they've received the sign of the covenant, right? Why not administer the sign of the covenant to an unbelieving spouse. Whatever we understand by sanctifying holy, it's not going to entail, in a sense, the sign of the covenant. I think that this passage is a great text that deals with the privilege of being raised in a Christian home. We don't treat our children as if they are little pagans out in the world. We don't treat them as members of the Covenant. But in a sense, I've often thought about it like this. You've got believing parents and they have their home and they have their backyard. All the kids in the neighborhood may come over, all right? And you have all these neighborhood kids in the backyard, but when you call those kids in, it's dinnertime, right? Your kids know. where they belong. There's a sense where our kids are not just total heathen. They're raised under the privilege of the gospel. They're raised under the influence of the gospel. They're taught to pray. They're encouraged to read their Bibles. We also encourage them to believe in the Lord Jesus. That's why, by the way, sometimes, just pastorally, sometimes kids that are raised in Christian homes don't always have a clear line of demarcation as to when they've come into the kingdom. To push my illustration a little farther, you have the backyard where that's where you have truly the mixed multitude. Then you have the house and the children of believers in a sense are kind of like on the back porch, right? They're not out with all the neighborhood kids, right? They belong close. And there comes a time where maybe those believing kids say, wow, I'm in the house now. When did I get in the house? Last thing I remember, I was on the back porch. Now I'm in the house, and I don't know how I got from here to there. But that's, you know, the children of believers, that's often what ends up happening, is they don't have a Philippian jailer conversion. Some do, but not many. It's more quiet. And so there's a privilege. And I think that's what Paul's getting at. The children are holy. That is, they're not holy in a salvific way, but they're set apart in a way that's privileged under the sound of the gospel. Is that anything akin to what we see in the Old Testament with vessels that are sanctified in the sense of they're set apart for a certain purpose? There are articles, there are vessels that are used in the tabernacle that were not to be used elsewhere. Is there a sense of that being in this? Yeah, because I think that what ends up happening in those passages is that you're making a basic appeal to the meaning of the word sanctified, which is set apart, right? Set apart. And so, in that sense, we can take comfort because our children are set apart. But, of course, that doesn't mean that we extend the sign of the covenant to them, right? We still tell our children, you need to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. So I was, we had a Presbyterian friend who was preaching for us. This is years and years ago, and I'm driving him back to the airport. And I said, I said, let me ask you a question. I said, you catechize your kids, I catechize my kids. You pray with your kids, I pray with my kids. You read the Bible with your kids, I read the Bible with my kids. I said, we do a lot of stuff that's very, very similar. I said, what do you think the biggest difference is between the way you raise your kids as covenant members and the way I raise my kids? And he goes, it's actually pretty simple. He says, I raise my kids telling them that God is their Heavenly Father. And I raise my kids telling them that Jesus is their Savior. I raise my kids and tell them that they are Christians. You raise your kids and you tell them you need to become a Christian. And frankly, that's an accurate description. And so with all of our kids, we, whether family worship or whatever the context, we would encourage them, you know, turn to the Lord Jesus, be born again. And so that is, but that's a privilege to be able to hear that from parents who love you. That is a privilege. Who then should be baptized? Well, I think that the testimony of Scripture is only those who are in the new covenant by faith alone in Christ alone. Those are the ones who should be baptized. Yes. On a broader scale, broad picture, how does the doctrine of Sola Scriptura hit this? How does it have application to this? I'm actually really glad you asked that because we would not be Baptists if it were not for our commitment to Sola Scriptura. and you know there's a resurgence today of the great tradition. There's a resurgence today of interpret the Bible with the church, right, and I want to say there's an element of truth to that. We're not In fact, we recited the Athanasian Creed this morning at King's Church. That connects us. We're confessing what the church has confessed for centuries upon centuries. In that sense, Catholic. Yes, in that sense, Catholic. And so as Baptists, we're not anti-traditionalist. We're not anti-credal. As confessional Baptists, we're most certainly not anti-confessional. We have to understand that if we were simply going by tradition, that infant baptism is the tradition of the church. Going back to very early times, that is the tradition. That is the majority position. With the exception of our Baptist confessions and then some of the like the Schleitheim confession from the Anabaptists, from the sane Anabaptist, not the crazy Anabaptist. With rare exception, the confessional history, the confessional tradition of the church has been infant baptism. And so why don't we baptize our babies? Well, because we're convinced that Scripture does not tell us to, right? And so it's actually our commitment to sola scriptura that actually causes us to say that aspect of church history, that aspect of church tradition, that aspect of, if you will, interpreting the Bible with the church If that was the case, I believe that we would baptize our babies. The only reason we don't is because of a commitment to Scripture, which ironically is often spoken of pejoratively today as Biblicism, right? And I want to say that if Biblicism means a commitment to Sola Scriptura, then I'm a biblicist. Yes, me too. And if... You know we're going to get in trouble for this. That's all right. But the idea that somehow we would be in that, let's say, that stream that would say... You've heard this distinction, the distinction between sola scriptura and solo scriptura. We are not saying that there's no place for tradition and there's no place for creeds. The solo position or the nuda scriptura. That's where you get a lot of the anti-Trinitarian movement and stuff like that in church history. That's not our case. That is not our case at all. But this is our case, is that the scripture is preeminent in deciding these matters, and our confession tells us that as well. And so, I'm happy to say that I'm committed to sola scriptura, and that commitment leads me to a believer's baptism position. As I understand it, the Reformation was making the distinction between that which is necessary and that which is sufficient. And with Sola Scriptura, we're saying the Bible is necessary and it's sufficient. And while we have great teachers in the body of Christ, not only in our own day, but through the centuries, we look at them and we evaluate them in the light of Scripture. Scripture is our final, ultimate course of Refuge is the place we go. It's the sole infallible rule of faith for the people of God. Amen. Amen. Well, why don't you wrap this wonderful time up with a word of prayer. Sure. Father, we thank you that you've given us your word. Father, we say regularly the grass, the flower fades, the grass withers, but the Word of the Lord abides forever, and Lord, we believe that, and we thank you that we have a great heritage, Lord, not only as Protestants, but also as Baptists, and we pray that you would help us to understand these matters clearly, and we pray, too, that you would give us charity with those that differ, And Father, we want to be known not only by our convictions, but also by our love for one another. And so we thank you for this time. I thank you for my friend, John, in Jesus' name, amen.