Does anybody have questions on the questions or the answers on baptism from the catechism? Any other thoughts or anything like that? I didn't want to cut you off too abruptly. A brief overview. Oh boy. You can just read the questions and answers. I mean, that's kind of the brief overview. I'm going to pull it up real quick. Where is it? So what is baptism? It's a sacrament where the washing with water in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, that's from Matthew 28, signifies and seals our ingrafting into Christ and partaking of the benefits of the covenant of grace and our engagement to be the Lord. So we are kind of committed to be gods when we are united to Christ, at least in an outward and official way that is significant. And so we talked about some of those benefits of the New Covenant. We're united to Christ, but it's in Christ that we receive our justification, our regeneration, our sanctification. And we went through some passages like Romans 6 ties baptism to our sanctification and being raised to walk in newness of life. And Romans 4 talks about circumcision, which we argued was the parallel to baptism in the New Testament. being a seal of the righteousness that is received by faith. That's justification. The doctrine of justification is that we are counted righteous in God's sight. We are declared by his official act as the judge to be not guilty, except it's a little more positive than not guilty, but we're declared righteous based on the righteousness of Christ, which is freely counted to our credit as we receive it by faith. And then we talked about who gets to be baptized. So we don't just go around baptizing people who are outside of the church, unless they profess the faith, and then we also baptize the children of believers. In large part, based on Colossians 2, and just the general overview of scripture, where Colossians 2 parallels circumcision and baptism, and we talked about how they represent some of the same things. One is just the old covenant version, one is the new covenant version, but the substance is the same. And we see that, obviously, in the Old Testament, you're circumcised on the eighth day. All the children of believers are brought into the visible covenant community. But that doesn't automatically save you. Obviously, you have to look back on your baptism in faith and take hold of what baptism signifies, being buried and raised with Christ, as Paul puts it. And so, in that way, just as in the old covenant, the children born into Israel had to accept and believe in God and not stray from the covenant, so children born in the church and baptized in the church and grow up in the church have to put their faith in Christ themselves. Even though they were baptized at a previous point, it's still their responsibility to keep covenant with God by faith in Christ, receiving Him by faith. That's the brief overview. Any questions now? Did I stir anything up there? Yes. Yeah, so that's kind of why baptism is better, because everybody gets it. The females were kind of included within a household of circumcised males. So your father is, you're part of the family, you're just as much a covenant person. It wasn't like they kept you out of the community. Oh, you're not circumcised. It was, you were part of the covenant community because you're of a circumcised family. Your father's circumcised, you get married, you don't marry a guy that's not circumcised. You know, we don't marry people outside of the covenant. And so that's, I think, basically how that works. That's one of the reasons, one of the arguments actually some people make, it maybe isn't the strongest, but they would say, when you come into the New Testament, you have this greater inclusivity in the covenant sign. But it kind of undoes that if you stop baptizing the children, because then now they're not included. And so you're, instead of like including more people, you're actually taking people who were included, covenant children, and you're putting them outside the covenant until they profess faith. So you're being less inclusive. And that doesn't seem to fit that general for us. Obviously Baptists don't find that persuasive, but they, Part of this, too, and I'll just mention this before we move on, is that Baptists have a very different covenant theology than we do. Our covenant theology says there is one covenant of grace from basically Genesis 3.15 on, and there's different administrations of that covenant, but in substance, it's the same covenant. The Old Testament and the New Testament are two dispensations or two administrations of the one covenant of grace. And the Baptists say that no, in the old, the new covenant is the covenant of grace. The covenant of grace didn't exist in the Old Testament. There was just the promise that it would come. And so they would say people in the Old Testament were saved by the promise of the new covenant, but they weren't actually in the new covenant because it hadn't happened yet. And so, again, they're still looking for that grace, but they weren't in the new covenant in that sense. or not in the covenant of grace. And so because they make that greater distinction, they're going to say, well, circumcision is an old covenant thing, that's something else that's different. And they're not going to see that parallel. And so whenever we like look at some of these verses about circumcision and things like that, they're going to say, oh, well, that was an Old Testament fleshly thing that wasn't part of the covenant of grace. I don't know about Reformed Baptists. Dispensationalists will definitely say there's two peoples of God, Israel and the church are two separate things. If you went to like a London Baptist confession church, I can't recall off the top of my head whether they, our confession uses the language of Israel being the church in its infancy. It's the same church, but it's kind of, it doesn't have the same privileges because it's like underage. And it grows up in the New Covenant, but it's basically the same thing. I don't know if they took that out of theirs or not. You have to recognize that there's in a lot of ways there's a big breadth in Baptists, but they all agree that you don't baptize babies and that churches are independent. They don't have Presbyterians. So they agree on that, but then within that you get a very wide range. And they can all be in the same convention, like the Southern Baptist Convention, because each one is actually independent, and they just kind of agree to work together sort of informally a little bit. Whereas we believe the Orthodox Presbyterian Church is one church, which is why if you transfer to another OPC church, they don't have to interview you or make your profession before the congregation again. You can just straight transfer. They'll take our word for it as a session. And that's because we do believe in that connectionality based on Acts 15 and other passages. That's not always the case, I don't think. It might be in some, but they also believe in various, like they believe if you're not immersed, it's not real baptism, so you got to do it again. If it wasn't after you were regenerated, it doesn't count because they believe very strongly that the order is you've got to believe first and then be baptized. And so for that reason, they would say, well, if you kind of believe that your first profession was false, we've got to do it again, whether it's in the same church or whether you believe when you went to a new church, oh, I wasn't really a Christian back then. OK, we better do it again. Because they would say it wasn't a baptism. Kind of like we would say, if it wasn't in the name of the Trinity, you might have pretended it was a baptism, but it's not really a baptism. We do too, in a sense, but for them, it's, we've discussed this last time. I think for them, it is more of a, it's a sign of my profession of faith in Christ rather than a sign from God of the grace that's available in Christ. Yeah, you are. And, and so it all, in some ways it's all looking at stuff that's like, Were you a backslidden believer or were you an unbeliever? Like, was it a true profession at first and then you fell away and came back, but obviously you didn't lose your salvation. Although some of them might believe that. Um, yeah, yeah. Some do believe that. Um, but, uh, you know, that you have that, that issue of like, we're trying to see stuff that I don't think you can really see. Um, yeah, that my experience too, is that like, If you're a Southern Baptist and you go to a New Southern Baptist church, they're not going to baptize you. But again, Baptists are, each congregation is independent, so they don't all necessarily agree and they might do it differently. I think I've heard that the Plymouth Brethren require that re-baptism at every transfer, which in a sense, they're kind of Baptist-ish. But again, because the independency thing means we have to be very careful when saying, why do all Baptists do blank, because again, there's a very wide range. And like, there's some people that are very close to us. They copied our confession and just changed a few parts they disagreed with. But otherwise, the London Baptist Confession, you go read it, like chapter one, copy and paste from Westminster, chapter two, copy and paste from Westminster. They, you know, they wrote a confession and then the Westminster Confession came out and they're like, that's better. So we're just going to use it and change parts, you know, so they would be very close to us. But then there's some Baptists that, you know, say that's all heresy and, and Calvinism's from hell and, um, you know, on a completely different wave. So, so it's, we have to be careful that we've not painting with too broad a brush. And we say, wouldn't Baptist do this or Baptist do that? Because there are differences. Um, yeah, there's, There's probably a liberal version of every church. And it matters less which denomination you go to, I think, when you're liberal. Because they've already, I mean, they've gotten rid of the central aspects. Do you think they're going to, the other kind of peripheral aspects that divide us from Baptists and things, they're probably less concerned with that on a convictional level. That was, we got some questions going anymore. Okay. Uh, no cheating. Um, Oh wait, this is my baptism stuff. Let me get out of this. Um, what is the Lord's supper? It's a remembrance. Okay, good. It's a sacrament. Good. The eating of the body. Good. It is. He said, do this in remembrance of me. It's a means of grace, right, because the sacraments are a means of grace. Good. Any other thoughts? Good. This one, you guys should probably know a little better because we do this more than we do baptism, because we only do baptism once. Right. We're not we're not, you know, continue every month. Everybody we're doing baptism again. So we explain it when we do it. So, you know, you guys are kind of given some of that stuff that I could Without trying, making a concerted effort, I could probably almost recite, you know, the Book of Order, what we say when we do the Lord's Supper, and you guys are picking it up. So the Lord's Supper is a sacrament wherein by giving and receiving bread and wine, so we give it and you receive it, according to Christ's appointment, his death is showed forth. So it's a remembrance of his death. And the worthy receivers are not after a corporal and carnal matter, but by faith made partakers of his body and blood with all his benefits to their spiritual nourishment and growth and grace. Do my Latin nerds want to tell us what corporal and carnal means? Corp means what? Body, right. And carnal means what? Like carne asada. And that's a derivative. I'm not joking. You're eating the flesh. And corporal. We think of a corporation, which is like a group gathered in a body, or corporate. Our corporate prayers are when we pray together as a body. Or what is a dead body called? Corpse. So we got English derivatives there. So I just wanted to explain this, because those are not We don't use those a lot in everyday English. We have to remember sometimes that the Westminster Standards were written hundreds of years ago. And so sometimes they use some words that we have to think about a little bit. But I think we all know it's a sacrament. We all are pretty familiar with what we do in the sacrament because it's what Jesus told us to do, right? We take the bread and the cup and we eat them together. And that's according to Christ's appointment. Remember, it's a sacrament. We do the sacraments that Christ told us to do. These are things that he said, do this. Like we mentioned command. I forget who said that, but do this in remembrance of me. It also, as he said, there shows forth his death. As often as we eat this bread and drink this cup, we proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. because his body was broken, his blood was poured out. And I think because we repeat this, what does it mean when it talks about being worthy receivers? Okay, you have to be a believer, talks about self-examination, recognizing your need, good, very good. Some of this is gonna come into the next question about what we do when we take the supper. What does it not mean? What are we not saying when we talk about being a worthy receiver? Right, that we've somehow pre-qualified based on our merits, right? And that's why that's going to get fleshed out. What is required to the worthy receiving of the supper? That's 97. So we're going to kind of just pause there because we'll pick that up in 97. Why are they saying that we are not after a corporal and carnal, not after a bodily and fleshly manner, but by faith made partakers of Christ's body and blood? Why do they say that? Yes, exactly. What is the Roman Church belief? Grand substantiation, right? That there is a change in substance from one thing into another. And there's some kind of miracle that goes on When the priest pronounces these words that God changes the substance of the bread into the substance of Christ's flesh, he changes the substance of the wine into the substance of Christ's actual physical blood. And so we eat those and drink those, according to Rome, in a carnal manner or a corporal manner. I will note, because I used to get snarky thinking about these things as a kid, and I was like, Could we clone Jesus? Could we just take, you know, some of that wine and, you know, if that were true, theoretically, um, and we could find out what he looked like or something, which we shouldn't want to do anyway. But, uh, and it doesn't work, but, uh, they actually believe that, um, if you're at all knowledgeable about, uh, philosophy and things like that, um, the substance is like the real essence of the thing. And the accidents are like it's properties. And so they believe it retains the accidents. It still tastes like and smells like wine and tastes like and smells like bread. So to us, it seems like it, but really kind of underneath all of that, it's really something different. And so they're kind of using those ancient philosophical categories and using those to try and explain this miracle that's happening, because obviously, right, it doesn't taste like meat. and it doesn't taste like blood. And so, in that sense, they have an explanation for that. It's the substance that's trans. It's a transubstantiation. It's the substance that changes, not those characteristics that we perceive. That's one, perhaps, argument against it, because when the Last Supper happened, I don't know if this is where you're going, but where is the substance of Christ's body during the Last Supper. It's right in front of us, right? And so did that somehow get into the bread and wine without, with him actually not being crucified yet? Or is he speaking in a more metaphorical manner, which is what we would argue? Yeah, they do. You know, we have issues with, because it's an image of Christ, which we believe is wrong, that we should not make images of any member of the Trinity. Um, there is also that matter of like, well, he's not here. He's risen. He's where is he? We're going to talk about it today in Hebrews. He's exalted and ascended to the right hand of God. Right. Exactly. And if you go into like the confession, it talks more about like, we're not going to bow down to the elements because that's not Christ's body that we're bowing down to or something. We're not going to adore them. Um, and, and all kinds of things that they do in the Roman church kind of based upon, uh, This belief, because if transubstantiation is true, then Jesus is physically present there, bodily. There are many differences, but in some ways, some similarities. And we talked about how it's not, I was reading about this and there's a quote by Augustine that I think is nice and pithy. But we talked about this when we said it's got to be received by faith. We've talked about this in not just the sacraments, but all the beans of grace. The sound waves of preaching the Word of God can hit your ear, and do you no good if you have a hard-hearted objective. You've got to be receiving it in faith. But if you're actually getting physical body of Christ that has grace tied into it in some way in that way, it kind of seems to make sense that their view of the automatic nature of the grace received kind of ties into this idea of it. Augustine said, I'm trying to remember exactly how it went, Judas ate the bread with the Lord, but he didn't get the Lord with the bread. Because, obviously, he wasn't receiving this in faith in that first supper. The first Last Supper. As Christ instituted it, he was there, but he obviously didn't have a repentant heart to receive from Christ. And so he got the bread, but not what it signifies. And that's why we, again, as we talk about sacraments, it's a sign, it signifies something, but we don't always get the thing signified unless we receive it by faith. Well, because it's the body and blood of Christ, and maybe possibly because of a misunderstanding of an ambiguity that's also present in English, if you say drink ye all of it, is the all referring to ye or is it referring to it? So they actually don't, like you can't throw out Jesus' body. So they finish it off afterward. And there's things like if they fill it, they've got to do things like cut that carpet up and things like that. And I think Luther spilled it his first time when he served the supper and had to like lick it up off the floor or something. Because you can't just like, you know, mop up the blood of Christ. That's, you know, that would be sacrilegious, right? So there's all these kind of superstitious things that happen because they believe this. I don't know from their perspective, because we believe you do actually receive grace when you take the supper, but it says you receive it by faith. And so we don't think like sometimes I'll just come up, eat the bread because like, why throw it away? Not because it's like more spiritual to get more at this point. It's just because it's wasting. And I don't know, I'm thirsty. I'll just down the rest of the cups. But it's, I don't, I don't know what they would say about if the quantity is tied to You take, you know, some churches do a common cup. You just take a sip. You take a gulp. Do you get more? I don't know if they actually believe that you would get more. And they do that in a lot of Presbyterian churches too. Um, there's, there's arguments about that. Right. That unleavened bread. They also, the wine was at some level of alcoholic content because yeast is there on grapes. So when you make grape juice, until Dr. Welch's came around like 102 years ago, you didn't have grape juice. It always like would be fermented. And so it's like how fermented is it? Is it, if it's new, it's fresh. It hadn't had time to ferment that much, but the older it gets, the more fermented it gets. So that's something we do keep in mind. You know, it's, it's a thing for practical reasons and for people who are alcoholics that some churches don't use that. Some people make a big deal about that and say, no, it's not the Lord's Supper unless it's actually alcoholic wine. And it's, again, is that the essence of the thing? Or is that an accident? Is that, you know, is the main thing that it's grape juice that pictures the blood of Christ, whether it's fermented grape juice or not, or is the main thing that it's leavened or unleavened? Because it was, the Last Supper they eat, or at the Passover they eat unleavened bread. But is that like the thing that makes it real? Some people would say, yeah, that's how Jesus did it, so we should do it the same way. Well, do we need to sit on the floor? Because that's how they ate. They reclined, right, and leaned over. You can, I think, tell where I stand. I don't think those details are of the essence of what it is. I kind of don't mind the trying to, okay, you want to try to be like that, that's fine, but I wouldn't draw a hard line to stand with that. Because you're watching on the live stream. So, I mean. Kind of like you hopefully are spiritually nourished by a sermon, if we take all of these things as means of grace. Obviously, sometimes you get sick and you have to miss church, you don't get the sermon either. But that should grow and nourish you in the same way the word supper should should grow and nourish you as you are contemplating. And again, we ever we never do. the supper apart from the word, from the sermon itself, or even from some explanation of what this is. If somebody came in who didn't speak English, they're not going to get anything out of the supper in the sense of, they don't know what it symbolizes. they can't get anything out of it. But if you do know that and you meditate on the sacrifice of Christ for you, that should strengthen your faith and nourish your soul in that sense. Um, so like if you get sick and miss church, like would, would you have been better off spiritually if you have been able to make it? Well, yeah. Just like if you got to hear the sermon, yes. Um, but it's, It's one of those things that's in God's providence that we get sick. Is that, am I tracking with you? Yeah. Well, you could say the same thing for like prayer. Oh, I just listened to the word, but I never pray like, well, you need to do both. Um, there is the fact that it is a command do this. And I think that's, uh, seems to be tied to the fact that we are not just brains on sticks as people. We're more than intellectual. And so in that sense, there is, I guess, in some ways, almost like an emotional strengthening for us by having something physical and tangible, and that is what we do. Many people argue that, that it's, you know, we're not just intellectual. And obviously the word is primary, as we've mentioned. This is a seal, but it's a seal of the righteousness that Abraham had by faith. in the Word that God had previously spoken. So there's a primacy to the Word of God, which is why we don't say that, for instance, we don't always do the sacraments in worship, but we always do the Word as part of that. And so, in one sense, it's a different thing, and it's something we should do, and yet the emphasis is primarily on the Word. You shouldn't just say, oh, I'm never going to take the sacraments. And I've advised people who moved away and got a job where they couldn't make morning worship and they can only make evening worship. And I said, go to a church where they sometimes do the Lord's Supper in the evening service then. If you're never going to be in the morning service and you're never going to take the sacrament, how are you obeying Christ's command? So again, in God's providence, we talk about providential hindrances. You should always come to church, but sometimes the battery won't start, or the road is iced over, or the crick rows, or whatever it is. Sometimes you just can't. And God's providence controls these things. You catch COVID, whatever it is. And so sometimes you don't get those things, and God sustains you through the sermon you heard last week, and your personal devotions and things. But we should try to do all of the things that God has said, do these to grow. Does that answer? Yeah. And it's not real blood because it symbolizes the once for all. And where do we learn about that? What book? Hebrews, right? Latin nerds. It's the locus classicus. It's one of those almost like it sounds fake because you just added U.S. onto the end of it. But the classic place to go for the once for all sacrifice of Christ, which means we're not sacrificing Christ again, this book of Hebrews chapters nine and et cetera, where it talks about his once for all sacrifice. Um, but yeah, so, um, that's the case. One thing it's, I think, important to note is that it's the same price that you're getting in both. You're not getting, uh, in a different price, but you're getting the same price differently, which might hit you differently, uh, hopefully and, and, uh, cause you to reflect on him differently and things like that. Um, frequency, how often we do it. A lot of people like to do it every week. Calvin wanted to do it every week and the city council in Geneva wouldn't let him. Um, some churches do it quarterly. Uh, at some point there was this weird thing in Scotland where they do it once a year and we'd have like a whole series of like a church service every night leading up to the communion service. Um, a lot of churches, I feel like Presbyterians either do it weekly or monthly. Um, I, our church in Seminole did it every twice a month. And it was morning, like first Sunday morning and third Sunday evening, uh, we would do it. And maybe we did a joint evening service quarterly or something like that. And we might've done it with that one too, because it was like multiple congregations would get together. Um, but, uh, yeah, so there's, I think our Book of Order says one of those wonderful vague words, like, it should be done frequently. What does that mean? Yeah, so different, you know, there's different arguments about that. Does anybody know the Lutheran position on bodily presence? Yeah, the in, with, and around language is used, or the technical term would be consubstantiation. The substance of Christ is with the substance of the bread and the wine, and he's physically present. And one of the things that we can say against both of these views is if we look at places like Acts 3, it's talking about Christ whom heaven, this is 321, whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of the holy prophets long ago. He's received in heaven. He's physically present somewhere else. How can he also be physically present here? Luke 24, 6, he is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you while he was still in Galilee. Again, this idea that Jesus has got to be physically somewhere because he's a man and men are physically present in only one place. And if we go deep into our Christology and we look at something like the definition of Chalcedon, which is an early creed that is longer and uses a lot of big words so we don't do it in church because it would almost be like speaking in tongues that nobody would understand it. But Jesus' human nature is a actual human nature. It's not like a, it's not half and half between, he's 100% God and 100% man. He's not 50-50. His divinity isn't humanized. His humanity isn't divinized to create some different thing. It's not quite human, but not quite divine. And both of these ideas of His physical presence either being replacing the bread or somehow being present in, with, and around or under the bread, both of those, how can Christ, humanly, according to His human nature, Christ is not omnipresent. His humans are not omnipresent. So how can His human physical nature be here while we celebrate the supper and also in Calcutta when Christians there are celebrating supper at the same time? Unless it's like his divine, by his divine nature, he's omnipresent. He's everywhere. But we're not, his divine nature doesn't have a body. His human nature does. And so you almost have to start fudging on other things and doctrines about Christ actually being God in me. That I guess Lutherans and Catholics somehow say it's a mystery or something like that. But the reform stance has always been, You can't have a bodily presence without fudging on calcibil, which we all agree. Um, or else you're a heretic men. Cause the spirit of Christ is omnipresent means with us, um, wherever we are. Um, so very good. I think they confess that, but then they don't. They kind of say, the same way, I think they would probably do, and I don't know this for certain, so maybe somebody can correct me, but I think they would do, like an Arminian would tell us, you're contradicting yourself if you believe in God's sovereignty and man's responsibility and free will. They'd say, you're fudging on sovereignty if you hold free will, or you're fudging on free will if you hold the sovereignty. And we're saying, well, we just hold them in tension because the Bible teaches both. I think that's probably what they would say, is that, yeah, we believe in Chalcedon, but also somehow miraculously. So if you read all of Chalcedon, it's one person. So you can't divide into two people, but you also can't mix or confuse the two, because they have to remain distinct so he can die, because God can't die, which is why he took on a human nature. So the person, the divine person of God the Son died by taking on a human nature. And so technically, Theologically, we talk about how he died according to his human nature. And again, obviously, at the end of the day, it does get to mystery. If you sit down and think about that too much, steam's going to start coming out. And if you've got power tools, when the smoke comes out of them, they're about done, right? You've got to keep the smoke in the tools. That's a joke. But yeah, it's a mystery at the end of the day. But is there true things we can say based on scripture that we don't want to fudge on? We'll, I guess, finish up with the worthy receiving of the supper next time in 97. Yeah, we'll see how long that takes. I don't mind taking a long. We got some, I think, good questions and discussion today. So appreciate that, and we'll do that, and then What is the other means of grace? We've got the Word, sacraments, prayer. So next we're going to start talking about prayer.