The Church and Infant Baptism, Part 4

In this part of the sermon: Martin recaps previous points, reiterating that biblical church members are those who have experienced redemption. He reminds the audience of the objection that the Bible teaches…

Martin references Paedo-Baptist theologians like Hodge and Bannerman who distinguish between the visible and invisible church to justify the presence of unregenerate people, illustrating a common argument he is refuting.

And I attempted to deal with that as we closed yesterday, that Hodge and Bannerman and others of the great lights of the Paedo-Baptists, Camp, have made a distinction between the visible and invisible Church and have attempted to use this distinction to justify the presence of the unconverted, the presence of the unregenerate, in the Church of Jesus Christ. We saw that there were various routes that could be used to attempt to get around the problem and that this one is commonly employed. Now before I go on this morning and come to the third basic objection that is raised to, ah,

3:27 - 4:06 Read in full sermon

The point: Beware of the danger of Landmarkism, which wrongly asserts that only Baptist churches are true churches.

He draws an analogy between individual indwelling sin (we are not yet what we ought to be) and corporate indwelling sin in the church, explaining why the visible church can contain unregenerate members and still be considered the church.

We laugh, but landmarkism is just as real a danger and an error as paedo-baptism with regard to this issue. It's a very real danger, and we must beware of going to that opposite extreme. And though the terminology may appear a little strange to you, whatever terminology you want to use to describe this, this is the terminology I picked up. But this distinction is vital to thinking your way through this whole matter. There's what you could call an ethical or a moral problem.

7:11 - 7:43 Read in full sermon

Driving home: John's speaking very realistically about the real church with its blots, blemishes, warts, unconverted leaders named diatrophies, who was a wicked man who loved to have preeminence among the brethren and who threw true C…

The example of Diotrephes throwing people out of the church (3 John 9-10) illustrates that the visible church can have unconverted leaders and members, and that an 'idealistic definition' of the church is unrealistic.

The exercise of benevolence, 2 Corinthians 8. And 9, the exercise of government, 3 John 9 and 10. There's diatrophies throwing people out of the church. Now, if the church only consisted of true believers, how did diatrophies throw those people out of the church?

10:26 - 10:44 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: He explains that the Greek 'ekklesia' in the Septuagint translates the Hebrew 'kahal,' which also has technical (assembly of Jehovah) and general (any group) senses. This…

He mentions the legend of 70 men translating the Septuagint (LXX) to explain the origin of the name and the consistent translation of 'kahal' as 'ekklesia', providing historical context for the linguistic argument.

Now, in the Greek translation of the Old Testament, which is commonly referred to, called the Septuagint or the LXX, the name LXX, comes from the fact that it's a Roman numeral for 70, comes from the quote, I shouldn't say the fact, I should say the legend, that there were 70 men who translated this Septuagint version. And what they did is they translated the Hebrew Old Testament into Greek. And when they did that, there were certain places that they used the word ecclesia. And as a matter of fact, there was only one Hebrew word which they ever translated, ecclesia, throughout the entire trans...

22:44 - 23:26 Read in full sermon