We come now here this morning to the blessing and privilege of receiving new members and also the administration of the sign of the covenant. And so as we prepare for that, let me say a few things here first. In regard to membership, today we have two different kinds, you might say. With Mara and with Rosalie, or as we know her better, ZZ. They, of course, have grown up in the church. They were received as non-community members as children, and they have been taught the things of the Lord, and they come now here today to profess that they are accepting the things that they've been taught. And so the profession of faith here is in this way for Mara and for Zizi. As for the Campbells, we have a different scenario. Here we have someone who, they've been part of other churches in the past, they've been members of other churches and so forth, and have started visiting with us and being part of our fellowship here over the last year, roughly. And so they now come and profess their faith before us. They profess their faith before others, but now they do it here. And so we have a different scenario in both of these. In both situations, I have met separately and met with the girls, and then I've met with the Campbells, and we've reviewed basically the same ideas. We've talked first of our understanding of God's character, his attributes, and what we believe he is, who he is. We talked about our understanding of God's word, what we believe it is, and of course, broadly, what it is teaching. Then thirdly, we talked about sin and the extent of our sin and being dead in sin and hopeless on our own. And then we talked about salvation and the gospel and how God has saved us. These were the four main areas of discussion, but we also talked more briefly about what Presbyterianism means, some of the history of our church and the PCA. Of course, we've talked about the Lord's Supper, since the girls now will be able to take the Lord's Supper with us. And we've talked about baptism with the girls as well, but then in particular with the Campbells, as Henry will be brought for baptism here this morning. Then, all of them met with the elders here this past week, and they were received into membership. The girls from non-commuting membership now to commuting membership, and then the Campbells, of course, by profession of faith, joining our fellowship. So, just briefly here's some of this idea. Now in regard to baptism, let me say a few words here as we prepare for the sign of the covenant. Sometimes you'll hear people say that we should understand Christian baptism in connection with John the Baptist's baptism. And certainly there are some connections. But John himself, Jesus, and Paul, all three of them say that there is a difference between John's baptism and Christian baptism. We read from Acts chapter 19 here a few weeks ago, where Paul specifically says that. And so he baptized John's disciples in Christian baptism. There's a difference there. So what should we look at in the scriptures for our understanding? Well, we should look to the sign of the old covenant, and we read from that here in Genesis 17. Paul makes a connection between circumcision and baptism in Colossians chapter 2. The meaning of both of these are the same. In the church of the Old Testament, If you were circumcised, you were brought in as a member. In the church, obviously, the church in the New Testament, when we're baptized, we are now considered to be members of the church. Both also communicate the ideas of cleansing from our sins, the washing away of sins. In the Old Testament, of course, that was seen most clearly through the shedding of blood, because without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins. And so in the sign of the covenant, there is a shedding of blood to communicate that point. But now that Jesus has come, And his blood was shed on the cross. The sign of the covenant no longer needs to be one of blood. And so instead now we use water. And so this idea of cleansing. John's baptism was anticipatory of Christ's coming. Now here in Christian baptism, the focus is on the washing away of our sins here in terms of the covenant. Now thirdly, we see in the Old Testament about the ideas of the circumcision of the heart. In the New Testament, of course, we see the same, Romans 2, Romans 8, for example, the work of the spirit within us is how these things are applied to us internally, because this isn't just an external act that we do. And so in these three ways both circumcision and baptism teach the same things. So obviously as we transition from the Old to the New Testament there are some changes. Hey, we've already talked about how we change from blood to water. We also see, of course, in the Old Covenant, it was only given to men and to boys. Now in the New Covenant, the sign of the covenant is given to both men and women, boys and girls. So what remains then is the question, okay, in the Old Covenant, the sign was given to children. Should we continue that in the New Testament era? And the answer is simply, the New Testament never tells us to stop doing what they did in the old covenant. For 2100 years, they practiced the sign of the covenant, giving it initially to initial believers, but then to their children in subsequent generations. And we read from that in Genesis 17. But then there's nothing in the New Testament that says, stop giving the sign of the covenant to your children. Hey, think of it in this way, in regard to sacrifice for 1,500 years under the Mosaic covenant, they were to do all these things. We just read about some of that in numbers. Hey, you can even go back, of course, to Adam and Eve, to Cain and Abel, you see sacrifice all the way to the beginning. And so for 4,000 years, they did that. And the New Testament clearly says, stop doing the sacrifices. or the food and cleanliness laws, stop doing that. We see that clearly in the New Testament but we don't see that here in regard to the sign of the covenant. What we do see are indications that it continued and so with that in mind then we come here today to administer the sign of the covenant to this new generation of Campbell and we are certainly Very excited to do this in this way.