Can my child take the Lord's Supper? That is one of the most common questions that young parents have asked me as a minister. When is the right time for my child to take, you know, the sacrament of the table? As I was sitting here singing as Gideon was leading the service, I loved hearing the children sing. I loved hearing them cite the Lord's Prayer. I love children. I love seeing them being raised in the faith. And they are the precious generation that will carry the baton on in future generations, long after we are gone. So when we ask the question, you know, can my child take the Lord's Supper? Should they? Our obvious instinct is to say, yes, of course. And certainly in our day and age, though it's not always been that way, the widespread practice in most churches today is to let your children go to the table just by default. And from my Norwegian colleagues, they've told me that the near universal practice in Norwegian churches is to not fence the table at all, that any child can simply come up to the table and participate in the elements. So with all of that, I mean, is there even really a debate about whether or not children should take the Lord's Supper? But despite the widespread practice of letting kids go to the table, both the Bible and church history testify to the importance of requiring a profession of faith before a child or adult can go to the Lord's table. So really, while the question is, should children eat the Lord's Supper? It's really, should anyone eat the Lord's Supper simply on the basis of their baptism? Now some churches don't even require baptism, but historically baptism has always been the entrance into the church and then the Lord's Supper is something that follows. But what you're going to see and what I want to show you this morning is that the Bible is clear that unworthy participation in the Lord's table brings judgment and even sometimes severe judgment. And that the Bible is clear that baptism is not enough, that a profession of faith, that faith is required for worthy participation. So that's what we're going to look at from scripture this morning. Let's begin with some definitions then. So believer's baptism is sometimes called credo baptism. Credo, the word for faith, okay. Believer's baptism teaches that a baptized child or adult must have faith before they can worthily participate in the Lord's Supper. And that's usually expressed by making a profession of faith to the church. So again, baptism is not enough. You need to have faith. in order to come to the Lord's table. That's called Believer's Communion or Credo Communion. The other position that is becoming more of a fad in recent days, in the last 40 decades or so, I would say, is something called Paedo Communion or Child Communion. Some people, of course, would say that baptism is not even required. Any child can simply go. The debate that's been going on more recently has been, can any baptized child go to the Lord's table simply because they're baptized? Is there anything else that's required? And the child communion position would say, no, just simply on the basis of their baptism, they are worthy to participate in the Lord's Supper. So these are the two positions, Believer's Communion or Child Communion. Let's begin then with some arguments for Child Communion. So what are the arguments that are typically made to say if a child's baptized, they are worthy to go to the Lord's Supper. Let's look at a few of these common ones. And I'm gonna mention, there are of course many arguments, I'm gonna mention arguments that have been made kind of in the current debate within the Reform Norwegian kind of community on this matter, okay? So first, child communion advocates will appeal to the Old Testament Passover. They will appeal to the Old Testament Passover. Remember, of course, in the Passover, God saved every man, woman, and child from the hand of Egypt. Everyone that put the blood of the lamb on their doorposts, the lentil in the doorposts, they were spared by the angel of death and God delivered them out of the hand of Egypt and the Passover celebrated as families became the symbol of that deliverance. So many advocates or paedo-communion or child communion will say that children ate the Passover And therefore, children should be able to eat the Lord's supper, which celebrates our greater deliverance, not just from a captor like Egypt, but from the world, the flesh, and the devil, everything that is against us. I will freely admit at this point, I think that this is their most compelling argument. I think it's their most compelling argument, simply because the Lord's Supper is, as it were, the fulfillment of the Passover. It's the greater deliverance. I think that is the most compelling argument that they make. However, with that said, we need to be careful to not let an Old Testament shadow be the thing that determines the reality of the New Testament substance. So the writer of Hebrews, for example, talks about the Old Testament, the things of the Levitical system, being a shadow. of the real things that come and the substance belongs to Christ. And so we need to look to the New Testament to help us understand the framework for what is required to go to the New Testament sacrifice, not the Old Testament. It's not wrong to make parallels, but we create hermeneutical interpretive errors when we start letting the Old Testament have the final word on what is taught in the New Testament. We cannot let the shadow control the substance. And we will see later what the New Testament has to say about worthy participation in a little while. So they appeal to the Passover. A second appeal they make is to the faith of John the Baptist in the womb. So sometimes they will say something like, okay, well, if faith's required, well, even an infant can have faith. And they will point to John the Baptist. Remember, John the Baptist leaped in Elizabeth's womb when she was in the presence of Christ, right, in the womb of Mary. We can debate this point. It's probably true that John the Baptist was regenerated from the womb. So we're not really debating whether or not a child, even a young child, an infant, can have faith, can be born again. But what we are arguing is that not all children are born again from the womb. And sadly, not even all children of believers are born again from the womb. It's just our own experience. We all could probably give personal testimony to that experience. Although we pray for it, not every child of a believer is also a believer. So making an appeal to John the Baptist in the womb does not logically connect that every child then comes to the table having faith, being born again already. A third appeal that advocates of child communion will make is their appeal to Jesus' welcome of children. Jesus' welcome of children. Those are beautiful passages in the gospel where the disciples are saying, no, don't let the children come. And Jesus says, Let the children come for to such belong the kingdom of heaven. So for example, Luke 18, Jesus goes on to say, truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God, like a child shall not enter it. So again, at a service level, it feels like this is the Lord's body at the Lord's table. Surely Jesus is welcoming all the children to come up and meet him. But the problem with this appeal is that advocates for child communion misunderstand Jesus's point in welcoming children. Jesus describes, for example, Luke 18, the kind of faith required to enter the kingdom of heaven. So anyone trying to enter the kingdom of heaven on their own merits as an independent, self-reliant adult is not worthy, will not enter the kingdom of God. Entrance into the kingdom requires complete dependence on Christ, just like a child is completely dependent on their parents for survival. And so they miss the point of Jesus's teaching. Another, a fourth appeal that child communion advocates will sometimes make is they will appeal to church history, especially Eastern Orthodoxy. So if you're familiar with the three main branches of the church, you have the Roman Catholic, the Eastern Orthodox, and then the Protestant Church. Those are the three main branches of orthodoxy. And advocates for child communion will point to the Eastern Orthodox tradition as a defense of their interpretation of Scripture. It's acknowledged by almost everyone that from the 4th century onwards in the Eastern Orthodox tradition that they give even infants the Lord's Supper. They'll dip the wafer or bread into the wine and then put it into the infant's mouth. Now, the problem with this view is you can't cherry pick out of church history kind of the things you like and don't like. And the reason the Eastern Orthodox Church gives infants the Lord's Supper is because they believe that it actualizes salvation for them. That word actualizes is a word that they would use. So they believe in baptismal regeneration, so by the child being baptized, original sin is removed, they're born again, and then giving them the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, makes basically that salvation grow in them, so they have a very different view of the sacrament, which leads them to that practice. So just making an appeal to church history is not a good argument on its own, and you can't simply take a practice without also considering the theology that is driving that practice. Okay, a fifth appeal that is sometimes made by advocates of child communion is that it's the parent's judgment that should be the determining factor when a child should go to the table. It's the parent's judgment on when they're ready. So they will sometimes say something like, how can an elder or a pastor know my child's faith? I'm with them every day. And again, there's a semblance of truth to that. You know your kids better than I do or Peter does, and that's generally the case. However, there is no biblical warrant whatsoever that gives parents the right to decide the membership of the church. The Lord's Supper has been the sacrament that has signified the communing membership of the church. We have communion, communing membership. Who is in communion in the church? There's nowhere in scripture that gives parents that right. In other words, nowhere in scripture are parents given what is called, to use the biblical phrase, the keys of the kingdom of heaven. So Jesus talks about the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and he gives them to the apostles, and he says it specifically to Peter. To get into this debate in the Roman Catholic Church would get us far afield from our discussion this morning. But throughout church history, there's been three views of who holds the keys of the kingdom. In the Roman Catholic system, they believe that the Pope holds the keys to the kingdom to determine who's in and who's out of the church. In Baptist or congregational polity, they believe that all the members of the congregation hold the keys of the kingdom to determine who's a member and who's not a member of the church. In the Reformed and Presbyterian community, it's the elders of the church, the presbyters. That's where we get the word Presbyterian from. It's the Greek word for elder. Hold the keys of the kingdom to decide who are the members of the church. So wherever you or anyone stands on who holds the kingdom, is it the Pope? Is it the congregation? Is it the elders? Nowhere in scripture are parents given the keys of the kingdom. So it is not their call. And that sounds really offensive in the Western world, the individualistic world. One thing, it's offensive to say a child can't do something, I think, in our culture. Or anyone can't do anything. But secondly, who are you to tell me what my kid can or not do in the church? But you can read this paper, you can study it for yourself. There's nowhere in scripture where parents are given the say to determine if their child's a member or not of the church in terms of communing membership. Finally then, a last appeal for the child communion position. They will reject the Reformed and Presbyterian position. So they will argue that we've got it wrong. We've misunderstood the text. Mind you, the people arguing for this are typically within the Reformed and Presbyterian tradition. There's a small group arguing for child communion but they reject our confessional position on the matter. So, for example, question 177 of the Westminster Larger Catechism, the question is, where and do the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper differ? And the answer is, the sacraments of baptism in the Lord's Supper differ, and that baptism is to be administered but once, with water, to be a sign and seal of our regeneration and engrafting into Christ. And that even to infants, Whereas the Lord's Supper is to be administered often in the elements of bread and wine, to represent and exhibit Christ as spiritual nourishment to the soul, and to confirm our continuance and growth in him, and that only to such as are of years and ability to examine themselves. So that's the rub, that last line, only to such as are of years and ability to examine themselves. That's Westminster Larger Catechism question 177. And there's other texts, of course, too, that you can read in the paper here if you choose to. But anyways, at this point with these arguments, even advocates for child communion acknowledge that a faith requirement for participation in the table has been the near universal position of Reformed and Presbyterian denominations. The near universal, you can't find any historic confession that doesn't require personal examination. in accordance with scripture. Moreover, about 40 years ago now, there was debates in the American Reformed and Presbyterian churches on this, and all of them after debate rejected the child communion position. as being without warrant in scripture. So none of the historic Reformed and Presbyterian denominations allow the practice of paedo-communion today. I believe that extends to Europe as well. There's one group that became kind of a breakaway group of dissidents to this issue called the Council of Reformed and Evangelical Churches, which is the denomination that Doug Wilson led, is leading. And they are a small group that reject this position and say a lot of not nice things about us who are historically Reformed and Presbyterian on these matters. Having said all of that, those are the general appeals to child communion that we have been hearing in the debate within the reform community here. Let's now turn then to the case for believers communion. In what follows then, I argue that believer's communion or credo communion is what the Bible teaches. And moreover, as stated above, this position is the uniform confessional belief of the historic Reformed and Presbyterian tradition in respect to our confessions. And that represents both the confessional positions of the Westminster Presbyterian tradition as well as the Continental Reformed tradition that would be expressed in the Belgic Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, the Synod of Dortz, things like that. So when we talk about the confessions of the Reformed Church, The broad general reform confessions are those that we find in the Belgic Confession and Heidelberg Catechism. They came a lot earlier in the Protestant Reformation. And then when we talk about the Presbyterian tradition specifically, that's when we talk about the Westminster Confession of Faith, larger and shorter catechisms, which are our doctrinal statements. So let's get into this case for believers' communion. I'm going to build an argument over seven points to show why we ask children to wait to come to the table until they make a profession of faith or any baptized person, even adult who hasn't made a profession of faith. This is why we ask them to wait. So number one, the case for believers communion is as follows. Number one, the Bible teaches that all children are born in sin. The scriptures are clear that children are not innocent. Even the beautiful children that we have, we hold them in our arms, we love them instantly, they look so pure and peaceful, but the Bible teaches that even children are born in sin. David acknowledges this in his great confession in Psalm 51, in verse 5, when he says, Our sinful nature, David shows us here, does not begin with that first time we disobey our parents as a toddler. Our sinful nature begins by our very conception because we descend from Adam. We are sinners by nature. and choice. We are not sinners just by choice, by nature and choice. Paul expresses this reality in Romans 5, 12. Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned. Number two, the second reason or defense for believer's communion is that the Bible teaches that baptism doesn't save you without faith. The Bible teaches that baptism does not save you without faith. At Pentecost, Peter proclaimed in Acts 2, repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of your sins. Repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of your sins. Repentance is an act of faith. Repentance is an act of faith, and baptism is only the external testimony of that repentant faith. So baptism is not the thing that saves you. The scriptures can talk about baptism and repentance in one thing, but that baptism is symbolic of the faith that you have that led you to be baptized, to repent, and to be baptized. Just a few verses later, well let me back up and just say again, faith, this is maybe the most important thing that you need to hear this morning. Faith, not baptism, is the hallmark of the true church. Faith, not baptism, is the hallmark of the true church, of true Christians. So just a few verses later in Acts, Luke writes, as Peter goes on, and all who believed were together. So he says, repent and be baptized. But just a few verses later, Luke tells us what that is. All who believed. were together, Acts 2.44. In his first letter, it is true that Peter says baptism now saves you. This is a text that those that teach baptismal regeneration will point to. Because Peter says, baptism now saves you, 1 Peter 3.21. But Peter goes on to clarify the substance of what saves you. He says in verse 21, an appeal to God for a good conscience. Again, that appeal to God is an act of faith, of repentant faith, we can call it. It's not the washing of water that saves you in the act of baptism. It's the repentant faith that comes to go under the waters of baptism. Baptism, again, is merely the external symbol of that faith that saves you. Likewise, Paul points to faith, not baptism for salvation, in Romans 10, when he says, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. Paul gets to the point. He's not saying, if you are simply baptized, you will be saved. No, it's what baptism signifies, the faith that you have. If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. Paul builds his entire ministry around the obedience of faith, not the obedience of baptism. No, I'm not saying baptism isn't important, but we don't, and Paul does not build his whole ministry around baptism. He builds it around the obedience of faith. John had a similar goal when he writes his gospel, John 20, 31, but these are written so that you may believe. that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life in his name. The apostles' consistent message is that faith, not baptism, saves us. Or stated another way, baptism symbolizes faith, but it is not the faith itself. Baptism symbolizes faith, but it is not the faith itself. Without faith, the symbol of baptism is meaningless. Number three, the Bible teaches that the sacraments do not create faith. The Bible teaches that the sacraments do not create faith. The first two points we looked at help us to see that the sacraments, baptism and the Lord's Supper do not create faith. The sacraments can only strengthen the faith that is already there. Okay? The baptism, the Lord's Supper. Do not make faith. Boy, evangelism and church planning would be really easy if it could. We could just walk around handing people the bread and wine. Boom! They're born again. Right? We could go around dumping water on people in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Boom! They're born again. I mean, boy, that would make evangelism great. I mean, missions would be fun, you know? Also, you'd be in good shape. You'd just be running around all over the place, just doing this. The sacraments cannot make faith. They can only nourish the faith that is already there. Remember what Jesus said to Nicodemus in John 3. He said, do not marvel that I said to you, you must be born again. The wind blows where it wishes and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit." In other words, man has no control over the Spirit. We cannot manipulate the Spirit to save a person. through the use of the sacraments or any other means. The Spirit is sovereign over us, not us over the Spirit. But we need the Spirit to make a person born again. Again, evangelism would be so easy if baptism were the only thing needed to make a person born again. But that's not what we find in scripture. Recall what Paul says in Romans 10, 17. He says, faith comes from hearing and hearing through the word of Christ. The normative means of salvation is when somebody hears the word preached or shared or they read it. And then the spirit works and they're born again. The normative way the spirit works in saving someone is through the ministry of the word. Read the whole book of Acts. You see the spirit and the preaching going together to growing and multiplying the church. Likewise, I want to say again, building off of these first two points that lead us to this third point, that sacraments do not create faith. Again, Paul built his ministry around the obedience of faith. Knowing that the Spirit saves through preaching, Paul's primary mission is to preach the gospel where it has not been heard. And remember what Paul wrote to the Corinthians at the start of his letter in 1 Corinthians 1.17? He said that he did not come to baptize, but to preach the gospel. The Corinthians were making a big deal about who baptized them. And almost as like a throwaway thing, he's like, I didn't even baptize any of you except for the household of Stephanus. But I did not come to baptize, but to preach the gospel, because that's the thing that saves. Again, baptism is only the sign of faith and of the promises of salvation. So likewise, we're going to see below that the Lord's Supper does not create faith either. Where faith is absent, the Lord's Supper can only bring judgment. Where faith is absent, the Lord's Supper can only bring judgment. So to summarize then, the sacraments are symbols of faith. They cannot create faith. Number four then, the Bible teaches that faith is intelligible and intellectual. Faith is intelligible and intellectual. So the question then is, what is faith? Isn't a child walking up to the Lord's table an act of young faith? It could be. It could be. You hope so. But it's not necessarily. There's a lot of reasons children do things, or adults for that matter. Just simply coming to the table does not mean everyone coming to the table is doing it as an act of faith. And we're going to see very clearly that that is true based on what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11. But anyways, advocates for child communion criticize the believer's communion position. They accuse us of intellectualizing the faith. but they are wrong to do so. The Bible teaches that faith is intellectual and faith is capable of responding intelligibly. Salvation comes from a heart that believes and a mouth that confesses. Romans 10.10, I cited that already. But what do they believe and confess? Saving faith is built on content that a person can understand and communicate. Right? Again, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. So scripture tells us that faith is intellectual and capable of giving specific answers. about what we believe. And I don't want to steal thunder from Gideon's sermon next week, but that's why we have confessions and creeds. It's, this is what we believe. This is what we confess. Because faith should be intellectual. It should be capable of understanding. Intelligible. Now, of course, that doesn't mean that a child's faith is at the same level as a professor at a seminary somewhere. We all have different levels of faith and different levels of ability to communicate, but the basics, like Jesus is Lord, Jesus saved me from my sins, are things that even a child, when they're ready, can profess and understand. I will not get into the question of – regarding infants and the mentally handicapped. If you'd like to study that, you're welcome to consider Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 10, Paragraph 3. Westminster Confession of Faith 10.3, if you want to study more on that. There are certainly going to be exceptions to this intellectual ability to understand and comprehend, and you can study that there. faith, real faith, we can say what we believe and why in an age appropriate or developmentally appropriate kind of way. Okay, let's go to number five. The Bible teaches that faith is essential. Okay, and I'm not gonna beat this point to death. I think we should understand that faith is essential for salvation, but I'll give you one verse, Acts 4.12, and there is salvation in no one else for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. And likewise, Paul, Ephesians 2, 8, 9, for by grace you have been saved through faith. By grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. Okay, so a pastor or priest who baptizes a child cannot produce faith in that child. Neither you as a parent or a grandparent can produce faith in your child, your grandchild. That is the gift of God. So having established the necessity of faith for salvation, let's now turn then to the question of what the Bible requires for worthy participation in the Lord's Supper. Okay, all of this that we've done so far basically is laying groundwork to say that no person comes to the table innocent. And thus nobody comes to the table on their own worthy of participation in the Lord's supper simply by baptism or just because you think you're a good person or your kid's a good kid or any other reason. The Bible is clear. No one is worthy to come to the Lord's table. And no one is worthy to come into the kingdom of God without faith. Faith is essential. It's the thing that marks us. Faith is the thing that makes us worthy to come to the table. So let's look at this then in our sixth point. The Bible teaches that baptism doesn't automatically make you worthy of the table. Baptism doesn't make you automatically worthy of the table. This is a big thing for child community advocates. You've been baptized, so therefore you're worthy. You could go to 1 Corinthians 7 and say that if there's a child of a believing parent, that child is holy. Which is true. So you could think then, well, therefore, because that child's holy, because they're a child of a believing parent, therefore they'd be worthy to go to the table. But in the same letter in 1 Corinthians, we are clearly shown that not all the baptized people in the church of Corinth were worthy to come to the Lord's table. Baptism isn't an automatic ticket. for worthy participation in the table. Now, just to kind of lay one other foundation, and we are going to go a little longer in this message today, and I apologize for that, but I think it's necessary, is that baptism is a big deal in the Church of Corinth. Paul writes all about it, and they're all, they're arguing, well, my baptism's better because Apollos baptized me, you know, Paul baptized, you know, it was like, who, who baptized you? And Corinth was way off on the importance of baptism, but we can assume as Paul's writing this letter that everyone he's writing to is baptized. Every person that he's writing to is baptized, given what he says in chapter one of his letter. Indeed, more than that, I think we can also make a fair assumption that scholars generally agree that the New Testament has no category for an unbaptized Christian. There's nowhere in the New Testament where we see someone who's a Christian but not baptized as a sign of their faith. So it's a safe assumption on these two grounds to understand that everybody that Paul is writing to in 1 Corinthians is baptized. And he's showing here in this letter that not everyone who's baptized is worthy to come to the table. And we see this expressly in 1 Corinthians 11 verses 27 to 28, where Paul says, whoever therefore eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. A personal examination is necessary for worthy participation in the Lord's Supper. Again, note here, it doesn't say the parent's examination of the child. It's a personal examination. Let a person examine himself then. And so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. As in Corinth, so today, baptism is not enough. Due to a lack of personal examination and repentant faith, the church includes baptized people who are not worthy to participate in the Lord's Supper. So that could be true of us too. Just because you've been baptized, if you're not coming with repentant faith, you're not worthy to participate. The scholar Frank Thielman writes about unworthy participation in personal examination. He gives a helpful note in the ESV Study Bible. He writes, unworthy manner probably refers to the incompatibility of the Corinthians' divisive arrogance as compared to the sacrificial others-oriented nature of Jesus' death. And a broader application of this principle would encourage believers to examine their own lives and to repent and ask forgiveness for any unconfessed sins before partaking in the Lord's Supper. So there's both the principle, clearly the Corinthian church, they're doing some funky things in the church services that are making them unworthy, but also there's a broader principle that what Paul is talking about here is we need to examine ourselves and repent of unconfessed sins before coming to the Lord's table. That's what's meant by personal examination. Worthy participation in the Lord's Supper requires that baptized Christians approach the table with repentant faith. Fehlman gives one additional note that I think is helpful. He also says, Now that's one of the, as I have the discussion with my own children about when they're ready, are they understanding how the gospel connects to how they should be treating other people, right? Because the Corinthians, even adults, full-grown adults, were not understanding how the gospel disconnect between their behavior in the church and what they're confessing with their mouths. And that was making them unworthy to go to the table. So we conclude here that repentant faith, not baptism, is the objective marker for going to the table. Baptism's not the objective marker. Repentant faith is. And then finally, number seven. The Bible teaches that unworthy participation in the table brings judgment. Unworthy participation in the table brings judgment. Finally then, the consequence of unworthy participation is severe. Paul goes on in 1 Corinthians 11 and 29 that anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. Up in verse 27, he says, if you take it unworthily, you'll be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. And that guilt will result in judgment. So if you come to the table, even if you're baptized without repentant faith, you're eating and drinking judgment on yourself. And at times to such a degree in the Corinthian context, some were getting sick. And some, Paul said, even have died. He's linking death and sickness, not in all cases, but in some cases, to the judgment of partaking the Lord's Supper in an unworthy manner. That's a serious deal. I think we scarcely really understand what that means in its fullness. I want to go back to a comment by Frank Thielman. I just use him anecdotally as kind of a common kind of understanding of this passage. He says, without discerning the body is understood in one of two ways. Some argue that Paul means without understanding that the bread and wine represent Christ's sacrifice on the cross. Others say that Paul means an inability to understand what it means to act like Christ as members of his body. On either view, he writes, these people do not recognize the spiritual reality of what is happening in the Lord's Supper, and therefore they are acting in a way that dishonors Christ. He says, eating and drinking judgment on himself is a sober warning that the Lord will discipline those who dishonor the Lord's Supper, and therefore it should not be entered into lightly. Fatally then, and this will bring things to a close, fatally then, advocates of child communion argue that 1 Corinthians 11 simply does not apply to baptized children. They'll say, that just applies to adults who are divisive. That's the argument. But there is no warrant in the text for such dismissal. Paul's pronouns in this passage, whoever and anyone, whoever, verse 27, anyone, verse 29, refer to every baptized person in the Corinthian church, man, woman, and child. So we've been asking, should children eat the Lord's Supper? And it's kind of an ambiguous question, because in one way, we can say yes. And in another way, we can say no. If a child has personal faith and ability to examine themselves, then we can say yes. If they don't, no. And the reason is, is because it's the duty, and again, in the case, the way we fence the table in our church is by, if someone wants to come to the table, they need to make a profession of faith to the elders of the church, which should be Peter and myself in our context. And that's the normative way Reformed and Presbyterian churches do it. There's not an age requirement, there's a faith requirement. An age-appropriate faith requirement. And the reason we fence the table is that we as pastors have blood on our hands. And I do not want to be responsible for letting somebody, because of my negligence, eat and drink judgment on themselves. And no pastor or elder or church wants that on them. If you want to read this in greater detail again, I would encourage you to read the position paper that will be attached when we post this sermon. I simply want to say in light of everything we've looked at between the child communion position and the believer's communion position, I'm arguing today, in step with the broad Reformed and Presbyterian tradition, that believers' communion is what the Bible teaches. In the light of that, I'll close with just two statements from our tradition. Again, Westminster Larger Catechism, question 177. Where do the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper differ? The sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper differ in that baptism is to be administered but once with water and to be a sign and seal of our regeneration in engrafting into Christ and that even to infants. Whereas the Lord's Supper is to be administered often in the elements of bread and wine to represent and exhibit Christ as spiritual nourishment to the soul and to confirm our continuance and growth in him. and that only to such as are of years and ability to examine themselves and likewise then in closing we affirm as biblically faithful the broader reform tradition as expressed in the belgic confession article 35 Lastly, we receive this holy sacrament in the assembly of the people of God with humility and reverence, keeping up among us a holy remembrance of the death of Christ our Savior, with thanksgiving, making their confession of our faith and of the Christian religion. Therefore, no one ought to come to this table without having previously rightly examined himself, lest by eating of this bread and drinking of this cup he eat and drink judgment to himself. In a word, we are moved by the use of this holy sacrament to a fervent love towards God and our neighbor. Make what you will of the Reformed tradition in our confessions. I'm arguing in this paper that our historic confession of faith is right and true and accurate. As you've seen in both these two cases, they simply reiterate what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11, that anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body without personal examination, eats and drinks judgment on themselves, so that our fence of the Lord's table is nothing more than what the Bible does to fence the Lord's table, saying, let a person examine himself. And so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. I'd be happy to entertain any questions later on that you have, or you can send me an email, but I would encourage you to read this paper. And there's other resources, of course, that you can read as well. But I pray that you would search the scriptures for yourself, because we're only as strong as our weakest member as a church, aren't we? Search the Scriptures for yourself, so that you're believing these things, not simply because I told you so, or because a Confession says it, but because it's what the Scripture teaches. So let's study the Scriptures together, and be reformed in our worship according to the Word of God.