We continue our study of the Westminster Confession of Faith this week. We are in everybody's favorite debate, I mean doctrine baptism. We are in that section of the Westminster Confession of Faith of the church and underneath the church there are a number of doctrines about the nature of the church and these sorts of things. And now we are in what you might say the sacraments of the church. We covered the sacraments last week generally. This week we cover baptism particularly and next week we will cover on the Lord's Supper. So, lesson plan for today, we're in chapter 28. These are the questions our confession seeks to answer. What is baptism? What does baptism do? Where and when is baptism administered? How is baptism administered? Who administers it? Everybody's favorite question, or among the favorite two, do you dip, do you pour, or do you sprinkle? Who receives baptism? Is baptism necessary? When does baptism work and perhaps last and practiced very often in the evangelical church? The question is, is wetter better? Does it make a difference to get baptized once, two, three, four times? We'll find out. First question, what is baptism? The Confession of Faith says that baptism is a sacrament of the New Testament ordained by Jesus Christ. And so by way of review, we remember that sacraments are signs and seals of the covenant of grace. Baptism is a sacrament of the New Testament. That is, that it's a sacrament that belongs to the covenant of grace administered under Christ and not of the one administered previously under the Old Testament, whether by Abraham or Moses or David or any of the others. It belongs to the New Testament era. It is ordained by Jesus Christ. That is, that he has instituted it himself. He is the one who gives us baptism. We didn't get baptism from some old Jewish practice that was made up. We didn't get it even from John the Baptist. Christian baptism is instituted, it's ordained by Jesus Christ. We see that John baptizes with water in John 1.33. It's a baptism of repentance and it's preparation is the main point. It's preparation for the coming Messiah. And so John himself, he conceives of baptism as preparatory and therefore temporary. It is to be succeeded by a baptism that is... Surely it has similarities, it's with water, it involves repentance, but it is not substantially the same. True Christian baptism, we know, will begin when Jesus comes because he will baptize, we're told, with the Holy Spirit. That's the big difference between John's baptism and true Christian baptism, is that the Holy Spirit comes when Jesus sends him. Interestingly, John the Baptist, or sorry, the Apostle John, he notes that Jesus himself didn't actually baptize anyone. They make the point that Jesus' disciples baptized, but Jesus didn't. And whose disciples did those baptized by the apostles become though? That's the important question. They became Jesus's disciples. So Jesus's baptism is formally instituted in the verse we see on our screen. And Jesus came and said to them, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them, dot, dot, dot. And so it's a formal institution, but it actually begins with the ministry of Jesus and his apostles. We find that it is reaffirmed explicitly as a sacrament though in Matthew 28 after the resurrection but before the ascension. And so denominations obviously differ wildly on their understanding of baptism, but they are almost universally agreed that it is a sacrament of the church. I say universally because there's always one, right? There's always one random denomination or group out there that doesn't do things according to the Bible in one way or another. There's no perfect church. And so in this case, there are denominations that believe that water baptism was temporary, that it was a right that was established for a time, but it ceased when the reality came with the Holy Spirit. Of course, the only problem with that is that Acts 2.38 and 10.47 clearly show, after the Holy Spirit has come and after people have received the Holy Spirit, that they are then baptized with water. So we can't say that baptism with water ends just because the Holy Spirit has come. Certainly they're related, but we don't dispense with one for the other. So, baptism is a sacrament of the New Testament ordained by Jesus Christ. At the beginning of his ministry, he begins it. Formally, it's reiterated after the resurrection. But what does baptism do? You'll note that in each of the paragraphs, as they begin to define anything, they define its nature, but then also its ends. What purpose, what use has God instituted it for? And here it begins with a sort of statement of one of its uses, though not the primary one, and it's going to go on to give us the primary one. So it begins, not only for the solemn admission of the party baptized into the visible church, and we'll stop there, and we have to remind ourselves, because there's terminology here that we're probably not terribly familiar with, though we should, because we're in the section of the church. and it says into the visible church and if you remember back to chapter 25 the invisible church is that church that includes the whole number of the elect everyone who has is and will be saved and you can read about that in Ephesians 1, Colossians 1 for details but I'm not going to reiterate the whole previous chapter. Here, baptism, we're told, is a solemn admission of the party baptized into not the invisible church, but the visible church. So what is that? Well, that's that broader category that is broader than the invisible church in that it includes not just the elect, but also all those who profess faith in Christ and their children. And so Is this a real distinction? Does it exist or is it just something the Westminster divines made up? Well, Paul writing to the Corinthians calls them the Church of God and then he lumps them in with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus. Later he says unbelieving spouses are sanctified such that their children of one or more believers are holy. And so for these reasons, among others, The Reformed have held this distinction of visible and invisible church. The invisible church being the elect in every age, the visible being those who profess faith and their children in the current age. Baptism, we're told here, is a solemn admission into the visible church. And so this language of invisible and visible becomes highly significant. It does not, baptism does not make you a member of the invisible church. And actually it doesn't make you a member of the visible church either. It's a solemn admission, we're told. That is not an actual admission, but a solemn one. It's given to those who already actually belong to the visible church by profession, faith, or by birth. And to make this clear, the difference here, think of a, think perhaps, I've got a couple illustrations here. Let's go with the first one first. Think of an enlistment contract. At what point does somebody enlisting into the Army or the Marines or wherever become a member of that service? Is it when they raise their right hand and take the oath publicly or is it when they put their name on the contract? Well, it's when they put their name on the contract and if you don't show up to give that oath, they're going to come looking for you. Or perhaps another way we can look at it, a marriage certificate. Is somebody legally married When the minister pronounces, I do, or you are husband and wife, not I do, that's what the bride and groom say. Or is it when the marriage certificate, sometimes days or weeks in advance, has been signed? As far as the state's concerned, it's the latter. It's when the contract is signed. And even in our own church, we have something of this. When we interview new members, the session interviews new members, and they receive new members later publicly, right? And so somebody is a member, as soon as they've been voted on by the session, they're a member of this local congregation, but then they're publicly received at a later date. These illustrations can help to explain this distinction. So it doesn't make you a member of the Visible Church. You're made a member of the Visible Church by profession of faith or by birth, but then it is a Solomon mission through baptism. So what does baptism do? That's one thing it does, but it's not really the main thing. That's why it's prefaced by those words, not only, but also to be unto him a sign and seal of the covenant of grace, of his engrafting into Christ of regeneration of remission of sins and his giving up unto God through Jesus Christ to walk in newness of life. So baptism is a solemn admission by the person being baptized, they're publicly marked as a member of the visible church. They have that badge on them, so to speak. But this is not the primary purpose of baptism. Its primary purpose, you'll remember, is really the primary purpose of both sacraments. They are signs, that is they point to, and they are seals. They confirm and confer the covenant of grace and all its benefits. And that's what they list out for us in several lines here. They have the engrafting into Christ, and the regeneration, the remission of sins, the giving up unto God through Jesus to walk in the newness of life. So let's look at those just briefly. First, engrafting into Christ. What does that mean? It's pointing us to union with Christ. The sign and seal of baptism is pointing us to and confirming the promise to us and conferring to us the grace of union with Christ. Regeneration. Baptism doesn't regenerate us. Only the Holy Spirit can regenerate us. But it points us to and confirms to us God's promise to give us a new heart and to give us a new nature. remission of sin. Obviously enough, baptism doesn't remove sin from us, it doesn't wash sin away in and of itself in its own working, but it points us to and confirms to us the promise that God has to forgive sin. And the ultimate result of this is probably the last part that we don't think of very often. I think most of us understand at some level baptism is about bringing us into union in Christ and a regeneration, the remission of sin. There's lots of imagery all over the Bible about that, but this last part the giving up unto God through Jesus Christ to walk in newness of life. Well, where does that come from? Well, it comes from all those promises that talk about giving a new heart and a new nature, and we tend to think just about the first half of all those verses, but those verses don't end where we think they are ending. He says in his prophet Ezekiel, I will give them a new heart and spirit, And then he tells us why, that they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules. Later in Ezekiel, he says, I will put my spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees. Or as Paul says in the New Testament, we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works. This is the culminate end of these things is that we would walk according to God's word. So baptism points us to and confirms to us God's promises that whoever has believed, has been brought into union with Christ, has been given a new nature, has had their sins forgiven such that they surrender to God through Christ to walk more and more in obedience to his word. And those that will believe will receive and do the same. So where and when is baptism to be administered. It tells us this sacrament is by Christ's own appointment to be continued in his church until the end of the world. I want to just discuss briefly where and then briefly when. The primary point of this part of the passage is actually when, but there is details here about where and I think they're relevant. So where is baptism to be performed? Is it to be performed in your backyard by your uncle who's not even ordained? In the bathtub, maybe. No. It says, the sacrament is by Christ's own appointment to be continued in his church. And so many evangelicals today in Rome, they have a problem with this, of course, because they don't quite do this right. They have special exceptions. The problem, of course, is that Christ gave the commission to baptize to his apostles and teaching officers in the church and not generally to anyone anywhere. Think about this for a minute. It makes sense, right? If baptism is a solemn admission into the discipleship of the church, doesn't it make sense that it ought to be administered by those who are primarily responsible for the discipleship teaching ministry of the church and then witnessed likewise by those who are engaged to be fellow disciples in the church? And we take church vows here, right? When you join, you make vows. And you're not the only one who is making those vows. If you're baptized in this church or you have your children baptized, you make vows, but the congregation also makes vows. And for these and like reasons, baptism is to be administered in the church. Secondly, It is to be administered in the church until the end of the age. And this sort of goes back to what I said before about people who believe that the spiritual reality of baptism came to us at Pentecost and therefore the formal rite of water baptism ceases there. And we saw already from Acts 2 and 10 that that's not the case. And so who are these people? Well, one group is called the Sassinians. They disputed the perpetuity of water baptism, and they have their modern-day successors in the Unitarian Church. They likewise dispute the perpetuity of water baptism. Well, are they correct to do so? Obviously, no, but they would argue perhaps along the lines of what Paul said, Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel. And so isn't water baptism superfluous? especially with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit? The answer is no. Because Christ commissioned. Think about where he formally enacts the sacrament of baptism. It's in the Great Commission and that Great Commission is not complete. The Great Commission is ongoing. Christ's mission for his church has not been fulfilled. It's not completed. And therefore his promise also is not expired. And so if the commission still stands and the promise still stands, shouldn't the things between those two things, such as the sacrament of baptism, continue? For these reasons, the church continues to administer baptism as a sign and seal of the covenant of grace. How is baptism to be administered? Maybe this sounds very obvious to us, and the answer is obviously with water, right? You wish you could take these things for granted. You really do. I remember when I was on a mission trip with some individuals from a para-church organization you all probably know. I won't name names. And they were arguing for the Lord's Supper being taken with Coke and Cheetos. And so you think it goes without saying that baptism is obviously by water, but the... Even during the Reformation, they weren't getting this right, y'all. You think of all the things that... Rome never went so far as to say we should baptize people in, I don't know, green slime from Nickelodeon, but they did destroy the nature of the sacrament by adding to it so many superstitious things. They add anointing oil. It's not needed. They say anointing oil signifies the anointing of the Holy Spirit. Well, where do you find that in the institutions for the baptism? They add chrism oil, but chrism oil is also not needed. They say it signifies engrafting into Christ. The Bible says baptism by itself with water signifies that. What about the sign of the cross? No, also not needed, but Rome says it is. They say it signifies initiation in the Christian faith. A white robe, salt, honey, exorcism, renouncing of the devil. These are just a few of the many things that Rome added to the sacrament of baptism that find no warrant in the Bible. I mentioned in my sermon a few weeks ago, it's not so much the things that aren't there. You go to a church and there's pews and there's a pulpit and there's a Bible and maybe they even read from it. But it's the things that they add to worship that so often become the problem. And by adding so many superstitious things, they corrupted the sacrament of baptism. We might ask though, why water, right? simply because the scripture clearly teaches that people are baptized in water. That should be enough. John obviously baptized with water, but where do we see water baptism or water mentioned in relation to baptism? Well, the obvious text is Acts 8. If you think of the Ethiopian eunuch, a text we'll come back to a few times in a later paragraph. One of the things we should learn from that, incidentally, is that water is an element that makes sense. It represents, it signifies washing. And what is baptism? The washing. It represents the washing of the Holy Spirit and regeneration. The washing of our sins away by the blood of Christ. But it's universally necessary for life. You can't live without water and therefore water is, maybe not in great abundance, but always in some quantity, universally available. The brilliance of Reformed worship, biblical worship, is that you can do it virtually anywhere. You can find bread you can find wine and you can find water. And if you have a Bible, you have everything you need to have a worship service. But the primary reason for water is that it signifies the washing of regeneration and Christ's blood. Shaw, if you don't know the name of Shaw, Robert Shaw, he has a great Simple, accessible commentary on the Confession of Faith. I encourage you to find it online for free. Robert Shaw says this, as water has a cleansing virtue for removing defilement from the body, so the blood of Christ removes the guilt of sin and cleanses the defiled conscience, and the Spirit of Christ purifies the soul from the pollution of sin. All right, so now we're kind of bridging from the how to the who of administering the sacrament of baptism. How is baptism to be administered? We know it's with water, but it's also in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And this makes sense, right? It's God's sacrament. He instituted and ordained it. and therefore it makes sense that it would be administered in his name. We didn't invent it, we didn't institute it, we didn't accomplish what it represents, we can't affect that which it seals. It's the triune God who does all this and so the sacrament is to be administered in his name. And so it's by his authority. But in the name of also means that the person who baptizes, this is the part we often miss, most of us understand that the name of God represents His power, His authority, and therefore when we baptize people they are being baptized in that authority, we are not doing it on our own authority. But it also means that the person baptized is brought in or under that same authority. Shaw says the recipients of baptism are solemnly devoted to the service of these divine persons. And so from the very beginning of the Christian life in the solemn admission into the church, it is Trinitarian. Baptism puts the recipient, whether he has yet to profess faith or not, under an obligation from the very beginning to repent and to believe and to confess and to serve the triune God. So that's the how, with water, in the triune name. But we have one last very important question to ask, and that's the who. The Confession of Faith says it's to be administered by a minister of the gospel, lawfully called thereunto. And this again is getting at Rome because Rome in certain circumstances, I mentioned in the general section on the sacraments, Rome allowed in certain circumstances for non-ordained ministers to administer at least the sacrament of baptism. But you have to give it to the Roman Catholic Church because at least they only allowed it in emergency circumstances. You can think of situations of midwives delivering babies and they're not going to live. And because Rome views the sacrament of baptism as necessary in an absolute sense for salvation, they wanted to make provision for babies to be baptized if they weren't going to live so that they could be saved. It comes from a wrong view, though, of the necessity of baptism, which we'll get to in a minute. They believe that baptism was necessary such that salvation was impossible without it. But even they, even Rome, never imagined moms and dads and uncles baptizing their children in their backyard swimming pool or bathtub. I can only assume the reason people think that they're allowed to do this is because of their wrong understanding of the Great Commission. This is the formal institution of the sacrament of baptism. And I think a lot of people read Matthew 28, probably not entirely their fault, but too many evangelism and mission pastors coming and telling them that this is Jesus speaking directly to them. The problem is, who is Jesus actually speaking to in Acts 28? He's speaking to the 11, the disciples, the apostles, the ordained teaching officers of that church. And I'm not saying that Christians on the whole don't have an obligation to do evangelism and shouldn't pursue sharing the gospel with people. There are other texts that tell you explicitly to have a reason for the hope that is inside you. And certainly it is a valid application of the Great Commission that we should be sharing our faith. But in its essence, it is directed directly to the apostles. The great commission to make disciples by baptizing and teaching was given to the 11 disciples, the apostles, as teaching officers in the church. So ruling elders, they can assist, as they do here. Parents are often involved by the giving, receiving of vows. But baptism is rightly administered by a minister of the gospel lawfully called thereunto. Everybody's favorite question. dip, pour, sprinkle. This paragraph is dealing with what we call the mode of baptism. And broadly speaking, there are two positions that are held. There are those who maintain that baptism is administered either by pouring or sprinkling. That's a fusion. And then there are those that think dipping of the person into water is necessary. That's called immersion. And the Westminster Confession of Faith and the officers of this church, the teaching and ruling officers of this church all believe that the Bible teaches this first view of what we call effusion, that is either by pouring or sprinkling. But obviously we have a lot of Baptist brothers, many of you are Baptists, your members here, and you believe that immersion of the whole body is essential to valid baptism. And so Baptists on the whole, they argue along a couple different lines. Yep. Many trees have been killed in the arguing of this issue. I think that was said in a sermon recently. This is one of those issues. But they argue that the word baptize has intrinsic to its meaning the sense of washing by immersion. They also argue that the Bible describes baptism as going into and out of water. That's the Ethiopian eunuch again in Acts 8. And then they also argue that baptism symbolizes being buried a la Romans 6 and Colossians 2 and therefore is best done by immersion. Well, what's the problem with that? Why do we disagree on this? Well, as those who believe that the mode of baptism is either by pouring or sprinkling, this is what we would say concerning those arguments. First, to baptize comes from the verb baptizo, which comes from the verb bapto. And bapto and baptizo, you're like, well, I'm getting a Greek class. No, I promise it's only going to last a minute. They both mean to wash. And they do often have the sense to dip or to immerse. Sprinkling and pouring people don't disagree with that. We agree it often has that sense. The disagreement is that it doesn't exclusively have that sense. And at least in one New Testament passage, it obviously means to be washed in blood via sprinkling. In Revelations 19.11, Jesus is portrayed as a divine warrior and the scripture says, he is clothed in a robe, dipped in blood. You're like, wait, I thought you just said it doesn't mean dipped. Well, the Baptist translated that part of the ESV. But you can tell the Baptist translated this part of the ESV wrong, because are we really to believe that Jesus, before, during, or after the battle, He's depicted as a divine warrior, and He's wielding the sword of His word, and He's slaying His enemies. Are we to believe that His robe is bloody red, because sometime before, during, or after the battle, He took it off and immersed it into a bucket of blood? I mean, I know it's a picture, but what is the picture? The context of this picture tells us the semantic range, the lexical cloud, the possible meanings of the word bapto here. It says it's baptized in the blood of his enemies. And it's because, obviously, it's a picture of battle. You're slaying your enemies with a sword and you're inflicting wounds as you're slashing at them with your sword. And the blood is spraying from the wounds and it's landing on Jesus's robe. Why is his robe red with blood? It's because he has tread down his enemies with the sword of his word. He has cut them down, and their bodies have sprinkled the blood upon him. Hopefully that's not too graphic. If you have a nice, happy Jesus who's meek and mild, that may be a little bit vivid for you, but that's what the Bible says. And when you look at the Greek translations of the Old Testament, it becomes even more clear that bapto often means sprinkle. Let me just read a few. Daniel 4.33 speaks of Nebuchadnezzar's body being washed with the dew of heaven. The word washed there in the Septuagint is bapto. And so is Nebuchadnezzar dipping himself or being dipped into a bucket of dew? Or is the dew sprinkling down onto Nebuchadnezzar? See, bapto refers more to the result of being washed than it does to the mode of how something is washed. And so oftentimes we read in the scripture of pots and cups and hands being washed, and certainly perhaps sometimes that's by immersion, but not exclusively so. Oftentimes you would pour water from a pitcher onto your hands or onto your dishes. Why? Because you have no modern plumbing. You have a pot of clean water. You're not going to make the whole thing dirty just by plunging a dirty dish into it, right? You're going to pour it out like any sane person would onto the thing that you want to wash. Likewise, it's unlikely that when the scripture speaks of beds and tents and furniture being washed, that such large items were immersed. It just does not fit the full sense of the scripture. This is the difficulty in dealing with systematic theology and dealing with sacraments in particular. It's not enough to say, I have my verses, you have your verses. The right answer has to account for all the biblical data. And constraining the word for baptism to immersion only and exclusively betrays far too many texts to be a valid answer. Well, what about the Ethiopian eunuch? Doesn't the prepositions in that text prove immersion? It says there he went into the water and he came out of the water. Well, it does say that. Even in the ESV it says that. What's the problem? Well, it can just as well be translated as to the water and from the water. The same prepositions for into is used when Jesus is going to the tomb of Lazarus. And does Jesus enter the tomb of Lazarus? No, he calls the tomb to be open. And then from outside of the tomb, he calls Lazarus to come out. Jesus never enters into the tomb. It's the same grammatical structure translated to and from, not into and out from. Dick, another commentator on the confession, he says the preposition act, which is out and simply signifies the point from which an ice, the point which is the movement, is the point to which the movement is made. What he's saying is it's not necessarily into and out from. And to take for, just let's take for granted for a moment that that is the only way to translate. Let's as a given say it is into and out from. Does that even prove immersion? Because it says they went into and they came out from. And if that means immersion, then the eunuch wasn't the only person who got baptized. Philip was there included in that they. I don't think that makes any sense. Finally, baptism does not primarily signify being buried. Paul does speak that way, but he's not prescribing a mode of baptism in Romans 6 or Colossians 2. Baptism, far more often in fact, signifies the blood of Christ and the Holy Spirit, both of which are more frequently promised to be poured out. I will pour my spirit upon your offspring, says Isaiah. I will sprinkle clean water on you, speaking of the Holy Spirit, says Ezekiel. I will pour out my spirit on all flesh, says Joel. I will pour out the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, a spirit of grace, says Zechariah. He saved us by the washing of regeneration and the renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us, says Paul. And Luke concludes saying the gift of the Holy Spirit was poured out even on the Gentiles. For every one verse that speaks of baptism being a symbol of burial, there are at least ten that speak for it being poured out. But again, even if we admit baptism is sometimes signifying burial, as it does in Romans 6 and 2, Colossians 2, the Jews weren't buried in the way we typically think people are being buried. We think people are getting buried six feet under soil. They are immersed in soil. But Jews in ancient Near Eastern culture, they were washed with water, and then they were anointed with oil for burial, and then they were laid on rock shelves inside cut-out portions of rock, sometimes caves. So they're not immersed in anything except for air. It does not make sense, and it certainly doesn't require immersion. I think this sufficiently disproves baptism by immersion as necessary. Scripture plainly does not support it. Moving on to who should be baptized. It says in paragraph four, not only those that do actually profess faith and obedience unto Christ, but also infants of one or both believing parents are to be baptized. So if the first debate is about mode, that's the big one for some people, but I think the bigger one is this question of who is the object? Who is the right recipient of baptism? Basically, no church that practices baptism debates whether they should or shouldn't be baptizing professing adults. No church is out there baptizing, to my knowledge at least, I guess there's always one, right? Baptizing adults who have not professed faith in Christ. That's not where the debate is. The debate is over infants, obviously. Roman Catholics, they practice infant baptism because they viewed baptism, as I said before, as being necessary for salvation. The Reformed practice, we don't like to call it infant baptism. What do we like to call it? We call it covenant baptism because it's based on the covenant. We're baptizing because they're members of the covenant, not because they are infants. But we practice covenant baptism of infants, not because baptism is necessary for salvation, but because it is necessary for obedience. But the Anabaptists, they rejected covenant baptism, seeing it as simply a holdover from Rome. So that's where this paragraph's aiming at. It's not aiming at Rome so much as it is the Anabaptists. Well, Scripture plainly teaches that God has established a covenant of grace with Abraham and his offspring after him. And the reality is that this does not change in the New Testament administration of the covenant of grace. If you believe in covenant baptism, the logical end is covenant baptism of children. If you believe in covenant theology, you should believe in covenant baptism. Acts 2.39 repeats this promise verbatim. And so if children are in the covenant by virtue of their parents, it follows that children are also subject in age-appropriate ways to the covenant signs. And this is exactly what we actually see in the Bible. Children were circumcised under the old administration and they are baptized under the new. And Acts contains several examples of household baptism which we as Presbyterians, this is reality, these household baptisms, they don't say and such and such household was baptized and they're all 18 plus. Nor do they say, and such and such household was baptized and there were infants there. Both sides are reading into those household baptism texts. But let's be honest, is it more likely that they had children or that they didn't have children? I mean, this isn't the argument, the primary argument. I've laid out the primary argument, but it does not make statistical sense that the households that were being baptized had no children. That is not likely at all. And besides this, Paul explicitly says that children are made holy by virtue of one or more believing parents. If they're holy, should not they have the signs given to them of baptism? And if all that weren't enough, Paul explicitly likened circumcision to baptism in that both are signs pointing to the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit. So we have ample reason to believe from the scripture that children of believers are to be baptized. Is baptism necessary? I've already said it's not. but it's sort of a yes-no answer. Necessary in what sense? It says, although it be a great sin to condemn or neglect his ordinance, yet grace and salvation are not so inseparably annexed unto it, as that no person can be regenerated or saved without it, or that all that are baptized are undoubtedly regenerated. Well, this paragraph just gets at everybody. You don't want to fall at the ditch on either side of this issue. As I mentioned before, Rome teaches that baptism is necessary for salvation, but on the opposite, there are those who teach that baptism is not necessary at all. And so the Reformers, what they're doing is they're rejecting both extremes as false. They, and we after them, teach according to the Bible that baptism is in fact necessary. but not for salvation. It's necessary as an act of obedience because Christ has commanded that we do it. And again, that should be enough. That means that neglecting it for ourselves or for our children is a sin. Dare I say this should make this a very practicable doctrine for all of us, whether you're in the Baptist camp and you're convinced or whether you're in the Presbyterian camp and convinced. This isn't just armchair theologians debating about something that doesn't matter. Because this is a sacrament instituted by Christ, and it's a matter of obedience, and if we are not obeying, then we are sinning. If you followed and agreed with my argument to this point, that children ought to be baptized by virtue of their membership in the covenant under their parents, and you've not baptized your children, or you did not baptize your children, they're grown up, the reality is that you have sinned. It's not an unforgivable sin, but it is a sin, and it's a sin that needs to be repented of. The good news, of course, is that baptism doesn't save your children, right? It doesn't condemn them by not having it. Let me say this to the Presbyterians in the room. I've been going hard on the Baptist for a minute, but I'll pick on both sides just to be fair. Baptism does not regenerate your children. I hope you realize that. It does not guarantee that they're saved. And this isn't just a problem with Rome, it's a big problem in the Reformed Church. Baptism is not regeneration. So I ask the question, when does baptism work? the question before us. The efficacy of baptism is not tied to that moment of time wherein it is administered, yet notwithstanding by the right use of this ordinance, the grace promised is not only offered, but really exhibited, conferred by the Holy Ghost to such, whether of age or infants, as the grace belongeth unto according to the counsel of God's own will in his appointed time. And that's just, I think, for people speaking modern English, a bunch of word soup periods were apparently not very popular back then. We've got multiple semicolons and commas. What's this paragraph saying? Baptism is not regeneration. Rome teaches that baptism does regenerate and many reformed churches teach that it regenerates. We have one very obvious biblical example of where it doesn't. It's Simon Magus. He was baptized but he remained, we're told, in the gall of bitterness and the bond of iniquity. Paul himself says later and elsewhere that he was glad that he had not baptized many of the Corinthians. If you've ever read the letter of Corinthians to the Corinthians, you'll know why Paul was glad he didn't baptize them. But they were still baptized by others and they were still living in sin. That's the problem. They were baptized with water, but they had not been baptized with the Holy Spirit. You see, regeneration belongs to the work of the Holy Spirit. He uses baptism to offer, to exhibit, to confer grace to all the elect. That is what it means when it says, as that grace belongeth unto, that's all God's elect. But when does he do it? In his own appointed time. We don't baptize infants because we think it regenerates them in that moment or saves them in that moment or anything of the sort. We baptize because we're told to and the Holy Spirit works through that means of grace when he pleases. I think as Presbyterians especially, we need to be reminded of the words of Nicodemus or the words of Jesus to Nicodemus when he says, the wind blows where it wishes and you hear it sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the spirit. We don't save our children by baptizing them. The Holy Spirit does that according to his own timing. Final question, is wetter better? The sacrament of baptism is but once to be administered unto any person. So the answer is no, wetter is not better. We don't get anything. We don't get any additional grace or any different grace. We don't get any better thing by being baptized more than once. You don't need to get wet again just because you sinned or walked away from God or from the church. What you need to do is you need to repent. And then you need to consider the promises that were offered and exhibited when you were first baptized. You need to consider the privileges and benefits that were conferred, what duty you have toward God, what grace He has towards you. We're not to get re-baptized. Baptism is an initiating ordinance. We've been given other things to sustain us, namely the Word of God and the Lord's Supper. And so being baptized multiple times has become something of a trend in evangelicalism, recommitting their lives to Christ, walking down the aisle and getting wet again. It does nothing for them. They ought to repent and read the Word of God and perhaps take the Lord's Supper at their church if they're a member there. So long as you are baptized by a minister lawfully ordained to the gospel ministry in a Bible-believing, gospel-preaching church in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, you are baptized. And if that doesn't describe you, you probably should come talk to one of your pastors. Lesson review. What is baptism? It's a sacrament of the New Testament. What does it do? It's a sign and seal of Christ. There's benefits in the covenant of grace. How is baptism administered? It's by water or with water. Who administers it? By a minister lawfully called to the ministry. Do we dip, pour, or sprinkle? We pour or sprinkle. If you've been to a baptism, we're going to have a baptism this Sunday. We pour. A lot of water going on that baby. Who receives baptism? Believers, but not just believers, also their children. Is baptism yet necessary? Yes. It's a duty commanded by Christ. If you're not baptizing your children, it is the conviction of this church that that is a sin. It's a conviction of the Bible. Again, not an unforgivable sin, but baptism is a duty, and if it rightly belongs to our children and we neglect to give it to them, we are in sin and need to repent. How and when does baptism work? When God chooses, when the Holy Spirit chooses. He's sovereign. He's not an idol. We don't control him. Is wetter better? That's a big negative. All right. Coming soon, we've got the Lord's Supper coming up next. I think that's substantially less controversial in Reformed circles. Hopefully, tonight wasn't too much, but we have the Lord's Supper next Wednesday to learn about, and our debates with that are largely related to Rome in this confession, though there are contemporary issues we could certainly address concerning paedo-communion. We'll see if we get there. Let's close in prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your sacraments which you have given to your church and that you have promised to work through by your Holy Spirit. We pray that we would believe your word, that we would hold these doctrines in high esteem, that we would consider them carefully, that we would realize that these are not superfluous questions. but ones of great importance, matters of practical piety and godliness and obedience to your word. Would you help us to give our attention appropriately to them? Heavenly Father, sanctify your people, build us up in grace, help us to make use of our baptism as we reflect on our own baptisms, even as we see this baptism, this Lord's Day. Would you help us to see and to lift our eyes up to the benefits and to the person of Christ. We pray in his name. Amen.