00:00
00:00
00:01
Transcript
1/0
I'm going to record this so that
we can inflict this on anyone who happened to not be here today. So before we get to this, I should
probably just tell you as a starting point where I grew up. I grew
up in an independent Baptist church. And I saw my baptism
certificate when we were moving here and it's in a box someplace.
But I think it says on there that I was baptized in that church. which was actually not in the
church, but behind the church in an old mill pond that we used
to baptize people in. Baptized by immersion because
of belief when I was, it says, I think it says July of 1976,
which means I would have been five and a half years old. And
I can still remember going down the street in my dad's car in
the passenger seat, this old 67, I think, Volkswagen Bug. He was driving down the street
and he said, son, tomorrow you're going to be baptized. And I remember
saying, I, that's where they put you underneath the water,
right? And he said, yeah. And I said, I said, uh, I don't
know if I want to do that. That looks kind of scary to me.
And then he said, why should I, why am I going to do that?
And he said, well, cause I've got a list in my pocket right
here of all the people that have made professions of faith in
Sunday school or in church or in classes at our school and
your names on the list three times so it's time for you to
be baptized and so They had me and a bunch of other people.
I think it was after church on a Sunday at some kind of a dinner,
you know, and then all of the baptizees went out to this pond
and our of course we have to dress up because we were independent
bachelors so we had on black dress pants and socks and a white
shirt and you know Sunday best down into the mill pond right
so that's when I was baptized and I remember when I was about
18 I was 18 it was my beginning of my sophomore year of college
when I first really sort of on my own with God's help, obviously,
started to think through what we refer to as the doctrines
of grace. And it really was one doctrine. It was predestination.
And so I was in college and started to wrestle with that. And I didn't
understand words like Calvinism or reform or even five points
of Calvinism. All that stuff, I had no idea.
Even though my dad was a five-point Calvinist, I had no idea about
all that stuff. It had just gone over my head.
for all those years. I didn't know doctrines of grace.
I didn't think of myself in any of those categories at all. So
I was trying to grapple with this one doctrine. And after
I felt like I understood it and embraced what predestination
had to say, then I began to understand, okay, somebody said, this is
part of something called systematic theology, which means that these
five points are really like gears in a machine and they work together. And so you need to kind of understand
that You know, there's a long history, centuries and centuries
long, of people working on these doctrines and they fit together
in a certain way so that when you embrace one, you really need
to look at some of the others because your questions are really
answered by other doctrines. And so I can remember growing
up and hearing doctrine, doctrine, doctrine, doctrine. I never really
understood how important that was until I got to this place
in my life where I felt like I was just sort of drifting around,
and I knew Bible content, I knew all the stories, I could name
all 66 books of the Bible, I knew all of the basic stuff, but I
just felt a little bit like there was not as much context for all
of the things that I knew. And as I was being taught doctrine,
some of these doctrines, I thought, oh, okay, now I understand that
there's a rhyme and reason for some of these things that are
going on. As I kind of grew up into what you would call Reformed
faith, it took from 18 until about 25 before I was ready to
say, okay, I think I understand enough, I'm ready to embrace
what the PCA and other Presbyterians and other Paedo-Baptists believe
about baptism. The reason why it took me so
long, I think, is because coming from being a Baptist, Baptism
is like the tent pole, or it felt like the tent pole holding
up the whole works. So whenever someone would start
talking to me about baptism, I kind of had a lot invested
in it. Personally, my whole family were Baptists. They still are
Baptists, even though my dad's a five-point Calvinist. We got married in the Southern
Baptist Church. My father-in-law was a deacon for many years in
the Southern Baptist Church. My mother-in-law still is a member
of the Southern Baptist Church. My dad's an associate pastor
in the Southern Baptist Church. Those of my family that are not
in the Southern Baptist Church, like aunts and uncles, are in
some other sort of Baptistic type of denomination. So I kind of have a lot invested
over there. So as I've kind of grown up,
and sort of seen another side of things, it took me a while
because of a larger context that I couldn't quite embrace. And
so, when we want to talk about what does the Bible say about
baptism, I think the first question really is, what's the big idea? What's the biggest idea of the
Bible is the kingdom of God. Underneath the umbrella of kingdom
of God, which is the big tent, underneath that is covenant.
So you don't have covenants without kingdom. And then underneath
covenants is baptism or signs of the covenant. So it took me
a long time to sort of work backwards from this individual doctrine
to see that even if you're in a Baptist church, that individual
doctrine fits into bigger ideas than just a standalone thing. So when I started thinking about
this lecture, this Q&A, and by the way, this is a discussion,
not just me, and some of the other guys are gonna present
ideas too, I think it's important to start with covenant. So what
is covenant in the Bible? So a covenant is a solemn relationship
between God and his people. We can define it in all kinds
of ways, but there are at least, there properly are six covenants
in the Bible. Covenant with Adam, Noah, Abraham,
Moses, David, and then the new covenant in Christ. These covenants
can be thought of in a variety of ways. Perhaps two ways is
universal covenants and national covenants. So an example of a
universal covenant is when God made the covenant with Adam and
Eve in the garden, it affected all of humanity. Universal, right? They were to rule over all the
beasts of the field, rule, subdue. Everything was under their authority.
when they sinned and plunged all of Adam's race into sin,
right? It affected all of humanity,
all of creation, thorns, thistles, all the rest, universal. We see
a renewal of the universal covenant later on in the book of Genesis
chapter 6, 7, 8, 9 with Noah, where you actually see the words
repeated after the ark, right? Rules subdue the earth once again. You see that same cultural mandate,
fill the earth, repopulate it and so forth. But then when you
get to Abraham, there's definitely a covenant going on there where
God himself makes a solemn agreement with Abraham, but it's more specific
than to the whole earth. It's to one man and his descendants
after him and to the kings and nations that will come from them,
right? You see it even more explicitly in Moses, which we'll see in
a few weeks when you get to Exodus chapter 19 in there at Sinai.
And God delivers the law to Moses, and that law is for the governance
of Israel. He delivers Israel from bondage
in Egypt into the land of promise that he promised to Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob. You see a deepening of the same
national sentiments in the covenant with David, where God promises
David that one of his descendants will remain on the throne throughout
and forever. Christ, the covenant with Christ,
the new covenant, though, is a little different because the
context changes a little bit. You could probably say that there
are elements of nationalism, national covenant, as well as
universal covenant within the new covenant with Christ, but
it changes slightly because it's not specifically just for Israelites,
it's for this new thing that Christ is doing where he's breaking
down the walls that separate male, female, slave, free, Jew,
Gentile, and all of that. It's a universal, but it's set
within the context of church, the community of the church,
not the identity of ethnic or national Israel. So in order
to kind of understand that, let's sort of click the drop down menu
on that a little bit and talk about universal and national
covenants as it relates to believers and unbelievers. So we should
understand that even back in the Old Testament, when we're
talking about the nation of Israel, even the covenant with Abraham,
where it kind of all started, that there's an understanding
that there would be people who believe that live in Israel,
that really believe in the God, Yahweh, and want to follow after
Him faithfully, and there's also those that are not going to believe.
So we get this image of those that really believe, those that
don't believe, but they both live underneath the same governance
of the same covenant, and they're expected, if they live in Israel,
no matter where they come from, that the law of the land, the
God of the land, is the God of the Bible, Yahweh. So, as kind
of an outline for this, if you look at Hebrews chapter 10, 26
to 27 and 29 to 30, you get some of this sense in the New Covenant,
where the book of Hebrews, written to Hebrew believers, is going
back into the Old Testament, and it's capturing some of those
sentiments of believers and unbelievers in the same pot or group of people.
And this is what it says. If we go on applying to New Covenant,
if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge
of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins,
but a fearful expectation of judgment and a fury of fire that
will consume the adversaries. because they treat as an unholy
thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified them. How much
worse punishment do you think will be deserved by the one who
trampled underfoot the Son of God and has profaned the blood
of the covenant by which he was sanctified? and has outraged
the spirit of grace. For we know him who said, vengeance
is mine, I will repay. And again, the Lord will judge
his people. You should focus on the phrase
that's in verse 29 that says, he has profaned the blood of
the covenant by which he was sanctified. Okay, so one of the
mysteries of the book of Hebrews is, And one of the often sort
of discussion points is this is describing people losing their
salvation. No, it's not. It's discussing
people who have embraced the covenant, have come into the
church, and then rejected at some point later. So you have
this idea that there will be people in the church, on the
church rolls, people that join churches that are not really
truly safe. They have not truly experience
new birth. They've given assent to these
things, but later on they turn their back, they walk away, or
whatever. So we have to have biblical categories. How do we
talk about this so that we don't, again, damage another doctrine
that we believe that's biblical that would tell us, once you're
saved, you're saved, because it's not you that saved you,
it's God that saved you. He saved you eternally, and no
one can snatch those that the Father has given you out of my
hand, right? Okay, so we have this idea that in the New Covenant,
just as in the Old Covenant, we've got this group of people
that belong to the visible community that may not belong to the invisible
community. Jeremiah 31, 33 says, a new covenant, we know this,
probably have quoted it. I will put my law in their minds
and hearts. They will be my people, no longer
will a man tell his neighbor, no, the Lord. This talks about
sort of the already and the not yet. He's talking about a new
covenant that will come where you won't have to say to your
neighbor, know the Lord. They already will because he
will put the law in their heart and mind. This is an expression
though, not of just a new covenant in the sense that we have it
now, but a day that's coming when there will not even be a
need for preachers and teachers anymore because the people that
are still around will already know all there is to know. This is not describing just the
church on earth. This is describing the yet to
come aspect of what will be embraced in the future. So how this applies
to baptism is that baptism doesn't save, it brings people into covenant
with God. Baptism doesn't save, it brings
people into covenant with God. Okay, so we have visible community. Wow, we have to turn that off. Sorry. We have visible community
and we have invisible community. The pathway to the visible community
is baptism. Baptism is not designed to save
people, it's to put them into relationship with God, covenant
relationship with God. So, adults and their children.
I gave you blanks so you could fill this in, because I felt
like these were the two most important statements. God never made covenant
in the Bible with an adult without also including their children.
God never made a covenant in the Bible with an adult without
also including their children. Genesis 618 says, this is Noah,
I will establish my covenant with you and you will enter the
ark, you and your sons and your wife and your sons' wives with
you. You get that? He's talking to
Noah. I'm gonna make a covenant with
you. Remember what it said? Noah found grace in the eyes
of the Lord, so God made a covenant with him, included his wife,
included his children, who were adults and were married, included
their wives, After them, all right included the whole family
Genesis 17 7 Abraham I will establish my covenant between me and you
and your offspring after you threw out their generations for
an everlasting covenant To be God to you and to your offspring
after you clearly you can see God made a covenant with Abraham
Made a covenant through Abraham with his children, with his wife,
with his sons, daughters, their children, all of his offspring
after him. Universal covenant, national
covenants. specific, but with their children
as well. Exodus 25 and six, the second
commandment, I am the Lord, your God, the Lord, your God, I'm
a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on their children
to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing
steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my
commandments. Psalm 132 is about the covenant
with David. The Lord swore to David a sure
oath from which he will not turn back. One of the sons of your
body I will set on the throne if your sons keep my covenant
and test my testimonies that I shall teach them their sons
also forever shall sit on your throne. You see that God makes
covenant with adults, but he includes their children. He never
makes a covenant with an adult and it excludes their children
ever. So when we talk about what is
it we believe in this church about baptism, the first thing
we believe is that it's covenant baptism. We sometimes talk about
it and we say it's paid-off baptism. I think that really shortchanges
it, because that gets down to the practice of baptism, not
so much the doctrine of baptism. The doctrine of baptism is not
paid-off baptism. The doctrine of baptism we embrace
as covenant baptism. So whether you're baptized as
an adult, believer, or as a baby. What we believe is covenant baptism. God makes a covenant with his
people, with the adults, and he includes their children. That's
the pattern that scripture develops for us, and the momentum of that
scripture, you need to see that it's not just a one-and-off thing,
that from the beginning, The understanding is that God makes
covenant with his people through the adults, but he includes the
children. Okay, so does the pattern of
adults with their children extend to the new covenant? You can
probably imagine that I'm going to say yes. So Acts chapter 2,
38 and 39, with all of that momentum of the whole scripture bearing
down on him, At Pentecost, Peter gets up and preaches the first
Pentecost sermon, and Peter said to them, repent and be baptized,
every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness
of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit,
for the promise is for you and for your children, and for all
who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself. He keeps the expectation. Covenant
for you, covenant for your children. Not just meaning once they grow
up and can embrace this for themselves, meaning right now. In the same
way he meant, God meant it to Adam and Eve, same way he meant
it to Abraham, Moses, David, covenant families. 1 Corinthians
7.14 says something very interesting. For the unbelieving husband is
made holy because of his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made
holy because of her husband. Otherwise, your children would
be unclean, but as it is, they are holy. We shouldn't mean,
shouldn't interpret that to mean saved by. So if a non-believing husband is married
to a believing wife, what it's saying is that that marriage
is set apart as a holy thing. Likewise, if a believing wife
is married to an unbelieving husband, the marriage is holy
because It's set apart unto God, not self-ific. Nobody is being
made saved because of the marriage. One person saved, the other person
not saved. But likewise, it says, even if you have a mixed marriage,
a believer and a non-believer, the children are set apart wholly
because this is a covenant. God recognizes it. He blesses
it. Because one is a believer, the children are set apart as
wholly. Our children are the expected heirs of the covenant
of grace. That's why we baptize our children.
That's what covenant baptism is, is our children are the expected
heirs of the covenant of grace. Okay, just a starting point.
Anybody have questions? I was gonna say, I've seen it
in my own life. My dad's a believer and my mom's
not. Is that right? My brother's a believer. I think that was a good question
for you. Back to Jeremiah 31, 33. It says,
they will be my people. Can you just, since I don't remember,
can you provide us the context with which that's being written
or spoken? I'm trying to determine, okay,
who says they will be my people, and my people is a special phrase,
so I go, okay, well is that a national, it would seem to be more leaning
towards a national, Yeah, I think you've got to see it from their
perspective. So here's Jeremiah the prophet talking to a group
of people who are post-Babylonian, during the Babylonian exile,
right? That's where Jeremiah, we're coming up on that, enduring
that. where there's a lot of nationalistic
hope that has fallen through the floor, and Jeremiah the weeping
prophet is mourning the loss of the kingdom of God on earth,
and the decimation of those people, the people of God, by the Babylonians. Is this it? Is this the end?
We never got to see the revival of David. We never got to see
all our messianic hopes lived up to. And so, Jeremiah's trying
to preach and give an oracle of hope that there's a future
coming, right? That's what Jeremiah 31's about.
And that's why everybody's always, you know, tattooing themselves
a Jeremiah 2931 or whatever it is. This is all part of the nationalistic
hopes, the eventual coming to fruition of the resurrection
of all the hopes of David and, you know, the kingdom of Solomon
and all of that. And so that's, from their perspective, yes,
very nationalistic. But even in their nationalistic
hopes, when you go back to Abraham, they understood, at least they
should have understood, that the hope of Israel is the hope
of the nations, right? The people who are walking in
darkness have seen a great light. God raised up Abraham to bless,
not just Abraham, not just to bless his people, but through
him the whole earth would be blessed. And so that's the context
of this, is let's look down into the future and talk about a time
that's coming when God will restore the captives, will rebuild this
kingdom, but no longer will even the prophet who's giving this
message be necessary because God's gonna write this message
on the hearts of people. when there won't be the possibility
that they'll stray from the law and need to be led into Catholic
or chastised because they will already know the Lord. So it's
an Old Testament picture of heaven, is what he's describing, but
put into nationalistic terms for them, but a lot broader than
that. When the remnant is brought to
fruition and there is nothing, there is no one else, There is
no unbelievers around. Okay, just a foundation. Anybody
else have a question? Again, big idea. Yeah, exactly. I think that if you don't see
the context of the book being written to Hebrew believers to
explain to them how and you know very little is given in the book
I know to set the context but most I think most scholars believe
this is probably a group of people that are living maybe even around
Qumran around where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found they're
living apart from like almost like Essenes trying to keep pure
the the covenant and trying to live as best they can how do
they grapple with those that came out of Judaism and embraced
Jesus, but then when the persecution came in Acts chapter 8, 9, and
10 against the Jewish church in Jerusalem, and these people
ran away to get away from that, then Judaism started to flourish
again in Jerusalem for a little while, and their friends are
going, huh, now we're living out here in obscurity, we have
no temple, we left everything behind, they're hunting us now,
and those people start to, peel away and go back to Judaism.
How are we supposed to think about that? And so I think that's
why Hebrews was written is to address that. So you have people
that have gone back from embracing Christ and salvation by grace
to let's go back to the temple. Let's go back to sacrifices.
Let's go back and embrace all these things that Christ fulfilled
and negated. How should we think about them?
And the writer says, if they tasted the heavenly gift and
they've been in the community of believers where the Holy Spirit
lives, and they can resist that and go back, there isn't another
sacrifice to be made to make, there isn't anything greater
than Christ. So if you can turn away from Christ, then, you know,
of course, there's hope as long as they're alive that they will
re-embrace Christ, but, you know. Anybody else? So Grant's gonna
come next, and he's gonna talk to you about the next page, which
is the covenant sign of baptism. You ready, Graham? I'm ready. I'll save the mode stuff for
the end, because it's probably the least important thing that
we have to skip. There's stuff up here by Johann
Sebastian Bach and Andres de Govia. I'm not going to talk
about that. I'm hoping that my Seminole shirt won't be a stumbling
block for any of the people in the audience here. No one in
particular. So Pastor Toby talked about the
covenant, the people of the covenant from the Old Testament foundations
and how that included both the believer and the family of the
believer. As he said, I'm going to transition from that to talking
about baptism as the sign of the covenant. So the part two
in your outline, which I'm basically following, but it's a little
bit different. But for the most part, it should be pretty similar
to that. So how do we get to this idea of covenant and the
children as that 1 Corinthians 7.14 passage talked about the
children being cleansed and holy. So that's a kind of statement
about the people of the covenant, both in the Old and the New Testament.
How do we get from that to baptism? So first, I think we should talk
about the former, the founder of the Baptist Church, John the
Baptist. That's a joke. Not actually the founder of the
Baptist Church. But from Pastor Toby's Independent Fundamental
Baptist background, I'm sure he would have heard that once
or twice. So John came on the stage and he said, repent, for
the kingdom of heaven is at hand, be baptized. And the people said,
yes. All Judea and Jerusalem was going
out to be baptized, right? But the question we should ask
ourselves then is, why did the people not say, okay, we'll be
baptized, what's baptism? I don't know what that is. The
reason is because this was a part of their community going back
all the way to Old Testament times. This wasn't just some
new thing that John was doing. So, in order to understand baptism,
let's first look at some of the Old Testament roots of baptism.
All right, let's look up a few passages, starting with Exodus
19.10. We'll just look at these real
quick. Exodus 19.10. When Moses told the words of
the people to the Lord, and the Lord said to Moses, go to the
people and consecrate them today and tomorrow and let them wash
their garments and be ready for the third day. So this is in
the context of Sinai, the people are there washing with water
their garments to be ceremonially cleansed. It wasn't that God
was so concerned that they did not have any actual dirt and
they had clean clothes. This is a ceremonial type of
thing, ceremonially being clean. Leviticus 8.6 then gets into
some of the more cultic and just ritualistic kind of activities
that were happening. And Moses brought Aaron and his
sons and washed them with water. So again, a ritualistic type
thing happening, setting apart the priesthood here, Aaron and
his sons as holy to the Lord for their tasks and they're essentially
baptized here, they're washed. Then Leviticus 16.4, This is talking about the sons
of Aaron again. Well, Aaron himself actually
on the Day of Atonement and then the high priest that would follow
after him. He shall put on the holy linen
coat and shall have the linen undergarment on his body and
he shall tie the linen sash around his waist and wear the linen
turban. These are the holy garments.
He shall bathe his body in water and put them on. Okay? So, Again, a baptism of sorts
happening here. Then Hebrews 9-10 is an interesting
passage in the Old Testament where you see some additional
commentary on these... It's a passage in the New Testament
where you see some interesting commentary on these Old Testament
baptisms. Again, going beyond that. We
won't look up all of them, but I think it's instructive. I'll
give you what the Old Testament citations are if you want to
look at them on your own time. Go ahead and do that. Hebrews
9.10 says, well, let me start up a little bit above that, starting
at 8. By this the Holy Spirit indicates
that the way into the holy places is not yet opened as long as
the first section is still standing, which is symbolic for the present
age. According to this arrangement, gifts and sacrifices are offered
that cannot perfect the conscience of the worshipper, but deal only
with food and drink. In various washings, the ESV
says, but the Greek is baptisms, various baptisms, regulations
for the body imposed until the time of Reformation. And then
if you continue on down in the same chapter of Hebrews, he cites
some of those various baptisms. And you can see that, one, two
things to note from one, all of them are bloody, and two,
they're often just sprinklings. So I'm not going to talk about
mode, but I think that's certainly something to consider as you
look at this. The New Testament writers are calling these baptisms,
and they're not all immersions. In fact, they're often not. Okay,
verse 13, farther down in 10. For if the blood of bulls and
goats and the sprinkling of defiled persons with ashes of a heifer
sanctify the purification of the flesh, how much more will
the blood of Christ, the eternal spirit, offer himself without
blemish to God purify our conscience from dead works to serve the
living God. Look that up when you have a
chance to Numbers 19.4. Numbers 19.4 is a comparison
to that verse. Then verse 19, still in Hebrews, For when every commandment of
the law had been declared by Moses to all the people, he took
the blood of calves and goats with water and scarlet wool and
hyssop and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people. Compare that to Exodus 24, 8,
where Moses was sprinkling blood on the book of the covenant and
the people. And then in verse 21 here of Hebrews 10, and in
the same way he sprinkled with blood both the tent and all the
vessels used in worship. and that corresponds to Leviticus
16, 16. So just some background in baptism
in the Old Testament. Again, this practice of a ritual
purification rite is not new when John came on the scene and
said, be baptized, both with water and blood, bloody baptisms.
Okay, so that's the context for New Testament baptisms. Then
Jesus gives the apostles the Great Commission, commanding
them to baptize disciples. So why is that? Basically, the
point to be made here is that circumcision is the Old Testament
or the historical precedence of baptism. So let's talk about
that a little bit. Let's look at Colossians 2, 11-12. Colossians 2, verses 11 and 12.
The apostle says, In him also you
were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands by putting
off the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ, having
been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised
with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who
raised him from the dead. So here we see all people, both
males and females, so that's an interesting point to be made
there. A circumcision has been done,
but this is a circumcision done by Christ. This is a spiritual
circumcision, but then the identification there of those who are circumcised
is happening in the baptism. buried with him in baptism, by
the circumcision of Christ having been buried with him in baptism.
So, you can see in Paul's mind there's an equating here of what's
happening spiritually, what's being represented by both circumcision
and baptism. And the next point I want to
make, In addition, this kind of tying in in the explicit scriptural
passage is also just what we see is happening in both circumcision
and baptism, that they're both basically serving the same purpose,
circumcision in the Old Testament and baptism in the New Testament.
So, four points I'll make on this. First, they both mark out
the people of God as distinguished from the unbelieving world. In
Exodus 12, 48, Let me go ahead and read that real quick. X is 1248. "'If a stranger shall sojourn
with you "'and would keep the Passover to the Lord, "'let all
his males be circumcised. "'Then he may come near and keep
it. "'He shall be as a native of the land, "'but no uncircumcised
person shall eat of it.'" So there's this distinction of the
people of Israel. Israel, those people who can
come into the camp in this ritualistic way and be identified with the
people, they must be circumcised. And of course, in the New Testament,
we see that is the common thing when people are brought into
the church, that they are baptized. Acts 2.38 is an interesting passage
there. I won't read that for sake of
time. Acts 22.16, or sorry, Sorry, I'm looking down at my
notes. One thing too far. Matthew 28, 19, the Great Commission,
then Acts 2, we see those who believe are to be baptized. So
that was both mark out the people of God as distinguished from
the unbelieving world. Number two, both indicate purification
from defilement. with circumcision, in Exodus
6, the people were commanded to circumcise, or they were talked
about being of uncircumcised lips. And then they're commanded
throughout the Old Testament to circumcise their hearts. There's
this indication of purity. that is supposed to be coming
from the circumcision. Then now we're getting to Acts
2.38 where in the New Testament, baptism is said to be baptism
for the remission of sins. And then Acts 22.16, Paul is
told by Ananias there to arise and be baptized and wash away
your sins. So both indicate purification
from defilement. Third, both point to righteousness
by faith as the only way of salvation, of our relationship to God. And that might be an interesting
thing to think of when you think of, okay, how is circumcision
doing that? We're circumcising a child who
doesn't have the faith. But the point there is that it's
the sign, it is a symbol that the circumcision is coming, or
that the righteousness is coming by faith. It's not a testimony
to that person's individual faith. We see this in Romans 4.11 with
the inspired New Testament writer's description of what was happening
in Abraham's circumcision. So that's Romans 4.11. He received the sign, that's
Abraham, he received the sign of circumcision as a seal of
the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. So here, circumcision is a sign
and a seal of his faith. And that faith we see is the
righteousness, that is his righteousness before God is this faith. And
of course, we know that was applied to the children as well. Then with baptism, let's look
at Acts 16, 31 to 34. Acts 16, 31 to 34. This is there with the Philippian
jailer. And they said, believe in the
Lord Jesus and you will be saved, you and your household. And they
spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all those who were
in his house. And he took them the same hour of the night and
washed their wounds. And he was baptized at once,
he and all his family. Then he brought them up into
his house and set food before them. And he rejoiced along with
his entire household that he had believed in God. So here
we see the belief in God, believe in the Lord Jesus and you will
be saved. This is the salvation by faith accompanied with the
baptism. And then the fourth point as
far as circumcision and baptism being tied to the same thing,
representing the same thing, both point to covenantal union
and communion with God. So following along with Pastor
Toby's point about being in communion with God as a covenant, this
is what's happening in the New Testament with baptism as well.
We talked about that pretty clearly, or we know that clearly in the
Old Testament with circumcision. Think of Genesis 17. I will establish
my covenant with you and with your seed after you. And this
even says, this is my covenant. you shall be circumcised. So
there's this identification of the covenant with this sign,
the sign of the covenant. And then looking at Romans six,
three to seven, with how baptism is identified with this union
with Christ, this covenantal union with Christ. Romans six,
three to seven. Do you not know that all of us
who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his
death? We were buried therefore with Him by baptism into death,
in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the
glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For
if we have been united with Him in a death like His, we shall
certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His. And
we know that our old self was crucified with Him, in order
that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we
would no longer be enslaved to sin, for one who has died has
been set free from sin. So here this covenantal union
that we all rely on for any hope before God, this union with Christ
is identified with baptism. That's when it happened is the
description here. Alright, so just to review those
four points real quick. Baptism and circumcision. First off, circumcision as the
historical precedent of baptism. And one of the ways we see that
is the similar use and meaning of baptism and circumcision. Marking out the people of God
from the world. Both indicating purification
from defilement. Both pointing to the righteousness
by faith as the only way of salvation. and four, both point to covenantal
union with God. And one last thing I'll mention,
just following on with the 1 Corinthians 7.14 passage that the pastor
mentioned before, we see in 1 Corinthians 7.14, this is a key passage,
for understanding this doctrine of Covenantal Baptism because
it's one of the most explicit points in the New Testament where
the designation of people, the families of believers is made
and I think we need to look at the old, our approach to scriptures
in general should not be that God needs to repeat himself in
the New Testament in order for us to believe something in the
New Testament. Rather, has he explicitly done away with something?
Certainly that isn't the case, but much beyond that, we see
not only just silence here, but here in 1 Corinthians 7, 14,
we see explicitly a declaration that the children and the unbelieving
spouse even in this case, but his point specifically, that
is the obvious point that he's kind of making in passing, is
that the children are both holy and cleansed. They're holy and
not unclean, which means they are clean. So let me just talk
really quick about what that means and how that's relevant.
So holy, what does holy mean? You had to put holy in different
words. Set apart, yeah, consecrated,
set apart for a special purpose. I just scratched down a few things
in the Bible that are called holy. We have the holy place,
the holy city, holy Jerusalem, the holy kiss in the New Testament,
holy angels, holy prophets, holy covenants, holy apostles, holy
nations. and there's many more that could
be said there. So yes, being set apart, there's
a specific designation for that particular city, for that particular,
those prophets, that particular covenant, those apostles, that
city. It's a special designation. And then we see this term is
used throughout the New Testament for God's people, the church.
What are they called? What do the apostles often call
the church? The saints. The saints. And so saints, don't think of
saints as what we often hear in just our general cultural
conversation about saints as these people that are super spiritual
and that they have some kind of merit that's way above ours
that we can get a hold of because they're so wonderful. That's
the Roman Catholic view, which is not a biblical view. The biblical
view is that the saints, are us, all those who are believing
in Christ, all those who are part of the church, they're the
set-apart ones. So I guess the point, one of
the points there is that to be a saint, to be in the church
is to be holy in that sense, and the children are called holy,
then clean. We'll see also, let me just cite
two quick passages and then I'll be done here about a call of
the church to be the clean ones, to be pure. And we see how this
is, it's interesting to point these things out just in light
of 1 Corinthians 7, 14, where the children are called clean
and holy, like we talked about. 1 Thessalonians 4, 7, the apostle says, for God has
not called us for impurity or uncleanness, but in holiness.
So that's the church that's called to holiness. 2 Corinthians, 6,
14-18. Anyone from an IFB background
heard this one once or twice? 2 Corinthians 6, 14-18. Do not be unequally yoked with
unbelievers, for what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness?
Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has
Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer
share with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple
of God with idols? For we are the temple of the
living God. As God said, I will make my dwelling
among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and
they shall be my people. Therefore, go out from their
midst and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean
thing. then I will welcome you, and
I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters
to me, says the Lord Almighty. So here, the apostle picking
up from those Old Testament themes of clean and unclean, this ritual
cleanliness is also then given to the church as distinct from
the world. Just like it was in the Old Testament, that hasn't
changed in that sense. Okay, so the people are, the
children, in addition to the people, the believers, are clean,
they are holy, and these, in this certain sense, What do you
do with people that are clean and holy in the New Testament? The point here is that you baptize
them. Baptism is the sign of being clean and being holy in
the New Testament. Look at Ephesians 5, 25 to 27
for that, and also Hebrews 10, 22, just for the sake of time. I won't go there
and read those, but Ephesians 5, 25 to 27, Hebrews 10, 22. And an interesting one that's
kind of a little bit of an offhanded passage about it, but I've found
this in my studies, John 3, 22 to 25, there's this kind of argument
that the disciples of Christ are having about baptism. And well, it's spurred on by
them seeing baptism, but the argument is about purification.
So you see baptism as the sign, the symbol there of purification. Tying again to the cleanliness,
the ritual cleanliness of the people of God. And that's all
I have in this section of Baptism as a Covenant Sign. Any questions
specifically about that, what I said here? So you said the
verse, so Ephesians 5.25. Yeah, 5.25 to 27 in Hebrews 10.22. It's more along the lines of
the washing cleanliness associated with those ritual terms of holy
and clean. And the washing associated with
that washing with water. Any other questions? All right. So Matt's going to
come up and talk a little bit more about the significance of
baptism then. I think the fact that we're here
today is a good example of the transformative work of Jesus
in our lives, at least for me. I woke up this morning, Izzy
woke up, I pulled her into bed and kind of fell asleep again
and woke up with vomit on my shoulder, snot on my face. Jim Gaffigan, the comedian, who's
got five kids, has this really hilarious bit about how if children
were roommates, they would have been thrown out a long time ago. But as it is, we love them. God's
working in our hearts, and so we're here. Praise be to God. You know, I'll say my personal
experience with baptism, well, I should say our personal experience
with baptism, Dean and myself, is we both grew up in a reformed
Presbyterian environment, so practicing infant baptism, but
you don't really, it's not really something you wrestle with as
a kid, really, per se, at least I didn't. And so until, or an
adult, until Des came along, and then we were really confronted
with the question, and it just so happened that we were going
to an independent church that practiced sort of Baptistic baptism. And so, I don't know, that was
a learning experience for me, just wrestling with that, and
what should we do, and then continuing to learn, you know, one of my
medical trainers in my career, as he was assigning me, or right
before he assigned me a big talk, was, I have an opportunity for
learning for you. So these things are always good
opportunities for learning. All right, so significance of
baptism. This section is fairly, you know, I think the bullet
points here in your handout are actually quite good. It's briefer,
shorter, I think for many, the main reason being, I think there's
a lot of mystery to baptism that the Bible doesn't really communicate. I think there's more that happens
in the moment of baptism or the practice of baptism than I think
God has communicated to us. The whole origin of the word
sacrament, the idea of a sacrament, we get it from the Latin sacramentum,
which was the oath that the Roman soldiers would give to Caesar.
But then also early on in the church they would refer to the
baptism in the Lord's Supper as Mysterios, the Greek word
from where we get mystery. And they sort of used that word
to refer to pagan rites of initiation. But that whole idea of mystery,
I think there really is definitely a mystery behind the sacraments
that we don't fully appreciate. I don't want to get into a lot
of that conjecture. Let's stick with what the Bible
talks about. So two things, significance of
baptism, the meaning to believers and the meaning to children or
infants. So we've already touched a lot
on baptism and the passages in this section sort of reiterate,
I think, most of what's already been said. So it talks about
Abraham starting off, so Romans 4.11. which we already read,
but let me go back a little bit further in it. Okay. So starting sort of midway through
verse 9, we have been saying that Abraham's faith was credited
to him as righteousness, but under what circumstances was
it credited? Was it after he was circumcised or before? It
was not after, but before. And he received circumcision
as a sign, a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith, while he
is still uncircumcised. And then it talks about, and
then 1 Peter 3, turn of 21, talks about, basically says that baptism
is not as a removal of dirt from the body, there's nothing physical
in it, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience through
the resurrection of Jesus. And I think it's fairly clear
in the Bible that for the believer, a believer's baptism, right,
there's nothing, the significance of the baptism is it's a sign
of the faith that God has already put in our hearts. And it's a
sign of us entering into this covenant with him. So entering
into the covenant and entering with the faith that, or a sign
of the faith that he has already given us. I think it, you know, There's
less scripture when it comes to what's the significance, what's
the meaning for children or infants. It talks about, as Toby iterated
with all the different covenants, each one, the children are included
as part of the covenant. But the specific significance
of what it means to them isn't necessarily addressed very much
in the Bible. So certainly, circumcision, So
Jeremiah 4.4 talks about, it says, circumcise yourselves to
the Lord, circumcise your hearts. He was in the midst of basically
proclaiming to the Israelites that you're doing all these rituals,
circumcision being the initial one, but it's really not about
what you're doing, it's about what's in your heart. So this
idea of, for children, obviously, there's
not an expression They haven't expressed faith, especially at
eight days old when they got circumcised, I think. Obviously
no real, at least conscious expression of faith at eight days old. But this understanding that they're
part of the covenant, they've been born into this family, they're
under the covenant, that's number one. And then sort of calling
them, you can use it to call them to faith. I remember my
parents talking about my baptism. I have no recollection of my
baptism. And there's a picture of me wearing one of those really
long, white dresses when I was a baby that apparently belonged
to my great-grandfather. But the moment of baptism had no
meaning to me because I didn't remember it. But it was my parents
talking about my baptism. I don't know, it's a way, I think,
of helping children understand that, this is my perspective
on it, that they're a part of something, a part of something
really special, and a way of calling them to pursue life within
the covenant. Questions, as I think about the
other point I was going to make that skipped my mind. It'll come to me. So, and then I like the, in the
third and fourth bullet points under meaning to infants, the
whole idea of, for adults, the significance of baptism starts
with faith in us. And the baptism is the outward
expression of that. And for children, it's sort of
the outward expression calling them to an inward change. So
kind of, Altay and I like, for me, that sort of mental picture.
Yeah, I remember what I was gonna say. The other thing, I think,
as I approach this, I realize that I'm limited by my own background,
my own cultural understanding. I was reading a book, the book
Ravi Zacharias did on, Has Christianity Failed You? And he talks about, and at one
point sort of laments that most of the exegesis and doctrine has risen
out of the Western culture. when he said his point is, you
know, this really is an Eastern book, you know, it's written
out of an Eastern culture, and he was sort of lamenting the
fact that there's not more Eastern people approaching the Bible
from an Eastern perspective, more relational, more family-centered,
more family-driven, and I don't really know You know, for me,
I'm an introvert, as we talked about earlier. So the idea of
individual is great for me. And obviously, when we're in
that moment where we're standing before God, well, we're not even an
individual at that point because we've got Jesus there covering
us. But that's an individual moment. But I think in His providence,
most of our relationship, most of our walk in life is more relational
than I'd like to give it credit for. That's pretty much all I had
on that. There's definitely a lot of mystery there that I don't
think we are meant to understand. So I have a lot of questions, I just
wasn't sure which group to start with. And Tony's got one more
section on the mode of baptism. Yeah, that's a very good way
to go back to not answer the question. But if you want to
direct the question, I'm happy to. Well, I'll direct it at you. So I think I'm just thinking
back to when we had the team testimony and a lot of baptism
discussion. And one of the phrases that was
said was, you know, there was confusion about, well, sprinkling
versus immersion. But the phrase was, you know,
what if the sprinkling doesn't take? And so there was this kind
of confusion between maybe election and baptism. And so my question
is, like, we talk about the covenant, and we talk about circumcision,
but presumably, Jacob and Esau would have both been circumcised,
and Ishmael was circumcised. Mm-hmm. How do we, like, there
is a confusion about what we're doing when we're baptizing, and
what we're doing for our children, and what the significance is.
Like, it's not saving them, that they're not part of the elect,
it is a covenant sign, like, I don't know, do you want to
just talk about that a little bit? I mean, I think that for me,
the covenant sign is That's a big thing for me. I
mean, you know, God has blessed me with us, with these children,
and He has graciously included us under His covenant. And our
children are, the fact that they're given to us, they're now under
this, in this covenant. But recognizing, yeah, that that's
not saving, that's not a saving grace. I don't know. So maybe
you could phrase the question in a different way. I think most
of us would go, baptism is significant just because you just hear it
all the time, right? So you're just going to do it. I guess the practical question
is the why, right? Why is it significant? Because
by virtue of their birth from believing parents, and most of
our kids this year, they would be Are they part of the covenant
without baptism? Are they part of the covenant
without baptism? Good question. So I guess I would
say what makes a person in covenant or not in covenant? Is it something
you do? Well, I think the answer to that
is no. It's not something we as humans,
as humans got to work, right? I guess the logical question
after that is, well, if it's not something we do, then why
are we doing anything? We'll go back to Pastor Toby's sermon
a couple weeks ago with the Zipporah and the flint and the thrown
foreskins. You know, I think It's kind of tongue-in-cheek,
but there's a seriousness there that, yes, the people were still
God's people in covenant with Him, but they were not obedient
to the command, and there was some significance there. I don't
know exactly to say, OK, what's it doing, what's the effect?
It was already covenant anyway, but it was at least serious enough
to cause that incident. Sure. So I'm kind of playing
the foil here, because I feel that the lack of obedience in
this case to the command, if you will, is a serious thing. But I don't think that is necessarily
an answer to why. Does that make sense? Because
we're commanding because there is some sort of, we're being
commanded to do so, not to be disobedient, but in order to
help us or protect us in some way. Right. So what is that reason? You know, how do we crystallize
that? Okay, so the nature of sacraments, I mean, I think this
gets at the nature of sacraments and their relationship to the
church. So we never ask that question
about, about Lord of Supper, like what's the benefit of this
and why do we do it so much? In fact, we have people in the
church that think we should do it every single time we meet
for worship, because that's the practice of But we never ask,
why do we even do this? And the answer to that would
be the same as it would be for baptism. So why do we take the Lord's
Supper? Not just to prove that we're
obedient, but because both of our sacraments are acting out
the Gospel. they are as valuable as a sermon,
if not more so, because a sermon is not a sacrament. It is the
word of God, which is a means of grace, obviously, and we're
told to do that. But we don't just preach the
gospel so we can check the box that says, look, we were obedient,
now give us the goods. I mean, I think at some point
with maturity, you can kind of say that humbly to God, yes,
I've been obedient, God, now You know do what you promise
to do, but that's the wrong orientation, right? So the right orientation
is that these are sacraments and means of grace and while
we're commanded to do them we do them because There is grace
for us in the doing of it. So we might look at like just
Forget all the arguments for or against Baptizing our babies. We have this, we have this idea
that when we baptize our children, our event is over with. We stop,
we stop baptizing once we baptize the last child, right? We're
baptized, our kids are baptized, we're done with that, right?
But now we've got Lord's Supper that we can participate in, and
that's communion together with everybody. Not true. Baptism
is still a community activity. So every time a baby is baptized
in this church, or an adult, or a believer of any age, the
whole community is involved in that. So, in my own personal
case, the thing that pushed me over, after seven years of studying,
why don't I see it in scripture, you know? Like those 3D pictures
that used to hang in the mall, and you'd stand outside, and
you'd stare at it, and stare at people like, oh, I see it, the spaceship,
right? I never could see it. And so you stare at it for a
long, long time until you finally see it. Well, the thing that
pushed me over was not a book, but after all the content was
in, and sitting for week after week after week after week, watching
and hearing other people's children being baptized, one day sitting
on the back row, bing, I suddenly saw it. Because we were all doing
it. And every time somebody's baptized,
it's a covenant renewal ceremony. for the whole church. We're renewing
for every generation. We're being obedient to what
God told Abraham for every generation that comes after you. And in
doing this, he said, yes, we'll agree to help those parents raise
their children in the fear and admonition of the Lord. We are
joining in the covenant with them. So it's not, so just to
be clear here then, because I know, I guess I know the answer to
the first question. The real thing is, for lack of
a better term, communing in the grace, in a covenant community,
if you will. It is about the communal act,
not necessarily the individual. And getting back to what he just
said a minute ago about that Eastern orientation versus this
very post-Enlightenment existential me and my Jesus and my little
piece of wafer and my little tiny cup of juice. That's what
communion is. And getting in the broader context
of family, that we're the family of God. Church is about the family
of God. What happens to one happens to
all. So, when you look at the Old Testament, remember what
happened right before they crossed the Jordan River. Circumcised
the whole generation, right? Remember, from time to time,
they would just stop circumcising their children. And God took
that very seriously. And so did the leaders take that
very seriously, because it indicated something. It indicated something
that had creeped in systemically to the whole of the community,
is if I can't trust you, I kind of think I said this maybe a
little bit in that sermon about Zipporah, is, I mean, I cannot
imagine, because I'm not a doctor, but even if I were a doctor,
even if I were a surgeon, They don't let surgeons work on their
own children for this reason. It's because you're emotionally
involved. And when we had our children circumcised, I did not
want to be in the room. I didn't want to be there for
the shots even, because it just sort of creeps me out a little
bit. But the idea that you would take an eight-day-old baby and
stand before the Lord in front of the whole community and circumcise
that child, Yes, it's at the minimum about obedience, but
I think that it embraces a whole lot more than just, look, I'm
gonna prove what a man I am. I'm gonna step up here and yeehaw,
believe in Jesus. That is not, I think there's
a whole lot more mystery going on than that. And if God says
to you, trust me with your children, and you're able to trust him
with your children in that simple little act, then teaching them,
who God is, and the Memorized Bible verses is probably a piece
of cake, I think. Just one thing I'd add to that,
and then I was going to answer Dean's question too, but I think
I kind of had some stuff in mind on that real quick. But I think,
like you just mentioned here, what Matt said on the mystery
part of the sacraments is an important thing here, and it's
hard, because I have the same you know, prying kind of questions.
Okay, what's this doing? It kind of... I think that is,
again, part of the cultural thing of everything's got to have a
cash value to us. What do I know? And then also,
I've got to understand. You know, we live in the scientific
day. I've got to be able to get my mind around every, you know,
kind of inch of what's going on there. But it seems like when
we look at the New Testament description of, you know, the
sacraments of the Lord's Supper and baptism, It seems like you
kind of want to poke it one direction more towards the memorial only
type of thing, symbolic only. But if you do that too far, then
you start running into passages that are memorial. There's actually
something happening. There's a means of grace that's
happening. Then you poke it too far that way, and it gets to
be more of this magical type of thing. where I'm just going
to arm wrestle God to get him there. And then you run into
other kind of problems that way. And so that's what I like about
the reform position is that it seems to take the middle road
to that, but there is a mystery at the end of the day. I can't
describe how exactly all that works, but it does seem that
there's some middle ground between a memorial only, a sign only,
and you know, actual grace happening, it's something happening by the
word of God. I don't think we do these things
out of fear, although that is what I would call a motivator.
But I think ultimately the mystery is in all of these sacraments,
I mean, you know, acquitting baptism in communion is very
interesting because we very rarely do ask why, but ultimately there
is faith here. Without that, I mean, that's
kind of, I guess another thing about Moore, that is kind of
the answer to the question. You know, it is a demonstration
of faith. It's a profession of faith. It is a profession of faith.
I think about the sprinkling. I love it. I appreciate that
you mentioned the many modes and the sprinkling of blood.
And I think about it, and I think, wow, if I had been, and I was
there, I mean, in the heart, maybe I would just want to run
away from that, because who wants to get blood all over you as
a reproach? You know, but then you think, I would not want to
have that all over myself and my children because of what it
represents, the remission of sin and the cleansing and, you
know, without the share of blood. So I think of how important that
is. You know that we are all covered. It is all his work. So Dean's question about was
linking election together with baptism. I think that was a big
hurdle for me is seeing how the two were linked together. I think
that the only way to get there is by faith, not by thought,
because I kept slamming into, I think, I think that I thought of baptism
as a response to faith. I was trying to think about covenant
theology from the mindset and perspective of non-covenantal
brain, right? So my brain was not wired, if
you want to say it like this, with covenant categories, but
I had embraced predestination as a standalone doctrine. And
so trying to think about covenant theology from a if you will,
pseudo-dispensational framework. Did that make sense, right? So
here I am, camped out in, you know, you're supposed to believe
and get baptized, that's it, that's it. The Bible says, just
stop talking about it after that. So trying to think back about
circumcision and election from that perspective was very difficult.
And there's a lot of arrogance and youth wrapped up in all of
that, right? So I thought, you know, predestination's for people
who've got it figured out, and not for people who don't have
it figured out. But I think that if you look at what God said
to the people about circumcising their babies, what you get at
is you're acting out what God does. You're saying your ability
to choose God is about as relevant as a newborn baby is to choosing
circumcision. And I think this is where trust
and faith really, the rubber hits the road of your belief
and practice. What you think, what you believe,
and what you're actually willing to practice, it just collapses
them into this one spot. So that what you're saying is,
this child is a gift from God, and from the very earliest, he
is marking them as his own. And so, if I can do it kind of
like this, so if this is the line of demarcation, the DMZ
between belief and unbelief, how are we commanded to raise
our babies? Whether you are a covenant theologian or not, we all agree,
all my Baptist friends, all my non-covenantal friends all say,
raise them in the fear and admonition of the Lord. Well, how do you
do that? Do you treat them like an unbeliever until they grow
up to the place where they're ready to stand up here as a believer?
Not a single one would say that. Not a single one. They would
all say, you don't stand them over here and say, now, honey,
when you're ready to make a choice, you can come to church. No. From day one, you're coming
to church. Long as you live, I have people
in this church, by the way, as long as you live under my roof,
we're going to church, right? When you get to be 18 and you
live on your own, if you want to go someplace else on Sunday,
fine. But as long as you're eating
my food and sleeping in my bed, we're going to church. End of it, right? Well, there's a lot more to it
than that, but what covenant says is we're raising them with
the expectation from the earliest day that you're a believer. And
that means we're restricting you and your choices by the restrictions
that God places on you. which means that you're gonna
be raised as a believer when you're rising up, when you're
laying down, when you're sitting at the table, when you come in
and you go out and walk along the road. What you think and
what you do, marked on your head and marked on your arm with the
phylactery of God, right? The word of God is gonna rule
everything you do. You don't get a choice on that. I think
it's exercising faith, too, of the passage that says, if you
train like a child, the more you should go, the more you won't
depart from it. And faith, and believing that
God says that in his word, that's true. I think that assaults are
sort of... Western we've got to present
them with as many choices and let them stand objectively apart
from them and choose for themselves That's where the that's where
the easternness of our faith comes in is that's just not an
expectation that God gives us is they're marked out from the
very beginning and raised as the people of God and should
they choose to depart from that then the other A side, B side
of all the sacraments comes in, right? Blessings for obedience,
curses for disobedience. You circumcise the child so that
Zipporah doesn't have to do it when God comes out to kill one
of you because of your massive disobedience and not following
along with the Lord in covenant with him. You circumcise your
child not just to avoid the punishment, but to enjoy the blessing. But
should you set apart from that, you need to understand that you've
been marked. Right? And baptism does it. And we're
warned about the same thing before we come to the table, right?
Don't take it in an unworthy fashion. Definition of unworthy
is without faith and discernment of the body of Christ. Because
many are sick and have fallen asleep. Same thing is said about
baptism. If you depart from the Lord,
you will be sick and fall asleep, if not in this life, in eternity.
Right? And that's what it's saying,
even in baptisms. I've told you the story, right?
One of the places that baptism comes from is these ancient judgment
rituals, where when ancient societies didn't know whether someone was
guilty or innocent, Someone was accused of a crime, and they
just could not, for whatever reason, present enough evidence
to secure a verdict of guilty or not guilty. They would take
the person down to a raging river and throw them in the water.
And they would say, if the god spares their life, then they're
innocent. If they drown, they're guilty. There's a little bit of that
in baptism. They're marked with water. They're cleansed. And
should they depart from cleansing, the dirt will kill them. So like, just bringing my own
subjective experience into this, so like, taking a grain of salt,
you know. I was baptized in a very local
church. And I feel like I was reborn
at eight, but lived a very nominal Christian life until I was 25.
And I was in a non-denominational lot of the church. They encouraged baptism. And
I was baptized for the second time with my mom. My dad didn't,
because he just moved on. He said, well, why don't you
baptize a different kind of woman, too? In that stepping in and
getting baptized a second time, I felt a whole direction in my
life where I cut ties with things that I needed to cut ties with.
There was definitely a drastic turning point. And maybe that's
just some psychology to it. I don't think so. I felt like
I was like, no. being obedient to the Lord in
it. And after that, it was a whole change in direction in my life. Sure. So maybe it's like Luther's
like, if someone wants to be baptized a second time, pull
them under the water. And I don't know. But it's just
my own experience. So I started with when I have
kids, Maybe twice they can do it. I
don't know. But yeah, so that's a very real
experience I had in the church, you know. But sorry I missed
your first... Oh no, you got mine. You missed
Granton. Yeah, sorry. So I would think
that's the experience of a lot of us, right? So I wasn't baptized
a second time, but when I was 20 years old and joined the very
first PCA church I ever went to, I asked that question because
I'd seen from growing up an independent Baptist, where people came from
Catholic, Methodist, Presbyterian, or non-baptized, whatever. And
they would come in, and if they'd been baptized before, and they
were making a profession of faith, then we almost always baptized
them. And so when I went to the Presbyterian church, the PCA
church, I joined. And by the way, I didn't believe
in infant baptism at the time. And after I joined that church,
I became the youth director of the church as a non-believer
in infant baptism, which I think is a remarkable sign of grace
on their part. So I asked the question, do I
need to be baptized? And they said, weren't you already
baptized? And I said, yeah, as a five and
a half or six-year-old. And they said, why would you
think you need to be baptized again? I said, well, isn't that
the way you do it? Like, no, no. Were you baptized in the
name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit? Uh-huh. then
why would you want to do it again? And I just thought, well, aren't
you supposed to? And they said, no. And I thought,
wow, that's pretty interesting. That's a good question. So yeah,
I think because of it being married up to circumcision as a single
act, in that respect and also the
symbolic value is It's connected to what the Holy Spirit does
in our lives Yeah We kind of made the OK circumcision
baptism link, I guess, to make the correlation. But then we
talk about sprinkling, which it would seem that that's a fairly
continual act in some of these cases. I don't think it's a poor
question in the least bit. I think it's a good question. I think it speaks to, OK, well,
why only once? It would certainly be inconvenient,
but. Sure. Well, in a sense, it's
only once when we look at it in an individual way. Right. But if you look at it
in the covenant community, it's continual, because there are
always babies being brought into the community, just as in the
covenant way, the Lord's Supper is celebrated. Sure. So let me let me let me do this
because this was so from a Baptist perspective I grew up hearing
all of the arguments for right then I went to Liberty University
for two years and heard all the arguments with passion for you
know immersion and so I I always heard, I can still remember standing
there, sitting there in my eight o'clock freshman class. Professor
Dr. Sumner Wimp, W-E-M-P, who was
the guy on evangelism, right? And so, I mean, he was a old
school, he's about 80 when I had him for class. He was this old
school, grind his voice, slam in the pulpit, Bible slapping
against everything evangelist, right? He was like Billy Sunday
incarnate. And all of his stories were about,
this weekend I was going to an evangelistic meeting, and I got
on an airplane to fly to Southern California, and sitting right
next to me was a young lady. And you know, the stories always
ended the same. And I looked at her, and she looked at me,
and I said, don't you want to know about Jesus? Yes, I do. With tears
in her eyes, she threw herself down to the floor and repented.
And I took her to some church, we found a church, and we dunked
her into the water because baptism means immersion. And he just
kept on saying that. So at some point you just accept
that that must be what the word means, but it's a little more
complicated than that. So here we go on that. So baptize
does not mean immerse. Baptize is connected to two words,
baptizo and bapto, two different words. In general, the word baptizo
Can mean immerse, but bacto means to dip, immerse. Usually it means dipping a hyssop,
you know, like a branch with leaves on it, or a finger. Almost always it refers to something
being dipped in. and then used as an instrument
to baptize someone. Okay? It's not as simple as just
saying, to baptize someone means to dump them underneath blood
or water. Not quite that simple. Exodus
12.22, Leviticus 4.6, 4.17, and 9.9. Same word, bapto, for dipping
one's feet in the Jordan River, Joshua 3.15. Our word baptize is baptizo, not bapto. Bapto might mean to dip or immerse.
Baptizo, this is the important part, does not refer to a mode
but to a process and an effect. Baptizo refers to a process and
an effect. So who cares whether you were
dumped underneath something? Did the process and effect take
Right? Okay, so what's the process in
effect? Well, baptism may include dipping or immersing. Baptizo
does not itself mean to immerse. Baptizo means to wash or to cleanse. Right? Just think about that
for a second. So going back to Grant did a
lot on Hebrews 9. So if you look at Hebrews 9,
it lays this out and connects to at least three or four instances
in the Old Testament. Hebrews 9.10 correctly translated
refers to various baptisms in the Old Testament. So what do
these baptisms do? Hebrews 9.13 is connected to
Numbers 19.17-18. The blood of bulls and goats
and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies them
for the purifying of the flesh. Remember, process and effect,
baptizo. Baptism is about process and
effect. The blood of bulls and goats
did not affect cleansing. What did affect cleansing? Faith, right? Here a clean person
in Hebrews 9, Numbers 19, here a clean person takes hyssop,
this branch, dips it in a vessel filled with water and the ashes
of a heifer, of a cow, right, that has been used as a sacrifice
and then sprinkles those on persons or things that are to be cleansed
ceremonially. Right, so you get this. The bapto
part is this. The baptizo is that. So in these different instances,
right, what is the Greek word? Because we're using many different
words in English. Right. So would the Greek, in
this case, lend itself to a different meaning? This is something that
doesn't particularly bother me. Sure. I look at the word terrorize,
the root word of terrorize. Tara right, right, so I don't
necessarily you know Baptism doesn't necessarily mean
this. So this is not a struggle for me per se, well maybe for
some, but for the accuracy portion, what are we saying? So, it's
cleansing, it's washing. So baptism means washing, cleansing
or purifying, not dumping under the water. So like when I've
had these discussions or debates with my hardcore Baptistic friends,
they want to marry up. obedience to baptism with putting
people underwater. So I had a new believer in my
church, my first church. He was about 10 or 11. No, he's
12 years old. And he had never been baptized.
And he was a believer. Elders interviewed him, asked
him all the questions. He gave all the right answers.
I've been watching him for three years, four years. Brought him
in front of the church as a 12-year-old, said the words, put the water
on his head, handfuls of water on his head. They left our church
and went to a Reformed Baptist church where he was told, you
know, he went to summer camp and had some recoming back to
Jesus moment. And so they asked him the question,
have you been baptized? Yes. Where were you baptized?
What were the circumstances? Presbyterian church. Were you
immersed? No. Then you weren't baptized. You
got to be baptized. Period, right? Because baptism
is immersion. And they came to talk to me about
that. And I said, So we've backed up to, now you
weren't obedient because you didn't go underneath water. But
what does that mean? Well, you have to be buried with
Christ. If you're not, if you don't reenact that, then you
haven't been baptized, which we'll get to in a second. But
the word for here in Hebrews 9.10 is bapto, sprinkling, purifying,
is what's going on, the process and effect of cleansing, right?
What's the word in the Greek mission? Which one is it? Baptizo. I'm sorry, I just said that wrong.
Bapto refers to dipping the finger or the hyssop. Baptizo is always
process and effect, cleansing, right? So Hebrews 9.19, which
is connected to Exodus 24, Moses took the blood of calves and
goats with water, scarlet wool, and hyssop and sprinkled, baptized
both the book and itself and all the people. What Hebrew word
is that? Baptizo. That's the Greek, right? And so you see, it sounds like
you're referring to the Hebrew, the New Testament Greek, and
then also, are you referring to the, like the Septuagint,
the Greek translation? Almost always they are, but in
the New Testament, these, when they're quoting, almost always,
almost all New Testament writers are not quoting Hebrew. That's
why when you read the New Testament and they jump over to the Old
Testament, sometimes the words are a little differently. It's
because two things. One, they are reciting, especially
Peter is notorious for this, for giving you, so that passage
in Isaiah that says, and he's quoting what he knows, but what
he memorized is Septuagint. And so it's not always bang on,
word for word, the same as somebody who went to the Hebrew translation
of the Bible of the Old Testament and then translated that into
English. It's not gonna look the same as Hebrew to Greek to
English. I mean, it's just gonna be slightly
off. But on these things, yeah, it's
pretty clear that they're trying to line up some ideas. So the process again, Old Testament
baptism was to dip the hyssop and the wool into the blood and
sprinkle it as a means of ceremonial purification. You still see this
in Catholic rituals where you see them doing that right there
to people. The idea is the same. Hebrews
9.21 connected to Leviticus 8.19, and in the same way, he sprinkled
with the blood of both He sprinkled with the blood both the tent
and all the vessels used in worship. The priest was to dip his finger
in the blood of a bull used for sacrifice and then sprinkle the
blood on the mercy seat representing atonement. A ceremonial means
of removing uncleanness of the children of Israel. In every
case, the process of baptism includes dipping the instrument
used to baptize into the substance such as blood or water. The instrument
was then used to sprinkle the persons or things to be baptized.
Baptism was not the dipping, but the process of dipping and
sprinkling according to God's order. So it's not as much about
mode. In fact, I skipped over this.
If you want to know what do we believe about it, so the Westminster
Confession of Faith speaks to this in chapter 28 in section 3 it says dipping of
the person into the water is not necessary but baptism is
rightly ministered by pouring or sprinkling water on upon the
person so not necessary does not mean forbidden so when i
went to seminary One of the revolutionary classes that I took was by St.
Clair Ferguson, who's from Scotland, from the Scottish Presbyterian
Church. And he did a whole section on baptism, on sacraments. And
he stood before us and he said, if we're going to make any headway,
we've got to separate mode from meaning. He said, so I come from
the Church of Scotland. My wife comes from the Church
of Scotland. I'm 60 years old, or however
old he was at the time, and he said, millions and millions of
Scottish babies have been immersed, including my wife. And it just,
we all just went, oh. What did you just say? If you
immersed babies? You know, and the Baptists looked
at the Presbyterians and we all went, let's all move to Scotland.
Case closed, right? I was reading a blog a friend
of mine has that When I tell the story of how I became a Calvinist
at Liberty, the guy who was instrumental for that was a guy named Bruce
Buchanan, whose dad is an OPC pastor. And about a year ago,
it's been 25 years, no, 27 or 8 years, 28 years ago is when
I met him and we had those conversations. I knew him for my two years at
Liberty. Well, I lost touch with him after I left there in 1989.
So I was looking for him on the internet, never could find him.
He's not on Facebook. And one day I was on a reform
blog, and I saw Bruce Buchanan's name underneath. And I said,
this is just too good to be true. I've got to email this guy and
see if it's the same guy. So I emailed him. He said, yeah,
I remember you told me. Yeah, blah, blah, blah. So we went back and forth about
that. was instrumental in helping me
understand this because he came from this OPC background. And
he would say all the time, this is the historic nature of the
church that we're dealing with. This is the history of the church
we believe in is this infant baptism sprinkling thing. But it's got to be separated.
The mode and the meaning have to be separated from each other.
I have a question just for the history. At what point did it
become a question? Yeah, I think really during the
Reformation. So the question that he asked, so you understand
Anabaptists, right? What that means. So during the
Reformation, this was a huge controversy. People were coming
out of the Catholic Church during the Reformation. What are we
supposed to do now? Our baptism was in the Catholic
Church. And so there was not a consensus on that. Some, really
a minority, which called themselves the Anabaptists, said, no, we
have to repudiate that. You need to be baptized. And
Calvin Luther and the majority were saying, no, no, there's
one baptism. And so no, you don't have to
be rebaptized. And they actually wrote, kind
of created a doctrine about the effectiveness of the baptism
isn't in the person. doing the baptizing any more
than it is in the priest offering the elements of communion. It
rests on... That's exactly right. Yeah, I was going to say on the
last page of this, under additional considerations or something like
that, on the very last part of it, early church history, Ancient
catacombs and ruins associated with early Christians often contain
subjects, John the Baptist, pouring water over Jesus in baptism.
According to a guide to ancient symbols, John is often depicted
baptizing Christ with water poured from a scallop shell. The shell
has become a common symbol of baptism. Furthermore, scholarly
Catholic source, much of the earliest Christian artwork, picks
baptism, but not baptism by immersion. If the recipient is in a river,
he is always shown standing in the river while the water is
poured over his head from a cup or a shell. So one of the things
that, the study that we're doing going inside the city, one of
the comments that R.C. I think it was R.C. He made it
was like, if you have an idea that hasn't been explored in
the past 1500 years, It's probably not a good idea. The arrogance
of thinking that, well, this has never been done before, but
I must have this wonderful revelation. I was going to say, as a general
category, if we accept that it's the Holy Spirit that is the substance
that water represents, the connection that we're making is the water
of cleansing is not... So we have this symbol, Old Testament
symbol of washings that went on all the time. So they were
sprinkling blood or water or whatever on the altar, on the
people, on the book, on the tent to ritually cleanse it. And then prophets crying out
over and over and over again, not circumcision made with hands. Remember, you're all circumcised,
Jeremiah is saying. Look at that symbol now that
you're adults, you're all been circumcised, but want for the
circumcision of heart. You've all been sprinkled and
washed clean ceremonially, but it's gotta be a lot more than
that. There's something that's gotta happen on the inside of
that. What does that point to but the role of the Holy Spirit
in our life? So every time you read about Holy Spirit being
administered to people, Pentecost and all, it's pouring, right? Poured out on them. So probably
the best symbol for the receiving of the Holy Spirit that washes
the conscience clean, the very thing that makes the New Covenant
better, the better covenant, is the presence of Holy Spirit
in people's life, washing clean their conscience, not just sprinkling
their outsides to set them apart as the holy people of God, is
almost, not almost, is always seen as being poured out on people.
Right? I mean, that's Joel, that's Pentecost,
Isaiah even. For I will pour water on the
thirsty land and streams on the dry ground. I will pour my spirit
upon your offspring and my blessing on your descendants. Psalm 51,
wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. Purge
me with hyssop and I shall be clean. Wash me and I'll be whiter
than snow. You know that nobody in the Old Testament, when they
took a bath, they had a drawn tub of water in their hovel that
they lived in, and they jumped in it and stuck themselves underneath
the water. Almost never. Yes, if you had a river that
you lived near, maybe you would go down to the river. But the
idea of immersing yourself in the river, you can see this if
you ever watch, you watch people who are Catholic to some degree,
when they walk in a church, they dip their hand in the in a thing
at the back of the church and they splash themselves with water
or they just do this. You see it a lot in Islam. They
understand the symbolic nature of cleansing rituals. So you
almost always see them when they go into their mosque to pray. What do you see them do? You
see them do this thing right here, even when there's no water.
And what do they do? What is that symbolizing? If there is
water there in a basin, They put their hands under the water,
and they do this to their face, or to their neck, if they have
a beard, which they almost always do. And that's, it's a symbolic
washing, the idea that out there, I'm walking around, and I don't
just have dirt on me, but I have this transactional profanity,
this uncleanness, and I need to clean myself before I come
to God. That's ceremonial washing that's
in the background behind New Testament. And the idea of the
Holy Spirit is what really cleanses us to come to God. But it's not
go underneath the water of the Holy Spirit and come up clean.
The idea is almost always sprinkling or pouring. But the mode is not
the important part. It's the meaning. I think the
reason people have trouble with this is the largest example of
this in the New Testament. the river Jordan in this case.
I just look at the Middle East in general and go, not a lot
of rivers. Not at all. So that strikes me. But I'll kind of come back to
something that was said earlier. I mean, ask the question like,
hey, the timing of these things, you know, life's path isn't a
one-time thing versus communities everywhere. Sure. And then I
think, Lindsey, you know, all of this, and just to kind of
make sure, you know, I, we, whoever we're orienting ourselves right,
we tend to look at baptism as an individual event because there's
one person being baptized. But I think the more I'm more
set back from it, This is really a communal or family event that
we are participating in. It just seems to us, at least,
that this is very much about that particular individual. Which
to me, it sounds like we need to stop thinking about that like
that, and more it's like this is about Us as a community of
believers, from a belief standpoint, but
from a community standpoint, it's not about this particular
individual, but really this is about us. Is there, is that incorrect? No, that's absolutely correct,
in fact. Because I think, you see, because people will get
this confused because this is very much as many people, an
individual. So, along the lines of that, I think that one of
the places that the church has really lost a lot of ground in
sort of a, amongst millennials, I'll say, is the current generation
is You get saved and you get baptized, and that might happen
to you at summer camp, that might happen to you at some kind of
a Hillsong event, it might happen to you, all these different things,
and baptism is something that's between you and Jesus. That is
not proper to think like that. I mean, it's just not biblical.
To me, it just tears the guts out of everything 4,000 years
of redemptive history has done. And for the first 2,000, well,
at least for the first 1,950 years of Protestant church history, the
idea of just being baptized was not some standalone thing between
you and Jesus and some evangelist minister or some happening that
you did. But the keys of the kingdom,
the doorway to the church is baptism. I mean, the idea of
being baptized just nakedly into Jesus is like, so I'm going to
have a baby. And as soon as the baby is born,
I'm going to leave the baby and just go off Because they're just
born into humanity. We know babies are born into
families, right? They don't just happen. They're
not just born and abandoned. Naturally, they're born into
a family. So new birth in the church, the visible community
of faith, begins when a person is baptized into the visible
community. That's the front door. So I have
a lot of respect for evangelist who will say, I'm just an evangelist.
I just came through town, and yes, we think you should believe.
Yes, we think you should be baptized. But we're not your church. You've got to join a church.
Let us help you connect to a church. Properly speaking, that baptism
is what connects you to that church, because those are the
people that are swearing and promising along with you to raise
your children if you're in that mission or war. Historically,
I mean, there are two types of baptism. There's believer's baptism,
and there's an infant baptism. Historically, believer's baptism
is more of the exception to the rule. Like, if you look at the
history of Israel, most of the people that were being circumcised
were men. It was like, those were the onesies
and twosies that were coming in as part of the community,
and the rest of them, it was like, morning days later, you're
officially welcomed into the community. Right. So that national
thing? So the sign of the covenant with
Abraham is circumcision, right? National covenant. You get to
Christ, the covenant with Christ, and it's like this. And so John
starts telling Jews who've been circumcised, you need to be baptized. So for a little while, you've
got baptism and circumcision doing this thing right here.
Acts chapter 15, where the first huge controversy hits as Gentiles
start flooding into the church, start flooding into all these
Jewish people, the Jews, the Judaizers say they ought to be
circumcised and made to be Jewish because this is a Jewish thing
that's going on. It's Judaism 2.0, but they need
to become us so they can follow after Jesus. So Peter, James,
John, all the apostles meet together with all the elders that can
come to Jerusalem, and what do they say? They say, no, they
do not need to be made to be circumcised. And from that point
forward, there's one sign of the new covenant, and it's baptism,
no longer circumcision. In fact, Paul goes out of his
way to say that to people in Galatia who are saying, no, no,
you must be, you must, you must, you must, you must. And he gets
really frustrated with that thinking and says, if circumcision was
of any value, I know we're running out of time, but I think we could
do a better job messaging this. Oh, sure. Because if this is
an us thing, we've got to do a better job of that. And if
we look at it as an us thing, and it is a continual event,
it's not a one-time ish. Here's what I really believe
after 27 years of this, is that this is covenant. This is covenant
and covenant baptism. Okay, go back to Genesis chapter
17. Who was there at the first circumcision?
A 90-some year old man, a bunch of teenage boys, and eventually
newborns, along with slaves from Egypt, right? Who got circumcised? All of them. Those that were
old enough to believe were circumcised. Those that were too young to
know what was going on were circumcised. Okay, so there's room in Trinity
Reformed Church to embrace the whole of that. We're going to
have people that are teenagers and have in the last year who
come who've never been baptized, we baptize them. We've had children
that are 5, 6, 7, 8 years old, never been baptized, we baptize
them as believers. But at the same time, we're going
to embrace the covenant Baptism, which says, suffer all the little
children, the babies to come to me and forbid them not, as
members of the community of faith. In that sense, we do practice
believer's baptism. We would not say that someone
outside the church should just be baptized because they come.
They should not be baptized if they don't have a faith in that
sense. Or so they? No, I mean someone
that's an adult that is... But an adult comes to the covenant
community through faith, through saying, yes, I submit to God,
you know, and come in. It's the same way in the Old
Testament, like that passage I read about the people keeping
Passover before they could come into the community. Those people that wanted to come
in, and then it was people in their house as well. Yeah, same
kind of thing. you know, there's a faith in
those that have not been given the sign of initiation to read
in the Old and New Testament. That's why, you know, it was,
that's why you see the belief to be baptized to the initial,
to the adults of the initial, you know, converse. That's what
we believe to believe to be baptized. But then, just like the household
baptisms, Lydia, you know, for instance, she believed And her
house was left, and her household was left. So was her husband?
I mean, I guess she wasn't married, but. It doesn't say it just says
her household was left. Most people think that it's probably
when it says her household, because of what she did for a living,
she employed a lot of people and would have had household
servants. But there was adults, too. Like,
we used that to talk about. There would have been adults
and children who worked for her and were her servants. To be a seller of purple and
a woman meant She was not begging in the street and to entertain
the apostles the way she did. She had a household. She had
a house full of people. Whether they were her mother
and her father that were living with her, or sisters and brothers,
there was a household of people. I guess my question is, so like,
so would those adults have their baptism? Because you're saying
it's probably not. But if they're all in the same
household, then they're part of it. Because we use it to justify,
like, all kids. Sure. Well, I mean, similar to
Abraham's situation, there were servants that were part of the
house that were adults. And because they're part of this
house, they're baptized as part of that house. Yeah. I guess
they could have. They're old enough, you know,
I don't know enough about the culture to know if they have
any right to run away. I guess they could have ran away.
You know, if they said no, I don't want any part of it. That expectation
is kept up, though, after Exodus 19 and 20, is if you're going
to live in Israel, I mean, there's different kinds of designations,
right? The foreigner and the sojourner, which is actually
the technical term. I think you talked about this
when we were talking about how to deal with immigration. There's
different technical terms that indicate One is living in the
land as a resident alien, and the other is somebody who lives
outside the land that comes in to do commerce. Different rules
apply. Different blessings, if you were,
are treated differently. So like taxes or usury could
be applied or not applied. But if you're living on the land,
even as a resident alien or a slave, you will be circumcised. I think
that you and your household, That tends to be more of a stumbling
block. Sure. You know, and I think, you know,
when that comes up, I think we might be scratching the wrong
itch. Okay. There necessarily, but when we
say believers baptism, You know, if I had to put that differently,
I'd go, yeah, this baby is a believer's baptism. You want to know why?
Because all of us here believe it. Sometimes, I guess, a believer's
baptism for an adult, I mean, it is also a covenant baptism,
too. Like, what you're saying, it's not just baptism. It's covenant. And as, like, the covenant community,
I don't know if that person is really a believer or if they
follow that Hebrew. You know what I mean? Like, I
guess I'm just thinking of those people that are sort of in between,
like the enlightened person might not necessarily have faith, but
is part of the community, right? Where do they fall in? Even the
Baptist church that believes in good believers, baptism only,
it's not believers. They're not baptizing only believers.
They're baptizing only professed believers, but we know that there's
people that go out and arrive from them that weren't true believers,
so... No one can baptize only believers
in that sense, true believers. It's impossible. That gets to
the point that it's a covenant thing, which includes truly redeemed
and non-redeemed that are in the covenant community, both
in the Old Testament and the New Testament. And there's plenty
of examples in the Old Testament of people who were circumcised
who didn't turn out to be what we would refer to as saved, or
covenant keepers. And I just wanted to add, you
know, the idea of the covenant family, you know, or church,
the church whole, but also the church generational. I mean,
and this isn't just baptism, but the whole idea of the covenant
family. You know, my testimony is very tied into the fact that
generations going back have been covenant families. And so God's
means of grace in their lives, in their acts of faith, have
directly translated to mine, absolutely. That is an easy grace
for me. So, you can really hold on to
the promise that when I do these things and claim these blessings,
you know, they'll die. And that's interesting because
it makes me remember the verse, you know, showing mercy to a
thousand generations of those who loved Him. And you just see
that. And I see Toby's family going
all the way back to Peter and I see the grace of God that's
poured out on him that came through persecution, you know. I just
think, And yet, on the other hand, I
can point to examples in my family of people who didn't believe.
Like, my dad's dad was not a believer his whole entire life, even though
he was raised in a Christian family, went to Methodist Church.
He had brothers and sisters that were then and are believers.
but died a pagan, and yet my great-grandfather recognized,
even though I never had a chance to ask him, like, why did you
do this? What were you thinking? He died when I was 10 or 11 years
old. But he would come, knowing that his son was a pagan and
married to a pagan, came to their house on Sunday morning to pick
my dad and his brothers up and take them to church. And it was
important to him. And so I look at that and I think,
this is what covenant, this is what covenant people do. And
yet, I wrote an article a couple weeks ago about what do we tell
our kids about transgender students? And it got posted, I wasn't thinking,
I posted to a family website, a family Facebook page that's
full of hundreds of people that have my last name that I don't
really know. And, boy, it took, Hardly any time at all before
I started getting messages back. How dare you? Don't you know
there's plenty of people that are DuBose's that are transgender,
that are gay, that are LGBTQ? How dare you, you know, assume? So sorry. So I have one last
question. I know we have a lot of time.
Yeah. But is there something to say
at the beginning about the moment Jesus was baptized? Like, so
we had a few minutes of history. And so, But my question is like,
so for those of us that maybe have been put back to zones,
like if there are scenarios where I'm thinking of harm ministries,
or healing ministries, like, I don't know, if there's some
sort of moment where you're being re-baptized, like, I don't know,
before you become a parent, after you become a parent, like, before
you go to college, like, why isn't it something that, and
maybe I just don't understand in that sense, I would say that
that itch that he was talking about, of that, our desire to
make it our own and own it, if we were infant baptized, and
to see it a reality in our adult life, that moment that you're
looking for is when your children are baptized. Because what's
on display at that moment is not their faith, it's your faith.
Right? But secondarily, what does Jesus'
baptism have to do with all this? I would say that John's... I'll
say this just really clearly. I say this to my Baptist friends
all the time. Despite the fact that John the
Baptist is sort of your patron saint, you do not practice John
the Baptist's baptism. Okay, John said his baptism was
a baptism of preparation for Messiah. So if you look at who
John was, John is the Elijah who was to come before Messiah. In every respect, this is true,
that John the Baptist was the last prophet of the Old Testament.
Even though his story takes place on the first pages of the New
Testament, John was the last prophet of the Old Testament.
So during the intertestamental period and even before then,
if you were a Gentile and you wanted to join and become a Jew
and practice Yahwehism, You come to them and say, I'm an adult.
I'm a male. I believe in Yahweh. I want to
join your covenant community and worship the God of the Hebrews.
They would say, you're fine. You need to make a public profession
of faith in front of the synagogue or in front of the community.
You need to be circumcised if you're male. And the third thing
is you need to take a bath. You need to be baptized. That's
what John was doing. And the thing that got him killed,
the thing that made the people mad, was when the Pharisees and
the Sadducees, the righteous ones, what their name means,
the Set-apart Ones, the holiest people in the land, were being
told Be baptized with repentance of your sins. Behold, the kingdom
of heaven is at hand, the Lamb of God." And they said, how dare
you tell us that we need to wash our sins off? We are the righteous
ones. The rest of you are the ones
that need to take a bath. And so Jesus said, I need to
do this to fulfill all righteousness. So if you were living at the
time of Jesus and you wanted to become a Pharisee, you want
to become a Sadducee, you want to become an Essene, and leave
just the rabble to join one of the truly committed, they would
say to you, your initiation rite is a baptism, a ceremonial washing. We're going to haul you in and
say, I have now embraced The chosen people now want to be
a Pharisee and they would say, okay, let's baptize you and make
you swear an oath and teach you the secret handshake. That's
what they would do because they thought of themselves as the
righteous remnant of Israel. So when Jesus presents himself
for baptism to John, he's identifying himself as fulfilling all righteousness. I am part of the righteous remnant
of Israel. And even though I'm the one who
John's baptizing people to prepare to come to me, I'm going to come
to this moment and I'm going to fulfill all their expectations
fill this cup up with meaning, and fill this water up that they're
being baptized with, with meaning. The idea that I'm the one that
this points to. And you can tell that's what
God thought too, because at that moment that he was baptized,
he says, Amen, this is my son with whom I'm well pleased. This
is God the Father speaking. And the Holy Spirit descending
on him as a dove would come down from heaven. And John reports,
I saw the Holy Spirit coming down on him. So if we're looking
for any watershed moment in the life of Christ, that's it, but
with change. And I think to some degree you
can see with change when at the institution of the Lord's Supper,
what does he do? He goes around and washes all
their feet. And what do they say? Not just my feet, Peter
says. Not just my feet, but my whole. No, no, no. The part for
the whole, right? The dirtiest part of you, your
feet, is the part I'm going to cleanse. pointing forward to
what is just about to take place. Death on the cross, the sprinkling
of blood. Are you going to take a bath
in blood? No, I'm going to sprinkle you with it. I'm going to wash
the dirtiest part because if I wash your dirtiest part, the
rest of you will be clean. If I wash your filthy, stinking
soul, the rest of you is made clean. How does that happen?
How does Jesus' atonement by blood on the cross, how does
that get imparted to you, the scripture says, by the Holy Spirit.
The Spirit applies redemption to you. What does it look like?
It looks just like when Moses dipped that thing, the hyssop,
and sprinkled you. Jesus dips himself in the blood,
his blood. Holy Spirit sprinkles you clean
in your conscience, your dirtiest part, making the rest of you
clean from the inside out. But you're sort of saying, is
there any sort of ritual? Like, in the season of baptism,
when you're at Mars? No, like, once you think you're
saying, like, I was kind of thinking, oh, it would be really nice here
before you have kids and, like, destroy their lives. Like, if
there was some sort of ritual cleansing ceremony, there is.
It's their baptism. Yeah. So I guess, like, so I guess
there are, there is a significant moment where we need to relive
that. Absolutely. And that's. But there are some churches that
will do, like, an anointing, right, service. Like in significant
moments, like before you go out on a mission, do you do that
kind of thing? No, I don't know. Ordination,
we do ordination. We're going to do that tomorrow.
Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I think with the baptism of John, you
know, there's so many, there's continuities there that we can
always make from Old Testament to New Testament, but there's
also discontinuities. And I think that's the key thing
is, you know, not confusing the continuities and discontinuities
so that when things are separate, you don't apply them the same
way. Whereas there were various baptisms in the Old Testament,
but the New Testament is only one. And the one that Jesus said,
go, you know, and make disciples of the nations, and when you
make disciples, then you baptize them. It says that, I think,
in 2 Corinthians, there's one baptism, one repetition of sins,
one name, one church, one body. One, one, one. So if I could draw a bottom
line, I would say, instead of repetition of baptism, what we
need to do is invest it with all that it was intended to be.
To allow it to be, for us, all that It should be. And yeah,
we don't do as nearly good a job communicating all of it in its
wholeness as we should. But I think that there's a...
By practicing it a lot, it does what it's supposed to do. Instead
of becoming an apologetic argument between two good people, if you
will, I think it just stands alone, and it affects... It affects
us the way it's supposed to. Just like when you go to a wedding
ceremony, you are in fact participating as a married person or a single
person. You're participating in marriage. If you are married,
I had a college professor, my first English professor in college.
She said, I have the coolest story about how she just got
engaged. She said, I have the coolest
story, engagement story. So my fiance, my now fiance and I were
just dating and we went to a good friend's wedding. And right when
he said to the groom, do you have the ring? He says, yes. He turns around and says, would
you like to get married? And he holds out my ring to me. And I thought,
that's a really cool story because you're getting engaged at a wedding.
That's what happens to us when we are in the congregation of
a child that's being baptized. It's repeating that back to us.
We're participating again in it. Not just passively. We're joining
in again with baptism. It's a covenant renewal ceremony.
Any other questions? All right, let's pray. Lord Jesus,
thank you for your scripture, and we pray that where we have
questions and we have, more importantly, doubts about a doctrine like
baptism or covenant baptism, that you would bring us back
again and again to scripture, and that you would season our
thinking with what you say and less with what we say, more with
what you've done and less with what we've done. And more than
that, even in our best attempts to be obedient to what we've
been taught, remind us that there's always mystery and there's always
more than what we know. There's more than what we've
done. There's what you intend and what
you're trying to picture for us. This mysterious union of
Christ with this church's bride, how that takes place, we don't
fully understand. even after studying it seemingly
exhaustively. So bear with us patiently and
give us great grace, both as we try to understand what you're
doing in our lives, in our children's lives, in our church, and in
those that will come into both. We pray that as we prepare for
worship tomorrow, that you will be with us and you prepare us
heart, soul, mind, and strength. to come and worship the God of
the universe who condescended to become a baby in a manger. In Jesus name we pray, amen. I recorded that, so.
What Does the Bible Say About Baptism + Q & A
Our pastor and elders present Covenant Baptism & answer questions.
| Sermon ID | 11516643490 |
| Duration | 2:05:53 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Language | English |
© Copyright
2026 SermonAudio.