Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Pray with me. O God, guide us by your word and spirit, so that in your light we may see light, in your truth find wisdom, and in your will discover peace. Add your blessing to the reading, the hearing, and the preaching of your word, and grant us all the grace to trust and obey you and all God's people said. Amen. Well, as you can tell, today's service is a little different than normal, as we gather with our brothers and sisters across the country to worship God and intercede for the life of the world on what has become to be called Sanctity of Life Sunday or Anti-Abortion Day of the Lord. One of the many blessings you kids receive by being in worship with us is that you get to grow up hearing and learning to think like grownups, which means that sometimes you hear words and ideas at church that you normally wouldn't hear or talk about any other time if it were not for your pastors making you ask questions that make your parents nervous to answer. Now, we try to be careful how we talk about these things and the words we use so that if something is too mature for someone, well, then it's able to go in one ear and out the other. But one of the principles we've used in parenting our kids is that if they're old enough to ask questions about it, well, they're old enough to talk about it with. We know some parents take a different approach and think they're protecting their kids by not talking about scary, sad, or even scandalous things until they're in their mid to late teens. But I tend to think that's an approach that is more psychology-based than scripture-based. We live in such a different world now than has been true for most of history. and the things that would have been normal to see and experience in everyday life are now considered too traumatizing to even talk about. Rather than make better, stronger, more emotionally healthy people, we're actually more fragile and more unstable than ever. This morning, we are going to be talking about something very heavy, very sad, and very real for many people. But the hope is that by talking about these things in public, some of you will be even more willing to at least talk about them in private, and therefore not have to suffer in silence. I already have one appointment set up to help a family talk to their children about these things. And so if you would like help yourself or for one of them, please let me or one of the officers know. I understand that if you haven't talked about these things, it can be kind of intimidating at first, but if we weren't living in such a historical anomaly, you would have already been forced through this topic literally dozens of times in the last 10 years or so. I had Ruth run the numbers, and we have 111 kids under 12 years old. That's something. That means that 200 years ago, before widespread vaccinations, before antibiotics and fever-reducing medications, before pasteurized milk, and before germ theory of disease was finally embraced, we would only have 55 of 111 kids. Try to imagine that. If I did our normal routine and asked every kid under 12 to raise their hand, well that means half of those palms, half of those knobby knees, half of those twinkling eyes would be in a coffin and not worshiping with us this morning. Now, I don't necessarily say all of that because of how nauseous the growing movement of people wanting to go back to how things used to be makes me. I would be child and likely wifeless were that our philosophy, but that's not our point this morning. I'm simply pointing out that of the 97 infant baptisms we have had in the past six years, we would have already had to bury over 40 of them. Point that out because I want to point out that we are in a highly convenient time period to be able to avoid dealing with such immense grief that was normal to our forefathers. Instead of talking about this topic when it comes up in the scriptures, which is relatively rare, or every once in a while on anti-abortion day of the Lord, our little church would have had to ask and answer the question six or seven times every year Where's my baby? Now I know many of you have asked that question of me in private and probably many more of you have had to wrestle through it alone. So this morning I want to try and help give an answer to that question for all of you by first taking a little walk through history to see how pastors from various traditions have tried to provide comfort to their people albeit with extra biblical answers that avoid contradicting their systems. And then I want to walk quickly through the scriptures to see that God's word and character gives us far more comfort than any man-made system could. ultimately seeing that in God's election of his son, particularly his conception, life, death, resurrection, and ascension, those who have had to, are having to right now, and will have to say goodbye to one of their beloved children too soon, can know they will be with their babies again. So first, we're gonna take a little walk through history to examine a few different traditions, attempt to answer this very real question in a way they think is consistent with their theological system, and yet still try to give comfort to their people. There have basically been three or four approaches that Christians have taken to try to answer this question. Now, the Eastern Church has, by and large, not even attempted to provide an answer, as they simply leave all mysterious things, particularly things that the Church Fathers are in disagreement over, up to the grace and mercy of God, which, to a degree, I can appreciate. But as far as the Western church has been concerned, the historic tradition we're a part of, the historical flow has roughly gone along the lines of the doctrine of limbo, maybe you've heard of it. The idea of an age of reason or the age of accountability. Three, a certainty that all babies are with Jesus. And fourth, a tentative hope in the sovereign grace in the election of some babies. One of the first attempts to try to ask and answer this difficult question was the doctor of limbo, which is different than purgatory. You see the idea of purgatory coming up relatively early in the church. Remember, for most of church history, everything we said about baptism last week, all that stuff about believing that something actually happens in the moment of baptism, that baptism saves and unites the recipient to Christ and cleanses them of their sins, was simply accepted as true because all of the Bible verses that say as much. Now the formulations around the efficacy of baptism have been modified and tightened up in various traditions over time, but for the ancient church, it was no problem to echo the Bible's language and confess what we sing almost every week. We acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins. And so for a church who believes there is no such thing as an unbaptized Christian, Well, then the answer to the question of what happens when baptized people, including infants, dies is simple. They go to heaven, eventually. Now you may have to be purified further in purgatory to cleanse them from the sins they committed after their original cleansing, but if you've been baptized, if you've been born of water and of the Spirit, you eventually get to be in the full presence of God in Christ's glory forever and ever. But I'm sure you can already hear the dilemma, right? the dilemma that arises when you restrict God's means of saving grace to the moment of baptism, particularly when there aren't enough priests to go around and so many infants die before being baptized. Sure, all baptized Christians, even baptized babies, go to heaven because they've been saved and cleansed and made ready to enter God's presence, but what do you tell parents whose babies die before they're able to be baptized? That's the question. Well, if you're Augustine, God is just. And he is sovereign, and he is in control over everything, including them not getting baptized. And so for him, it's actually quite simple. The baby hasn't been cleansed from the original sin we all inherited from Adam, and therefore unbaptized infants are not in heaven. While they may not be undergoing excruciating torment, according to Augustine, they are perhaps still experiencing the mildest of sufferings in hell. Now again, if you're restricting God's saving grace to the ordinary means of grace, in baptism you can see how you might be required to believe something like that if you want to stay consistent to what you believe is consistent. Understandably, though, even for the most hardcore sacramentalist, the thought of infants suffering in eternity, no matter how mild, isn't merely impalpable. It doesn't fit with the Bible's overarching teaching that our God is a God who extends his grace and mercy and love not only to parents, but their children. At the same time, to them, it was also clear that baptism is effectual and that babies weren't baptized and nothing unclean can enter the presence of God and so, limbo. You can imagine a pastoral visit in the 12th and 13th centuries going something like, don't worry, mother, don't worry, father. We know your baby isn't in heaven because you couldn't get him to a priest in time. And yes, I know what Saint Augustine said, but Mr. Abelard and Saint Aquinas are here to comfort you that your baby isn't in hell, but rather is in limbo. Now we know you've never heard of that because it's new, but God would never send the infants of even one believing parent to hell. Now they won't be in the full presence of God because they still do have original sin and weren't cleansed, but they are in a state of blessed happiness as close as you can get to the edges of heaven without being in. Now we may think that's crazy, because we're almost a thousand years removed from that historical moment, and we're all Protestants as far as I know, but that was the attempt of guys with a high view of the sacraments and the holiness of God, doing their best to comfort parents who were experiencing such terrible grief at a rate unknown to all of us. Thankfully, limbo never became an official teaching of the church, but the church really was in a tough spot because they had so rigidly embraced some Bible verses to the exclusion of others. But anytime you embrace some scripture but not all of it, you are forced to come up with answers that aren't in scripture if you want to keep your system intact. And so their unbiblical answer to this very difficult question was limbo. But once you reject limbo, the question still needs answering. Well, after some guys in the church started spreading the idea that grace was a kind of substance and the sacraments were God's means of infusing grace into worthy recipients, the question remained. Now, not just of babies who died in infancy, but for all children dying without being able to receive the grace of God in the Lord's Supper. You see, the modern practice of denying communion to baptized children is more akin to the church of the late Middle Ages, who believed that children weren't capable of comprehending the mystery of the Eucharist, and therefore, they taught children shouldn't partake of the bread and wine. But if baptism is the means of initial grace, And if the Lord's Supper is God's means of nourishing grace, well now you don't just have a problem with unbaptized babies, now you have a pastoral problem where kids are getting grace but not continuing in it. So what about those kids? Well, if the Lord's Supper is about rightly comprehending your sin and the mysteries of the gospel, well, now the priest has to make a call as to when he thinks a child is old enough to do that. So in the Western church during the 14th century or so, you get something called the age of reason, which in American revivalism would become the age of accountability. It's a little complicated, but essentially, infants were baptized to wash away their original sin. And until they each reached the age of reason, a child could not be guilty of committing high-handed mortal sins, or sins that separate a person from God and lead to damnation. And so the reasoning went, we don't know what happens to babies exactly, but we do know that a child is incapable of true and right belief sometime between the ages of seven and 12. So, don't worry, mom and dad. You can take comfort that you might see your little one again, but you should probably keep praying for them just to be sure. You see? A bad answer, sure, but an answer attempting to bring comfort to parents while keeping their theological system intact. Related to, but very different from the age of reason explanation is probably what most of us are more familiar with, and that's the age of accountability. This idea developed in more revivalistic and baptistic traditions in the 19th and 20th centuries, not so much to comfort parents who have lost children, but because of a systematic shift in belief about how people get saved. While the first 1,500 or 1,600 years of the church tied salvation to receiving grace in the act of receiving the sacraments, The church had become so corrupt that the Anabaptists wanted nothing to do with that corrupt system. Understandably so. For them, the church should only be filled with believers. And so they reject infant baptism and rebaptized adults that professed faith and then waited until unbaptized children could prove they believed before baptizing them into the church that they wanted to be pure. Now again, perhaps you can already tell where this theological system creates problems when trying to answer the question of what happens to my children? Just like restricting God's saving grace to the sacraments creates problems, so too does restricting God's saving grace to those who are able to prove they have repented and believed create problems. If there is no such thing as an unbaptized Christian, and now my kids are having to wait until they're teenagers, and 50 to 60% of them are going to be dead before they get there, now what am I supposed to do? Well, if you're totally off the rails, the answer is easy. All kids are innocent until they reach the age, not of reason, because we're not Catholic, but the age of accountability. That's it. So to comfort Anabaptist parents whose kids died before being able to make a credible profession of faith, pastors reassured them that they needn't worry because their kid hadn't reached the age of accountability. And that's fine and good if you reject the idea of original sin or provenient grace, but if you were more Calvinistic Anabaptist, now you were in a real pickle. Because you believe, rightly, that all children are born in sin. But you don't believe the children of believers are to be numbered among the holy people of God. So now what do you do? If you're a medieval church heretic, you've got limbo. If you're a Roman Catholic heretic, you've got the age of reason and purgatory. And if you're a Pelagian heretic, you've got child innocence. Not great options, obviously, but genuine attempts to offer comfort to grieving parents. But what do you do if you've stolen bits of Luther and Calvin, who stole from Augustine, who all stole from Paul, who taught that no one is righteous, no, not one, all are born in sin, none is righteous, and that God predestines and elects some people unto salvation from eternity past, But you've also stolen from the Anabaptist tradition who taught that it couldn't possibly be regenerated without confessing and believing in your own individual heart. Where's your comfort come from then? Well, to keep that system intact, the best theologically consistent hope that your system can offer is God's mysterious and sovereign election for some, though perhaps not all, infants and children of believing parents. If you're in that tradition, the best pastoral comfort you can offer your people, the same that my counselor pastor offered his people, and remain consistent is God is just, your child is born in sin, but if your child is elect, then we can trust they're with Jesus. Now is that technically correct? Sure. God is just and whatever he does is right, full stop. If they're correct and some babies and preteens who die before being baptized or making a credible profession of faith are elect and others aren't, and that's what God's word teaches, then we better not teach anything else. That same thing would be true for limbo in the age of reason and the age of accountability. If that's what God revealed about himself and the nature of salvation in his word, then we must side with God and not man-made tradition. But what if those systems are wrong? What if the Bible actually teaches something else? What if God's grace isn't restricted to the sacraments? And what if God chooses to save people apart from making a credible profession of faith? Well, our tradition says that if that's the case, well then we have to reject any and every theological system that would teach something different and stick to God's revelation to us in his word and supremely in his word as he has perfectly revealed to us in his son. Our contention. is that Christian parents need not worry whether they'll be reunited with their unbaptized babies or children dying in childhood because God has always loved not just his children, but his children's children. And his promise to extend his saving grace to those children is something he promises and proves over and over and over again. Let me read from one of our confessions, Article 17 of the Canons of Dort, which were written 1618, about 100 years after the Reformation. Since we must make judgments about God's will from his word, which testifies that the children of believers are holy, not by nature, but by virtue of the gracious covenant in which they together with their parents are included, Godly parents ought not to doubt the election and salvation of their children whom God calls out of this life in infancy. What's more, one of our other confessions expands this grace. The Westminster Confession of Faith reiterates this and expands the salvation of the children of believers, not only to their children who die in infancy, but to those who are called incapables. Children of believers who are incapable by way of mental or physical handicap of hearing and receiving and responding to the gospel in a supposedly credible way, whatever that means. from chapter 10 of the confession. Elect infants dying in infancy are regenerated and saved by Christ through the spirit who works when and where and how he pleases and so also are all other elect persons who are incapable of being outwardly called by the ministry of the word. Now we hear that phrase, elect infants and elect incapables, and wonder how that's any different from the Calvinistic Anabaptists, but it's different because it assumes, along with Dort, that the children of believers are all elect, all made holy, not because of anything in them, but because God has always included the children of believers in the covenant of grace. We do not believe the covenant of grace started with Jesus. But even if it did, why would that covenant of grace be any less gracious than all the covenants that came before Jesus? All the way back to the first covenant God made with Adam and Eve, the children of believers were included with their parents. You know the story, God created Adam and Eve in a state of innocence and told them to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, you know, with babies. After their fall into sin, we don't only see their children inheriting Adam's sin nature, we see their children being included in God's promises. It was through the offspring of Adam and Eve that God promised to crush the head of that old serpent, Satan. Sure, Cain rejected that grace and killed his brother Abel, but Seth was saved, and God's means of keeping his promises to Adam and Eve continued to and through every generation leading up to Christ. Noah and his family were included in God's plan of salvation. And God said to Noah and his sons, behold, I establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you. And that covenant with Noah and his children and his children's children extended all the way to and through Abraham. For likewise God made a covenant with Abraham and his offspring. I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant to be God to you and to your offspring after you. And I will give to you and your offspring after you "'the land of your sojournings, and I will be their God.'" God made this promise to Abraham before his son Isaac was born. And from the moment Isaac was conceived, Abraham and Sarah knew God had chosen their pre-born son to be the one through whom he would keep his promise. So confident was Abraham in God's promise that even in the face of his son's impending death, he knew God would provide a sacrifice. To the wilderness generation, God declared, know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments to how long? 1,000 generations. In every covenantal dispensation, God's covenant, personal love extended not just to adult believers, but also to their children before they're even born. David's saying of God's love toward him, not just as a grown man who had faith to slay God's enemies, or even as a young boy who, by faith, killed that old serpent, Goliath, but even as an infant. David sang of this covenantal love in Psalm 22. Yet you are he who took me from the womb. You made me trust you at my mother's breasts. On you was I cast from my birth and from my mother's womb. You've been my God. In another psalm, 139, David described the same kind of intimate relationship with God as God himself described as having with another elect infant, Jeremiah. Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. Before you were born, I consecrated you. That phrase consecrated you sounds so old covenant. could be translated as sanctified you or set you apart or made you holy. It's the same word in the new covenant that Paul uses to describe the covenantal status of children of even one believing parent. You've heard it 97 times in the past six years. Just as the apostle Paul wrote that all of God's children were under the cloud and all passed through the sea and were baptized into Moses, so too did he declare that the children of believers are to be numbered with the holy people of God, calling them, here it is, saints. So beloved, when we tell you that you can be confident that you can know God loves you and extends his love to your children, even the children in your womb. We aren't telling you to merely give you comfort or to give you some theological framework that we want to keep intact. We are giving you that comfort because that wonderful, covenantal comfort is the comfort God's people have always been able to have. New covenant parents should have no less comfort for their children than old covenant parents. Sure, God's grace is and should be bestowed on your children in baptism, but beloved, his grace is not restricted to that moment. And sure, God's grace is for those who repent and believe and make credible professions of faith, but his grace isn't held back until that moment either. God's covenantal grace is for you and your children before their profession, before their baptism, and before they even make it out of your womb. And we needn't look any further than God's election of his own son in his mother's womb for you to know that he chose to save your child in yours. I couldn't say it better than Saint Irenaeus who wrote in the late second century. Jesus came to save all through himself. All, I say, who through him are reborn in God. Infants and children and youths and old men. Therefore, he passed through every age, becoming an infant for infants, sanctifying infants. A child for children, sanctifying those who are of that age. A youth for youths, becoming an example to the youths, and thus sanctifying them for the Lord. So likewise he became an older man for old men that he might sanctify the aged also. Then at last Jesus came onto death itself so that he might be the firstborn from the dead and in all things he might be preeminent. Beloved the omnipresent, Grace of God literally penetrated the tiniest, most intimate places of creation so that he might redeem all of creation. And this includes redeeming your little ones who died before they ever developed lungs. You do not have to cling to the unbiblical hope that they might just be on the outskirts of paradise to assuage your dreadful fears. If you do believe God's grace is conferred in baptism, you don't have to worry about what if your baby wasn't baptized before they died. And if you're a Reformed Baptist, you don't have to just hope that God might potentially, possibly have elected your child even though they never made it to a credible profession of faith. Christian, you can take comfort in the very character of our God. not only by promise and shadow in the Old Testament, but in the revelation of himself in the person and work of Jesus in the new. And you can know, without a shadow of a doubt, you're gonna see your little ones again. The kingdom of heaven is of such as these. God loves you and your children and your children's children, and he is a God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with all those who love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations. So if and when you have doubts as to whether God loves you and considers you as his beloved child, look to the great love with which he loved you in sending his own son into the world to live, die, and rise again for you to remind you that you are his child. But also, if you ever have doubts as to whether He loves your children, even the children that didn't make it out of the womb, look to the lengths He was willing to go to save even them. To the womb, through the tomb, and into glory, for His glory in the life of the world. Amen. Let's pray. O almighty God, who out of the mouth of babes and sucklings has ordained strength, and made infants to glorify Thee by their deaths. Mortify and kill all vices in us, and so strengthen us by Thy grace, that by the innocency of our lives and the constancy of our faith, even unto death, we too may glorify Your holy name, and be reunited with all Your and our children again, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Our communion meditation is from 2 Samuel chapter 12, where we see and hear not just God's promise to save infants of believers who didn't do anything to contribute to the deaths of their children, but of David's assurance that God can and does save even the infants who die because of the sins of their parents. Hear God's word. David said to Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord. And Nathan said to David, the Lord also has put away your sin and you shall not die. Nevertheless, because by this deed you have utterly scorned the Lord, the child who is born to you shall die. Then Nathan went to his house and the Lord afflicted the child that Uriah's wife bore to David and he became sick. David therefore sought God on behalf of the child, and David fasted and went in and lay all night on the ground. And the elders of his house stood beside him to raise him from the ground, but he would not, nor did he eat food with them. On the seventh day, the child died. And the servants of David were afraid to tell him that the child was dead, for they said, behold, while the child was yet alive, we spoke to him and he didn't listen to us. How then can we say to him that the child is dead? He may do himself some harm. But when David saw that his servants were whispering together, David understood that the child was dead. And David said to his servants, is the child dead? They said, he is dead. Then David arose from the earth and washed and anointed himself and changed his clothes. And he went into the house of the Lord and worshiped. He then went to his own house, and when he asked, they set food before him and he ate. Then his servants said to him, what is this thing that you have done? You fasted and wept for the child while he was yet alive, but when the child died, you arose and ate food? He said, while the child was still alive, I fasted and wept. For I said, who knows whether the Lord will be gracious to me? That the child may live, but now he's dead. Why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I'm gonna go to him, but he's not going to return to me. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. As we discussed at the beginning of our time together, good fathers tell their children the truth. And sometimes truth hurts. Now a bad father can hide behind the fact that truth hurts and tell the truth in a way that it only hurts. But nevertheless, the truth can hurt. When Jesus prayed what has come to be known as the high priestly prayer, he prayed to his father, sanctify them in truth. Your word is truth. As Christians, we are the people Jesus prayed this for, that we would be sanctified, we would be set apart, we would be made holy by the word of God. And as Christians, we must be people of the truth, even if and when it hurts, because only in telling the truth can we also be comforted by what's true. When we don't tell people the truth about their sin, we can't offer them the only truth that will heal them from it, and that includes the sin of being responsible for the death of your child. We believe that the Bible teaches life begins at conception, just like the angel told Mary, and just like we heard in so many of the passages we read together. And that means that any and everyone, Whether it be through an irresponsible use of birth control or in vitro fertilization or someone who has had an actual abortion, you're responsible for the death of that child. I cannot downplay what you've done. I'm not going to patronize you and call you a victim if you're not, and I'm not gonna tell you that what you did isn't grievous in God's sight. Any and all false gospel messages that would do anything less than tell you the truth that hurts cannot offer you the only thing you know deep down you crave, comfort, forgiveness, peace, and an answer to the nagging question, what happened to that baby? In our sermon today, we discussed the covenant love of God to parents and the children of believing parents, but I saved the question that may come to many of our minds every year on anti-abortion day of the Lord. What happens to the babies that die because of the sins of their parents? As grievous as that is, if that is you, You too can find comfort not just in the fact that you know that you're forgiven and you belong with body and soul both in life and death to your faithful Savior Jesus Christ, but you can find the same comfort for your unborn child, the comfort David found in the covenant love of his God whose grace covered all his sins, even the sins that resulted in the death of his child. You committed sexual immorality in Christ where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more. Your sins are what led to the death of your child in Christ where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more. or have dozens of frozen embryos, or have knowingly had the life of your child ended in Christ, where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more. Again, I don't say any of these things to hurt you any more than you're already hurting, and I'm not using God's grace to downplay sin. I tell you the truth about these things because you need to hear the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so that you can receive the help of God. Without the truth of your sin and the truth of the gospel, you will be forever miserable, forever anxious and suffering and questioning because you will have no way to reconcile the things you've done with ultimate reality. But with the truth of what we celebrate at this table, with what we sang a few moments ago, the only begotten Son of God, God of God, light of light, very God of very God, was incarnate by the Holy Spirit. Born of the Virgin Mary, made man, crucified under Pontius Pilate, suffered, was buried, and on the third day rose again and ascended into heaven. With those truths echoing in your ears and sitting before you in this bread and wine, you do not have to only weep. Because the forgiveness of sins purchased for you by Christ and extended to you, you, like David, can trust God's sovereign grace covers all your sins. And even though your child will not come to you, you will go to them. No doubt David still thought about his boy and what could have been for the rest of his life. No doubt he still felt sad and still had hard days where guilt and shame crept back in, but because of David's faith in God's eternal covenant love for him and his son, he didn't have to grieve as one without hope, and neither do you. Since we believe Jesus died and rose again and through Jesus, God will bring with him all those who have fallen asleep, including all the children we never knew. Well, they can walk by comfort in God's grace and mercy and forgiveness, looking forward to that last day when Jesus will wipe away every tear from every eye and you will see him and all your loved ones, even the ones you never knew, face to face in glory everlasting. Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us seek the peace