The Radical Anabaptists

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I want to invite you to take out your Bibles and stay standing as we read our text for the morning.
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We're going to open our Bibles to Matthew chapter 28, and we're going to be looking at verses 18 to 20.
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Matthew 28, this is usually described as Jesus giving the Great Commission.
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We're going to be focusing specifically on what He says here about baptism.
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It says in verse 18, And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.
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Father in heaven, I thank You for Your Word.
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I thank You that Your Word is the light unto our path, it is the lamp unto our feet.
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And I pray this morning, Lord, as I seek to continue to preach this series that we've been in on history, I pray that You would keep me from error.
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As I know, Lord, I am a fallible man, I am capable of preaching error, and I do not want to do that for the sake of my own conscience, for the sake of Your people, and for the sake of Your name.
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I pray that You would keep me from error.
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I pray also, Lord, that the message would draw people to Jesus Christ, that You would use it to encourage, but also to convict.
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And Lord, where there are areas that we need to repent, that it would show us our need for repentance.
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And Lord, if there are those here, and there certainly must be, in a group this size who have not yet bowed the knee to Jesus Christ, that You might use this as the time where Your Spirit sovereignly opens their heart to believe.
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And that they might cry out for salvation to the only one who can save, our Lord Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray.
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Amen.
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You may be seated.
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Well, I'd like to welcome everyone back to our study.
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And this has been several weeks now.
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We finished the book of Acts.
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We've been going verse by verse through the book of Acts.
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We finished that at the beginning of the summer.
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And now we are in a study entitled Foundations for the 500th.
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And for some people, that really probably doesn't make a lot of sense.
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So each week, I'd like to remind you why that matters.
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This is the 500th year since the posting of the 95 Theses by Martin Luther.
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He posted the 95 Theses on the castle church door at Wittenberg on October 31st, 1517.
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So this year, on October 31st, we will be celebrating the 500th anniversary of the Reformation of the church.
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And what we have been studying over the last few weeks, is the history that led up to the need of the Reformation, as well as some of the people who have been most influential in the Reformation, looking at both their legacies, and more importantly, their theologies.
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We believe something here.
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It is the sort of unofficial motto of this church that theology matters.
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What you believe about God will affect how you live your life.
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And the 16th century Protestant Reformation was a watershed moment in human history, watershed moment in church history.
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In our last session, we looked at a man named Ulrich Zwingli.
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Zwingli, as I mentioned, was considered to be somewhat radical in his reforms, because Zwingli not only sought to reform the understanding of salvation away from the sacramental system of Rome, and into an understanding of justification by grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone, but Zwingli had a view of anti-idolatry, which should be all of our view.
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None of us should be pro-idolatry, I suppose.
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But he had a very focused intent to go through Zurich, where he was the pastor, and they whitewashed the walls of the churches which had been painted with murals, and people used them in devotions, and so he washed the paint away, and painted over them, and he crushed the statues, and he pulled down the crucifixes, and he looked to have nothing that would stain the church with any form of idolatry, and many people considered him to be quite the radical as a result of that.
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But, Zwingli isn't titled with radical.
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I mean, he was considered somewhat radical, but the title radical belongs to another group, a group that actually came out of Zurich, a group that was first a group that followed Zwingli, but would later divide from him, and that group was called the Anabaptists.
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And we're going to talk today about the Anabaptists.
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We're going to talk about their history, what they believed, and their theology, and how it has been important in the shaping of even our own theology down to today.
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Certainly, Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli could all be called radical in their departure from Roman Catholic teaching, but the title radical certainly is deserved by the Anabaptists even more so.
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And I wanted to bring a whiteboard today, and I often wonder, because I love to teach with a whiteboard, I do that on Wednesday nights, I do that when I'm teaching Sunday school, but sometimes I feel like it would be awkward to have up here on the chancel when I'm preaching.
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But I want to introduce you to something, and if you want to write this down, this is an important concept, because where the Anabaptists divided from the Reformers mostly was not so much on the subject of baptism, even though you'd think that the title Anabaptist, that the focus would be on baptism.
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Anabaptist simply means re-baptizer.
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Ana means, again, it's a prefix.
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And the Anabaptists were those who were baptized as children, as was everyone at that time in history.
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Everyone who was part of the civilized Western world was baptized as an infant.
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The Anabaptists believed that they were to be baptized as adults upon profession of faith, but since they'd already been baptized once, according to the state, to be baptized again was called Anabaptism, or to be re-baptized.
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That's where the title, the name comes from.
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But there's something else that needs to be understood, very important historical significance, and that is the idea of the Magisterial Reformation.
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And again, if you're writing notes or anything, that phrase is very important.
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What is a magistrate? A magistrate is a person who is in authority, a person who is part of civil leadership.
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We still have them today.
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We talk about civil magistrates and people that are in important roles.
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Luther, Calvin, and even Zwingli were considered to be magisterial reformers.
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And what that meant, a lot of people think that that means that their word was law.
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That's not what it meant, even though some take it that way.
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Luther has Lutherans, Calvin has Presbyterians, and Zwingli has, well, there's no church of Zwingli, but you understand.
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But they consider sort of a magisterial as they're having authority.
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That's not what the term means.
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You can take it that way, but that's not what it means.
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The term magisterial reformer means that they were supported by the local magistrate, that they were in connection with the state.
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In Luther, there was Germany, there was Wittenberg, and he was supported by the state.
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In Calvin, there is Geneva, and there is support from the state.
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In Zwingli, there is Zurich, and supported by the state.
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So at this point in history, there was no such thing as a separation between church and state.
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In fact, the state was seen by the reformers, Zwingli, Calvin, and Luther, the state was seen as the enforcer of church law.
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If there needed to be order in the church, the state was understood to keep that order.
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If there needed to be discipline in the church, the state was seen to have the responsibility to keep that discipline.
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And if there needed to be punishment for heresy, the state enacted the punishment.
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You remember a few weeks ago we talked about Michael Servetus? Remember who he was? He was the one who came to Geneva and tried to find respite with Calvin because he was anti-Trinitarian.
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Calvin didn't want anything to do with him because he believed he was a false teacher, and he was.
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He denied the Trinity.
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But his heresy was condemned by the church, but enacted his punishment by the state.
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The council of Geneva condemned him to death, and he was burned as a heretic.
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So the church and the state had a mutual function under the magisterial reformers.
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There was an interdependence between the church authorities and the secular authorities.
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But the Anabaptists disagreed.
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The Anabaptists believed that the church ought to be separate from the state.
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They believed that to keep the purity of the church, as well as to protect the church from persecution from the state, that the church should have its dominion, and the state should have its dominion.
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And those two ought not interfere with one another.
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And so the Anabaptists believed that there should be a division between church and state.
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They were committed to pacifism in general.
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We'll talk about some who weren't.
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But in general, Anabaptists were committed to pacifism.
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They did not believe in serving in the military.
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In fact, they didn't believe in serving any state office at all.
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They believed Christians were part of a different kingdom.
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And so Christians ought not be serving in the state.
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Now, no, for a second, I'm not agreeing with them.
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I'm teaching what they taught.
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I believe personally, and I believe it can be found biblically, that a Christian should and can serve.
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Even though I think it's hard, because being a government official and being honest and being a Christian is a difficult thing to do, I believe that we're supposed to be salt and light in every area.
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And so I do believe that this is one of the places where the Anabaptists erred.
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But I want to express what they taught because it's going to be important later.
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We start talking about why their view of baptism was so controversial.
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So you wonder why the issue of baptism was so controversial.
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Think of it like this.
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If baptism is how someone becomes part of the church, that's one thing.
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But if baptism is tied to how someone becomes a part of the community, that's something else entirely.
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And at this time in history, baptism wasn't just tied to your church life.
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It was tied to your citizenship.
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Do you realize there was a time in our history, even in America, where baptism certificates could be used as birth certificates? Baptism certificates were legal documents and could be used to define where somebody was born.
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And their national heritage could be determined by baptism certificates.
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And so you see now why the baptism of an infant takes on a more important role in a society that's attempting to form somewhat of a theocratic nation.
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And every citizen is a member of the church.
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Anabaptists didn't believe that.
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They believed that citizenship in the church came not at birth, but at rebirth.
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They were seeking for what they considered to be a pure church.
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A church that wasn't a mixed multitude of those who had yet confessed Christ and those who had confessed Christ.
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But they believed in a church that was made up only of those who had confessed Christ.
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And that was the purpose and desire of the Anabaptists.
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And this is how the church-state relationship was so important.
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Now in the past few weeks, I've focused on certain men, like with Lutheranism and Lutheran Calvinism and Presbyterianism and those things.
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But when it comes to the Anabaptist movement, I can't really do that.
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I can't focus on one man and say, here is the man who is primarily responsible for the Anabaptist movement.
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Because there wasn't even one Anabaptist movement.
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Much less one Anabaptist leader.
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If we start to think about how many groups there were and how many movements there were, it would be impossible.
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How many of you have ever heard of the Mennonites? That's Menno Simons.
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That was the group that's based on his teaching.
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He was an early Anabaptist leader.
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Then you have the Amish.
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Then you have the Quakers.
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All of these are the descendants of different strains of Anabaptist theology.
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So it's really hard to nail down and say, well there was one guy who started it all.
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It's impossible to do that.
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But I do want to mention a couple of names.
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Because there are some people that I think we should at least familiarize ourselves with.
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One of the men who was prominent in the early Anabaptist movement was a man by the name of Conrad Grebel.
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Conrad Grebel had been saved under the teaching of Ulrich Zwingli.
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Remember we talked about him last week.
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Ulrich Zwingli was preaching the evangelical gospel.
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He was preaching the truth of the word.
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Conrad Grebel hears the evangelical gospel.
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He is saved by the gospel.
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And he is now a committed follower of Jesus Christ.
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And he is learning at the feet of Zwingli.
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But he sees Zwingli's changes not enough.
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Zwingli is not willing to go far enough, Grebel said.
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Zwingli is not willing to do what needs to be done.
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So on the 17th of January 1525, Conrad Grebel and Ulrich Zwingli had a debate in the city of Zurich.
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And Conrad was not alone.
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He was with two other men, Felix Manz and George Blaurock.
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And they all gathered together to debate Zwingli on the subject of infant baptism.
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Because the city was seeing this rising of people who didn't want to baptize their infants.
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And the city knew that this was going to be not only a theological but a political nightmare.
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So they wanted to enforce infant baptism as a demand.
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So Grebel and Blaurock came together to debate Zwingli.
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Now the city council ruled in favor of Zwingli.
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Which makes sense because Zwingli was arguing on behalf of the city.
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And so they gave the Anabaptist leaders eight days.
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You will present your infants for baptism or you will be banished from Zurich.
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Eight days.
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On January 21st, just shy of that eight day mark, they were meeting in the house of Felix Manz for prayer.
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And while meeting in the house for prayer, George Blaurock stands up and he looks at Conrad Grebel and he says, Brother, baptize me! You see they all believed in baptism but nobody had yet been baptized.
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Even though they believed in Anabaptism, they believed in being baptized as believers.
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None of them had done it yet because that was a crime.
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Re-baptism was a crime.
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And George Blaurock stands up and he says, Brother, baptize me! And there was a bit of a concern.
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You're going to be an outlaw.
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He didn't care.
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Now, just so you know, they didn't have one of these things.
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They didn't have a big bathtub.
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Well, maybe they had a bathtub, I don't know, but that ain't how they did it.
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They did pouring.
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Anabaptists poured water on the head as baptism, not immersion as we would practice.
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But Conrad Grebel baptized him and then George Blaurock went around and baptized the other men.
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Now they're all marked out.
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They're all criminals.
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This is a watershed moment in history.
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Because now they're breaking from the authority of the church and the state.
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And they become enemies.
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By this one act, they became enemies of Rome and enemies of the Magisterial Reformation.
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They were rejected by Rome and the Reformed.
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If you read what Luther and Calvin wrote about the Anabaptists, it was not kind.
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It was not encouraging.
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It was not loving.
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But I want to explain a little something at this point in our talk on the history of this, because, as I said earlier, we can look at Felix Manns and we can look at George Blaurock and we can look at Conrad Grebel and we can say, okay, here's some guys that had a conviction and God blessed their conviction.
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And I hold the same conviction about baptism, except for I believe you ought to dunk them, not pour water on them.
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He wasn't called John the Pourer, he was called John the...
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never mind.
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And he wasn't called John the Sprinkler, just so you know.
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No, just kidding.
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But we shared similar convictions on baptism, but there were other groups that were very, very dangerous that also identified with the Anabaptist cause.
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And when we talk about radical, these people were uber radical.
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And it's what caused such a problem for the Anabaptists.
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Because, just like today, if I say evangelical, that don't mean hardly anything.
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Because I can go to several evangelical churches in our own city and they're not preaching the gospel.
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The term evangelical has become somewhat benign.
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It doesn't have any real meaning.
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Well, the same way with Anabaptists.
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There were groups, the Zichal Prophets, there was a group that came into Wittenberg.
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When Luther was taken away from Wittenberg and he was being kept at Wartburg Castle, when he was under the punishment after the Diet of Worms, and he was being hidden away at Wartburg Castle, a group of prophets came into Wittenberg and tried to do all kinds of radical change there in Wittenberg and tried to change the Lutherans into followers of them.
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They were called the Zichal Prophets.
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And those guys were really off the rails.
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They were far afield.
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They were, at the time, we might call them maybe just hyper charismatic, but even to the point of very dangerous false teaching.
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And yet they were identified with the Anabaptists.
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In the city of Munster, in 1534, Anabaptist group came to power and took up arms to overthrow the government.
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These are the people who say they're pacifists.
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They took up arms to overthrow the government.
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They set aside the pacifism for a few minutes.
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And at the same time, they were practicing polygamy and they were trying to enforce the setup of a theocratic state in Munster.
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So you have to understand, there wasn't just one group of Anabaptists and they weren't all benevolent.
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They weren't all good Christ followers.
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So when you talk about Anabaptism and Anabaptist groups, it's not a homogenous thing.
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It's not monolithic.
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It's a spider web and some of it got really, really, really crazy.
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But if you look back at men like George Blaurock, Felix Manns, and Conrad Grebel, even though some of their theology would be left or right of center, it's hard not to find in them a heart that sought to follow after Christ.
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And the thing that breaks my heart is when you study what happened to these men.
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Because of their connections with some of the more radical, crazy sides of the Anabaptist history, the Anabaptists were severely persecuted, killed by the thousands, not only by Rome, but by the Reformers.
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This is a black eye on the history of the Church, one I would never seek to defend.
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And the most heinous practice was that which became known as the Third Baptism.
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The Third Baptism was the practice of executing Anabaptists by drowning them.
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On March the 7th, 1526, Zurich passed an edict which made re-baptism punishable by death.
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And less than a year later, Felix Manns, remember it was in his house that the First Baptism had taken place, Felix Manns became the first victim of the edict.
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While his brother and mother watched, encouraging him to stand firm for Jesus' sake, he was taken on to the river Lamotte.
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His hands were bound behind his knees and a pole was placed between his legs.
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He was then lifted and cast into the river where he sunk to his death.
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And it was reported that his last words were, Into thy hands, O God, I commend my spirit.
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And some may wonder why baptism in any sort was ever such a huge issue.
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When you look at it today, most people don't even have convictions about baptism anymore.
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They'd be just as happy in a Lutheran church as they would in a Presbyterian church as they would in a Baptist church.
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And no one today would think about taking another person's life over a subject of how you baptize or when you baptize.
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So why was it in the 16th century this was such a huge issue? Well again, I think the answer goes back to the separation of church and state.
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Within the Magisterial Reformed teaching, a person was born not only into a Christian family, but into a Christian nation, a Christian culture.
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And to deny a child to be baptized was to deny that child to be part of the community.
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And when Anabaptists tried to eliminate this practice, they were seen as not only attacking the church and her doctrine, they were seen as attacking the society and its cultural foundation.
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And ultimately, as long as the church-state relationship stood, the baptism of infants would have to stand as a foundational part of that relationship between the church and the state.
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So this leads to the question of today.
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That was all introduction, so we're going to get on now to the sermon.
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This leads to the question of the day, and that is, what is the question of infant baptism? Why are there differing views, and what view do we take here at Sovereign Grace? And I'm going to say from the outset, I know that we have people who've come from different churches, and there may be different views, but I'm going to tell the church's view.
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The position from which we teach.
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Because I think it's important to understand.
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Because for many people, as I said, baptism is seen as nothing more than church tradition.
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However the church does it, we're fine, and I'll move to whatever, it doesn't matter.
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But how a church administers baptism speaks to three important issues, and you need to understand this.
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It speaks to, first, how does it understand the purpose of baptism? Second, how does it see the children of believers? And third, what happens when a child is baptized? You see, in Roman Catholic teaching, they baptize infants, but not for the same reason as they do in Presbyterian and Lutheran churches.
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You have to understand that the whole reason behind infant baptism in Rome, is that they believe that because of original sin, and we believe in original sin.
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Original sin is that sin which has been passed down to us from Adam, our original father.
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We believe in sin, we believe we're born sinners, and we're sinners by nature and by choice.
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The Bible says we're by nature children of wrath, just like the rest of mankind, we know that.
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But Rome teaches that when you are baptized as an infant, that baptism creates regeneration.
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And regeneration removes the stain of original sin.
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This is why in Roman Catholic theology, there's a question of children who die unbaptized.
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Do they go to heaven or not? Because they believe that baptism has an efficacious role in the salvation of an individual.
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So a child must be baptized very close to the point of their birth, because if they were to die before that, there would be questions about their eternal destiny.
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So they baptize the infant, encouraging people to understand that this infant has now been made a regenerate member of the church, by virtue of their baptism.
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Lutherans hold to a slightly different view, but also believe in a form of baptismal regeneration.
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They would argue that justification does not come until faith, and they believe justification is by faith alone, and by that we can stand shoulder to shoulder with our Lutheran brethren and say, we agree, justification is by faith alone.
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However, they do believe baptism has an effect on the regeneration of the child.
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This is one place where Luther would not divide far enough from the church.
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Now Calvin held a unique view, and his view has become the primary view of Protestants who baptize their infants.
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Calvin's view was that he would separate baptism from regeneration.
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Baptism and regeneration, now in Calvin's view, were not to be seen as being together, but he taught that baptism was to be connected to circumcision.
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And he taught that the child who was circumcised in the old covenant, would be baptized in the new covenant as a sign of that child's entrance into the covenant community.
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So, as an example, my wife Jennifer and I are expecting number five.
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Pray for us.
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And when number five is born, she has a name, her name is Faith, but when number five is born, is she a part of the covenant community? Calvin would say yes, because she is born into a Christian family.
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She's part of the covenant family, and as a result of being part of the covenant community, she would be deserving of baptism as much as anyone else in the covenant community would be deserving of baptism.
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Doesn't matter whether or not she will one day profess faith, because that's unknown.
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What matters is that she's born into a covenant family, and being born into the covenant family, she deserves the right of the sign of the covenant.
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As much as Abraham's children deserve circumcision, so too the children of Christians deserve baptism.
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This is the view of Calvin, and it's the view of the modern Presbyterian church.
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And they see the denial of baptism for infants as a denial of their place in the covenant family.
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So you can see how serious that is.
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For a Presbyterian, if you deny baptism, you're denying them something that they have every right to.
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And all of these positions cite historical precedent, because they all will argue that infant baptism goes back to the earliest writings of the church fathers, and infant baptism has been the overwhelming practice of the historical church.
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But the problem, all of these positions, whether it's Rome, or Luther, or even the great John Calvin, the problem that all of these positions have, and they continue to have to this day, is it just isn't in the Bible.
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In fact, Dr.
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R.C.
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Sproul says, himself a Presbyterian, himself a man who believes in infant baptism, says, and I quote, there is no place in the Bible that explicitly commands the baptism of infants.
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But he goes on to say, there's also no place in the Bible that forbids the baptism of infants.
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To be fair to his quote.
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Because of this, those who believe in infant baptism have to rely on what they call good and necessary consequence.
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Good and necessary consequence, as it is described in the Westminster Confession, is how we answer the questions that the Bible doesn't answer.
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We have to look where the Bible makes necessary inference, where it doesn't speak by explicit statement, it may speak an implicit statement.
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And they would argue that the Bible implicitly teaches the baptism of infants.
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Well, as I said, here at Sovereign Grace, we would disagree.
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Or I would disagree, particularly.
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And as a church, our church statement of faith would disagree.
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And as a result, many people say we're not reformed.
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Because we identify ourselves as reformed evangelicals, and people say, well, you don't baptize infants, you're not really reformed.
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Well, this is what I say.
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You still baptize infants, you haven't reformed enough.
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You tell me I'm not reformed because I don't baptize infants.
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I tell you, if you're still doing it, you haven't yet got out fully from the foot of Rome.
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Now, that may sound ugly, but it can go both ways.
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They would say that I'm a radical, as would the Anabaptists.
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But all of this is simply to make the point that baptism is an important issue, and one that we should take seriously.
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And I want to take a moment to defend believers' baptism.
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Because I think it's worth defending.
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I think if men were willing to be tied behind the knees and thrown over a boat for this subject, I think it's worth defending.
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And I don't think it's something that should simply be left as, well, we're just not going to care.
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No, I care about this.
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And I'm not saying that if you disagree with me, that you're a heretic.
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I love R.C.
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Sproul, and I love my Presbyterian brothers and sisters.
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But I'm going to defend this position, because I believe it's biblical.
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But I also do believe that it is secondary to the gospel, and I don't believe that a person is lost because they may share a different position.
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And that's important.
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I think that this is not a salvific issue.
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I believe this issue is to be considered a question among brethren, not a question that would divide someone from the brethren.
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We clear? Make sense? Okay.
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So you say, why do you believe in baptism for believers only? Well, the first scripture we read this morning, and I realize, like I said, I'm just now getting to the text.
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But this particular scripture is the closest thing that we have to the Lord Jesus Christ identifying who it is we are to baptize.
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He says in his great commission, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
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And then he gives them the command to make disciples.
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A lot of people think the command is go.
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The command isn't go.
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The command is make disciples.
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And the going is what we're doing.
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We're all going, and as we go, we're making disciples.
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That's our job.
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People think our job is to get people to pray a prayer.
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That's not our job.
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People think our job is to get people to come forward during a camp meeting or during a worship service.
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And so they tailor everything to this big push at the end, where we get people to come down and get down on their knees and accept Jesus.
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That's not the job.
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The job is to make disciples.
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But then what is the next clause? Baptizing them.
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As that is said, the statement here is very simple.
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We baptize the disciples.
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And that's as close to a command in Scripture from our Lord regarding the nature of who is to be the baptismal candidate.
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Who are we to command to baptize? Those who have been made disciples.
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And certainly some might argue, and I'm sure they will argue and say, well, what about those who confess Jesus and yet are not truly saved? Has that ever happened? And I know I'm going a little long this morning, but I want to ask, has that ever happened? Do people confess Jesus Christ and they're false confessors? Absolutely.
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And they would say, well, there you are.
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You've baptized somebody who's not really a Christian.
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Here's the difference.
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We don't knowingly do that.
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If a man deceives me or even deceives himself regarding his faith, I'm not held accountable for that failure any more than Philip was held accountable for baptizing Simon Magus when he was baptized as an unbeliever.
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Nobody went to Philip afterward and said, hey, Philip, you messed up.
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You baptized this guy and he was a false believer.
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Now, Philip may have thought about it after a while and said, boy, maybe I should have thought a little more.
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Maybe I should have investigated this guy's faith a little more before taking him over to the creek.
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But at the end of the day, all I can accept from anyone is a confession of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ when they want to be baptized.
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I can look at their life.
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I can ask them questions about what they believe.
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We can give an examination, but I can't prove anyone's a believer or not.
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But I know this, when a man baptizes a baby, he is knowingly and unashamedly baptizing an unconverted person.
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And that's something I'm unwilling to do.
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The heart of believer's baptism is simply this, to see the sign of confirmation given only to those who have professed Christ.
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And as I said, if somebody believes that a person deserves the sign of baptism because they've been made part of the covenant community by birth and they believe as Calvin did in that, I don't think that makes them a heretic, but I do think that they are incorrect.
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Because your entrance into the covenant community does not happen by birth.
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It happens by the new birth.
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Your entrance into the new covenant does not happen because your parents are Christians.
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Now you are sanctified by them, the scripture says, even if you have one believing parent, you're sanctified by that believing parent.
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Which that simply means you are set apart as having a benefit of the gospel being spoken into your life as a child.
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But know this, no one is born into the kingdom of God.
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You are reborn into the kingdom of God.
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The Bible says, Jesus came unto his own and his own received him not, but to as many as received him, to them he gave the power to become children of God.
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Those who are not born of the flesh, not by the will of the person, but by God.
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We're born of God and that's how we enter into the new covenant.
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And again, I would never cast dispersions on anyone's character who disagreed on that, but that is the position that we take.
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And there are reasons for the convictions that we have and to sweep them away as simply being non-important, I think, is unfair to the generations of those who fought and died for those convictions.
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We believe in the baptism of disciples alone.
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That's the missing sola.
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We have sola fide, justification by faith alone.
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Sola gratia, salvation is by grace alone.
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We have sola deo gloria, all to the glory of God alone.
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We have solus Christus, salvation is in Christ alone.
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We have sola scriptura, the foundation for our faith is the scripture alone.
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But there's a missing sola, and that is the baptism of disciples alone.
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And I'm unashamed about that.
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And in that, we could rightly be called Baptists, by the way.
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I know that makes some of you get a little nervous.
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We're not Baptists by denomination, but we're Baptists by conviction.
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And I'm going to show in the next few weeks how even though we don't go back to the Anabaptists, we do find our roots in the 17th century Baptist revival, which happened in England, giving birth to seven churches, which then would give birth to the Puritans, which then would give birth to the rise of the Christianity, which would come and make its way to the Americas.
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Baptists have made an impact on this world.
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A mission's impact which cannot be overstated.
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And I want to finish with just a call to confirmation.
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If you're here today, and you have not been baptized on profession of your faith in Jesus Christ, I would encourage you to do that.
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It is a sign of the promises that we have in Jesus Christ.
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We are buried with Him in His death, and we are raised with Him in His life.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank You for Your Word.
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I thank You for the truth.
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And I do thank You, Lord, that this issue, while important, is not a dividing issue.
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And that this issue can be discussed between loving brethren, and even disagreed on between loving brethren.
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And those brethren do not have to divide to the point of identifying one or the other as heretics.
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We are ashamed, Lord, that in the history of the church there has been that time.
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There have been men who have died for this doctrine and this teaching.
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And that is to the shame of the church.
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I pray now, Lord, that Your Word has been spoken.
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I pray that we would understand that as much as we have talked about baptism today, baptism is not what saves, but faith alone in Christ alone is what brings a man before You.
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So I pray, Lord, first, if there are those who are here without faith, that You would save them.
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And if there are those who have confessed faith and have yet received the sign of baptism, that You would encourage their heart to do so, Lord.
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In Jesus' name we pray.
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Amen.
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Let's stand and sing and prepare our hearts for communion.