congregation of the Lord, why is it that we baptize the children of believing parents? A Baptist high school teacher in a Reformed school once asked her class this question and she got ten different answers. And she said in a response, in a kind way to be sure, shame on you all. You mean to tell me you belong to a church which baptizes children who haven't made a profession of faith and A church that says this is one of your defining doctrines, but you can't put into words why you do what you do. And that is what we need to do in the next few sermons, to put into words why we do what we do. And the simple answer is this, because of the command and promise of God. Now, that'll need to be unpacked. in spite of the fact that the form very clearly says that parents are not to baptize their children either out of custom or out of superstition, such baptisms do sometimes seem to happen in our churches. We could discuss whether that's due to poor teaching or other reasons, but it does seem to happen because among us too you hear people say something like this, Well, that's just the way we do things in this church, and it doesn't really matter one way or the other. I can take it or leave it. It doesn't really make a whole lot of difference. Well, if you think that, then you really should not be presenting your children for baptism because then it's not an act of faith, it's an act of custom. Someone else might say, well, I think it's just special to stand in front of the church at the beginning of my parenting with my new child and have people shake my hands afterward and give me their best wishes and congratulations and call it a church baby shower of sorts or a wet dedication. Is there anything wrong with that? Someone else might want to say, well, it can't really do any harm, and someone else might want to say, well, it just means that they're all saved. Custom. Superstition. Aren't those really forms of idolatry? And maybe still another person wants to say, not realizing in how far the culture has influenced our views of humanity, I just don't understand the baptism of a child. What good could it possibly do? And our beloved Baptist brethren would say, well, those baptisms are just the lingering influences of Roman Catholic superstition. Because after all, Roman Catholics, and I looked it up on the web this week, they still baptize all kinds of things. They'll baptize a church bell, and they'll baptize a church building, and a boat, And the bishop will sprinkle holy water on it, and he'll murmur a blessing, and the bell doesn't sound any different for it, and the boat doesn't float any better, and the church doesn't function any more smoothly, but it's done. Spurgeon once famously said this, baptizing a child isn't any different than baptizing a boat or a bell because the child isn't any more aware of what's going on than the bell is. Do you see? that it's good to dig into the biblical roots of this part of our church life. Because superstitious idolatry may have no place in a worship service. That is to dishonor God. But when you do listen to the scriptures, then you discover that the scriptures light up with all kinds of wonderful good news for both parents and children. Our theme is this, the last Adam's good news for our baptized children. We see in the first place the bad news of our union with the first Adam. Secondly, the wonderful news of union with Christ. And lastly, the nightlight of Christ in your home. So the last Adam's good news for our baptized children, the bad news of our union with the first Adam, the wonderful news of union with Christ as the last Adam, and the nightlight of Christ in your home. You've heard, I'm sure, the rather strange saying, at least to us in this Western world, that there's more than one way to skin a cat. That may be so, but there's only one way to save a sinner. And if you really understand what it means to be a sinner, then you have no hope apart from Jesus Christ, not for yourself and not for your children either. And baptism pictures and seals the promise of salvation in Christ to sinners whom God draws near to himself. And shouldn't we then be able to describe what we need to be saved from in order to appreciate the sign and seal of God's covenant? Everything you believe about God, yourself, sin, and salvation is connected when you answer the question, what is baptism and who should be baptized? And if you want to go back to the ground zero in Scripture of understanding baptism, then you must go back to Adam, the first Adam, and Christ the last Adam. And only then can you understand why baptism is beautiful and also why the baptism of the child or household of believing parents is beautiful. Now someone might want to say, well, but I just don't see it. Where does the Bible connect union with either Adam or Christ to baptism? Well, let me ask you, why do you think that Romans 6 immediately follows the words we read from Romans 5? And keep in mind the chapter divisions are not original. They didn't happen until later. After revealing that we can be justified by faith in Jesus Christ and have peace with God Romans 3 4 & 5 5 first half Romans 5 then goes on to compare these two Adams and And only when it has been said that salvation flows from union to the one who overcomes what we did wrong in Adam, do we then immediately read in the following chapter, in chapter six, about being buried and raised with Christ, who has just been identified as the last Adam who saves in chapter five. That's the connection. And this is also how we answer this objection to the baptism of children. Well, they're too little. They have no clue they are sinners. They can't tell the difference between being up here and being in the bathtub. They're not capable, at least they don't seem to be capable, of believing in Jesus Christ and repenting of their sins. Then how can you baptize them? Because doesn't baptism symbolize being united to Jesus Christ and therefore being buried with him in his death and raised with him to new life? And how can someone who has no idea what any of these things mean get the symbol of this promise to him or her? Well, let me ask you, do you think children who are handicapped mentally and are never able to reach the age of discretion, can they be buried with Christ and raised with him? shouldn't you at least then wonder if that's true not just for them but true for little ones before they ever reach the age of accountability. You can only give someone the symbol of union with Jesus Christ when the promise that is baptism pictures reality. And what is that reality? Remember what the sacraments are. It's the Word of God made visible and personal. Joined to the Word you hear with your ears as it's read to you comes the Word you see with your eyes. The waters of baptism and the Word of God can be pronounced over a child and be true even if that child doesn't realize it or remember it, or even if that child eventually rejects it, that doesn't cancel out the truthfulness of the Word of God. What God says and does is what makes a baptism the Word of God revealed. God is revealing himself to us every time, just as surely in his Word as he is in the waters of baptism. God is claiming that child with his promise. God is promising to give himself to this child, and he wants that child to learn to give himself to God. Now, that's the one-paragraph summary of Reformed theology, but I'm going to need to prove that to you from the Scriptures. And that will require a bunch of sermons. And what are the three parts of the Word of God as they come to us? Well, first, our fallenness and sinfulness. And doesn't baptism send us that message? You don't wash clean people, only dirty ones. And that dirt begins with union to Adam as he sins. And second, the glorious salvation of God in Christ as the last Adam is proclaimed by the dripping waters and personally promised to all those who believe. And third, the claims and faithfulness of God are declared as the waters flow, and parents have that to lean on in raising their children. And someone might want to say, yeah, but I have all of these things from the Word. I don't need baptism for that. Well, if you think this, you don't realize that baptism is the same Word made visible and personal by the God of the covenant. Baptism is simply God's Word made graphic to picture and illustrate The word of the covenant-making God, and to reject, therefore, baptism is to have difficulty with God's word, not just with a ritual. Saying the baptism of an infant or a child is merely a ritual is like saying a book is just the letters of the alphabet. Well, it's just letters on the page. Well, that's true. But when you put those letters in certain combinations together, that book has more to say than we are the letters of the alphabet. And the same is true of baptism. This is the Word of God made visible and personally addressed with your name on it. And tonight we'll zero in on just one part of these biblical roots. We'll consider the two Adams in all of scripture. And all of scripture can be summarized like this. You were born in union with the first Adam. You sinned with Adam. And do you therefore deserve death from the moment of your conception? And you can only be saved then by being disconnected from the first Adam and plugged in union to the second Adam Christ. And the word for this union to a human head, to an Adam, that word is covenant. And baptism pictures these unions and it makes them graphic for us. Ah, someone might want to say, there you go to the Old Testament again. Reformed people are always going to the Old Testament. We're a New Testament church. Well, actually, this is a New Testament doctrine. Without the New Testament, we really wouldn't have this doctrine of being born sinners. Now, you've said this before often in your life, right? Hindsight is 20-20. something goes wrong, some scandal erupts, some failure comes to light, and that employee has to be fired for stealing company funds, and someone else might say, well, why didn't you see this coming? I saw it coming. And the answer is, well, hindsight is 20-20. Everybody sees it after it happened. Of course you see it after the fact. And the same is true of this doctrine of us being born as sinners. with a sinful nature. And like every other doctrine, it's hinted at in the Old Testament. We read the clearest Old Testament passage of it where David grieves in Psalm 51 over the depths of his sin. And no, this is not just poetry because Romans proves most of its doctrines with Psalms, and that means that you can do that. David grieves by the depths of his sin when he says, I was conceived and born in sin. There are other hints in the Old Testament you can flip a few pages later, Psalm 58 verse 3, and I quote, The wicked are estranged from the womb. They go astray as soon as they are born, speaking lies. But those are the hints. and they do not light up in full until Jesus Christ comes into this world as the last Adam. And then with 20-20 hindsight, because of the brightness of Jesus Christ, you can look back in the Old Testament and say, now I see, now I understand. And that's why Romans 5 doesn't just present Christ who by his one act of obedience on the cross brings sinners from many transgressions to one righteousness and one new people. That's why Romans 5 is continually comparing these two people and therefore these two kinds of humanity. The first Adam and the last Adam, and no less than 10 times you find in these verses this phrase, by one man. By one man, sin and therefore death and condemnation come upon the entire human race. By one man, by union to that one man, obedience, life, and righteousness come upon many. Children, think of the human race like this. The human race is like a tree. And Romans begins with all the little twigs and branches and individual leaves. But then it moves to the center. You take away the trunk of that tree and not a single branch can grow. Without the trunk and the roots, the smallest twig can't grow. And if it's separated from the trunk, that branch, no matter how small or big, will die. And therefore that branch gets its life out of the trunk. And that's why a cactus branch doesn't grow on an apple tree's trunk. The branch gets its life and identity and character from the trunk. And no, this is not tradition, this is scripture, Romans 11. describes God's covenant dealings like this, as being grafted onto the olive tree of his covenant. God doesn't think of anybody merely as an individual. That's the influence of our Western culture. God thinks always, first of all, of a people and of a family before he ever gets to the individual. And God didn't create a tribe to start the human race. He created one man and one woman. And it was the sin of the man that led to the sin of humanity because Eve was not our covenant head. It was Adam's sin. Why Adams and not Eve's? Because Adam was designed to be a picture of Jesus Christ, a negative one to be sure. Romans 5 verse 14 even says this. that Adam is a figure of him who was to come. That's Christ. That means a type. Children, I know that's a very big word for you. So let's explain it very simply, shall we? Adam's the shadow of Christ in the Old Testament. So imagine you're going to meet a new person. You've never met that person before, never seen them, and that person's standing out in the sunlight around the corner. But before you even turn the corner, You can see the shadow that's being cast. You can see something of what that person's like. Is he short, tall, skinny, wider, long hair, buzz cut, bald? You can't see the color of their clothes. But you get an idea of who it is that's standing there. And Adam is created by God as the head of the human race. And therefore, through him, his sin and death are inescapable because since he is the trunk and since he is the head, we sin when he sins. That one specific sin of command and test, the sins that Adam committed later in his life don't apply to the human race, but that one specific one of obeying that command. You look at Adam and you look what happens and you're catching a glimpse of who Jesus Christ is and why you need him. Now Christ has walked around the corner. Now we see in full color what Adam was. We see more about Adam than we ever could have without Christ, too. And that's why Romans 5 is constantly comparing these two things, these two Adams, each of them the head of the human race. God has created us as humanity to be under headship. Adam of the old human race fallen into sin, Christ of the new one brought to eternal life by the cross. And yet they're also different because Adam's one sin leads to the condemnation and transgressions and death of many and Christ's cross leads to salvation. Adam's sin should make you want to hang your head and weep. Nothing the whole tree of humanity growing out of Adam does can ever undo our sin. And Christ's cross is enough to make you sing for joy because that one act of obedience undoes the sins of a multitude too big to count. And nothing can ever undo what Christ has done. No branch that draws its life out of Jesus Christ can ever go lost. That's the security of the salvation that God gives. And now in that light, let's zero in on Romans 5 and verse 12. Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned. So one man sinned, Adam. But we all sinned with him. We are born rebelling with Adam and dying with Adam. How do you know? Well, because infants and children can die too. God has designed humanity in such a way that only sinners can die. God says in Romans 6 that the wages of sin is death. Death doesn't come to humans in any other form than as wages, wages to those who are getting paid what they're owed. And without explaining how this all works, because God doesn't, he just simply says to us, take my word for it, without explaining all of this in detail to us, God is simply saying, we sinned in and with Adam. And we can be held guilty for our rebellious hearts. That is why we can die from the womb. And it also means, by the way, that salvation is possible from the womb too. Now, do our children understand these things? No, they don't. Do they remember reaching through Adam's hands for the fruit? No. Do they remember the taste of it in their mouth? No. And yet they reveal from the womb, the Bible says, that they agree with Adam and that they continually choose to sin just like he did. Yeah, but it's not fair. I wasn't there, and it can't be true, and I'm not going to accept the verdict of guilty for something I didn't do." Well, God says you did do it. But what kind of law is this? Well, let me ask you, is the law of gravity true? Do things fall down to the ground and stay on the ground unless something or someone is holding them up? Yes. Now, can a child explain the law of gravity? No. Does that mean then that a child is not bound by a law it can't explain? So, if you drop a baby by accident, it's not going to fall to the ground because the law of gravity is not enforced until he's old enough to say, I sign up for the law of gravity. The law of gravity is true whether we vote for it or not. And sin in this way is like a law. Romans 7 even calls sin a law. It drags every child down, not kicking and screaming and protesting, but every child is willingly and willfully agreeing with being under the power of that law. It's even called a tyrant here in Romans 5. Verse 21, sin reigns unto death. Verse 17 says it again. Death reigns. No one can escape this dictatorship. Children are conceived under this brutal reign. They are little buds growing out of the tree trunk of rebel Adam. And a rebel can only conceive and give birth to other rebels. A bird can't give birth to a fish, and a cow can't give birth to a snake, and sinners cannot give birth to anything other than sinners. And our children will live the fruits of this sin willfully, defiantly, instinctively. It'll come as natural to them as breathing. And, oh, what a grievous burden that should be. We call our children innocent, and the Bible even sometimes uses vocabulary like children who don't know their right hand from their left. And those expressions have use if you look up the context of them, but they should never be used to cancel out other passages of the Bible that very clearly say, I quoted to you Psalm 58, that the wicked go astray from the womb. I had a cousin, I have a cousin, I should say, and his wife, and they've had several children with Zellweger syndrome. That means, for those of you who don't know that, Those children will all die between the first and second years. And I remember sitting in a baptism service and was packed and we all knew in a year or two there's going to be a little coffin. There's going to be a grave. The pastor said something striking that day. He said actually all our children are born just like that. They'll all die because they're all sinners. And baptism is God's repeating of this part of his word graphically and publicly to remind us of this gruesome reality. And that should break your heart. What have you brought into this world? How can we ever make it right? There is nothing you can do. Well, if I give them the right information and the right education, but education can't undo a rebel's heart or a rebel's guilt or a rebel's polluted lifestyle. Yeah, but if I give them a good life and lots of special toys and trips, that should do it. Well, how many weeks of the year do you hear scandals in the lives of families who try just that? Well, but if you raise someone in a drug-infested neighborhood, there's a good chance of turning out bad, but you raise them in a good home and they'll turn out okay, will they? Do you know how many children raised in a loving home choose to pursue and do evil? All of them, to varying degrees. There is absolutely nothing you can do to make it right. You can't cut off that child from the tree trunk of Adam. And unless you can, nothing you say and do will make any difference and change anything in their lives. Their lives will be lives of sin, and sin will come as naturally to your child as breathing. They won't fight it. It'll be like a child going down a water slide. Sin is as natural to children of Adam as swimming is to a fish and flying is to a bird. Some days ago, my dad got a video for his birthday, and it was spliced together of all the interviews of his grandchildren, and every grandchild was asked a few questions about Opa, and one of his grandchildren is almost two, and she was asked eight questions, and her answer was the same to every single one of them. No. Now, your children have all gone through that phase. You did too when you were that age. And we might think it's cute, but that's the only thing that rebels have to say to God. Not even the daily experienced goodness and love of God can cure such a sinner. And baptism as the word of God reminds us of and pictures that bad news and shows us the filthiness and the ruin. It's your nature that's destroyed. It's not just that you choose some bad things now and then. And since that bad news is true of that child, then the sign that pictures and accuses them of that bad news can be applied to a child, can it not? Now, thankfully, there's more. Because to parents stuck at the heart of the bad news for their children comes God's good news in Christ, our second point, the wonderful news of union with Christ. What's the good news baptism pictures? God comes to believing parents with the promise of his full salvation in Christ. Oh, what amazing news that is. There's a cure for sin. God loves to give the cure and he wants believing parents to begin their parenting Realizing this cure has been promised in Christ personally to that child And that every child who grows up and responds to that promise and faith will receive the fullness of the grace of the Lord Jesus Imagine that baptism service of my cousins with the joy, because those children are dear children too, and the heartache. And imagine that if the pastor stood up in that service and announced that there was good news, an infallible cure for this child's condition has been found. A sponsor is promising to pay for this cure at the cost of the death of his own son. And you just have to ask him after the service. And he's a good friend of the parents and out of love for them has said, I'm going to sponsor that cure for your child, even at great cost to me. What would happen to the mood during that service? It would have gone from tears of grief to tears of amazed and staggering joy. And that is precisely what is happening during a baptism service. And we've seen it so often, it doesn't hit home the way it should. You'd be amazed, you'd be overwhelmed. You would want to sing for joy. The first thing you would want to do is sing something like, let God be praised with reverence. Deeply daily comes our lives to steep in bounties freely given. And that is what God is doing in the baptism of the household of a believing parent. Don't take my word for it. Look at Deuteronomy 10 and verse 15. Here God is explaining why he's so faithful and so kind and so good to the Israelites. Why does he stick it out with them? Because he says in another place, they're the most stiff-necked people in the world. Why did he choose them? Deuteronomy 10, 15. It says this several times in Deuteronomy, but we'll just pick this one. Only the Lord had a delight in thy fathers to love them, and he chose their seed after them, even you above all people as it is this day." Someone says, yeah, but that was Old Testament Israel. Really? Why then are New Testament households baptized when one parent professed faith in Jesus Christ? You'd have to prove there are no dependents in any of those households, which you can't do. Why then does the New Testament use language like this, 1 Corinthians 7, 14? Unbelieving children are considered or set apart as holy because of that believing parent. Holy meaning set apart, chosen by God. Oh, believing parent, because God loves you. And because God delights in you, even in your most difficult and heartbreaking day, He has decided to choose your children after you, and He has decided to promise them full salvation, and to declare that they inherit Jesus Christ. He has promised to engraft them into a new tree, not the old Adam, but the last Adam. He has made them branches in the vine, Jesus Christ, John 15. Yes, they're going to have to follow the directions of the covenant. They're going to need to learn to trust in Christ themself when they reflect on this word that God declared to them when they were young. They are going to have to be born again. They're going to have to repent of their sins and surrender to God. But God promises and guarantees, to use the words of Psalm 81, I will, if thou plead, fill thy every need. In fact, God loves to give children the very desire by which they learn to believe. What more could you want as apparent than that? Yes, but no buts allowed right now. Yes, but no. Should you not be erupting in joyful amazement? Should you not want to leap for joy and praise the God from whom all such blessings gush and flow? Shouldn't you say, Lord, thank you so much for loving me and delighting in me and for my sake and because of love for me, choosing my children? to have a heavenly birthright promised to them. Oh, what a God! What a promise maker! What a covenant maker! What good news for a sinful family! Yeah, but... All right then, spit it out. Yeah, but my child can't appreciate it yet. That is true. But does your child need it already? Is that child already a little bud growing on the tree trunk of the first Adam condemned to sin and death? Yes. So then doesn't your child already need good news? Good news that's going to shape how you raise him or her. Good news that is so good and so big that it's going to set the tone for your home and encourage you to look to the covenant making God with hope and expectation that he would be the covenant keeper for sinful families. Good news that's going to unfold one piece at a time and be planted like seeds in the life of your children. That's going to grow with God's blessing into an understanding and a believing faith in Jesus Christ. Let me ask you, don't you do all kinds of things for your child because he needs it before he realizes he needs it? You named him, didn't you? You picked his name and that name's going to be with him for life whether he likes it or not. You don't call your child Kid 1 and Kid 2 until they're old enough to choose their own name, do you? Is God allowed to attach his name to a child then before the child's old enough to want it? And you don't say to your children, well, you can't call me mom and dad until you're at least 16 and until you understand what you're saying. The most you can call me is most sapient potential progenitor. Is that what you would say to your children? Would you? Your child was born a citizen of Canada or wherever else you're born. My children were born American citizens because their dad is one. And I applied for a U.S. birth certificate for them. Now, when they get older, they get to choose where they want to live, Canada or the United States. Was that wrong of me? Should I have said, you know what, you shouldn't have citizenship anywhere until you're older? When a nation declares of children who are still minors, I'm going to extend the privilege of citizenship to you. Is that wrong? When the UN passes a bill about the rights of the child, are they wrong? Now, that doesn't mean we have to agree with everything they put in there. But should children be treated as subhuman or only potentially human until they're adults? Do you want to deny God the same rights that every earthly parent and nation has? God has the right to declare certain children, I claim them, they're mine. Or to quote Jesus, of such, of children, not could become, no, of children is the kingdom of heaven. That's why Jesus calls people born and raised in the covenant citizens of the kingdom. God says to you as a parent, because I love you, believing parent, I choose your children. And you and I want to say, yeah, but no thank you, or that doesn't make sense. Well, then you better not do any of those other things for your children that I just outlined to. Because that's a violation of their ability to choose and experience it. Yeah, but children have to have a choice in a saying the matter. They do. A child of earth can choose to change his name when he's an adult. He can disown his parents. He can move to another continent, and he can renounce his citizenship. But that doesn't mean he isn't raised in the home and citizenship of his birth until then. And God says to covenant children things like this, you choose this day whom you will serve. Covenant children can despise their birthright and they can refuse their inheritance. And they can decide they want to be grafted in the old tree trunk of the first Adam after all. And they can suck their life out of that instead of in Jesus Christ. And it's sad and it's sickening. But should that stop you from raising them in the light of the good news and the promise and claim of God? And that's why once you understand this, we need to see lastly the night light of Christ in your home, and I'll be brief. What difference does it make when you're raising your kids not just as yours but as God's children? Well, baptism declares Jesus Christ as the nightlight in your home. Children, when you're scared of the dark, you need enough light to be left on for you. You want to be able to take those few steps in the middle of the night. You don't want to step on a Lego. You want to be able to go to mom and dad if you need to or the washroom. You know, parents need a nightlight too, not a visible one for your eyes but one that glows in their hearts. because their own hearts are dark. I say this as a parent, too. You can weep sometimes at this darkness. Children, your hearts are dark, too, and that's going to make mom and dad sad. What's the nightlight that both of you can turn towards as parents and children when you realize how many sins you have and how many wrong things you do? It's Christ, the last Adam, the covenant head, the mediator of the covenant of grace. And Christ makes a huge difference. First is it tells you from the start what to teach your children. Covenant maker says, my son, my daughter, give me your heart. And here you see the tension in the covenant. The bad news has to hit home to their hearts, too. They must come to an end of themselves, whether suddenly or by a long, slow process that they can't remember and describe afterwards, but they need to recognize their sins in need of a Savior. Will they do so, or will they simply wander off into the world and be the people of the old Adam? They must learn to know the promise and claim of God on their lives and that they owe Him faith and repentance. They must know that they can ask expectantly for the Holy Spirit and for the very faith and repentance they need. And second, it gives great hope to covenant parents. Those little buds will grow into branches. Those little sins will become big sins. That child will sometimes break your heart and your own heart will be broken when you see your own failures as a parent. Their rebellion, their ugliness, the selfishness, it'll grieve you, it'll grieve them. The disrespect and disobedience and defiance will stare you in the face. You don't know which seeds of sin are going to sprout in the lives of your children. But you do know there will be plenty of them. Imagine a yard filled with old boards left on the grass for two years. The grass seems dead. There seems to be nothing alive underneath there, but lift up three or four of those boards and expose it to the light and sunshine and rain, and all kinds of weeds will grow up there. And the trials and difficulties in the lives of your children will be like boards lifted aside that let all kinds of weeds come growing out because that's what sinners do. And you need good news big enough to help you every step of the way from their childhood till the day you breathe your last in this present world. And God in the covenant of grace gives good news that's big enough by revealing Christ as the last Adam. And it's news big enough that you can hope in and lean the weight of your soul on till the end. Of course, this whole discussion was in the early church, too, when Augustine told Pelagius, the man who said that children are born innocent and without sin, oh, the consequences of sin, to be sure, but not as sinners. And Augustine said to Pelagius, he said, the biggest problem I have with your position is this, that you have cut off children from Jesus Christ, for they don't need a Savior, and they have no reason to go to him. And now you've created a whole part of life where Jesus Christ is no relevance and no use. One of the people I follow on Twitter is a man named Christopher Yuan. He's written a wonderful book together with his mother called Out of a Far Country. He chose at one point to live a gay lifestyle for years, and his despairing mother never gave up hope. Today he's a Christian. Now, I have no idea if his mom recognized God as the covenant maker and covenant keeper throughout this process, but she grasped the hope of the gospel even if she didn't recognize its covenantal shape. Believing parents, you can hope till your last breath because God is the covenant maker and covenant keeper. And third and last, this makes you want to pray as a parent, doesn't it? to pray with real urgency and yet with real hope. And that's why the first thing we do after realizing that God claims these children for his covenant sign and promise is to pray. The form does this wonderfully. It's the most important thing you'll ever do for your children. I can't give you a fail-safe technique, infallible information, or five tips that are guaranteed to produce godly-believing children, but I can point you to the covenant-making and covenant-keeping God, who declares his love and delight for parents, leads him to work down through the generations, and to keep his promise. Cry out to Him. Pour out your heart to Him. Never stop doing so till your last breath. That isn't empty superstition. Baptizing a bell or a boat is silly nonsense because God hasn't ever said anything about those things. That's no more spiritual than hosing down the sidewalk. but baptizing the households of believing parents is gospel covenantal believing and living. It's an act of thankful faith in response to the God who speaks to us in baptism and teaches us how to approach Him. God, be merciful to me. On thy grace I rest my plea, not on my parenting and not on my skills and not on the character of my children and not that I say my children are good kids. thy grace. I am evil born in sin. Thou desirest truth within. Speechless I thy mercy trust. Thou alone my Savior art. Teach thy wisdom to my heart. Let my contrite heart rejoice and in gladness hear thy voice." That's how you start sounding for yourself and for your children when you understand how all of Scripture is summarized in those two atoms. And that's pictured in Baptism.