Hermeneutics - Q and A

Introduction to the Q&A on Infant Baptism and Hermeneutics

0:00 This adult Sunday school class was held on July 31st, 1983, at the Trinity Baptist Church in Montville, New Jersey. Now, particularly for the benefit of those of you who may be visiting with us today, and we have usually an unusual number of visitors throughout the summer months, often people from many places and even many lands, and for your sake especially, I do want to make a word of explanation or two with respect to what we are doing in our adult class this morning. Normally, for the past few weeks and on for some weeks to come, Pastor Nichols would be your instructor in this class. I have been the regular instructor for well over a year now, but there was a series of studies that we felt in a very special way. Pastor Nichols was competent. To set before you, and those of you who have been here will know that it has been on the subject of infant baptism.

1:06 Is it a scriptural practice? Now, we are a Baptist church. That is, we believe that the proper subjects of baptism are disciples and disciples only, and that the proper mode of baptism is defined by the very word to plunge, to dip, or to immerse. But we are not.

1:28 We are not nasty Baptists. In all my years of ministry, which now stretch over 20 years in this area and to this church now constituted as Trinity Baptist Church, I have never brought a lengthy series on baptism. I think the longest series was three messages from Matthew 28. We have not been nasty, narrow Baptists.

1:51 Many of our friends, both dead and alive, are those who have practiced infant sprinkling, and yet we do believe that there is a biblical doctrine of baptism and that it is essential for us to understand that doctrine because baptism, on the one hand, is linked in Scripture with true biblical evangelism. We are to make disciples baptizing them. Furthermore, it is linked to a biblical concept of the church. The visible church is defined as the company of the baptized.

2:27 And then there are many others. There are many other ramifications. And so, with what we trust has been an outworking of the very spirit that Pastor Nichols enunciated in his opening study, that is a fair and a peaceful and ironic and gracious spirit, Pastor Nichols has been leading us in a study of the subject of infant baptism. Now, his proposed outline was to deal, first of all, with the biblical witness to the subjects of baptism.

2:56 And he went through every passage, in the New Testament, in which baptism is mentioned, and we examined those passages together, asking the question, who were the subjects of baptism? And then, after doing that, he sought to answer some of the major objections of pedobaptists to that witness, or the manner in which pedobaptists or infant baptizers deal with some of those passages. And that's where he left us, when he took off for South Africa, just when the going got tough.

3:36 Now, it was the thinking of at least several of the elders, two of the elders that I, I should say one of the other elders and myself, two of us, that in my handling the class this morning, it might be well to give opportunity for questions arising from the material that Pastor Nichols laid before you. Admittedly, the last couple of weeks, some of you were probably hopelessly lost. Not because Pastor Nichols was not close, not clear or biblical, but simply because he was scratching where you never itched. And he was answering questions which you've never raised.

4:09 And he was solving problems you never knew existed. And when someone's scratching you where you don't itch, solving problems you've never had, answering questions you've never raised, it's hard to see the relevance of all that they're doing. And we're very conscious that that may have been true of some of you, for some of you, but for others, that was not true. So, what we're going to do, this morning, and again, this is primarily for the sake of our visitors, have an open-ended session.

4:37 We do this from time to time, in which the congregation is free to ask any question regarding any biblical principle, precept, text, problem in the Christian life with this simple proviso that the leader of the class is able to make a judgment as to whether or not engaging our minds in answering that question would be unto edification. So, with one little introduction, with an introductory matter taken care of that I want to do to sort of buttress the approach that Pastor Nichols has taken, we'll entertain questions, first of all, pertaining to any of the material that has been covered in the past weeks by Pastor Nichols. And then, if there are no questions, or we exhaust those questions, then we'll move on to general questions relative to any biblical concern or any issue pertaining to the Christian life. Now, one of the great differences, between our approach to this whole subject, of studying the question of who should be baptized and our paedobaptist friends, is what we would call our method of approach. Some would say our hermeneutics, our principles of interpretation, our approach to handling the biblical witness. And in approaching the question, should infants be baptized, or who are the proper subjects of baptism, you will notice,

Critique of Paedobaptist Hermeneutics: Starting with Circumcision

6:01 that Pastor Nichols began with what he called the biblical witness to the subjects of baptism. In other words, if our question is, who are the proper subjects of baptism, believing the Bible to be the sufficient and the only rule of practice, we began to search in the Bible into those specific passages in which men, women, or question mark, children, are said to be baptized. And we went to our Bibles with this question, subjects of baptism, and we turned in the Bible to every recorded baptism passage. Now, is that a proper approach?

6:44 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?

7:24 Someone tell me. Anyone. Alright, you would get a concordance, and you'd look up the words, choose, chosen, elect, election. Ron, would you take your concordance and look up the word, foot?

7:51 Yes or no? Would you look up the word, ear? Why not? It's totally irrelevant.

8:02 Irrelevant. You want to know what the Bible says about elect, election, electing, choosing? You look up the passages in which those words are used. Then you would back off and say, well, there may be passages where the words are not used, but the concepts are used.

8:25 Parallel passages that shed light upon the explicit usage. We would do that with any subject of inquiry. Wouldn't we? Yes or no?

8:38 Are you awake? Are you in Trinity Baptist Church this morning? Good. Very good.

8:45 Alright, now, if we have a question then on the subject of baptism, do you take your concordance and look up circumcision? No. But this is precisely what the majority of paedobaptist teachers do. They take their regulative perspectives from the Bible's teaching on circumcision, set up a framework, and then take the explicit witness on baptism and squeeze it through that framework.

9:28 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.

9:53 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.

10:16 But that's just a little biographical detail you would have no way of knowing. So, reared in a situation where I had no thinking on baptism, I was converted, went to two schools, neither of which took any position on baptism. My associations for five years in a traveling ministry were Baptist and Presbyterians or paedobaptists. And I had no distinct, well-thought-out convictions.

10:41 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 assumed. Now, follow closely. Emotionally and psychologically, no one was more prepared to be a paedobaptist than I. I had no background to prejudice me against the position. I now had a newfound discovery of the Word of God that put me in the mainstream of historic Christianity, and everything in me wanted to come fully into that stream, and I reasoned with myself this way.

11:51 Well, all I need to do is read a few books by a few good men on the subject of infant baptism, and I will then become a member of either the Orthodox Presbyterian Church or the Reformed Presbyterian Church, which is now merged with the PCA, but then it was a distinct thing, and I was anxious to do so. And God has witnessed that that was the disposition with which I approached for the first time a serious study of the question of infant baptism. But you know what struck me? Every book I picked up, from Burkoff to Professor Murray to Calvin, they would start off using the language of baptism, but in the second or third page, lo and behold, for the most part, I'd be back at circumcision, back at circumcision, back at circumcision, until I said, wait a minute, don't throw curbs at me that way. When you men have been my teachers with regard to election, you open up the passages in which it says, He chose us in Him, whom He foreknew, whom He did predestinate. These very men were the exegetes who supported and enlightened my mind in the great issues that I had been wrestling with for years in terms of the doctrine of salvation. But they became different men when we came to the subject of baptism.

13:11 And it was reading the best paedobaptist authors that made me a Baptist. And God has witnessed that that is not rhetorical overstatement. Because I came to the conviction, if that cause has to be supported and demonstrated and defended by so twisted an approach to the subject, it is a weak cause that cannot stand on its own feet the way every other tenet of Reformed theology does. So Pastor Nichols' approach has not been a, quote, Baptist approach.

13:50 It has been the only thoroughly biblical, consistent approach to arrive at any understanding of any questionable doctrine in the Word of God. And for anyone who's felt the pressure of the weight of going through every single New Testament reference to baptism, who feels that's a Baptist approach, I simply quote from the Westminster Confession, baptism is a sacrament of the New Testament ordained by God. By Jesus Christ. So approaching it with New Testament predominance is not a Baptist approach.

14:32 It is not a dispensational approach. It is not a fragmented approach. It is the only proper approach to take if we believe the Bible to be a self-interpreting body of divine revelation. And I say to anyone struggling with the issue, or will you meet anyone that does, seek to bring them to this perspective.

14:57 How do you approach any other doctrine concerning which you have questions? Go to the portions of the Bible that bear witness to that subject. Now, when you have done that, Mr. Racer, when you have done that, and you have set up your framework of basic understanding from the accumulated witness of the subject in question, then you may go to parallel concerns.

15:26 Is there a parallel between circumcision and baptism? Yes, there is. But you see, you will then extract the parallels that fit the explicit categories of teaching in the New Testament. And no doubt, Pastor Nichols will take you into what those details are in such passages as Colossians 2, 11 and 12, etc.

15:51 But you see our approach? Our approach is to take the subject as it is set before us in the Word of God, gain our major framework of perspective and conviction from the collation of the biblical materials which address themselves to the subject in question, then any parallels, any comparisons that may exist will fit the framework of the explicit and not the other way around. And alas, this is what our paedobaptist friends do continually. So that Warfield, the great theologian and exegete, admits the basis for infant baptism, baptism, a sacrament of the New Testament, Warfield says, does not rest in the New Testament but in the Old. Now that's an honest admission, but frankly, if I were a paedobaptist, I'd be embarrassed to make it and try to defend so weak a cause. Well, I just thought that little polemic on the propriety of the approach that Pastor Nichols has taken, not that he needs me to support what he's doing, but simply to underscore that. Now, questions that may have arisen as Pastor Nichols took us through the subjects of baptism and then dealt with the passages that are most frequently brought forward by infant baptizers to justify their position,

Addressing Questions on Infant Baptism Passages (Mark 10)

17:20 and he concluded like this, and he concluded last week by dealing with those passages, Acts 2.39, 1 Corinthians 7.14. I think that was the concluding passage.

17:31 All right, any questions on the material that he covered? Yes, Rich? Mm-hmm? . Yes.

18:50 . . That's a good question. .

19:10 . . . .

19:15 . . . .

19:19 . . . .

19:23 . . . .

19:28 . . . .

19:32 . . I would not want to answer that with any degree of finality until I had traced out the significance of the word blessing through the scriptures and the context in which it would have been spoken in that situation there in Palestine, how they regarded a rabbi and what it was for a rabbi, an official teacher, to bless. I'd have to do some homework before I would answer that.

20:11 I wouldn't dare answer off the top of my head without looking into the whole background of it. Furthermore, I would say this, Rich, the fact that it says they brought the children to him that he might pray for them, could it be that the absence of any statement that he prayed for them, but it says he blessed them, that he blessed them in his praying for them? You see, there could be a synthesis. It doesn't need to be either or.

20:37 But the great point of the passage is that these passages say nothing about, A, the salvation of children or the baptism of children. Our Lord is using, as the parallel passage in Luke says, he took brephos, which means nursing babes. He took nursing babes in his arms. And he said, of such is the kingdom of heaven.

20:58 He's using the illustration of a child in its helplessness and dependentness being placed into his arms to illustrate the disposition that we proud adult sinners must have if we're to enter the kingdom of heaven. He's not saying those children are in the kingdom. He's not making any statement about them. And he certainly is not putting water on them.

21:20 Whatever he did, whatever blessing was, whatever praying was, it had nothing to do whatsoever with water or the ordinance of baptism. And that I would be prepared to say, with some degree of conviction. But on the question you've raised, Rich, I would have to trace that out and do a good bit of homework before I'd be ready to respond. All right?

The Inconsistencies of Presumptive Regeneration in Paedobaptism

21:45 All right, any further questions on the materials we've covered? Yes, Louise? The Christian Reformed Church? Yes, yes, they would basically justify it that way.

22:06 Men like Burkoff and others would base it on that whole framework. But the interesting thing is, though many of them would deny, if you press them, whether they believe in what we call presumptive regeneration. That is, presuming that when the water is placed on the head of little Willie, it is actually regenerate. I wish I brought my Psalter hymnal, but it's true.

22:31 This is not false witness. The rubric for infant baptism that the minister is to read is the language of presumptive regeneration. It is the language that this child is now cleansed and regenerated and incorporated into the kingdom of heaven. It is the language that this child is now cleansed and regenerated and incorporated into the kingdom of heaven.

22:46 It is the language that this child is now cleansed and regenerated and incorporated into the kingdom of heaven. It is the language that this child is now cleansed and regenerated and incorporated into the kingdom of heaven. He is now a Christian child. So for them, covenant child means Christian child.

22:55 And your nurture is not with a view to their being brought to discover their sinfulness, to own their undone-ness and their unregeneracy and their lostness and in repentance and faith to come to Christ. The nurture is with a view to developing the life already imparted. in virtue of their blood relationship to their parents. So when the scripture says who were born not of blood, you have a theology that says, yes, you have people who are basically born of God because they are born of blood.

23:32 But not all, see I want to be fair again, not all take that position. And so there's this tremendous inconsistency in pedobaptist testimony and the best of them who will not want to presume that the child has grace because he has water upon his forehead,

23:53 they end up then with no doctrine of baptism. What then in the world does baptism signify? And then they end up having to admit, well, we really don't know what it signifies. We really don't know.

24:05 They're not prepared to say it signifies what the Bible says it does. Because as Pastor Nichols will open up to you in the next session, having dealt with the subjects of baptism, he's going to deal with all the passages that open up the significance of baptism. Well, baptism everywhere signifies the possession of regeneration, cleansing from sin, union with Christ. There's not a passage on baptism that says it signifies something potentially received later on.

24:36 Not one. Not one. Every baptism passage that indicates it, its significance points to blessings already received. Arise, wash away thy sins, calling upon the name of the Lord.

24:52 Arise and be baptized, washing away thy sins. As many as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. All of the passages. So you see the tension the poor pedobaptist feels.

25:04 When his mind is being influenced by the Bible on the significance of baptism, he's driven to believe that his children are regenerate, cleansed, incorporated. Into Christ, because baptismal theology from the Bible teaches that that's the significance of baptism. But when he's honest with what he knows, he's got in his arm a little unconverted brat child of Adam.

25:28 He says that can't be true. Can't be true. He's a lost sinner, little covenant sinner, little covenant rebel.

25:38 So now he's torn to say, well, whatever he got in baptism, he sure didn't get a new heart.

25:45 Little scoundrel. Lie, pout, scheme, connive. He can't be regenerate and act like that. And then when he gets older, he's typical, rebel, self-centered, insensitive.

25:59 He says, there's no way I can read my Bible and say I see the fruit of regeneration in little Willie. So whatever he got when he got the water, he sure didn't get a new heart. He sure didn't get incorporated into Christ. So his instincts, his better instincts say, whatever he got, he didn't get all that.

26:16 So what did he get? Well, some kind of a pledge and a sign and a seal of the covenant. Ah, come off it now. What do you mean?

26:24 Sign and seal of what covenant? Well, the covenant. Well, what covenant? New covenant?

26:29 My Bible says all in the new covenant have a new heart and have the Holy Ghost put within it. Well, the covenant blessing that God will bless the children. Bless them with what? Land of Palestine?

26:40 No, we're not members of the old covenant. Well, bless them with what? Earthly blessings? No, we don't belong to that covenant structure.

26:47 Spiritual blessings? Well, yes. Well, wait a minute. Baptism says they already have the blessings.

26:53 You say you sprinkle them in view that they will yet receive the blessings. You see the hopeless confusion. And you will find that confusion in paedobaptist literature all the way through because they're trying to adjust a theology of baptism, which on the one hand is being pulled in this direction by the witness of the Bible and is pulled in this direction by the witness of obvious experience. And they can't.

27:20 They can't put the two together. You see that? Yes. All right.

Distinguishing Christian Parenting from Baptismal Efficacy

27:24 Yes. Joy? That's ridiculous. That's utterly ridiculous.

27:53 Excuse me for answering that way. Do I need to have water on my children to love them spiritually? What do the blessings being raised in a Christian home have to do with being regenerate, incorporated into Christ? All right.

28:24 Stop. End of discussion. No, no. Just a minute.

28:28 Now I want you to see a point. See the point. No. The blessings of having been reared in a Christian home have to do with an ordinance instituted for disciples, according to the Bible.

28:43 Okay. All right. All right. Good.

28:49 All right. Just a minute. No, no. Joy, stick with me now.

28:53 Don't run ahead of me. I'm in charge of the direction of the discussion. Now stick with me. Stick with me.

28:57 Stick with me. What does the blessings of being reared in a Christian home have to do with an ordinance instituted for disciples? Zilch. That's it.

29:10 Zilch. Zilch. Now, let's ask another question. Iron wall.

29:16 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.

29:47 Their outdoor bar, beautifully furnished. It's as big as this. Like a little house. Doors open up.

29:51 They have a refrigerator there, well stocked bar, bottle and bottle and bottle after bottle of all kinds of booze, open at 10 or 10.30 on Saturday and usually Sunday morning. They live for sex, for self, for the world. Now, is there any difference between their relationship to their children and my relationship to my children?

30:12 What's the obvious answer? I want an answer to my question. I'm in charge of the direction. Is there any difference in the relationship we bear to our children?

30:16 Yes or no? Answer my question. Is there any difference in the way we relate to our children? Absolutely.

30:21 All right. Now, what is the fundamental difference? Okay. And looking at them according to scripture, I view them biblically.

30:32 Excellent. But then there's a second thing. Is there any difference in the disposition of how we relate to our children? There is.

30:36 There is. There is. There is. There is.

30:40 There is. There is. There is. There is.

30:48 There is. There is. There is. There is.

30:52 There is. There is. I may, I may have said this. I may have said this.

30:57 Everyone is ... everyone cares about that.

30:58 profesor error I mean, do they care from the start towards those children? What's the highest thing they can have for their children? What's the highest emotion they can have? Self-centered love.

31:11 They can have a measure of natural affection. But it's self-centered. It's earthly. It's for temporal blessings.

31:16 Do they have any yearning for their salvation? No. No. Do they have any ability to get on their knees and plead that where God puts the word, He often intends to convey grace?

31:30 Can they plead the promises? train up a child in the way he shall go, and when he's old he'll not depart from it? Can they plead the promises of God that God would bless a man, a woman, who seek to rear their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord? Can they yearn over their children with godly compassion?

31:48 Absolutely not. So there is not a world, a total universe of difference between the way a godly Christian parent regards his children, relates to them, esteems them, treats them, and ungodly treat theirs. And when paedobaptists say, if you don't baptize them, then you're just like the pagans, I object. I say that's hogwash.

32:12 That is pure, libelous, slanderous accusations to say that I am no different in relationship to my children than my pagan neighbors is totally unfounded in fact. I yearn over my children. We have wept over our children. We continue to weep over them.

32:31 We instruct them formally, informally. We plead for them. We cry to God for them. But now, does that mean we have any warrant to put water upon them which signifies that they are regenerate?

32:46 That they are united to Christ? That they have died with Christ and risen with Christ? That they are members of His church? Yes or no?

32:54 Absolutely not. Do you see that? When we're thinking biblically, and Joy, I didn't mean to be rough, but I felt I had to take control in order that the whole class could see where we're going. If we'd been talking one-on-one, you know I wouldn't have dealt with you that way.

33:10 Right? You don't feel squashed, do you? No? Okay.

33:13 Good. Good. Again, we have visitors and we have the kind of relationship. This is sort of our family time and I can sort of let things out in a fatherly way that might not be appropriate from the pulpit.

Sovereign Election and the Covenant Line

33:25 So, you see, the whole mirage then, and that's all it is, it's an emotional argument. You Baptists, how could I ever become one of you cruel people who treat your children like little pagans? Well, what do you mean by that? Do you mean that I don't instruct them?

33:43 That I don't pray for them? That I don't seek to live Christ before them? That I don't plead the general promises of God on their behalf? I say, how do you know what I do?

33:53 God's witness to my tears. God's witness to my fasting for my children. God's witness to my instruction of my children. Who are you to tell me that I treat them as though I were a pagan parent?

34:06 But if you ask me the question, what do you pray for them? Do you pray that the life already given to them because they are born of my wife and me will be nurtured and developed and they will prove themselves to have been regenerate? I say no, because my Bible says,

34:26 it is not of him that willeth nor of him that runneth, but of God that shall. Showeth mercy. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy and whom I will I harden. The very one who received the promise of the covenant in its first formal enunciation, Abraham, he said, oh, that Ishmael might live before thee.

34:48 And God said, no. In Isaac shall I seed be called. The next heir of the covenant promised Jacob and Esau, I'm sorry, Isaac and his two sons. God is making the message plain.

35:02 Heir of the Abrahamic covenant promise. Thy seed shall be blessed. Does that mean Abraham has the right to presume all his seed will be regenerate? No.

35:12 Before they ever came out of the womb, he said, Jacob have I loved, Esau have I hated. Sovereign electing grace in the covenant line. And that electing grace goes right through the covenant community into the new covenant. You see the issue?

35:29 And if Abraham, the first receiver, of the covenant promise, could not claim the salvation of all his children because they were, quote, in the covenant, how stupid to build a theology of baptism on that very promise and then totally disrupt the witness of the Bible to the sovereignty of God in election and the whole biblical doctrine of baptism. And you see, this is what makes infant baptism so attractive. It is the emotional pull to believe that with regard to, my precious children, God's electing grace is not totally free and sovereign. Oh yeah, with those reprobates, God can love a Jacob and hate an Esau.

36:13 But not my children. They've all got to be Jacobs. Is that so? Where were you in eternity to tell God that all of your seed had to be Jacobs?

36:26 Now, do we have more reason to believe that the Jacobs are to be found in our family than in our neighbor's family? Where there's no Bible, no God, no church? Yes, because God uses means. We have far more reason to hope and to believe that our children will ultimately prove elected.

36:46 It's a fact in Scripture that God calls many of His elect in family lines. Do we as Baptists deny that? Of course not! We would be denying the witness of the Bible.

36:58 But to say because they are born in our family, they are born in our family, they are born in our family, they are elect, we've gone beyond Scripture. Or they are in Christ, we've gone beyond Scripture. That we have no grounds to do. All right, Joy?

Critiquing Simplistic Views of Baptist vs. Paedobaptist Parenting

37:17 Yes? Well, I'd say you're all wet in your assessment, Joy. I'm sorry. No, I'm sorry.

37:42 You're all wet in your assessment. That is not true that Baptists trust more in the rod and Presbyterians trust more in the promises. That's a simp...

37:51 And I know more Baptists who do that than Presbyterians and I think my exposure is wider to both. I'm sorry, Joy, but when you make statements like that that are unfounded in fact, I have to shoot them down. Sorry to do it. Yeah, well, I'd say your experience has been very limited.

38:15 Remember now, my exposure is to international conferences, many of them, Pedobaptist, Baptist, good mixtures, and I would say there is no fundamental difference where people take the Bible seriously. Baptists and Pedobaptists have a proper emphasis upon godly nurture, using the Bible, to sit down with their children, explain their sins, explain how to be forgiven. So I don't believe...

38:41 That's an overly simplistic and the best thing I can say about it is your exposure has been very limited and therefore your conclusion is invalid. All right, we had a question over here. There was one here first. Yes.

The Spiritual Harm of Presumptive Regeneration

39:21 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 was qualitatively different, not in terms of just privilege, but she was somewhere in a halfway house. She wasn't a lost, undone sinner who needed Christ, who was surrounded with the very womb of privilege and blessing out of which life might come, but she supposedly had life and was to be nurtured and developed. But when she tried to live as though she had life, she found she didn't have any. And she said, I felt the frustration of trying to act and live like a Christian as described in the Bible, but alas, I didn't have the power and the motivation necessary and was coming to the conviction I don't have what a Christian's supposed to have, but I'm regarded as a Christian.

40:43 So you see, then there's that tremendous tension. Do I repudiate all that I've been told I am and face realistically in the light of the Bible and embrace what I am, or do I continue on with the act? And though hypocrisy will be found equally in Baptist and Pedo-Baptist circles, you hear me now? Hypocrisy will be found equally, in Pedo-Baptist and Baptist circles.

41:08 There's a lot more opportunity for it in that frame,

41:13 especially where children trust their parents. And they say, well, I can't figure out all the things for this, but all I know is mom and dad must have good reasons for having me baptized. And when I ask them, why was I sprinkled? They say, because you're a son or daughter of the covenant.

41:26 And if the child is inquiring, what's that mean? And the parent really believes, well, that means that God's grace has come to you because you're born in this place. Family, et cetera. That's rough.

41:38 Now, if the parent simply says, and thank God there's blessed inconsistency, and I know many godly Pedo-Baptists who would simply say, when we baptized you, what we were saying is, we were committing ourselves to rear you according to the Word of God in the hopes that you would come to personal faith in Jesus Christ. I know many godly Pedo-Baptists, that's what they'd say. I'd say, well, hallelujah. But then the kid's going to ask a question when he does come to faith in Christ, what does having that water on my head as a kid have to do now with doing what the Bible says, repent and be baptized?

42:10 Then the Pedo-Baptist parent is up a creek without a paddle.

42:15 Because now the grace they prayed the child would have has given him a disposition to obey the Bible. And that's the point Pastor Nichols made last week. What right then does the Pedo-Baptist parent have to forbid that child from obeying Christ in disciple baptism when he sees in his Bible repent and be baptized and he sees that even those who had the sign of the covenant in Acts had to take the sign of their new life in Christ in baptism. And then he comes to his Pedo-Baptist parents and says, look, this is what I see now in my Bible.

42:48 It's a new book to me. I have new eyes. I've come to faith. And the parents rejoice.

42:52 That's what they've been praying for. Now they can discourage one of the most tangible expressions of that faith when that person says, I have chosen my Father's God and Mother's God to be my God by grace and now as one who has come to years of discretion, I wish to declare that in the God-appointed way. Well, thank God, one very well-known Pedo-Baptist man said to me, he said, well, frankly, I wish we could have both. He said, because I see things declared in infant baptism that are precious to me.

43:26 This was his testimony. But I see things in disciple baptism that fit the testimony of Scripture and declare something completely different. Well, the Bible says there's only one way to one baptism. You've got to make your choice.

43:40 Is it water on Willie's head or is it that watery plunge that declares, I am a disciple? So there's the crunch. Now, we had a couple other questions. Dottie Van Dunk was first, I think, and then up to Hartmut and then to Bob.

Infant Salvation and the Silence of Scripture

43:53 All right, Dottie?

44:12 1 Samuel 12, 23 is David saying after the death of the child, it shall not come to me, but I shall go to him. The text, all it clearly states is the child is not going to be resurrected. He's in the grave. I will eventually go to him in the grave.

44:29 It says absolutely nothing, pro or con, about infant salvation. And I will say nothing this morning, pro or con, about infant salvation. All right? But to use that text shows again how flimsy is the biblical material when someone must take a text like this and build a doctrine of infant salvation upon it.

44:50 Yes, Dottie?

44:56 Because they're infants. Very good. Unless you're prepared to say, God who knows the end from the beginning sovereignly elected to salvation every son or daughter of Adam whom he determined to take out of this life in infancy. You see?

45:12 See the reasoning? Now there's nothing to say that God didn't do that or couldn't do that. And that's why I like the language of the confession, all elect infants dying in infancy, and then it goes on to describe their state. It doesn't say how many there are, whether all who die in infancy are elect.

45:31 The confession is willing to be silent where the Bible's silent. And I think that's precisely where we must take our stance on that issue. So don't anyone go out and say, that's a horrible church, doesn't believe that all babies die. No, we're agnostic on that question.

45:45 That is, we can't say we know because the Bible doesn't give us enough materials to say we affirm, we know, here is the basis. And we believe Genesis 18.25 shall not the judge of the earth do right. And we're willing to leave the Bible to leave that unrevealed question in the hands of God.

Internal Non-Exegetical Pressures Towards Infant Baptism

46:03 All right, Hartmut, and then Bob, and then back here to Mark. Yes. Second Samuel. Second Samuel.

46:10 All right. All right, thank you. Second Samuel. All right, Hartmut.

46:14 When you get my age, Hart, you don't trust your memory.

46:52 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.

47:20 And I remember some of them coming to me in a parking lot that's as vivid as though it were yesterday. A parking lot only about a fifth the size of ours. And they said, or they said to me inside the church, they said, Al, how in the world can you be such a convinced Calvinist? And not the Epito-Baptist?

47:37 You obviously understand the covenant. It's come out in your preaching. You see the unity of scripture. How in the world can you embrace all of that and not, quote, come all the way?

47:46 I've had them ask me that question many times. I said, well, if you really want to know, can we step outside? I don't want to appear like I'm proselytizing on your territory. Can we step outside in the parking lot and will you give me 15, 20 minutes?

47:59 I'll tell you. After about 10 to 15 minutes, you know what they said to me? Stop. We don't want to hear anymore.

48:04 I said, why not? They said, you'll make a Baptist out of us if you keep dissing.

48:10 Well, we laugh, but that's enough to make a man weep. What they were saying is, if you continue to bring the word of God to bear upon our consciences, you may convince us from the scripture.

48:24 And alas, my experience has been heart-moot and this does not, again, go to the matter of the motive of the heart. Only God goes there. But I believe that with most convinced people and this is what I plan to prepare perhaps next week, what I'm going to call the internal non-exegetical pressures towards infant baptism. So maybe we can sort of anticipate that.

48:50 I didn't want to do it off the cuff and I want to prepare for it during the week. But there's such an emotional cloud that surrounds the issue that men cannot bring themselves to back off and look at the objective testimony of the word of God. There is the respect for the great men of God who held the position for many, respect for their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents to whom infant baptism was a very precious part of their religious experience and they instinctively know to even open up the question is to run the risk of appearing to despise all that heritage, to walk over the graves of my ancestors with disrespect, to stand against the great giants of the church, Calvin and Owen and Luther and right down the line and all of those things combined. Many men have simply come to the place where they say that's not an issue that I want to open up and even consider.

49:53 And to me that's tragic. That's tragic. Because we should never be in the place where we're embarrassed to turn up any page of the word of God and absorb it in the presence of God in its plainness and obvious sense and preach it to our people. And that's another axiom that I should mention that early in my life when God saved me at age 17 and at age 18 just about my 18th birthday and I immediately began to preach not a practice I recommend to others but there were circumstances that made that at least expedient.

50:31 One of the principles to which I committed myself was this as an 18-year-old boy Lord, help me never to preach anything or help me never to hold any doctrine that will make me embarrassed to turn up any page of the Bible and preach it in its plain and obvious sense. That's what drove me to become what people call a Calvinist because periodically in reading through the New Testament I'd come to John 6 I'd come to John 17 I'd come to Romans 9 I'd come to Ephesians 1 and I'd say look if I were preaching through that chapter there's no way I could preach it in its plain and obvious sense. I was just believing what I presently believe. So something's got to happen to my present convictions because I had that silly notion that election is God foresaw who would choose him and therefore he chose them. Well I knew enough about words to know ratification is not election. I knew enough about words to know that. So it would trouble me and I never could bury the issue because I had adopted that axiom of seeking to be true to the word of God.

51:33 So that's all I can say in answer to that question, Hart.

Hypocrisy in Baptist Churches and the Call to Biblical Fidelity

51:37 Yes.

51:58 That's right. And you see the same way in Baptist churches where you have toddler and what I would call pre-teen baptism. And multitudes are decisioned and you can't get those preachers to consider what is the biblical doctrine of conversion. And so you've got Baptist churches full of unconverted baptized people just as much as you have pedo-Baptist churches and all they've done one has entrenched himself in one area of error and the other in another area of error.

52:32 And it's tragic. It is tragic. I've preached in Baptist churches when I've sought to expound not the doctrine of baptism but the doctrine of conversion where I've almost been run out of town. I've preached at conferences where they had a bunch of young kids ages 8 to 12 or 13 and I preached to them like the majority of them were unconverted because there was no evidence they were converted but they'd all been decisioned and baptized.

52:56 And I had preachers going to the conference director saying if that guy Al Martin is ever back on this conference grounds I'll never attend here. Why? He's got all my kids upset. Well I didn't get them upset the Word of God did.

53:09 I just preached the biblical doctrine of what are the fruits of regeneration and those kids didn't have those fruits. Well you see it's that same spirit of unwillingness to bring everything to the touchstone of the Word of God. So don't any go out and say well Pastor Martin said that only pedo-Baptists have deceived people. No.

53:29 Alas they're in Baptist church. But we're discussing this morning the subject of pedo-Baptism and of course the focal point has been there. If we have any pedo-Baptist friends who are visiting with us let me assure you this is not a hobby we ride. I say in 20 years of ministry we've never had a series of six weeks in an adult class on the subject of baptism and so please be kind and gracious in interpreting what we've done this morning and if you've had your pedo-Baptist conviction shaken a little bit hallelujah.

53:59 Go to the Bible. Go to the Bible. Go to this book. I have challenged many pedo-Baptists to do something that I've never known a pedo-Baptist to challenge someone to do.

54:10 I've had people come to me with a question about baptism and I've said take your Bible and your concordance look up every reference to baptism and come and give me your conclusion. A pedo-Baptist will not do that because he knows the person will never end up in Genesis 17 with circumcision and that's the truth and if you need to go to Genesis 17 to get the fundamental teaching on the significance of a New Testament sacrament that's pedo-Baptist language then you better question. You better question seriously whether or not you are really mishandling the word of God and I lay that challenge before you. Don't be angry with me.

54:53 Go to your Bible and do what I've urged you to do. Let's pray. Our time is gone.

55:03 Our Father we thank you that the scriptures are given to be a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. We thank you and we pray that amidst things that have caused invective and ungodliness in people's words and attitudes that we may be kept Christ-like and gracious even in the midst of controversy while at the same time that we will call no man master. We thank you for the great lights given to your church and how many of us are indebted to John Owen Jonathan Edwards and to the John Calvin and Luther and Knox and a host of others. But Lord we call no man master and we are determined to follow them only so far as they follow Christ. And we would follow our Lord Jesus in his institution of disciple baptism. We would not rob our children of the blessed experience of coming to years of maturity and declaring themselves the disciples of Christ and the disciples and voluntarily acknowledging to the church and to the world that they now freely and joyfully are the bond slaves of Christ as they join themselves to him formally and visibly in the waters of baptism. Holy Father help us oh help us that we may ever walk in the light

56:33 of your word in all things for Jesus sake. Amen.