Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Yeah. Okay. Well, good morning. Good to see you. What a fun to go class. This is bigger than most churches, aren't it? You have a handout, don't you? Okay. Everyone should have a handout that says they look at input baptism. And that's all this is. There's a look. A little looksy. Let me tell you. Because if you think that we can figure out and work out all the problems with the question of who should be baptized, when, where, and how, and this short time, it just certainly will not happen. But I think we can take, we have a little bit of feedback down here. Okay. If we take a few minutes this morning to look at some aspects of this question, I'm hoping it will be a help to some of you who have, and these serious questions about what happens up here when babies are brought up and, Ray sprinkles a little bit of water on their heads. It was funny. I was just in Erykusk's Siberia last month and we were talking about a fellow in a prison in Siberia who was unable to baptize his converts because there wasn't enough water. And I thought, well, that's no problem. All I had was just enough water to do this. But that didn't go well with all the baptists that were there in Siberia. Because as far as they were concerned, baptism was a particular thing that needed to be done exactly the way they thought it ought to be done. And I can respect that because I was raised baptists from the crib and did not change from the baptist view of baptism until I was pressed material for maybe four or five years. In fact, that was a preacher, and my views have ever really changed. Baptism is usually the last thing that changes in a person's way of thinking as they attach themselves to a Presbyterian group. Did you realize this is a Presbyterian church? Did they know that Ray is that a secret? Okay. Some Presbyterian churches try to keep that a secret. I don't think this one does. But as you get attached, there are many things that are attractive about this kind of a church. It stands on the Bible. It's emphasis on evangelism. It's balanced with things like this morning's message on mercy. The idea that Christianity should be affecting all of our life and not just part of our lives. Those kinds of things are very attractive to us, but then there's this peculiar thing that sort of war on the nose of the PCA. But they bring these babies up here and do something over them. Some hocus-pocus. Then they look like baptism doesn't. But they call it that. We know what it really is, don't we? Infant dedication. Right? I know that from my background. I've got it all together. No problem. So I want to say to you that if you have struggled with the question of who should be baptized, I want to say to you, you have somebody who's sympathetic up here. I'm very sympathetic with the kinds of struggles that people go through. Because if you're serious about the Bible and you have not been raised in this kind of a church environment, then you should have questions about it. If you just quickly accept what happens up here because Ray says so, then I want to challenge you to reconsider infant baptism in a negative way. But on the other hand, if you have been resisting it, I guess that's my main goal. That's why Ray asked me to come over here. I'm going to try to ask you to open up to the possibility that maybe the practice of infant baptism isn't quite as crazy as it seems, or maybe not quite so unbiblical after all. You know, there are many things in the Bible that if we were to analyze how sure we can be about them, you'd have to say that there are some things that if you put them on the scale, the scale would tilt like that, just in a second. I like, for instance, the question of was Jesus resurrected from the dead? I think the answer is to clearly yes. Did Jesus die for our sins? Yes. Do you have to believe in Jesus to go to heaven? Yes. Do there are many things like that in the Bible that as soon as you ask the question of scales are tilted like that? Then there are other things in the Bible that the scales tilt a little bit like this. Well, what form of government should the church have? Well, the Presbyterian government, did you see it didn't do like that? Okay, this did like that because there are plenty of Christians who would say no to that. And with some good reason, but I tend to think that that issue is kind of like that. Then there are other issues that are even a little less certain, a little less certain, a little less certain to where you go. Well, you know, on this issue, I can understand both sides is on this view on the Bible, but I tend to think this is the right one. And now, when you come to a situation like that, you have to be very humble. You have to be very open. You have to be willing to let people live as they are and to live out their own convictions and to work these things out. You have to be patient with each other and so on and so on. I want to tell you something about infant baptism. It is not one of these issues. You don't just ask that question and read a verse in a way that's pretty obvious. That's not the way it is at all. In fact, I want to tell you, and I may get in trouble with my Presbyterian for this, it's not even one of these issues. I want to tell you that the question of infant baptism is more one of these, where you look at it and you go, yeah, I can see that, but it's not like this. And anybody who thinks that infant baptism is just the clearest teaching in the Bible needs to open their Bibles again, or at least get new glasses, because it's not. Now, because this is such a difficult teaching and one of those things where you kind of go like that on it at best, you have to ask the question, what's the best way to approach it? And through the years, I have worked in different ways trying to help people understand this, trying to help myself understand it and explain it. There are a number of ways to go about it. One way to do it is just to hit it head on. I mean to say, all right, we're going to look at a verses that talk about who gets baptized, and we're going to work hard at this thing. We're going to push hard at it, and we're going to understand that, and then we'll make a decision. If you do that, that's a very tiresome, worrisome, difficult way to go about this. There's another way to go about it, too. And that is to deal with other issues. Did you know that you can fence in your backyard in at least two different ways? I have a very frugal father, frugalism, a euphemism. I mean, we have a big backyard. When we grew up, we used all the neighborhood boys used to play baseball in our backyard. It's almost three quarters of an anchor of a backyard. And we're surrounded by other houses, but all along, we would like to have had a fence around our backyard so that we can let the dogs run free, so we could have a home run marker for hitting the baseball things like that. But my father always said, nope, too expensive. Nope, too expensive. He said, I'm going to wait. Well, what was my father saying? He was saying, well, it's really expensive if you build a fence around your backyard. If you do it all yourself, then you've got to go way back there, across there. You can call sears up, and they'll come and do it, won't they? But if you've ever done it, it's an expensive prospect, especially if you have that much space in your backyard. That's one way to fence in your backyard. But there's another way, the way my father did it.
You know how he did it? He said, well now, Mr. Sprinkle over here on that side of my house, we'll just let him build his fence around his yard. And the bird coals over here, we'll let them build their fence around their yard. See, this is the other house next to them. Then we even had a person in the back of the house like this, we'll let them build a fence across their yard. And then I just have to spend a little bit of money to fence in that part of that part, and it's done. Now, it took 25 years. I lived in a house since I was four years old, and I'm now 38, and it was about 25 years before his fence was, before his backyard had been fence in. But it's fence in, I'll tell you that, today it's fence in, and he only spent about 50 bucks to do two little parts right here. Well, in many ways, I want to suggest the best way we should approach this question of Vincent Baptism. Rather than dealing with a head-on and trying to fence in this whole issue ourselves with just talking about the one subject of infant baptism, that's like, that takes a lot of money, a lot of effort, a lot of energy, and you don't get very far for all of that, I'll tell you, because it's a very difficult subject. Instead of going out of that way, let's fence in the issue of infant baptism by talking about some other biblical doctrines, some other things. Instead of looking directly at the issue of who should be baptized, but others built that fence ourselves, we're going to look at some other issues, and let the neighbors, let these neighboring issues fill in, define the matter of infant baptism for us. I'm convinced, not only is this a more convenient way of doing it, and an easier way of doing it, I'm also convinced it's almost essential, because it's these issues that are keeping you, those of you that are struggling with this, from understanding what goes on up here when Ray puts water on his baby's head. Now, what are those issues? They're outlined right here on your piece of paper. The first one of these issues is the unity, the question of the Bible's unity. That's one question that Christians disagree over, an issue we disagree over, that has an effect on how you view infant baptism. Another issue, we're going to go through these, the relationship of implicit and explicit teachings in the Bible, implicit, explicit teachings. We're going to go through all these, don't worry. And then the third thing that we're going to talk about is the origin and the purpose of baptism. Now you can imagine that we're going to have to go pretty quickly and skip and jump around these things to talk about all three of these subjects, but I want to suggest something to you. If you can fence in your backyard by letting your neighbors, the neighboring issues of the Bible's unity, the implicit, explicit teachings of the Bible, and the origin and purpose of baptism, if you can deal with those issues, it will help you define whether or not the Bible teaches that infants should be baptized. Now let's take a look first at this question of the unity of the Bible. Did you know that there are Christians who believe that the Bible is disunified? I grew up in a Sunday school where my teachers told me these kinds of things, the God of the Old Testament is a God of anger and a God of wrath, but the God of the New Testament is a God of mercy and love and kindness and gentleness. You ever heard that before? Yeah, we don't serve the God of the Old Testament. He was one who had warfare and told people to kill people and have this and have that judgment and wrath, but not now. We serve a sweet, soft, spoken Jesus. Now you may have heard that one way or another in different circles, but what it appeals to and what it supports is a basic idea about the Bible, and that is that the Bible is disunified. That instead of having one basic thing, one basic program from beginning to end, the Bible can be chopped up into segments. And those in those segments, there are different, well almost different religions. Certainly God changed his program here radically when he came with program number two. Then he comes with program three and that's really different than programs one and two and so on and so on. You can imagine that this way it's some people think of the Bible as if it were a tree planted in the very beginning. It grew for a while and God decided that was not working so it chopped it down and planted another tree. We'll try this program for a while. Well, we'll try it the way it moses for a while. It grew for a while, did it work? Now shut that down. We'll go with David for a while. Let it grow. That didn't work either. Cut that down. Now we'll bring Jesus in and we've got it. That's the way many people think of the Bible as different trees being planted and uprooted all through history. Now that is your view. You will never, did you hear the word never? If that is your view, if you believe the Bible is basically separate segments. Old Testament is different from the New Testament, not related, different religion, different kind of God. If that's your view, you will never believe in infant baptism. You may as well turn off right now. It will never happen. Because to understand what's going on up here when these babies have water sprinkled on their heads, you have to understand that we believe that the Bible is unified. Rather than looking at the Bible this way, as a book that covers a history, see that book, they're pretty good, huh? It has separate segments in it, like there's one religion, and then there's another religion, and there's another religion as you go through history. Finally, of course, we get to the big one, the good one, which is what? Yeah, Christianity. If that's the way you look at it, if you think the days of Abraham are different from the days of Moses, and that Moses is a radically different kind of religion than David had, and if you think that David and Moses and Abraham are radically different from the kind of religion that Christ taught and the apostles taught them, forget infant baptism will never happen. Why? Because baptism only came when Jesus came, and so is something new. It doesn't have any continuity with anything that went before. What we teach up here, in this pulpit, what we teach in this denomination is that the Bible is not that way. Oh yes, it's pretty clear that there are differences between Abraham, Moses, David, Christ, there are obvious differences. But at the same time, we teach very strongly that the Bible is a unity, that despite these differences that may be there under the surface of the water, there is something there that is overarching. Does anybody know what we call this? We call it a start to the C, and so the C. A covenant good, that's right. We speak in terms of the covenant of grace. Have you ever heard that term before? Does Ray use that term? Probably doesn't when he sprinkles the baby. How is prejudice always used the word covenant? Are you going to say, huh? Covenant. I mean, you can tell if something is prejudice because it has covenant something. Covenant something. Covenant baptism. Covenant college. Covenant seminary. Covenant church. Covenant community. Covenant people. Covenant brothers. Covenant sisters. Covenant children. You name it. Covenant something, right? And why is that? It's because the notion of covenant is very important to us. Covenant is an agreement between two or more persons, right kids? Right. How many covenants are there? Do you know that answer to you? Two. That's right. What are the two covenants? That's right. Covenant of work. And that's back before the fall. And then the covenant of grace that extends over the whole Bible. The whole Bible. Which means that from the Presbyterian point of view, or from my opinion from the biblical point of view, this segmented idea is wrong. It's not as if God planted one tree and uprooted it. Planted another tree uprooted it. Planted another tree and uprooted it. Planted a final tree and said, I like this one. Rather, what we have in the Bible, all the way back to the days of Adam, in fact, you can go back even further than Abraham, is you have God plants a seed. And the seed sprouts a little bit of a root and sprouts a little bit. This is a little neophyte there. And it starts to grow a little bit more. It starts to grow a little bit more, spreads on out a little bit. Finally it grows into a grand mature. I'm working on my art here, believe me. A tree. Can you see that's a tree? Yes. Now you can tell us a tree, yes. OK. Now this is one thing. One item, going from seed to full tree, rather than different trees being planted and uprooted, planted uprooted, planted uprooted. Let me ask you a question. Is there a difference between the seed and the full tree? If you look at them superficially, would you say that there are differences between a little tree and a big tree and a little seed and a big tree? I think you have to say yes to that, wouldn't you? But on the other hand, are there deeper similarities? Who are the biologists here? He took me into the abyss yesterday, so I guess I have to do this. Are there similarities between that seed and that tree? That's right, there are. What kind of answer is that? Well, I have a similarity. Genetic similarities. Everything that's in that tree, everything that tree is, apart from external forces on it, every characteristic inherent within the tree itself can be found back here in the DNA code and all that kind of thing. So there are differences, but there is a similarity between them all. On the same as true in the Bible, you can go back to the days of Moses and say, wow, that is really different from the way he is. It's really different from the way Jesus taught, but at the same time, you have to remember that Jesus said things like, hey, don't think I came to destroy the law. I didn't come to destroy the law but to fulfill. Matthew 5.17. The Apostle Paul said, wait a minute now, you think I'm teaching something that's different from the Old Testament? Does justification by faith and all the law he said may it never be? No, the law, meaning Moses, supports the idea that people are justified by faith in the Romans, chapters 3. So I know you hear a lot these days, if you watch Christian TV or listen to the radio or read Christian books, even hear most Christian books. Of this idea of things being chopped up in the Bible, it's not true. There is one thing, one religion that runs through the whole Bible, growing, developing, changing, yes, but one religion. Now, here's the question that we have to raise that's important for us, and that is, is there something that runs through the whole Bible that gives a background to infant baptism? And I think the answer to that is yes. Let me tell you what it is. It is that when God saves people, He makes a special relationship, not just between those people who believe, but also with their children. This is something that runs through the whole Bible, that when somebody believes there's a special relationship established, not just between them and God, but between them and their children and God. Now, we can go all the way back to the days of Noah. Do you remember Noah? Who went into the ark with Noah, guys? Animals, who else? His wife and his sons and his daughters-in-law, right? That's right. Even in the days of Noah, you can see that the ark, representing the salvation offered from the judgment of the water, who was involved in it, not just Noah, but Noah and his children. Now, we can go further than that. This is just one event? No, not just one event. Let's go to the days of Abraham. In Genesis chapter 15 and Genesis chapter 17, God says, I'm making my covenant with you Abraham, Genesis 15, 17. I'm making my covenant with you Abraham. Now, what tune was this covenant made? Genesis 15 and 17. Abraham and his children. It comes to the days of Moses. I love this. Take a look at Deuteronomy 29-29. Deuteronomy 29-29. This is, I guess, one of my favorite verses in the Bible. Deuteronomy 29-29. 25,000. Okay. Let's read that together. What does it say there? It says, the secret things belong to the Lord our God, but- That's right. That's what it says. The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and our children. Did you hear that? To us and to our children. That's a very strange thing to say, isn't it? To our ears, it sounds very odd, because the things revealed we would say belong to us, who believe in Jesus. But what does Moses say or what does God say through Moses? What do the people say about God, to Moses, etc., etc., all that happens in this one verse. The things revealed belong to us and to our children. Sound like Noah, hey Noah, not just you and to the ark, but you and your children into the ark. Now let's go to David. Is this true even in the days of David? That there's a special covenant relationship between children of believers and God. Well, you can look at 2 Samuel, chapter 7. We won't read it now, but I'll just tell you where the verses are. 2 Samuel, chapter 7, and you can look at Psalm 89 and Psalm 132, and all of those psalms tell us that God made a very special covenant with David. A covenant that he would be king, that David would be king, but this covenant was not just with David, it was with David and his sons, his children, that they would be kings over and over and over throughout the generations. That was the promise given to David. Now, what this does for us is it sort of sets up a momentum. You know what momentum is? You get the ball rolling and it just keeps on rolling. I want to tell you something about momentum, how powerful it can be. When we lived in Boston, Massachusetts, we lived on the edge of a highway, and we had a little Volkswagen bug, and I could never, that Volkswagen bug would not hold a charge. The battery is very old, we were students, so you don't buy any battery. You know what you do? You just push the car, right? Remember those days, some of you? We did this for about two years, and our road is sort of an incline toward the highway, and I got to where I put Becky and her car seat, my daughter, and just push it off and jump in and go on. One day, I pushed off and I tripped somehow, another on my two-string or something, and the car kept going and I was on the ground. And there it is heading for highway one, highway one, my little daughter in it. And so I figured, well, what do you do? What are they doing TV? They run around in the front of it and do like this. I sort of figured, I got it started, I can stop it, right? And while I was almost run over by the car, because I'll tell you, once the car starts moving, it's hard to stop it like that. And I barely escaped getting right over by the tires and ran around and grabbed hold the door and got in and slammed on the brake, so everything was wonderful. But happy ending. But I want to tell you something, the same is true in theology, the same is true in a religion. That if the religion has been saying over and over and over and over again, if you and your seat, you and your children, you and your children, you and your children, you and your children, you and your children, you and your children, is awfully hard to stop that kind of thinking.
When you come to the New Testament, you expect the New Testament to put on the brakes and scream bloody murder, it's not that way anymore. Now it's just believers. No more of this children stop like that. And that's what they would have to do. That's what the New Testament writers would have to do because everybody was thinking, believe it's in their children, believe it's in their children, Abraham, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, believe it's in their children, believe it's in their children. It's got to be that way. That's the way it always is. The car's rolling down the road. How are you going to stop it? Well, it's not just the matter of the New Testament not putting on the brakes and screaming is not that way anymore. It's not just that. The New Testament actually tells us it is true. Look at Acts chapter two. Acts chapter two.
Now these are words that we usually read, and we don't even see these words because we don't live with the momentum that the Jewish community lives with. You see, the Jewish community has this momentum of believers in their children, believers in their children. We read right past these verses that they would not have. They would have heard these verses at all. We know what that is. That's believers in their children. Take a look at it. Acts chapter two, verse 38. Let's start with verse 37. When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other popl's brothers, what shall we do? We know the answer to that, don't we? What shall we do? Peter says, repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. We like that, don't we? We're safe about that. That's at the back of the four spiritual laws. We can deal with that. E.E. says the same thing, doesn't it? How many of you are in E? Okay, good. I'm not making fun of these things. I'm just telling you, that much we agree with. That much we owe. Yeah, that makes sense. But Peter doesn't stop there, does it? And you will receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Now look at verse 39. The promise is for you. All right. Yeah. For those who believe. Yeah? We all like that. But what else does Peter say? The promise is for you and your children. Then he goes on and says, and for all who are far off, meaning they're at Pentecost and they're going to take their message back home, far away, far away. But notice the order. Did you notice the order? Verse those who believe. And second, their children. There is this momentum that's created by the Old Testament that continues into the New Testament. That the gift of salvation, the promise of salvation in Christ, is not just for you who believe. It's for you and then in a special way for your children. One other verse that we often skip. Verse Corinthians chapter 7. This is a wonderful passage too. And without the Old Testament, you would not understand this verse. That's a plug of job security for me, you understand. That's what that teaches Old Testament. I'm going to try to prove you to you right now that you can't understand the New Testament without the Old. And that means that you'll tell RTS to keep having an Old Testament department. First Corinthians 7.14. For the unbelieving husband have been sanctified through his wife, 7.14, and the unbelieving wife has been sanctified through her believing husband. Otherwise, your children would be unclean. But as it is, in other words, but in reality, what are our children? Holy, special. Now, you guys, holy, they're saying, no, what do your parents do when they get? Say, yes. Yeah, you're holy. Why are you holy? Right, because you have believing parents. Now, does this mean that you're saved automatically? No. No. No more than no of sons were saved automatically. No more than Abraham's sons were saved automatically. These children of ours are not saved automatically. But just as Noah and Abraham and Moses and David's children were special in the eyes of God, set apart from the world, set apart in a special way. So are your children. You see, there are not very many verses in the New Testament about this. Why? Same reason or not many verses about prayer and the New Testament. Same reason or not very many verses about social justice and the New Testament. Same reason or not very often. Same reason or not very many verses about worship in the New Testament. Same reason or not many verses about many things in the New Testament. Why aren't they in the New Testament? They cause they're in the old. And nobody has to tell you things, keep rolling. What they have to tell you in the New Testament is where you put the brakes on. And that's what the New Testament does. It's really remarkable. The New Testament tells you where to put the brakes on, not where at the same keeps rolling. And one of the things that rolls all through the Bible, which is just one religion through and through, growing from seed to giant tree, is that the covenant of grace is made with you and your children. So we said that one of the things we have to address as Christians in our day in order to allow this backyard to be fenced in is the question of the Bible's unity. And the Bible's unity is a very important issue when it comes to infant baptism because the Bible constantly tells us again and again and again that there's a relationship between us and our children and our God. Now there's a second fence that we have to build. And that's the fence of the relationship between implicit and explicit teachings. What is an explicit teaching of the Bible? What does that mean? Very clear. It says it just like that. Do this and you shall live. What is an implicit teaching? Yeah, something that's implied. Something that's sort of beneath the surface. That you really don't see anybody say, don't you see what you're supposed to do here? Instead you have to do things like, well, what do you think the implications of this are? What do you think underneath this verse that makes it make sense? Okay. I want to tell you something. Here's the way most of us think about the Bible. Most of us think that if something is said explicitly in the Bible in the New Testament, then it's the most important thing. And if it's implicit, it's the least important thing, right? What's more important is the explicit stuff. Things where you can point to a verse and say, as you say, right there, John 3, 16 says it, word for word, it's just what I said. That's the most important business. That's what we're all about. That's what we want to do. Quote a verse. If you can quote a verse, then you feel like you've proven it. Funny isn't it how Jehovah's Witnesses can quote verses over and over and over again. Better than you can. Better than I can. I don't talk to them much because they know the Bible better than I do. But is there theology right? Why not? What do they forget? Right, the implicit. Yeah. I want to tell you something. If you believe that the explicit teachings of the Bible, the things that it just comes right out and says are more important and more fundamental than the implicit things, the things that it needs to surface, the things that are holding it together, the kind of glue that holds it together, then you'll never believe in it in baptism. Just forget it. Forget it. You just drop it. Don't even ask the question anymore. Because nobody can show you a verse in the Bible that says, thou shalt baptize there by babies. There is no such verse. If you're looking for such a verse, give it up. Give it up. Oh yeah, there are some verses that might imply that, to hear that, like Acts 16. What happens in Acts 16? The Philippian Jailer comes out and says, what must I do to be saved? And what does Paul say to him? I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and now to be saved. And the household, and all the Presetrians go, go see him and baptism in that. He follows me. And of course, who gets baptized? The Philippian Jailer in Acts 16 and his whole house. We say, don't just see him but baptism in there. And what does the Baptist say back to that? Well, it doesn't say, yeah, babies, they could have been teenagers. The President here goes, hmm, well, guess what? There are several household baptisms in the book of Acts. And none of those passages say explicitly that babies were baptized. They do not. But I want to tell you something that may sound a bit strange to you. The most fundamental, the most basic teachings of the New Testament. Are not the things that says explicitly. It's the things that says implicitly. That's strange, isn't it? And unless you understand that, you may as well give up on this infant baptism idea. Let me see if I can give you an example of this. One teaching, that's pretty fundamental to the whole of the Bible and the whole of Christianity, that is not taught explicitly in the Bible. In other words, you can't find a verse that says just what the doctrine says. Anybody know what that is versus the tea? Yeah, this one. There is not a verse in the Bible that teaches the doctrine of the Trinity to God's three yet one. It's not a single verse in the Bible that says that. Now how do we get the doctrine? Well, you take a little bit from this verse. You take a little bit from that verse, take a little bit from that verse, take a little bit from that verse, and you look and you say, well, what's underneath all this that makes it hold together? What's implicit? The idea that Jesus is God and man, two natures, one person. They don't mix, they're not divided, they're not separated, so on and on and on it goes. You can ask these guys over here what the official doctrine is. I just need to test this stuff, I'm a whole testing. All right. The two natures of Christ, human and divine. Can you show me a verse in the Bible that says, Jesus is human and divine. Two natures in one person. Can you show me a verse that says that? No. How do you get that? How do you get this concept? They take a little bit over here, a little bit over there, a little bit over there, a little bit over there, and you draw the lines that make it make sense and you say, well, it's an implicit doctrine. Is it an important doctrine? Oh, yes. Oh, yes. You know something that's really bizarre. What is the title that the New Testament uses for Jesus more than any other title? Starts at the C, H. Christ, okay, good. Christ. Did you know that the New Testament never, never explicitly defines this word? It never tells us what it means. Not one single time. Now, is the idea that Jesus is the Christ a pretty important idea? I mean, is it pretty fundamental to the Christian faith to know what Christ means? Well, then why doesn't the New Testament ever teach it explicitly? You see what I'm trying to get a call here? Is that the most fundamental, the most basic, the most central teachings of the Bible are not even the ones that they have. We can show verses for to say it explicitly right down the line like that and say what you're going to just take a verse here, take a verse here, take a verse here, take a verse here, put them together, and you got it. How do we know what a Christ is, a prophet, priest, and king? Well, that's what a Christ is. Did you know that the most important things that have been said this morning during this hour have not been said? The most important things that have been said during this hour have not come out of my lips. They are things like, I care about you. We serve a risen Savior. We believe this book is the authoritative word of God. You are interested in this subject, not. But anyway, your pastor is, but you're interested in this. You're wanting to work through this and think through this a little bit. These are all things that have been said here but have not been said. Why didn't I come up here this morning and start to talk off, I say, I want you to know that I love you and care for you. Why didn't I start it that way? No, no, no, who said that? Mr. Pat, I want you to know he is not a relative of mine. We may have the same last names but I'm sure we are very distant. Why didn't I say, I love you because it's assumed. If you thought I hated you, would you be sitting here? If you thought I did not believe in the Bible, would you be having me do this? No. See, there's a world of things in this room that have been said that have not come out of my lips. The same thing is true with the New Testament. Now, how can you tell that Richard believes in the Bible even though he didn't say it explicitly? How can you tell? Well, it's because I keep on talking about it, huh? Keep on saying, well, take this verse. Look at this verse over here. Look at that verse. Look at that verse. How can you tell that I care about you? Because I take a Sunday morning away from my family and I come over here and do this. Does that make sense? Okay. So there are all kinds of things that are implicit and the same thing is true in the Bible. If you want to talk about infant baptism, you've got to recognize that there are many things in the Bible that are implicit and you have to ask the question, which makes more sense? Acts 16 as other pastors, which makes more sense in the light of Acts chapter 2 where he says, believers and their children, that they baptize them or that they don't, which makes more sense. You see in the Old Testament there was a sign of a covenant. What was the sign of a covenant in the Old Testament? Circumcision. And what we say is that in the New Testament there's a new sign of a covenant. Baptist. Okay, now that's basically what we're saying. And we say now in the light of all those verses that say there's a special relationship between you and your children, just like Abraham's children and God, just like Old Testament children and God, the things true over here, that we have a special relationship between our children and God. And just like they got the sign of the covenant over here, circumcision, we and our children should get the sign of the covenant over here, baptism. So if you're looking for a verse to prove it, forget it. What I want to tell you is the whole New Testament and the whole Old Testament proves it. Let's go to the third fence. There's a third fence. The origin and the purpose of baptism. Okay, we talked about the Bible's unity, how necessary that is to infant baptism, how the explicit and implicit teachings are. What about the origins and purpose of baptism? Where in the world does this idea of baptizing people come from? I mean, that's a crazy idea. It certainly isn't in the Old Testament. Well, let me give you a little bit of rundown. Real fast on what happens. During the time between the Old and New Testament, the Jews did a lot of missionary work. A lot of missionary work. And what they would do is they go out, they witness the people, and the name of the Lord, and they, people would convert. And when they converted, they would wash them. They would go through ritual washing to what's called prophylite baptism. There are, in fact, even synagogues today that still have places where they would do this. And they would baptize these people, and then the males would be circumcised after they were baptized. Is that makes sense? So you go out as a Jew, before Jesus came, and you're witnessing the people about the Lord, and they convert, you baptize them. It was sort of a ritual washing to show that now you're clean, you're susceptible for circumcision, you're circumcised, and now you are in. You're in the covenant. Well, John the Baptist was one of these kinds of guys. It was going around telling people that they needed to be baptized. They needed to go through this prophylite baptism. But John the Baptist did a funny thing with this, didn't he? He wasn't talking to Gentiles. But who was John the Baptist talking? The Jews. You see what he's saying to the Jews? Now, out of the Jordan, he was telling these Jews that the Jordan, if you want to enter the kingdom of God, you've got to realise that now you are like the Gentiles. And you've got to go through this baptism before you can enter into the kingdom of God. Isn't that amazing? No wonder they were offended. And you remember what the Pharisees said? They kept saying, but were the children of Abraham? Were the children of Abraham? And John the Baptist said, what? So what? God can make children of Abraham from the rock, which is what he's done with you. You realise that, don't you? You're taking a bunch of crazy Gentiles from all over the world and they've been children of Abraham. Pretty wild. So John the Baptist is saying to them, look, your circumcision, that Old Testament sign, it's beginning to fade and it's significant. It's become so abused, so misused, that we're going to replace it with something else, namely baptism. You see in the Old Testament, the sign of a covenant was circumcision. And for a while, if the days of John the Baptist and even in the days of Christ himself, something started happening. You had circumcision continuing, but you also had something added onto it. What was that? So I might say baptism, that's right, baptism. Alongside each other, circumcision and baptism together. Yes, if you wanted to get into the special kingdom of God, what did you have to do? Not just be circumcised, but also be baptized. And then the church did something very interesting in the book of Acts. And Acts chapter 15, something happened. The question came up, what about all these Gentiles? What about all these Gentiles who want to be believers? Do they have to be circumcised too? You can imagine that was an obstacle for people becoming Christians. If I have to be circumcised to become a Christian, I think I'll think about this for a little while longer. All right, that was the problem that the church faced. And in Acts chapter 15, they started talking about it. They started trying to figure out what they were going to do about it. So it would be apostles arguing with each other. And they work it out. And what do the apostles say? Do they say you have to be circumcised and baptized? Is that what the apostles say? What do they say? Just baptized. The apostles say circumcision doesn't matter anymore. Doesn't matter anymore. The only thing that matters now is what? Baptism. Baptism. And so circumcisions stopped. There was this time when both were going on. Can you see that? When one was sort of added to the other, then then baptism continued and circumcision was dropped because it had become such a perverted sign that people started resting in it as if it were their way of salvation. And so baptism continues, while circumcision stopped. Now you say, where do you get this connection between baptism and circumcision? Look at me at Colossians chapter 2. Colossians chapter 2. Colossians chapter 2 verse 11. In him, that is in Christ, you were also circumcised. What? As Christians we were circumcised? What do you mean? Paul, I wasn't circumcised as a Christian. In putting off the sinful nature, all of the spiritual circumcision, I get it. Not with the circumcision done by the hands of men, but with the circumcision done by Christ. Do you understand this? He says, all right now, you Christians have been circumcised. All of you in here have been circumcised. But I don't mean this in a physical way. I mean this in a spiritual way of getting rid of the old sinful nature and putting on the new in Christ. Not your head if you with me. Okay, now how does, when does he say this happened? When does this happen? Is it just a purely spiritual thing or is there something physical that's supposed to happen too? Look at verse 12. Having been buried with him in baptism and raised with him through faith in the power of God who raised him from the dead. Do you understand that? When does he say the spiritual circumcision took place? When you were baptized. Before you were baptized, meaning before you profess faith and became baptized, you were like the uncircumcised in the Old Testament. When you were baptized, you were like the circumcised in the Old Testament. Does that make sense to you? Now all the Presbyterians want to say this. Who was circumcised in the Old Testament? Who? Believers and their sons? Yes. But now we are in the New Testament. What happens? Believers and their children, where there's neither male nor female. Do you follow that? Okay. So that's one, that is our look at infant baptism. If you tried to approach this thing, head on. You're going to do like I did yesterday when Keith and Jim took me down into the 70 foot pit in the middle of Crystal River. The first time I ever went diving. Okay? Yes it was. 170 feet. It will scare you to death. But if you do what we did after that, when they saw me panic and just sort of swim around, it's snorkel for a while Richard. Okay? And just go around and think about these three teachings. You'll do much better. They were very kind. They really didn't take me to any deep pit. The Bible's unity. The influence and explicit teachings of the Bible and the origin and purpose of baptism. If you'll think about those three things, I think you'll begin to see that infant baptism makes more sense than what it might appear on the surface to make. Okay. Thanks very much. Let's pray together and ask the Lord for blessing on this. Lord, you're kind to us. We know this is a hard thing and for some it's convincing others it is that help us to love each other and to be strong toward each other in faith and humility as we wrestle with who should be baptized. We want to serve you. Grant us the grace of good conscience in this so that we may do what is pleasing to you from our hearts. And as you do that, we will honor you for it and give you the praise. Amen.