Household Baptism Without Faith?

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I will confess, I was tempted to move out of our series, but I'm like, man, we are making such progress and had been making such slow progress for so long that we will take this as a indication from the

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Lord. He would like us to someday finish the topic of the subject of baptism and is giving us opportunity to do so.

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If you're visiting with us, we have been in a series on the subject of baptism. I had done a couple of sermons early on, then we were interrupted by various sundry other things.

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And then over the past now four weeks, including today, we have been pressing through with our subject, looking at the baptism of John.

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And then for the past few weeks, we have been looking at each of the instances of baptism in the history of the early church in the book of Acts.

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Our goal, we have already looked at the meaning of the term as it was used historically, its foundational meaning, its application.

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So we looked at that. And now we're looking at the examples of baptism in the history of the church.

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And then once we're done with that, we will start looking at specific texts in the epistles in Paul, Peter, where baptism is either the specific subject or is at least brought in to the discussion as this has to do with the mode, meaning, application, theology.

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And then once we have that done, then we can look at what has happened down through church history in regards to an understanding of this subject before we wrap up in looking at why we hold the position that we do in response to our dear brothers and sisters who hold different viewpoints and perspectives.

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But I think one of the problems in looking at baptism is very often this foundational material, this spade work, this groundwork is not done.

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Sometimes it's just assumed and assumed improperly. And so we are being very careful, hopefully so that we can put these resources together.

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And if someone has a question as to why we stand where we stand, then you're able to look at those things.

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So with that in mind, we turn to Acts chapter nine. And we very briefly, because it's not central,

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I'm gonna have to be somewhat quick, partly because I don't want everyone to pass out from the heat, and partly because I want to get as far as I can at the same time.

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So the incident of Paul's baptism will just be mentioned briefly, but I do think we need to look at it.

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So Acts chapter nine, verse 17, so Ananias departed and entered the house and after laying his hands on him, now remember, just background real quick,

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Paul's been knocked from his steed, horse, donkey, whatever it was he was riding, and has had an encounter with Christ, but he has been struck blind in the process.

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And so he has been led away, and a man named Ananias has been given the task, one that I'm not sure

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I would have wanted to have been given given Saul's reputation, the task of going to him and explaining to him what has happened.

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So Ananias departed and entered the house and after laying his hands on him said, brother Saul, the Lord Jesus who appeared to you on the road by which you were coming, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the

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Holy Spirit. And immediately there fell from his eyes something like scales and he regained his sight and he got up and was baptized and he took food and was strengthened.

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And so you really have barely a sentence here, you briefly have the recording of just a few of the words,

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I can assure you Ananias said more than one sentence to Paul and then walked out of the room.

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But you have the essence of what was communicated and that is he indicates to him that he knows what has happened to him and he brings about the regaining of his sight.

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He noticed he says it's the Lord Jesus who appeared to you on the road, which must have been the thing that is running through Saul's mind.

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The one that he has persecuted, the one that he has detested is the one who not only met him in splendor and glory but has now sent this man who has supernatural knowledge of what took place while he was on the road.

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And I can imagine that Saul, i .e. Paul's mind is in absolute overdrive trying to figure out how he could have missed all of this.

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Now it is interesting that you'll notice, now for several days, continuing on verse 19, now for several days he was with the disciples who were at Damascus and immediately he began to proclaim

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Jesus in the synagogue saying he is the son of God. So it does not take long for Paul to start seeing what he needs to see physically and spiritually in understanding who

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Jesus is. And I find it interesting that he doesn't simply say he is the

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Messiah, he certainly says that but he is proclaiming he is the son of God, a extremely exalted designation of Jesus.

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And as soon as this happens, and interestingly enough, when he is filled with the

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Holy Spirit, there's no reference to him speaking in tongues. Now Paul will say he speaks in tongues more than anybody else later on but it's not even mentioned here.

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Instead he receives his sight and he got up and the first thing he does is he's baptized.

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Now nothing's told us about finding a body of water, nothing's told us about anything else but do we have to have that mentioned every single time?

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We know what the word means, we've seen the regularity, even last week when we talked about the

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Ethiopian eunuch. Here is water, what hinders me from being baptized? I had the words of a friend,

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I hadn't seen them myself but someone forwarded them to me, a friend of mine who's a

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Presbyterian said, well that sounds to me like, not like he was baptized but like he was sprinkled and I'm just sort of like, they went down into the water.

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You can do that standing on the edge, you don't have to get all soaked to do that, it's just, it's amazing the power of tradition, how it can cause you to see things and hear things but the point is, if we're reading

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Acts chronologically and going from beginning to end, is there any question as to how

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Paul was baptized or why he was baptized? There shouldn't be, there's consistency up to this point, there's nothing that's altering that, so far people hear the word and they repent and believe and are baptized and they're baptized in water and they're baptized by immersion and this is what takes place in Paul's experience as well and so we won't spend a whole lot of time upon it because it's not really controversial but we will then go to an extremely important text in Acts chapter 10,

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Acts chapter 10, we're gonna try to get through a number of them today and so I hope

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Lord gives us that time to do so, Acts chapter 10 verse 44, now we have the great transitionary period in the book of Acts, what do

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I mean by that? We've seen the ripples of water, we've thrown the gospel into the world and first it's in Jerusalem and it's

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Jews and then Samaria and eventually you've got to get to the

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Gentiles and Peter is the one who's going to be the first one to bring this message,

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God has to miraculously intervene in triplicate to communicate to him that what

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God has called clean, he is not to call unclean and so he has the vision on the housetop, he's told men are coming, he goes down, they're there, he goes with them and in obvious great discomfort for his traditions, he enters into a

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Gentile home because he's come to realize that God does not have the traditional issues that the

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Jews had in regards to these things and that he is opening up the way of salvation to the

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Gentiles, it's not like Jesus hadn't already indicated things like that but remember, even at the ascension of Jesus, the disciples are still asking questions that demonstrate they haven't fully gotten it yet, it took time, it took time and so Peter proclaims the gospel,

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Cornelius and these God fearers, they are individuals who have been attracted to the message of one

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God, the creator of all things, they're familiar with the Jewish scriptures and an angelic visitor, an angelic message has been sent to Cornelius to go get this

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Peter and so Peter proclaims not only to him but to a whole gathering of people, the message of Jesus Christ and so in verse 44, while Peter was still speaking these words, the

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Holy Spirit fell upon all those who were listening to the message and all the circumcised believers who came with Peter were amazed, why were they amazed?

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Because the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out on the Gentiles also so we can go back and we can read in the gospels and we can see how

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Jesus's message was preparing for these things and certainly the disciples later could look back and go oh wow, how could we have missed that?

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But it took time, tradition is such a strong thing to work through, we all must recognize that, we all have our traditions and when you elevate your tradition to the status of the word of God then it's no longer examinable on the basis of the word of God, you've added to scripture, all of us must be careful, we see the examples over and over again so the circumcised believers, they're even filled with the

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Holy Spirit and they're amazed, the gift of the Holy Spirit has been poured out on the

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Gentiles also for they were hearing them speaking with tongues and exalting God, then Peter answered, what's the first thing

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Peter says? Surely no one can refuse the water for these to be baptized who have received the

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Holy Spirit just as we did, can he? It's fascinating, it's understood that when

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God by his spirit moves in someone's life when regeneration has taken place, when spiritual vision has been given, what's the first thing?

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Well obey Jesus' command, it hadn't been all that long ago that the disciples had heard

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Jesus say, go into all the world and make disciples of all the nations doing what?

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Baptizing them, that was Jesus' command, and if you're gonna be in submission to Jesus, you're gonna do what he commands, and so his first statement, who can refuse the water for these to be baptized, who what?

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Who have received the Holy Spirit just as we did, and at what point did the spirit come upon these individuals as they were listening to the message of the gospel?

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They had already been prepared, Cornelius had had the visitation, go get this man, he will tell you the truth, and so they are wide open, they hear the message, the

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Holy Spirit comes upon them, and Peter's first response is, let's get them baptized.

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Now, if we follow normative mechanisms of interpretation, this isn't gonna be some new kind of baptism, in fact, that would be really dangerous at this point, why?

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Because these are the Gentile believers. If you treat them differently, you're laying the foundation for division in the church, the very thing that Paul is so concerned about in Romans, Peter's concerned about, there cannot, why does

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Paul oppose Peter at Antioch? Because Peter, by his behavior, was possibly causing the very division that would have resulted if you treated the

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Gentile believers differently. You don't baptize the Jewish believers in a way differently than you baptize the

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Gentile believers, because it's all one Christ, it's all one faith.

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That baptism, just like the supper, is the great equalizer.

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There is no super Christian that gets a different kind of supper, a deeper supper.

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You don't get a special kind of baptism that other people don't get that marks you off, no.

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Doesn't matter how much money you've got, doesn't matter your status in the world, doesn't matter if you're a centurion or a grunt

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Roman soldier, doesn't matter if you're Caesar, and it does not matter what color your skin is either.

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You come to the same baptism, the same waters, you walk down into them and you come out of them wet, just like everybody else, and you come to the same table, because it's only one

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Savior, there's only one gospel, there's only one cross, there's only one imputed righteousness.

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And man, if we would just get our eyes back on that, a lot of the mess we're going through would be dealt with.

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So the point is, he ordered them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, then they asked him to stay on for a few days.

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Now, very, very quickly, don't have time to expand upon this very much, but there are people who get confused because they read

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Matthew, and Matthew is baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and then you go to the book of Acts and it just simply says they were baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.

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And there are certain groups, certain non -Trinitarian groups even, that'll say, see, the name of the

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Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is Jesus Christ, and so you're to be baptized in Jesus' name only. There are groups like that out there, the one that's

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Pentecostals, United Pentecostal Church International, et cetera, et cetera. The problem is, what you have going on in Acts is merely a description of Christian baptism.

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It's not giving you the words, the words were provided by Jesus himself. It's simply saying they received

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Christian baptism over against, for example, the baptism of John the Baptist. They received

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Christian baptism in the name of Jesus Christ, that is, they are being associated with him, they know who he is, they know he's the

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Messiah, and they are being baptized and associated with him publicly.

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It is considered a break with everything that has come before and a new commitment to walk in newness of life with Jesus as one's

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Lord, and so this takes place with the Gentiles. They receive the same thing.

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Now, what's interesting is we then leap over five chapters before we come back to any references to the subject of baptism, and this is where, in Acts chapter 16,

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Acts chapter 16, we come back, and this is where the title on your bulletin came from, and I'd be interested, how many of you have never heard of the first word, the title on the bulletin, oikobaptism?

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How many, for the first time, oikobaptism? Go on, put them on up there, be brave. All right, thank you very much, okay.

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Well, at the very least, you will have an advantage in your next Scrabble match.

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Anyone still play that? Oh, it's done on computer now. What is that, words with friends or something like that?

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I don't know. I'm back from the old day where you had actually wooden things you put on. Oh, it was great, it was wonderful.

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We were very quietly in our caves hoping that the dinosaurs walking past us didn't come in and playing

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Scrabble, but they were much simpler days.

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We knew what men were, we knew what women were. It was great, it was wonderful. So we get to Acts chapter 16, and we are now full on into the missionary movement of the church.

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It's going out into the world, but what we see very plainly is

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Paul's not stupid. When he goes into a new place, he's going to start with the

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God -fearers. He's gonna start in the synagogue. He's gonna start amongst the

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God -fearers. He's gonna find places where the scriptures are already available or known, or at least respected.

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And so in Acts chapter 16, verse 11, so putting out to see from Troas, we ran a straight course to Samothrace, and on the day following to Neapolis, and from there to Philippi, which is a leading city in the district of Macedonia, a

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Roman colony. And we were staying in the city for some days. And on the Sabbath day, we went outside the gate to a riverside where we were supposing that there would be a place of prayer.

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And we sat down and began speaking to the women who had assembled. So you don't have a synagogue here.

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There is an assumption next to the river there would be a place of prayer.

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That's interesting. Maybe this was where the

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God -fearers would meet. Maybe people who had been influenced by the scriptures in other contexts, whatever it might be.

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And so they go out and they find women who had assembled, not men. Now that's interesting in light of all sorts of things in regards to the fact that it was the women who were the first ones who saw the resurrection and things like that, but also the reality that the gospel has to go to all people, not just to men and then through men to women, but the disciples, the apostles of Jesus were more than happy to sat down and begin speaking to the women who had assembled.

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And a woman named Lydia from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple fabrics, a worshiper of God was listening.

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So again, like Cornelius, now we have a

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Gentile woman. She seems to be a woman of means.

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She is a seller of purple fabrics and purple fabrics were very, very expensive in that day.

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That was considered a sign of Roman success, shall we say.

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And so if you made fine purple fabrics, you were not lower class, that's for sure.

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You'd be middle class, if not upper class, as far as the possibility of your income. At the same time, we have no reference whatsoever to Lydia's husband ever.

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And so what is the situation here? Well, we don't know. And that's what's interesting to me is when people try to force this particular text into service as an illustration of one person being baptized and then others being baptized because that person was baptized, without faith, without repentance, because this person is baptized, then these people get baptized.

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That's how this text is used by some people. And yet the problem is there are a bunch of assumptions.

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Well, the assumption is that Lydia would have little children in the household, except she has no husband, or at least not one that's mentioned.

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Could he have recently died? I suppose. Could she be old enough she doesn't have little children in the household anymore?

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Yup. Could she have been childless? Yup. Fact is, we don't know.

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And so when Lydia's household will be mentioned later on, the only thing that we can assume is, well, she is a woman of means, so she probably has servants.

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She might have children, she might not not. We simply don't know. Well, when you have a bunch of we don't knows, and then you have to use that as one of your key proof texts, that might mean you're trying to smuggle something in that isn't actually there.

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Keep an eye on that. But she's a worshiper of God. Like Cornelius, somehow there has been a testimony given before this time.

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And she is listening. So what is she doing? She's listening. She's hearing the message of Jesus.

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We once again have proclamation. And the Lord opened her heart to respond to the things spoken by Paul.

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Now, we could camp on that one for a while. If we were wanting to emphasize the reality that it is

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God's spirit and God's sovereignty that brings people into relationship with himself.

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I mean, this is good reformed language. The Lord opened her heart to respond to the things spoken by Paul.

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We all know what that means if we have ourselves experienced that opening of our hearts to hear and to understand.

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And you may have heard the message of the gospel many times before your heart was opened.

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And it wasn't because you had gotten better. You probably got worse. But it was the work of the spirit of God that opened your heart.

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And so the Lord opens her heart. She responds to the gospel message.

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And when she and her household had been baptized, she urged us saying, if you have judged me to be faithful to the

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Lord, come into my house and stay. And she prevailed upon us. So we have one verse.

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And when she and her household, now a household in Greek is an oikos.

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Hence household baptism would be oikobaptism. Now you know where the term comes from.

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It's the idea of the baptism of a household. Now, what is a household?

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Well, that story depends on when you live and where you live. Seems we can't figure any of that out anymore.

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Certainly can't during the month of June anyways. But back then, what would have been involved as a household?

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Well, certainly in ancient context, if you were to look at Abraham, for example, when you look at Abraham's household, it wasn't just he and his wife and his immediate children.

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It included his servants. Now, sometimes we use that term servant in a nice, gentle, kind way.

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But in many situations, the other word that would be just as adequate in its use would be slaves.

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Now, there are all sorts of different kinds of slavery in the ancient world. The Greeks practiced it.

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The Romans practiced it. They practiced chattel slavery, full ownership slavery.

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But a household would include not just your immediate relatives, but extended relatives and very frequently the servants and the slaves.

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And so on the basis of this text and the text we're gonna look at with the

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Philippian jailer in just a moment, there have been those who have taught that what we now have, what we've never seen this before in Acts.

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Up to this point, there is always proclamation, understanding, repentance, and faith. That's what brings about the conditions of baptism.

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But all of a sudden now, going out to the Gentiles, there's something new.

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And this new is that Lydia believes and her household is baptized because Lydia believed.

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She becomes the representative, the federal head of the household, which obviously means there's no husband here, but federal head of the household and therefore all of her children are baptized.

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You have an oikobaptism, a baptism of an oikos of an entire household. Okay? Now, here are some problems with that.

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First of all, you would think if some brand new understanding would be promulgated that there would be something in the text that would indicate this, not just a single sentence and not even, and in fact, it's not even a single sentence, it is a clause introducing the major clause that comes afterwards about what

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Lydia says. If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house and stay. Now, I simply point out that if we were just to continue with what we've already seen and what has already been established as the standard process, including with Gentiles, including with Cornelius, you're gonna have proclamation, we had that.

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You're gonna have acceptance, Lord opens her heart, and then you're gonna have baptism. And why do we assume that Lydia is out there by herself while her household isn't there?

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I mean, they had to have been there to be baptized. So what does that mean? They heard the message, did they not?

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If they were there with Lydia at the place of water, the place of prayer, then they've heard the message that has been proclaimed,

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Lydia hears, her heart is opened, she believes, and so the natural interpretation would be, and so did they.

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I don't know how anyone all of a sudden leaps to, and they did not, but got baptized anyways.

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How do you get to that? I don't see it. Well, you get to that by not starting with these texts, but by creating a whole system up here, and then importing it in later on.

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That's really how it works. You're not gonna get that from reading the text. The natural way of reading the text is, they heard the message, just as Lydia did, she responds, they respond, they're baptized,

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Lydia invites them, the apostles, to stay in her home, which then becomes the foundation for what happens to the jailer.

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That's just a transitionary statement, and that would be the natural way to read it, but instead, those promoting

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Oikobaptism will say, no, actually, here is the first instance of an entirely new way of doing things, where you have one person who repents and believes, and because they do, then everybody in their household gets baptized as well.

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What is interesting is that that then leads to the major questions that, for example, were discussed and debated, even in our own nation, when slavery continued to be an institution in this country, and that is, if you're a good

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Southern Presbyterian plantation owner, should you not baptize your slaves?

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They're part of your household. And there were those who said, yep, or if you want to take it up to the modern day, what if you have a man who becomes converted, he has a wife, a 16 -year -old son, and a 14 -year -old daughter, but the 16 -year -old son, the 14 -year -old daughter, and the wife reject the message.

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They should still be baptized. So you literally have people who've heard the message and have rejected it, receiving the sign of submission to Jesus Christ.

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Pretty hard to find that in the text, but there are those that have gone that far, and I think you could argue, gone that far consistently as well.

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Well, move on down in the story to verse 25.

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You know what has happened. Paul messes up somebody's business by casting out a spirit of prophecy that was really a demonic spirit, and the authorities have gotten involved, and they've locked

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Paul and Silas up in jail. Verse 25, but about midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns of praise to God, and the prisoners were listening to them.

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Well, of course they were listening to them. What else are they gonna do? I've always thought that was so strange. I mean, you're in a prison.

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You're chained to the wall, and there are these crazy Christian guys singing. Well, it's entertainment.

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You didn't have CNN. You know, ESPN was offline that day, something,

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I don't know, and so why not? So they're listening to what they're praying and singing hymns of praise.

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They're having a revival at midnight in the jail. I can guarantee you it was a whole lot more interesting than the night before in that jail.

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The prisoners were listening to them, and suddenly there came a great earthquake. So at the foundations, the prison house were shaken, and immediately all the doors were opened, and everyone's chains were unfastened.

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Now, do I really need to point out that if you're chained to a wall during an earthquake, that's probably not gonna open the chains.

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All right? So this is a supernatural thing. This has meaning to it.

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And so when the jailer awoke and saw the prison doors opened, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself.

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Now, please recognize that's not because this guy had some type of mental disorder or was depressed or, oh,

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I've had a rough life, and this is the worst job I've ever had, and so now they've escaped, and so I'm gonna kill myself.

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No. If you remember in Acts chapter 12, as I recall, when

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Peter was supernaturally released from prison as well, the guards, who had done their jobs, when you're a

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Roman guard, you're not really up to taking on angels as far as releasing prisoners is concerned.

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They had done their job. However, what happened to them? They were executed.

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If you're a Roman soldier, you're a Roman guard, and your prisoners, your charges escape, you will be executed and not executed kindly.

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And so when the jailer awoke, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, supposing the prisoners had escaped.

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I might as well do it to myself. Save them the trouble. At least I can make it quick.

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But Paul cried out with a loud voice, saying, do not harm yourself, for we are all here.

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And he called for lights and rushed in, and trembling with fear, he fell down before Paul and Silas, and after he brought them out, he said, sirs, what must

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I do to be saved? Now, we have heard this text used over and over and over again, and it's always placed in the context of personal salvation, and what must

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I do to be saved, and things like that. In all probability, the jailer is asking them, what can

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I do to save myself? An earthquake has just taken place, and all the prisoners have been freed, and we're all still here, but why?

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What must I do to be saved? He probably does not have, he's not a God -fearer, he doesn't have enough theological background to be specifically asking the last question in some type of evangelism explosion discussion, okay?

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And that's brought out by saying what we have here, Acts 16, 31, they said, believe in the

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Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, and your household, and they spoke the word of the

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Lord to him, together with all those who were in his house. So, he asks, what must

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I do to be saved? They immediately say, let's tell you what you really need to be saved from.

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What you need to be saved from is not simply the situation you're facing with all these prisoners, the situation you need to be saved from is your sin in submission to Jesus Christ truly is.

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And so, they spoke the word of the Lord to him, together with all those who were in his house.

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Now, I know there are those who have looked at Acts 16, 31, and they have said, see, it just takes one.

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If you believe in the Lord Jesus, you will be saved, and everybody in your household will be saved because you believed in Jesus.

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Well, if that's the case, then why they bother proclaiming the message to everybody in the household? All they gotta do is get one of them, and the rest of y 'all get their tickets punched, right?

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No, there are those who've come up with it, but instead, the apostles promised to him salvation not just for him, but for all his household as well, and how does that salvation come?

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By faith and repentance on the part of each person, himself and all those who are in his household.

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And so, they speak the word of the Lord to him, together with all those who were in his house, and he took them that very hour of the night and washed their wounds, and immediately he was baptized, he and all literally of his own, but hence his household.

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Now, let's just stop for a second. What we have plainly in the text is that the message, the word of the

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Lord has been preached to the Philippian jailer and his household.

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Now, some people would say, well, he might have had infants in the household.

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Okay, but the text says that they spoke the word of the Lord to him together with how many of those who were in his house?

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All, all, and so all those who were baptized had heard the word of the

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Lord, they had had it preached to them. The consistent standard up to this point has been, you hear the message, you repent and believe, and are baptized.

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There is no reason to break that here either, unless you're literally going to say that what we have now is another situation where there are individuals who heard the message, rejected the message, but were then forced baptized.

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Notice what is then said, because this is where some of the controversy comes in, verse 34, and he brought them into his house and set food before them and rejoiced greatly, having believed in God with his whole household.

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Let me just ask you a simple question. Sorry about that. Eventually, I'm not sure which one of us is going to do it, but when you plug in a fan back there, we will have a

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YouTube moment, and that will have the most views of anything else, especially if it's me that ends up on the floor back there when

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I trip over the fan plug. What's the natural way of reading this?

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I mean, from a reform perspective. He brought them in his house, set food before them, that's the

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Baptist part. It must be hot in here.

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Man, I'm going to tell you. There are a few of you going, what did he say? What? What? I can't,

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I can't. That's Luke back there. I'm sure Luke is just about ready to melt into a puddle. Right, Luke? Yeah, hey, he says he's good, he says he's good.

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Keep going. Set food before them and rejoiced greatly, having believed in God with his whole household.

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Now, it is pointed out that having believed in God is specifically in the language referring to the man, and that's true, that's true.

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With his whole household, and they'll say, well, what that means is he believed, his whole household rejoiced greatly, but they were all baptized because of his belief.

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And you're sitting there going, why are we doing mental gymnastics here? Because it is mental gymnastics.

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From a reform perspective, let me just ask a simple question. If you are in the

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Philippian jailer's household, you have had the word of the Lord proclaimed to you, but you have rejected that message.

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You have not repented and believed. You found it to be weird, this idea of some

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Jewish Messiah guy rising from the dead, really? Maybe you're already very committed to Apollo, Sir, Mercury, or one of the many

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Roman gods. Maybe you had just been gone through a ceremony in one of their temples.

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Would you rejoice greatly that Dad has now committed himself to this weird religion from Israel and is forcing you to get dunked in water, but you're rejoicing greatly that he has joined up with this cult group?

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Really? Do lost people normally rejoice when people submit to Jesus?

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What reformed person has ever thought this? Every reformed person that's ever used this text to say, see, oikobaptism, they got baptized because of his faith.

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No, they got baptized because they heard the word of the Lord. They heard the word of the

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Lord and they're rejoicing with him in his belief because they believe too.

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Ooh. That's the natural reading of the text. It is absolutely upside down unnatural to go, what we've got here is we have another oikobaptism where the household's being baptized because of the faith of the leader of the household, even if it's a woman with Lydia.

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Leader of the household is baptized, so everybody else does, even though in each instance, they've heard the word of the

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Lord, they've heard the message, but we're gonna assume that having heard the message, they didn't believe it.

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Because if they did believe it, then we know why they were baptized, huh? So the only way to make this an oikobaptism on the authority of the leader is to assume they didn't believe.

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And that raises all sorts of incredibly difficult questions. And yet, that's what we face.

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That's the concept. And so, you will find some of our dear, dear brothers, and sisters, obviously, that we have conversations with regularly.

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And especially because we have such a large number of homeschoolers, and hence are connected to all the homeschool networks, all you ladies have good

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Presbyterian and other Reformed denomination sisters in the

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Lord, and you have conversations about your kids, and you have conversations about baptism, and you have conversations about why are you

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Reformed Baptist apologia people so weird? Why not just go with the flow?

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This is how we've done it since the Reformation. Well, keep something in mind.

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I'll establish this later. Calvin's doctrine of baptism was not taught by anyone in the history of the church before Calvin.

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That's a fact. That is a fact. So, sitting here and saying, well, but we've done it since then.

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Yeah, so. There were a whole lot more years before Calvin than there have been since him.

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And that's not how you determine what biblical teaching about the subject of baptism should be.

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But the point is, many of those brothers and sisters will point us to oikobaptism, household baptisms.

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We'll say, see, that's how it should be done, and then what happens is as the church matures, and it's no longer so much missionary as it is primitively at the beginning where there's just so few

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Christians, but as it becomes more normative in a society, then you have a switch from adult baptism of new converts to the regular baptism of infants, and hence the establishment of paedo -baptism as the norm rather than credo -baptism.

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That's the argument, that's the idea. Now, as we're gonna see, that doesn't come from going to these texts and drawing it out.

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It comes from establishing a priori assumptions about the nature of the covenant, the nature of covenant signs, the relationship of circumcision to baptism, the creation of that system, and then the utilization of that system as a lens through which you then go back and you look at these and go, ah, see, this would fit within our system.

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Not we derived our system from this, but we can fit this into our system.

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That's two very different things. That's two very different things. But please note that in each of, in both situations in Acts chapter 16, there is the communication of the message and what's interesting to me, tune in here and I'll be done.

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Believe it or not. Yep. Some of you are going, oh, thank you. Tune in here.

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We believe that there is a message that needs to be communicated to the individual who is to be baptized so that that baptism can represent a reality in their life.

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That is repentance and faith, union with Christ. We have bread and wine.

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And interestingly enough, the vast majority of Reformed from the time of the

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Reformation down to today have recognized that there is a need to partake of these elements of a communication of fundamental divine truths to make the partaking of the bread and wine meaningful.

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Paul says that you are to discern the body and that partaking unworthily of the supper is a very dangerous thing.

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And so what has been believed by the majority of Reformed people down through history is that that means that the supper is for someone who has to be old enough to understand the gospel message and what these things represent.

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You see the problem? There's only two sides that are consistent here.

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I believe we are consistent. And so for example, we guard the table.

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That is, when I give the instructions in a few moments as to partaking of the table,

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I'm gonna say, if you are not a believer in Jesus Christ, if you have not repented and believed, this is not for you.

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This represents his broken body and his shed blood. If you have not repented and believed in his broken body and shed blood, if you are not depending upon that as your sole source of salvation, then this is not for you.

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We guard the table. We guard the baptistry.

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We ask for a profession of faith before someone is baptized. The elders have talked to these individuals and we want them to understand what the gospel is, so what they're doing is in accordance with the apostolic example.

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So we guard the baptistry, we guard the table. Most Presbyterians guard the table, but do not guard the baptistry.

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And in fact, purposefully give one sacrament, baptism, to those who have made no profession of faith in anticipation of the hope for someday they will do so.

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But they don't do that with the supper. But then there is the minority.

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The minority of Reformed, historically speaking, who believe in paedo -communion and hence do believe that infants should be given the supper as soon as they can be.

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Try that with an eight -year -old, okay? I'm sorry, eight -year -old, eight -day -old. Doesn't work real well.

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And so there has to be some qualifications,

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I guess would be the term. But there are those who believe, they try to be consistent.

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They try to say, look, the arguments that the Reformed use against paedo -communion are the same arguments that Baptists use against paedo -baptism.

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So we need to be consistent, and so we have paedo -baptism and paedo -communion.

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The result, I would argue, is a fundamental shift in the emphasis on what the supper actually represents, as it does with baptism as well.

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Now, as you may know, last year in March, I was supposed to go up to Moscow, and Doug Wilson and I were gonna debate this very issue.

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It'll still happen, I'm going up next month, but we're not debating that at that particular point in time.

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We'll be doing a lot of other things. But we will be debating it eventually. It needs to be debated.

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I think it would be a very worthwhile and helpful discussion. But there is a connection.

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Unfortunately, very often, the conversation of baptism and the supper are completely disconnected from one another.

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They shouldn't be, because they are the two ordinances that Christ has given to us in the church. So you see what's coming?

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And then, there's still a lot to go. You might think, we are making such progress.

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Yeah, but I would say we might be halfway through.

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I don't think so. I think we're maybe a third of the way through the baptism series.

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You're going, but we've done six, six or seven. Yeah, yeah.

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And if anyone is even thinking about complaining, I have one phrase for you,

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Matthew 24. No room for complaint in this church.

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I could go on baptism for years and we'd be good. We'd be good. All right, let's pray together.