Hermeneutics - Q and A

In this part of the sermon: Martin explains the proper hermeneutical approach by analogy to studying 'election,' emphasizing starting with explicit biblical texts. He then critiques paedobaptists for…

Martin uses the example of someone encountering the word 'election' for the first time and how they would use a concordance to find all relevant passages, illustrating the proper hermeneutical approach for any doctrine.

Well, let me ask the question this way. Suppose, for the first time in your life, you heard the word, election or chosen. And you heard a sermon on the fact that God, ostensibly, exercised His prerogatives as a God of sovereign might and power, but of love and of grace, in choosing certain sinners from among the ranks of lost humanity to be the objects of saving grace. Now, if you had a question about election or choosing or chosen, how would you approach the resolution of that question from your Bible?

6:44 - 7:24 Read in full sermon

Driving home: And it was reading the best paedobaptist authors that made me a Baptist. And God has witnessed that that is not rhetorical overstatement.

Martin shares his personal background in the Salvation Army, which does not practice baptism or the Lord's Supper, to explain his initial lack of prejudice against infant baptism and his openness to different views.

You say, Pastor Martin, you're not teaching, you're preaching. Well, I'm doing so because for the first time in over 25 years of wrestling with this, I've let all the pressure come out. Because when I desperately tried to become an infant baptizer, because I had no background in any kind of baptism. My background is Salvation Army, where they looked on the disputes on baptism and to the Lord's Supper and they said, phooey with both of them.

9:28 - 9:53 Read in full sermon

Driving home: And it was reading the best paedobaptist authors that made me a Baptist. And God has witnessed that that is not rhetorical overstatement.

Martin humorously recounts his mother's saying that he was 'fated to start preaching on a street corner' because she was on one in her womb, adding a personal touch to his biographical detail.

They've been such a course, a source of dispute. The Salvation Army does not practice baptism or Lord's Supper. My father was a Salvation Army captain when I was born. And so my mother says I was fated to start preaching on a street corner because I was on a street corner in her womb when I was seven months along down in Alexandria, Virginia.

9:53 - 10:16 Read in full sermon

The point: Seek to bring anyone struggling with the issue of baptism to the perspective of approaching it by going to the portions of the Bible that bear witness to that subject.

Martin describes his earnest attempt to become a paedobaptist after embracing Reformed theology, reading prominent paedobaptist authors, and his emotional and psychological readiness for the position, only to be convinced otherwise by their hermeneutical approach.

But when I began to take seriously the words of the Bible, elect, chosen, called, and became what people call a Calvinist, as I searched out the details of the teaching of the Bible on man's condition as a sinner, God's grace, which is sovereign and free and selective, began to study what it means Christ redeemed His people, Christ died for His people, He laid down His life for His sheep, I became theologically what people call a Calvinist. I became reformed in my theology. Now, I knew enough in my reading to know that the vast majority of reformed theologians practiced infant baptism, so I as...

10:41 - 11:51 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin refutes the emotional argument that not baptizing infants is akin to pagan parenting. He passionately distinguishes the profound spiritual care and prayer of Christian…

Martin contrasts the home life and parenting of earnest Christian couples with that of hedonistic, ungodly neighbors, highlighting the vast difference in their relationship to and yearning for their children, to refute the idea that not baptizing infants makes Christian parents like pagans.

Six foot thick. Only separate question. Is there any difference between a child born in my home, the home of these earnest, godly Christian couples in this church, and a child born in my neighbor's home who are perfect examples of 20th century American hedonism? They live for things, for booze on the weekend.

29:16 - 29:47 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Beth shares her personal testimony of confusion and frustration growing up in a Christian Reformed context, believing she was a 'covenant child' but lacking true regeneration…

Beth shares her personal testimony of growing up in a Christian Reformed church, being baptized as a 'covenant child,' and the resulting confusion and frustration when she tried to live as a Christian but found she lacked the power and motivation, illustrating the spiritual harm of presumptive regeneration.

And the problem with that is that if anyone is serious about the Bible seriously and that really led me to the point of questioning Christianity as a whole, because it was so messed up in the beginning that the rest of my childhood and early teenage years, I couldn't measure what was happening in my heart to what was supposed to be happening in my heart. All right, now if you all couldn't hear that, Beth, who was reared in that, in a Christian Reformed Church framework and was baptized as a covenant child and led to think that because of that, as she was a covenant child, in other words, she w...

39:21 - 40:43 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin recounts an experience with Presbyterian ministers who, when confronted with the biblical argument for Baptist views, admitted they didn't want to hear more for fear of…

Martin recounts an experience preaching to Presbyterian ministers who, after hearing his biblical arguments for Baptist views, asked him to stop because he was convincing them, illustrating the power of Scripture and the emotional resistance to changing long-held convictions.

But let me do, let me say this. There have been several occasions where, and this was particularly back when I was going through this thing I described this morning, when I had become a Calvinist, become reformed in my theology, was still, not really settled on the issue of baptism, but was in the process of becoming settled. I was reading Professor Murray and Burkoff and these other writers. And I do remember this very, very vividly, being at a conference preaching to a group of Presbyterian ministers.

46:52 - 47:19 Read in full sermon