Well, this morning we come to our third message in the series on the sacraments and the third message on baptism. And I wanna stay from the outset that every now and then a topical sermon is good, but if all a preacher ever does is topical sermons, I get pretty wary of it personally as a minister and what I've seen, because it is really easy for a minister to start just preaching on their hobby horses. And it's really important that the word of God and the sequential reading and working through the word of God in books and chapters is vital to not only understanding all of what God wants us to hear, but also the balance of what he wants us to hear. There are times to give more of a theological summary of a doctrine. And I think, especially as we get underway as First Presbyterian Church of Norway, it's really important to teach on the sacraments because we want to practice them. Jesus has ordained us and called us to practice them, but it's really important that we know what we're doing. And so these three weeks have been my best attempt really to help you understand why do we baptize babies as Presbyterian and Reformed people? Why do we do that? and next week we will then look at what does the Lord's Supper mean, what is it about, and I hope these have been helpful lessons for you to understand these two important and ancient sacraments of the church. As you recall in week one, we talked about the biblical foundations for the practice of infant baptism as Reformed and Presbyterian people. We talk specifically about God's call on Abraham to give his children the sign of his faith. Abraham is the model of the gospel that is brought forward in the New Testament. Abraham believed and it was credited him as righteousness. And God called Abraham to give his children the sign of his faith, knowing full well that not all of Abraham's children would go on to believe, Ishmael included. Nevertheless, he was to do that. We saw the principle of household solidarity, both in the Old Testament and the New Testament, where the faith of a parent, usually the father, but it could also be the mother, represents the faith of the children in that time when they live in the house. We saw also that baptism is the entrance sacrament. It's the thing that you do to be marked out as the visible people of God. It's the first thing. It doesn't come later on. And we also saw the warning about breaking the covenant, that though you bear the sign of the covenant, you can walk away and break it. And heaven forbid, but our kids could do that, or we could do that. and therefore the biblical call is a call to perseverance. So that neither circumcision nor baptism is a guarantee of salvation if you don't persevere in the faith. And then we saw last week in the second part, we looked at historical, the historical practice of the early church in respect to infant baptism. And we saw near universal practice of it with some very rare exceptions. and that even the the main person, Tertullian, that those who oppose infant baptism use, we showed that even Tertullian in one place seems to be specifically talking about pagans coming in and they should wait till their families are catechized, but in another place he assumes Christian baptism for the infants of Christian families. So we saw that even there, the near universal practice for 1600 years to the Reformation was infant baptism, and that was in alignment with really everything we saw in the Bible, both the mention of Abraham, as we saw from Augustine, and the parallel of circumcision, household solidarity, baptism is the entrance sacrament and the warning against covenant breakers as augustine did as we saw this early kind of nascent articulation of what would later become reformed theology of baptism all of that's reflected in the universal church and so we see a very wide I think, for me, persuasive case for why we baptize babies from the biblical witness as well as from the hermeneutical, really the biblical interpretive witness of the early church at how they interpreted scripture. This does not mean that this is just easy to change your mind on if maybe you're on the other side. And I have to say that if parts one and two did not convince you Part three today will probably not do anything for you either. I mean, I myself wrestled with these things. A lot of the, I was a pastor in the Baptist tradition. I should say the Baptist free church tradition. And I've experienced the other side. I've argued for the other side. It's what I grew up with. Really, usually when you grow up in a tradition, you kind of don't question things until you're really forced to wrestle with it. And it was as our kids were getting older that I was really going, well, what age should they be baptized in? And then I was kind of forced to really analyze the position. Because up to that time, when you don't have kids, you just kind of usually assume whatever you grow up with. And even moving into the pastorate, oftentimes you just take on the tradition that you're in. And sometimes it's that first pastorate where you're really practicing things and wrestling with things that you really start to dig in, stuff you didn't have time to do in seminary. And in some ways that's a bit of my case as well. It was during my first pastorate that I really began to wrestle with the doctrine of credo baptism or believers baptism and not baptizing infants. And what I share with you today are my own reflections with scripture and with some dangers that I saw from the baptistic tradition of what it, the danger it poses to people and to children who grow up in that tradition. I want to speak with a lot of love and respect and admiration for both sides because I grew up in it. I love, I have a lot of beloved colleagues and family members in that tradition and many of those people are supporting me here as a Presbyterian Pedobaptist. to be here. So I speak with a lot of hopefully warm admiration for both sides, but I do want to share, and I hope it's helpful, my pastoral experience of some of the dangers of the other side. So the first two weeks, I really gave you a positive case for the Reformed Presbyterian view of infant baptism, Today will be a little more of a negative case, but I hope that I give it to you winsomely and fairly and would convey it in a way that if some of my Baptist brethren were sitting here, I could look them in the eye after saying it. So I wanna say it with that kind of integrity, Lord willing. So what I wanna look at this morning is five dangerous beliefs or hidden implications from the Baptist view of baptism. Sometimes in an educational speak, we use the term kind of explicit curriculum and hidden curriculum. So explicit curriculum is what you say. The hidden curriculum is what you teach by what you actually do. So there's sometimes a difference between what we say and teach is the emphasis, or the main thing, and what our actions actually show to be the emphasis and the main thing. I think as Christian families, there's a lot we can learn from that. I mean, we all know, or maybe you grew up in the family where You grew up putting on the appearance and going to church, kind of self-justifying yourself before others, looking good, but then in the week, your parents said nothing about the gospel or the faith, you know? And the Lord's Day was treated very lightly. And it's just something you did when it was convenient. Whether you grew up that way or, I did not, praise the Lord, but we all know people or maybe you had that kind of experience. And the hidden curriculum was teaching this really doesn't matter that much. So you can say anything you want, but it's that hidden curriculum that often is the dangerous, subtle thing that has a negative or a positive effect. Hopefully, if the hidden curriculum is good, it should match with your explicit curriculum. But anyways, I want to look at five dangerous beliefs or hidden implications from the Baptist view of baptism. And that would include just the doctrine of the church from a Baptist perspective. And these are things that I wrestled with as a Baptist free church pastor. So number one is, the number one dangerous belief, or dangerous belief number one, I should say that way, is that baptism authenticates your regeneration. baptism authenticates your regeneration and what we mean by that is it's it's the seal or the stamp that says you are born again you are born again and I should say with with all of these things some of these are implied but not explicitly taught some of them are explicitly taught but Oftentimes in a baptistic view of baptism, you'll hear a phrase like, baptism is an outward sign of an inward grace. Baptism is an outward sign of his inward grace. And what that implies then is that if somebody is baptized, that inward grace has actually happened. that if you're baptized, it actually means that that inward grace has happened automatically. In some senses, it's not that different from the Roman Catholic doctrine of baptism, which just by the working of the actual baptism, it automatically regenerates the child. Lutherans have a similar kind of view, but that it's an outward sign of an inward grace. It implies that it has happened. We need to qualify that that can be true. When God sovereignly elects and chooses his people, when they're baptized, that sacrament does have power. but it's only power according to his election. So that I can't just go randomly like dunking people or like, like tossing water on people while I'm running through the city and saving everybody, you know, cause they've been baptized. It doesn't work that way. Okay. It doesn't, it doesn't work that way. It can be true, but it is not guaranteed to be true. The purpose of baptism usually in the Baptistic tradition is that it's in some sense a born again test. Are we sure that this person is truly saved? Which is why Baptists have debates about what age a person should be baptized. Can they be baptized as a child at eight or nine? Or some Baptist churches say not till they're an adult. So we need to wait, we need to see what they do after they're out of their family home. Do they continue in the faith? And then we'll baptize them if they seem like they're born again. The problem that I found as a pastor is that, for one, the New Testament never shows a regeneration test before baptism. When you see the baptisms in Acts, You don't see the apostles slowing down and go, wait a minute, we're moving too fast. Let's make sure you're truly saved. And then we'll baptize you. You know, people are repenting and believing and they instantly are baptizing them like that. So there's no like delay or regeneration test. And in fact, the apostles sometimes got it wrong. Not everyone that the apostles baptized maintained their Christian faith to the end. So Simon the Magician, for example. He, according to church tradition, is noted as the founder of Gnosticism, which is an early church heresy. And whether that be true or not, we see Simon Magnus or Simon the Magician in Acts, who is baptized, showing his true colors. and the apostles call him to repent. But the story of church history goes that his spiritual children grew in the Gnostic sect. So anyways, whatever we think about how Simon Magnus ended up, it shows that the apostles didn't quite have it right if they baptized him, if the point of baptizing is to make sure someone's saved before you baptize them. like to really make sure that their faith is credible, that their repentance is credible. We don't see that in the New Testament. What the Bible calls for and emphasizes is not where you begin, but where you end. not where you begin, but where you end. The emphasis of the Bible is on persevering in faith to the end. What I often found in more Baptist kind of cultures, which is just broadly evangelical culture, that a lot of emphasis is actually on where you began. What's your spiritual birthday? Were you really converted back then? You're looking backwards rather than looking forwards. So there's a big danger of making baptism about making sure that you're saved because it just kind of sets people up to think, well, yeah, I was baptized and now I'm good. And we're looking backwards rather than looking forward. Related to this implication is, I would say, dangerous belief or implication number two. The second thing is this belief or implication that all church members are saved. That all church members are saved. Some have explicitly taught, for example, that the church is for believers only, but for all believers. And this implies that all church members are saved. Now, most of the people that would say this would say, yes, there are exceptions, but the implicit teaching in the church then, if you're saying the church is for believers only, is that everyone who's a church member is a believer and is truly saved. And in my experience, this produces naive parents as well as nominal Christians. And there are obviously, the majority in between there, fervent, devoted believers and Christians. So praise the Lord for that. But it can produce, on the one hand, naive parents, and on the other hand, nominal Christians. Because the view is like, well, speaking of a wayward child, or a wayward brother, or somebody you know, a family member, well, they're not walking with the Lord, but they were baptized, they prayed the prayer, I know they're gonna come back. And it deceives people into the reality of what's going on. On the other hand, it can make people that just, well, I prayed, I was baptized, I prayed the sinner's prayer, and I don't really need to go to church or do anything else. It can produce a nominalism that is spiritually deadly. Now I should say with another qualification that wherever infant baptism is practiced and taught that a child is automatically saved if they're baptized, it produces that same kind of nominalism as well. But what we need to be is realistic about the nature of the visible church. A really important concept to bear in mind is the distinction between the visible and the invisible church. The visible church is everybody who is members of the church. The invisible church are God's elect who are truly saved. And in every age and in every generation, both in the Bible and church history, there are people who are church members, so they're members of the visible church, who by their actions and conduct prove that they are not. born again, they're not Christians. And so we need to be realistic about the visible church, about what it is, not make more or less of it. So for example, in the Old Testament, referring to the Old Testament people, Paul in Romans chapter nine says, not everyone who was born a Jew is a Jew. Not everyone who was born a child of Abraham truly is a child of Abraham. We saw that even with Ishmael, Abram's own son. that he wasn't truly, spiritually speaking, a child of Abraham. Even though he bore the sign of the covenant, Ishmael was circumcised, he showed that he truly wasn't a spiritual child of Abraham. And the same thing happens in the New Testament. John will write, they were of us, but they went out from us to show that they were not truly of us. So there can be baptized people, whether baptized as adults or children, who appear to be members of the church, but who by their actions, they eventually depart or leave or abandon the faith. and they show that they're non-believers by their actions. So both in the New Testament and the Old Testament, the visible church is a mixed people, and the same is true today. And when you teach that the church is for believers only, but for all believers, you produce that sense that everybody here is just saved, and you just kind of assume it. One pastor spoke to another of my pastoral colleagues who said, do you really think there's people in the church membership who aren't saved? You really think that? And both of these men were well-reputable, solid theological guides of men of good character. But it can produce, whether for pastors or for church members, a sense that everybody here is saved. And we then neglect to call each other to persevere in the faith. to the end. So from my perspective, both from the dangerous belief number one and number two, the Presbyterian and Reformed doctrine of baptism, both is a call to perseverance, to persevere in the faith, to look ahead, not behind. And then it's also realistic about the visible church so that people are not deceived into thinking otherwise. Dangerous belief or implication number three that I found as a pastor in my old tradition is that baptism tends to be viewed as something for the mature. Baptism is for the mature Christian. So what we see is that what should be an entrance sacrament, something that you receive at the beginning of your Christian life or a child when they're born into a Christian home, gets turned into a mark of maturity. And many people would say, well, I'm waiting to be baptized. I don't think I'm quite ready to be baptized yet. They're still wrestling with this theology, theological thing, or that theological thing. I'm not ready yet to get baptized. And that all speaks of this notion that you have to meet a certain kind of mark. You gotta kind of meet a certain bar. You gotta rise up to that before you're ready to be baptized. But again, we never see the Bible teach this. Who is the kingdom for? In the Bible, we see that the kingdom is for newbies, right? In the book of Acts, we see baptism of newbies. People who have just really basic faith and repentance, they're baptized. Their households are baptized. They're newbies in the faith. They're not mature. They're not spiritual elites. The reason for this is that the New Testament teaches that baptism is the entrance sacrament, like circumcision before. So take the Great Commission, for example, where Jesus says, go into all nations, make disciples. So make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey all that I taught and commanded. But baptism comes before the teaching all that I taught and commanded. It's the entrance for those that have a basic repentance and faith. It's the beginning point for discipleship, of learning all that Jesus taught and commanded. And when we think about our little children in Christian homes, when does discipleship begin for our little children? I don't know about you, but I was speaking the gospel to my kids while they were still in the womb. I was talking to them in utero, you know, and they're born and we begin to sing with them. We sing the songs with them. We sing hymns with them, Christian songs. We're teaching them about the faith. That is what the Old Testament people did by circumcising their children and giving their children the sign of the faith. That's what we do by giving our children the sign of the faith. If they have the privilege by God to be born into a Christian family, discipleship starts at the beginning. The baptism is for the weak, not the mature. The kingdom of God is for the weak, not the mature. As we read in Luke 18, as believing parents who were following Jesus, disciples of Jesus, brought their kids to him, Jesus said, forbid them not, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven. Then he goes on, and for you, if you want to join the kingdom of heaven, you must be like this child. The kingdom is not for the mature, it's for the weak. It depends not on our intellect or maturity or theological knowledge. It depends on the Lord's call. and often through Christian families. That's why when in the sermon at Pentecost and the people were cut to the heart and they said to Peter, what must we do to be saved? He says, repent and be baptized. This promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord calls to himself. And if you're a child who was born in a Christian home, You had that privilege laid upon you before you had anything to do with it. You were called as a family. And again, that does not mean that there won't be covenant breakers in Christian families, just as in the Old Testament people of God families, there were covenant breakers. But that call comes upon families. very often. So, dangerous belief or implication number four, that baptism replaces church discipline. Baptism replaces church discipline. Now, I never saw this explicitly taught but it was often implied in practice. And I think the thinking goes, if you raise the bar for baptism, so you really make sure that you only baptize those who you're pretty 99% sure are truly saved, well then you don't have to discipline people, because discipline is for purging people who prove to be unbelievers out of the church. And the evangelical church today does not, in the main, ever practice church discipline. It is very, very rare. It does happen, but it is very, very rare. So then baptism now gets put in the place of what church discipline is for. One of the major Baptistic arguments against Presbyterian and Reformed infant baptism is that you're allowing unbelievers into the church. If you baptize babies, you're allowing unbelievers into the church. church. That's probably the main argument that I heard going along. That's how you'll become liberal, if you let unbelieving babies into the church. But history, if you study history, both modern and ancient, church history proves that unbelievers will surface in all denominations. Whatever stripe or whatever tradition you come, unbelievers surface, both that were baptized as babies and both that were baptized as adults. So baptism can never replace church discipline, no matter what side you take. But the problem is that oftentimes, because baptism is treated as like not exactly a replacement for church discipline, but we're so sure that they're saved that we don't really have to worry about it afterwards, that again, it really deceives people into thinking they're Christians and allows unbelievers to remain in the midst of the church. Presbyterian Reformed baptism requires a public confession of faith to come to the Lord's table. We call it communicant membership, to commune at the Lord's table. You have to make a profession of faith. But we see that the sacrament is not a regeneration test, it's not a test from the mature. all the way from the biblical record to the historical record God's people have given their children the sign of their their faith and that if that child eventually chooses to walk away if they're the parents should discipline them if they're in the home but if they're adults then church discipline needs to be enacted and I think I've heard from Baptists themselves, like Mark Dever, for example, a very well-known Baptist, who talks about how Baptists are notorious to have bloated membership roles that have people that are dead on there, that have children that have walked away in there, adults that have walked away in there, and they never remove them from the list. They never excommunicate, they never discipline. So Baptists are as bad as anyone of retaining known unbelievers on their membership roles. So baptism can never replace discipline. The way that, I think a helpful way to think about Presbyterian reform sacramentology is that those that are baptized, children or adults, are innocent until proven guilty. Not guilty until proven innocent. We really see both in church history and in the Bible that people are, if they make a basic profession of faith or they're born in a Christian home, they're assumed to be innocent until they prove that they're guilty. As opposed to someone having to prove that they're innocent and just being assumed guilty before that. So it's a total difference in the way we view the people in the visible church. But it can never replace discipline. Dangerous belief or implication number five, lastly here. Baptism tends to be portrayed as about what you have done to prove you're born again. less emphasis on what God has done. Now, everybody in all circles, at least all evangelical circles, say that we are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. I think even Armenians would say that. So, Calvinists, Armenians would say that. I think all stripes would be able to quote Ephesians 2 and say, we're saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. But again, it's what is emphasized in the baptism. And what I saw as a pastor in baptismal testimonies is often it has little to do about talking about the gospel and a lot about showing and proving that you are a believer. I was like this and then now I'm like this. And I used to do this and now I do that. And really the whole emphasis is about what you have done to show that you actually are born again. Not always the case, but often the case in my experience. And this too runs contrary to the gospel. I have found that a baptistic type of theology can often imply a sort of Arminian or semi-Pelagian View of doctrine I'll explain that I realize those are probably unfamiliar terms But that at the end it's God threw the life raft out But the question is did you choose to grab the life raft or not? that kind of view that comes from this. Because in the reform view, we talk about God's sovereign grace in saving you, whether as an adult or being born in a Christian home and being reared up in the faith. That's just God's sovereign grace. The contrary often implies, at least the way it's practiced, that, well, I was this, and now I did that, and this is why I'm a Christian. And I wanna be fair to this position. Again, you'll have many Reformed or Calvinistic Baptists who would definitely refute an Arminian or semi-Pelagian view, which, I told you I'd define that term, but, Pelagius was a guy that did battle theologically with Augustine on can we save ourselves or does God have to save us? And to what degree do we need to kind of pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps? You know, like if there's a pit, does God lower the ladder and then we we grab on, or we're in the pit, and does God lower the ladder, or the rope, and we just kind of hold on, and then he pulls us up? Or are we in the pit dead, and God breathes life into us and pulls us out? We're just laying there completely helpless, and then he breathes life and takes us up. The last one is the Reformed Presbyterian view of salvation. We're totally dead and we're brought up. We're called, we're raised to do life. We couldn't even grab on to the life raft because we were lying dead at the bottom of the ocean. The other views, which are where the Baptistic tradition comes from, though now there would be what you call reformed Baptists, come from the other position, the semi-Pelagian or Arminian tradition. And then some reform tendencies came later in a small group. But I think that this kind of view of Baptism implies this kind of feel. So I want to be fair. I think we could argue about that, but that's my perception and my experience as a pastor in that tradition. Presbyterian reform baptism, to me, does the best job of showing God's sovereign grace to helpless sinners as he works in individuals and families from every tribe and tongue and nation and calls them to himself. I think to me it is in the best continuity with God's promise to Abraham that in him all the families of the earth would be blessed. I think that language is very specific. I think it is in best continuity with Peter when he says, repent and be baptized as promises for you and for your children and everyone whom the Lord calls to himself. And I think it's most consistent with Luke 18 when the disciples were holding the children back But Jesus said, forbid them not for to such belongs the kingdom of God. In the end, I think that the Presbyterian reform view of baptism does the best job when well articulated of reflecting the gospel and the God of sovereign grace who called us as weak and helpless sinners. So thus ends our three weeks on why we baptize babies. I hope it's been helpful to you. I do hope to get these recordings online sooner than later, and I can send them to you if you'd like to go back and re-listen. And we also have our sermon on baptism is about the gospel, if you want a broader view. So I hope this has been a winsome series. I would love to discuss more and further on this. I really do, like I said, I know both sides because I've been there. And from my experience and study, I'm thoroughly a Reformed and Presbyterian infant Baptist for every reason that is described here. Next week, we're gonna look at the sacrament. Why do we practice the Lord's Supper? What does it mean? Who should partake of it? And then the following week, then, the following Lord's Day, we'll practice the Lord's Supper for the first time. And then the week after, we're gonna have baptisms. I think it's the 6th and the 13th, if I remember correctly. But I think that's the flow of events. So may the Lord bless you as you continue your study of this doctrine. It is important. It is not a tertiary issue. It's at the heart of the practice of God's people all the way back to Abraham to today. So this is an ancient thing, circumcision, then baptism, and the New Testament early church. It's not a subtle tertiary thing. It's at the heart of the faith. And it's, as we say, or as Augustine would say long ago, that the sacraments are visible words. They're visible words of the gospel. They should show the gospel. And I hope that I've shown you in these three lessons why the Presbyterian Reform view of baptism, and especially baptizing infants, is the greatest display of the gospel in visible form. Let's pray. Lord, we come to you I hope with awe and admiration and gratitude that you saved us by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. We thank you for those of us who grew up in a Christian heritage to have that privilege. We grieve for those who don't. I think of the little children that my children go to school with. And the reality of so many being is, to use Paul's words, are without hope and without God in this world. So I pray that we as Christians and those of us who are Christian parents, we would take this duty, not lightly, but with great earnestness, seriousness, sobriety. And that really remembering at the end of the day that Baptism can only point us to something, but it doesn't replace the call to persevere in faith. And it doesn't replace our duty of public and private worship and of maintaining communion with you, not just when we gather together, but throughout the week. I pray for all of us that our explicit curriculum and our hidden curriculum would be identical. That we would practice what we preach. And that when we fail to do that, that we would be quick to confess those things to you. that we might live with a sober judgment as Christians, pilgriming along, waiting for the reclamation of all things in the new creation. I pray for everyone here that we would persevere to the end, that you would sustain our faith, that of our children and our children's children, even to the third and fourth generation. Amen. Please open your Psalter to Psalm 146a.