artists that Pastor Thomas went to a conference in Atlanta at which he heard a great deal of negative comment about the doctrine of Pato communion and asked me to just summarize what the case for Plato communion is I have held this Doctrine for about 20 years and I have followed the arguments to some extent although for the last 15 years of my life I've been in churches that practiced it and so I didn't really have an existential need to keep arguing the matter whereas a number of my friends who are in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church are in the Presbyterian Church in America have continued to be on committees and continue to keep the argument up against those who are not persuaded of child communion so I followed that to some extent I've lived with it for a long time and I did write some of the initial articles about 15 years ago that were some of the first things that went out and early on before a lot of people had been persuaded of this I would have to say that having watched this over 20 years that the number of people in the Presbyterian World persuaded of Plato communion has probably moved from two or three to two or three hundred pastors clergyman and Seminary professor as I was at a seminary I won't mention a couple of years ago and had lunch with several the professors Allah whom told me they believed in it but they don't want to lose their jobs and so it's not something that they're going out on a fence on but they said it makes sense to us as we look at it as we've been forced to study it we've changed our minds which I think is the position all of us are in I've never met anyone except my own children of course who grew up believing in Plato communion I'm part of a generation it had to look at this and be challenged to say well maybe children belong at the table just as they belong to be baptized of course you have to admit that children should be baptized before you even get to this question so it is a presbyterian discussion not one that runs across the whole gamut of the Christian world today that's how I come to it but there are plenty of people in the Presbyterian world who view this Doctrine with a great deal of disfavor and Pastor Thomas ran into a bunch of them so he came back and said let's kind of lay all this out again and nail it down so while there's material out there that you could read it's not readily available it's usually majority and minority reports in the PCA the OPC the Christian Reformed Church other churches and there are some other tape lectures out there that you can get hold of the deal with this subject I'm here to present it and let you ask questions and we can discuss it so let's begin with prayer Father in heaven we ask the guidance of the Holy Spirit as we consider these things this is an old Doctrine but for us it's also a new one it's controversial I ask that you would give me a good spirit in presenting this material that I don't say anything that's offensive in dealing with a thorning issue where words spoken innocently might be taken the wrong way if I ask that you would guide our thinking and help us to think your thoughts after you as we consider these things we ask this in the Name of Christ Our King amen if you look at the outline I'm going to briefly discuss what we mean by Pato communion I'm going to briefly go over the history of this Doctrine then I'm going to make a prima fascia case for Pato communion Prima fascia means first look and we're going to see why it looks like the Bible teaches Pato communion that is if you accept them for baptism Beto communion will certainly seem to follow and that will just basically be the positive argument for Pato communion and then what we have to do is take up arguments against it why is it that so many Presbyterians don't hold of this why is it that the Protestant Reformation when they change so many errors in the church this was not changed so we'll look at that and that will take us certainly into next week and I feel that two or three weeks ought to be enough to go through this unless we get into a whole lot of questions that I haven't thought about before okay so first of all what is meant by Plato communion fatal communion means child communion pedo means child Pato baptism means child baptism the doctrine that we're talking about says that as far as coming to the Lord's table is concerned the only requirement is that you be baptized there's no additional requirement okay God sovereignly puts us into his church and we could say God sovereignly puts us into the visible Church by baptism and everybody that's in the visible church is welcome to the table that's the doctrine this does not mean that you take a baby that is two weeks old and you put a crumb of bread in his mouth or you dip your finger in wine and put it in the baby's mouth the biblical rule for Passover was that you will cut the lamb up and distribute it each according to his eating and so that phrase each according to his eating is one that we used to say when a child starts to eat at home he's welcome to eat at church he's welcome at Jesus table to eat with the Lord as soon as he starts to eat at home so if he can munch on a teething biscuit at home and if he can sip from the rim of a cup at home he can do that in church children can't follow the sermon but they know whether they're included or excluded and the doctrina Pato communion means that from our earliest time we tell our children you are included And when everybody else is having a piece of bread and the child reaches out for it you don't say no you say yes you're included now why are you included because you were born good no you're conceived in iniquity and you're born dead and trespasses and sins you're included only because God sovereignly put his mark on you at baptism and claimed you and now you grow up responding to that and we'll have to discuss that a little bit the other opinion says that yes baptism I think that the Presbyterians usually have somewhat difficulty explaining why they baptize infants if they don't hold a fatal communion well baptism is somehow other God's Mark and claim on the child and yet the child has to come to an age where he makes a visible response before he can come to the Lord's table our Baptist friends go one step further they say well you might dedicate your child to the Lord as a baby but until the child comes to an age where he makes a personal response of the Gospel he shouldn't be baptized or at the table and the Presbyterians as they have been are right in the middle a fatal communionists say no baptism puts the child in a visible church and gives him all the benefits of the visible Church including communion Baptists say no when the child makes a decision and gives a visible indication of a work of Sovereign Grace then he can come in a Presbyterians say God claims him as a baby but the child has to have this experience or give a visible indication to come to the table I feel like what is happening there is a principle of Works has slipped into the equation and so that we program our children to say being baptized is not enough being in the church is not enough you have to have an experience or you have to do something before you can come to this benefit and I think that what is happening there is a principle of Works comes slipping back in the back door with this Doctrine and one reason that I believe strongly in Plato communion is it eliminates any possibility of that but that's what we're talking about we're not talking about young child communion if you look at the Christian Reformed Church they don't let their children come to the Lord's table till they're 18 or 19. and so the Christian reform would look at the southern Presbyterians Southern Presbyterians let their children come to the table when they're about nine or ten the reason for that is that's about the age that all the Baptist kids walk the aisle and join the church and so in the Southern Culture that's the age at which kids come into the church the Baptist kids walk the aisle and get immersed the Presbyterian kids start taking the Lord's Supper around nine or ten well from the Christian reform standpoint that's child communion that's too young but that's not what we're talking about because there is still this extra requirement to come to the table nor are we talking about a magical view that says the infant is force fed we're just talking about a child naturally growing up at the table just as a child naturally grows up at my table at my house the child naturally grows up at the Lord's table at his house because he's included and he is included by baptism we baptize them because they're dead Presbyterians are so depraved that our children are born dead and they have to be brought to life again in the church we have to give them up just like Sam Samuel's mother had to give him up but we have to give our children up we bring them into the church and we say this child is dead is there anything you can do and the pastors say well we can baptize him but then he belongs to Christ and he's given back to you just in stewardship all of our children are adopted you see they're given to Christ and Christ gives them back to us it's a confession of Parental impotence to baptize your children and from that point all they belong to Jesus and they belong at his table that's the concept now that's either right or wrong okay but that's the concept obviously I think it's right so I presented it in glowing colors but that's the concept is there a history of this yeah there is from everything we can tell in the early church children were baptized and came to the Lord's table now our Baptist friends will maintain it in the first couple of centuries that wasn't true but everybody had missed it by the third or fourth Century as soon as we have records and liturgies this was the case our Baptist friends would say the church made a mistake by introducing infant baptism we would say really it was always there and that's where we would just have to leave this but for centuries until the Middle Ages this was the norm in the eastern and western churches children were baptized and usually they were Anointed with oil immediately after that and then they were admitted to the table from then on I'm not advocating anointing with oil I'm just telling you this is what they did now why did it stop well it stopped in the western church and not in the Eastern Church the Eastern churches still practice Plato communion to this day in Russia in Greece in all the Eastern churches Plato communion never stopped but in the western church it stopped because of the doctrine of transubstantiation the doctrine of transubstantiation changed the doctrine of the Lord's Supper Augustine said nothing happens to the Bread and Wine Augustine said the Holy Spirit comes down and gives us Christ when we eat the Bread and Wine and the augustinian tradition through retromness of Corby and baringarius of Tours throughout the Middle Ages maintained that the holy spirit is the one who makes the Lord suffer work but mostly the church abandoned that and came to believe that the Bread and Wine are converted into some type of physical form of Christ's body and blood and it wasn't until the Protestant Reformation that the augustinian view came back into currency which is what we believe the holy spirit makes the Lord's Supper work it's not changed into Jesus in some mysterious physical way transubstantiation said that the bread actually becomes in some way the physical body of Christ it doesn't look like it it doesn't feel like it doesn't taste like it but it really is the difference between the outward appearance and the inward reality between the accidents and the substance in the outward appearance and the inner reality the inner reality is this really is skin it's flesh and this wine it looks like wine outward appearance and it smells and tastes like wine but it's really blood is not the holy spirit gives us Christ as we eat it it really becomes it sitting right here and so since it's consecrated it actually becomes the body and blood of Christ and we should venerate it and so then they begin to hold it up and say Behold the Lamb of God you can look at it well what happened if this is really Christ then we better be real careful with the bread and why now we would say be careful with the ritual you know you don't want to eat and drink unworthily but the spirit is the one who is active they said be careful with the elements now you've got a loaf of bread here and when you break it crumbs go everywhere that's no good little pieces of Jesus are going on the floor mice might eat it that would dishonor the Lord and God will be mad at you so what do you do with the bread to make sure that doesn't happen you make it into wafers that melt in your mouth not in your hand you ever had wafers I remember a couple of kids in our church in Tyler they visited out of town he went to Episcopal church and they were given wafers at the rail and when they came out their father said well what did you think of communion there and they said well we didn't get any bread and he says yeah you did he said oh Dad but they gave us this and he pulls out this wafer and the father said that's the bread he says oh Dad that's styrofoam well I grew up in a way for church see Wafers don't make crumbs so you turn it into wafers and you see if you've got a common cup and somebody might spill the blood of Christ that's dangerous and so what happens some people think that the church took the cup away from the people no the people rejected the cup the people were terrified to take the cup and so even down to the present day in Catholic mass you get wafer you don't get wine at a marriage maybe they give you wine up until Vatican II nobody but the priest had wine from the Middle Ages on Protestant Reformation put wine or grape juice for us too often back in but for three or four centuries no Layman took wine for fear of spilling it and people were so afraid of the Lord's Supper that they would never go to it the priest would do it all by himself and so the church passed Canon laws that said people must attend communion at least once a year because people wouldn't go to it at all you see the people were afraid of it and the third thing that happened was they said we better not let our kids even have these Wafers because they might not do it right and so the children were removed from the table not by the church making a theological decision but by parents pulling them away and then this becomes the custom see if this is Mystical stuff here the stuff itself has become Jesus we better not let any kids fool with it they may run through the church or something with it and we better not take the wine we might spill it in fact we better not do it at all unless the church forces us to once a year that's what happened that was an effect of the doctrine of transubstantiation well the Protestant reformers change that before the Reformation there were pre-reforming movements and in what we call today Czechoslovakia or Czech land the followers of John Huss or we can write it in English the followers of John Huss restored the Protestant doctrines and the doctrine of the Lord's Supper of Augustine and early church and the hussites formed their own churches now the Roman Church the Church of Europe had a counseling Constance and they invited us to come and defend his position and then they burned him at the stake so the high science had to do without Huss there were two groups of hussites that came out of this in Bohemia the taborites and the utrequists ultra Quest means both kinds it means they had communion with Bread and Wine and we know these people today as the Bohemian Brethren or as the Moravian Church after the Protestant Reformation the moravians adopted also some of the doctrines that the Protestants developed and clarified but a hundred years before Luther they existed they gave the cup back to the people and they restored Plato communion and the hussites or moravians have always had child communion and the reason is very simple they just looked back the early church and said well children were always at the table and so they put children back and there are Moravian hymns maybe I'll bring one in and read it to you that talk about how children are welcome at the table I just bring that up to say this is not a new idea okay it has a long history was there an early church the only reason it ever stopped was Superstition as soon as the Reformation started up children came back to the table and then at the Protestant Reformation what we think of the Reformation Calvin and Luther and boots are and the rest and bullying her they did not restore Plato communion and we'll look at why when we get to the arguments against it they tried to restore frequent communion they restored wine they restored bread started using loaf bread or unleavened bread that was not waferized they had communion sitting at tables looking at one another or standing around a table in England the customers to come down and stand around the table then it kind of fell apart into kneeling in the reformed churches it was to sit at tables they didn't pass it up and down aisles like we do today a pews rather they they sat at tables very much a meal with Bread and Wine bread bread and wine wine but they didn't let the children back in they said the children need to make a decision so that they can come back in I think that they made a mistake but their arguments are the ones that we will be looking at later on there were however some of the Protestant reformers who argued for Pato communion in Zurich and this is not a household name but the reformer Wolfgang musculus I'll write his last name up here Wolfgang you know s-w-o-l-f-g-a-n-g okay Wolfgang musculus was one of the Zurich reformers there was a company of them there the best known as Heinrich Bullinger he made a strong case for Plato communion but he didn't persuade anybody but here again you see at the Reformation this issue came up again and at least some of the reformers were arguing for it after the Reformation in the English church there were people who advocated returning to Plato communion and here and there on the continent there were people who advocated returning to Plato communion in the German Reformed Church and other places but they never carried the day nowadays though it is a big issue the Christian Reformed Church has had at least one big study Commission on it with two reports one pro and one against the PCA General Assembly had a study Commission on this in the mid-1980s it was a short majority report against Plato communion that said Gee this is new we don't want this and then there was a long Minority Report by Rob Rayburn very acute and one of the best things you can read on the subject in favor of it who really deals with all the issues a number of presbyteries in the PCA and in the OPC have had their own study commissions another excellent document if some of you want to kind of file up on this maybe I can make some copies of these things is the Presbyterian Church in America PCA Presbytery of Philadelphia I don't think they call it Philadelphia but it's that one it's the one where Westminster Seminary is and they had a study commission that came down Foursquare in favor of Plato communion the Orthodox Presbyterian Church which is the Church of which our church here is associating has studied it off and on it first came to their attention because they had a Ministry in Washington D.C to Ethiopian Christians and one of the men that I knew in Theological Seminary hailu mcconnin was down there in D.C working among Ethiopian refugees and others and they formed an Ethiopian Church which was a mission of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church well they ran into the problem then of course the Ethiopian Christians out of the Coptic church practice Pato communion these people said hey we've always had Plato communion our children have always been at the table and of course now we've accepted Calvinism and the doctrines of Grace and justification by faith but seems to us that if we're going to baptize our kids they ought to be at the table and that's our whole cultural tradition and so the Orthodox Presbyterian Church General Assembly met and said okay we'll make an exception your church can have Plato communion well the Camel had its nose in the tent and so then all kinds of other churches and people in the OPC started saying well if they can we want to too because we believe in this and that was news to the powers that be that so many people had come around to this opinion so the OPC met again and said no you can't do it nobody can do it and I don't know whatever happened to the Ethiopian Church there I guess is probably still there and they probably you know have their children at the age of four or five get interviewed by the elders and come to the table but they had to stop it well that meant that the OPC had a big issue on its hand because now a whole lot of people had looked at it and become persuaded of it so they had a study commission just a few years ago three or four years ago they put all their big gun theologians on it and the big gun theologians that they put on it said yeah we think this is wrong and we'll come up with all the reasons why it's wrong so they met for about a year and a half and they came back and said well actually it's starting to look right and so the majority report in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church came out in favor of Pato communion and said we need to change the Westminster Confession we need to change the Westminster larger catechism you don't really need to change the confession but you have to change the larger catechism to allow for Pato communion and they had two men on the committee who disagreed and all the rest of them they're big guns as a result of studying it came around to it well that's where we are right now now the OPC General Assembly met and said whoa we can't change the larger catechism we're not ready to make that step yet so let's keep studying so it's keeping studying but I bring this up to say over the last 10 15 years more and more interest in this and I sure thought I'd be farther along than I am maybe this is going to take six weeks instead of two do any of you have any questions about anything we've done up to this point before we start looking at Theology and Bible texts I've said everything I know so if you have any questions I'm not going to be able to answer them but okay let's turn into a prima fascia case for Pato community I want to make some theological points presuppositional theological points and then in fact calling them points is itself an admission of theological perspective I'd like to present some aspects and dimensions of this question not points before we look at some texts first of all I'd like for us to think about a trinitarian view of humanity and Society God is one in three God is a society God is also an individual God is three individuals but he is one Society he is one God but he is also a society that means God is just as much interested in society as he is in individuals now we don't think this way as Americans we think individualistically our whole world view that we have inherited since the late Middle Ages is called nominalism or I'm going to call it something that'll be easier for you to understand and I think it's clearer we have a philosophy of atomistic reductionism we reduce all explanations to little bits we understand things by cutting them up and analyzing them in little bits for instance why do you get sick little itty bitty things called germs make you sick how do you stay healthy by eating little itty bitty things called vitamins how come you look so ugly because little itty-bitty things called genes made you look the way you do oh I didn't say ugly how come you look the way you look okay every explanation that we have consists of breaking things down into a little bits little itty bitty herbs will make you well okay all different kinds homeopathic herbs barley orange herbs okay we are trained to think that what makes the world go around things called atoms now quantum physics has begun to say wait a minute it's not just little itty-bitty things called atoms it's also field phenomena and wave phenomena but we're still always thinking in terms of little itty bitty things the fact is we don't grow up to be people just because of genes it doesn't make any sense there is no reason why the tiny little genes in your cells would make you grow up to be shaped the way you do instead of being shaped like a rabbit and now science has begun to say wait a minute we are also inheriting morphogenetic fields that make us grow the way we do and it's very likely that a lot of sicknesses and diseases that we have are not just caused by germs and viruses also have to do with a whole lot of psychological and psychobiological factors and social factors these kinds of things are not part of our way of thinking but they ought to be but we inherit this and that goes right along with the fact that we are individualists in our society we think an individualistic categories we don't think in family categories we don't think in group categories we think in a rugged individualistic categories which is why Americans tend to be Baptists we tend to say my decision my personal individual relationship with Christ is what counts it couldn't be that my parents made a decision or that God works with my family as a family in so direct away yes you know Baptist will admit that God works with families but they don't put that on the same par as God working with individuals now what I am saying is we need to think of it on the same par and a lot of this has to do with what's in the back of our mind and has been in the back of our mind for centuries how do you analyze a Doctrine or a text to the Bible you break it down into three points and then you break each point down into three points now this is all very modern the Bible is not written in points you see points are these things they're atoms and you always break your text down into points that very language is this language why don't we just take the flow stream of Consciousness that's what we should do is give the stream of the flow that's in the text I could say but see what our tradition is since late medieval nominalism a way of thought this is ramus logic from Peter Ramos he said the way you understand things is to break them down break them down into smaller and smaller bits and the three-point sermon is ramus Logic the Puritans and all the reformers and just about everybody in the church lutherans and everybody else they all followed Peter ramus and rhemus logic and they broke things down into points you see that's our thinking we inherit this that's not the way people have always thought and we can't afford to just keep thinking that way without at least inspecting and saying is this the best way to look at the world I don't think it is I think we need to have points and Fields we need one and many or many in one now the trinitarian view of humanity and society says that we are linked together in society by bonds and the Holy Spirit is the bond maker the spirit is the Matchmaker in the Trinity you know that we are the bride of Christ and we're going to grow up to be married to Jesus and he is our husband and the spirit is the Matchmaker the spirit is the one who prepares the bride for Christ that's what history is that's what biography is that's what your life is you are Esther being prepared for the king the spirit prepares us for those bonds the spirit creates all these Bonds in the world and in the fullest sense it's the work of the Holy Spirit to do that and in hell we're all going to be completely alone those who go to hell will not have any tithes or bonds with anybody but we have all these bonds now in God himself there are bonds okay each of the persons of the Trinity is bonded to all the rest they have tithes you know why when somebody that you know well or love dies you feel so horrible it's because that bond is broken and it's really there I mean why is it that you know if your child dies you don't say well he died that's what animals say animals don't bury their dead we do we affirm these bonds and ties are real the closer you get to somebody the stronger that bond is well in the creation God makes men and God makes women one of these years this symbol isn't going to work anymore but Adam and Eve have a bond with each other and each one of them is bonded to each of these three persons and has a relationship and when children are added in then we get more bonds and ties and there are animals out here and you know if you have a pet that you love you have a bond we would draw these in different colors you know there's a marital bond that might be red there's a bond to Heaven those might be blue lines bonds to these animals they might be brown lines if somebody breaks into your house you come home tonight and somebody has broken in how do you feel have you ever had that happen you feel violated they have come across your space they've crossed your boundary and they've violated your bonds the bonds that you have with physical things they took your stereo now it seems crazy but we actually form attachments to those things that's why the Bible says Safeguard other people's property well these bonds are real sin tears up those bonds as soon as we break the bond with God the holy spirit all these other bonds start to attenuate what happens when Adam breaks the bond with God starts blaming Eve what happens when Cain breaks a bond with God murder is able as soon as you break the bond with God all the social bonds start to tear up and the bond between husband and wife tears up and the bond between parents and child tears up when the spirit comes he will restore the hearts of the fathers to the children and the hearts of the children to the fathers you see that's the last verse in our Old Testament the last verse in Malachi the bond gets restored our work for bond is Covenant but I'm going to use the word bond okay Covenant is so loaded in our minds that it almost doesn't have any meaning we use it to refer to so many different aspects of things just these bonds and ties these strings husband and wife are at War parents and children are at War if that's the case then what does salvation do salvation restores all those bonds salvation restores marriage salvation restores parent child now if that's so then salvation is not just an individual thing let me ask you something if salvation restores these bonds and puts things back the way they're supposed to be think back to the garden Adam and Eve this time they don't sin they have a child the child grow up knowing the Lord yeah for a child from the womb is bonded in bonded to the mother and bonded to God just like John the Baptist leaped for joy in the womb when he encountered the fetal Jesus John is a fetus encounters Jesus as a fetus you know stomach to stomach here Mary and Elizabeth and John leaps for Joy that's a response of Faith people say Do you believe children can have faith I say man I believe a fetus can have faith John the Baptist had faith in the womb I don't know how much intellectual content it had but he recognized Jesus his heart had faith the children would grow up naturally knowing the Lord they wouldn't have to make a decision now as they get older they become more self-conscious in that relationship sin is what destroys this whole pattern of life these bonds if salvation means anything if we're trinitarian in our view then I submit salvation has to mean that these bonds are restored our children do grow up knowing the Lord now is that because we're made righteous and so our children are conceived without sin no uh they're conceived in iniquity and we're made righteous and so our children are born without sin no they're born in sin they're born dead but the pattern of redemption follows the pattern of creation God baptizes our children and he puts them into relationship with himself now they may grow up to be an Esau and they may break this okay but they start out inside by baptism we don't baptize our children because we presume they're regenerate we baptize them because we presume they're unregenerated we baptize them because we confess they need to be regenerated and baptism is our pledge and hope that God will regenerate them in his time it's a promise to us it's are claiming the promise so salvation by implication restores these relationships it's not just an individual thing the Holy Spirit comes and we would expect then that God would put our children back into relationship with himself just as if Adam and Eve hadn't sinned their children would have grown up in a relationship with God and that's what we find of course have you ever known five and six-year-old children in Christian family who didn't believe If the parents went to church and brought their children along and prayed you ever know small children that don't believe no they do they may get to be 13-14 and rebel but when they're young they receive the Faith from their parents that's God's way if God didn't want it that way he wouldn't cause them to come into the world as little kids I mean there's nothing wrong with that we think somehow or other there's something wrong with that for a child to believe what his parents tell him that's not wrong that's God's way if God didn't want it that way children would pop into the world at the age of 20. you know a woman would get this big and then there'd be a 20 year old who would make his own decision think about this now God's way is for children to start out believing what their parents say and then get to the point where they begin to move away from their folks you know and that's by degrees first of all those terrible twos where the child moves a little bit away and then there's terrible fives and there's adolescence and find the child is out of the home and each one of these defines a new stage or a new relationship with the parent these stages are real at each stage the parent relates less to the father and mother and more directly to God that's what we want okay we'll discuss this more children relate to God as father when they get to be adolescents they start wanting to relate to God as husband and that's why they get involved in a passionate need to have a relationship a special relationship with God the son as a spouse for the same reason they start looking for a member of the opposite sex God puts them into a phase of life where they want this complementary relationship before that time they relate to God as a father they just crawl into his lap that's not wrong that's just a different stage of life I want to talk about that more toward the end what I want us to reflect on then is that if we are trinitarian and we believe that God is just as much a person as he is a society then that salvation restores society and restores parent-child relationships our children we should expect to grow up in the Covenant and I think they do the second thing I want us to think about just a little bit by way of how we even start approaching the Bible out of our theology is a covenantal view of History I've got that word covenant in there which I said a minute ago is we've loaded it up so much that it's almost hard to use but what I mean by that here in this context is there's a relationship between Generations now that seems so obvious that we don't think about it but we got to think about it God's whole way of Abram means big Father Abraham means even bigger father the whole idea is Father and Son then Isaac is the son Abram has to pass on Legacy to Isaac and Isaac blows it of course Isaac chooses I mean God tells Isaac Jacob is the one and Isaac says forget it I'm going to favor Esau but the idea of passing the legacy on is still there and Isaac has sons and Jacob has Sons all this genealogy in the Bible means there are father son relationships where there is an expectation of a legacy passed down what it is not is each individual making his own decision it's not as if Abram well he has a relationship to God and here's Isaac Isaac is neuter and when Isaac gets to be 20 he has a relationship with God that's not the expectation the expectation is Abraham passes it to Isaac Isaac passes it to Jacob okay but that's the whole way the Bible's set up that's what's in the background of thinking about our children the second thing I have down here to mention is the second word of the second commandment what does it say visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children down to the third and fourth generation of them that hate me but showing loving kindness to thousands of generations it passes down now here again it doesn't pass down in an automatic way in the sense that because I'm a Christian my children are born holy my children are born unclean they are made holy at baptism but the point is God works through generations it's always a difficulty I think with Baptists and particularly the most self-conscious Baptists do they teach their children The Lord's Prayer I have known some that did and I have known some that didn't well I can't tell my child to say Our Father Who Art in Heaven because God may not be his father he hasn't closed with Christ at the age of three he's not old enough to make that decision so I can't teach him that others say we teach him you see I think that strain that very fact puts a strain on the Baptist belief our belief is because of infant baptism and God's claim on the child we hope and pray the child will remain faithful to God's claim and mark That's put upon him at infant baptism and so we teach our children yes God is your father you mayor Rebel like Cain did you may Rebel like Esau did and lose God as your father for right now he is in some real sense you say well maybe not in the ultimate decretal sense yeah but the decree is God's business I don't know about the decree I only know about this who's in the decree and who's ultimately elect or not I can't know I don't live by that I live by the scripture so where does this covenantal view of History come from Fathers and Sons well obviously it comes from God God the father and God the son he eternally begotten son who is always being begotten and yet that's not a process it's a condition in eternity the sun is always a son to the father that's what that means he is always a son to the father in this procession of father to son which is just a condition in eternity and we can't understand that we will always exist in time so we will never understand how that can be but the image of that God had a reality is the fact that they are Fathers and Sons in this world their fathers and mothers and sons and daughters and so there's this passing on and if Adam hadn't sinned there would have been this passing on the children would have grown up and everywhere else in the Bible when Redemption comes when salvation comes that is restored God says to Abram teach your sons God says to the Israelites teach your sons teach your sons and daughters do you understand what I'm saying here this has a theological grounding in the doctrine of the trinity man is the image of God human life images the Divine Life the fact that the father has a son and passes on to the son that happens in our life For Better or For Worse is real now if the Bible didn't talk this way if it said well Adam's children would have grown up knowing the Lord but they didn't and so as a result now the whole father-son thing is gone forever you see Abram is a righteous man and in there is Isaac and there's nothing about passing anything on to Isaac Isaac grows up and he either sides or doesn't decide and every generation is chopped off that would be one thing but that is not what we see is it that's not what we see at all everything is this continuity the fathers pass on to the sons well in view of that then what do you expect if you're thinking trinitarianly if you're thinking in terms of this father-son thing we haven't even gotten to particular verses that talk about this we're talking about General categories the whole relationship of life is restored Family Life Fathers and Sons parents and children you're all restored and becomes a Christian family not just Christian individuals children are included the whole view of history that everything passes down to our children that's all there in the background so are we surprised at infant baptism I don't think so the doctrine of infant baptism C I want very briefly to touch on because we very often are told that infant baptism just carries over circumcision from the Old Testament which of course it does but it's not just circumcision and the reason for that is that there are all kinds of baptisms in the Old Testament in the very fact that God picks up baptism and makes it the New Testament symbol of entrance into the kingdom relates us not just back to Old Testament circumcision which we all know was done on boy babies but it also relates to all creation baptisms particularly the baptism of lepers I'm not going to do this but if you read the Old Testament baptisms or in Leviticus and numbers you'll find that you are baptized anytime you come in contact with death and that would apply to children as well as adults and it applied to women as well as men you want proof text for baptizing women you can find it in the Old Testament won't is unclean by an issue of blood that goes beyond her normal monthly period she's going to have to be baptized she will have to baptize herself at the end of that time before she can come back to the Tabernacle if she has a baby she has to be baptized or rather she has to baptize herself to come back to the Tabernacle if you are in a room with a corpse or if you touch a human corpse you will have to be baptized by somebody else you will not baptize yourself the word baptism is a word used here you will not baptize yourself somebody else will have to baptize you with the ashes of the heifer on the third day and on the seventh day now if you have a baby and the baby is in a room with a human corpse the baby's gonna have to be baptized and re-established and if you contract leprosy or skin disease white spots on the skin where the flesh shows through if you want to understand what Paul means by the word flesh the best place to go is Leviticus because the flesh is all over the place issues from the Flesh and the flesh showing through the skin and leprosy and all that tells you what the flesh is it's the corruption inside of us if the flesh shows through these white marks on the skin you have leprosy not the same as modern leprosy and you have to be baptized to be cleansed once it goes away and that has to be done by priest now when John the Baptist comes baptizing people were not washing themselves and John was a priest remember Zacharias father was a priest so what kind of baptism was John performing the only Old Testament antecedent for John's baptism is the baptism for leprosy to go out to John and say I need to be baptized as to confess that you have spiritual leprosy it was also to confess that you belonged out in the wilderness and you need to come back in the promised land that's why it was done at the Jordan my point here is that these Old Testament baptisms all the different ones and we will see later on and this was almost certainly going to be next week now crossing the Red Sea crossing the Jordan River are baptisms the flood is a baptism the New Testament tells us all these things these include infants you want proof text for infant baptism marching through the Red Sea is a proof text for infant baptism okay want one real quick man it's in the New Testament First Corinthians 10 I don't want you to be unaware Brethren our fathers were all under the cloud all passed through the sea all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea all ate the same spiritual food all drank the same spiritual drink for they were drinking from the spiritual rock that followed them The Rock was Christ now that's a proof tax for Pato communion because the babies were drinking that water and the babies were eating the manna it's also a proof text for infant baptism because the babies were included in passing through the Red Sea and there are other passages as well passing through the Jordan and so forth in the various sprinklings for uncleanness also would apply to babies and girls women as well as men when they became unclean and so New Testament baptism pulls together circumcision and the Old Testament baptisms it pulls both of them together and of course we can't have a bloody right in the New Covenant because the blood has been shed once and for all so circumcision cannot continue to be the sign baptism then comes in its place but I wanted to point this out because later on what we're going to see is many people say the Lord's Supper is just Passover Lord supper is not just Paso the Lord's Supper is the Feast of pure him the Lord's Supper is the face of Tabernacles the Lord's Supper is all the peace offerings in the Old Testament the Lord's Supper is the Manna and the water the Lord's Supper is the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil in the garden the Lord's Supper is the elders eating up on the mountain with God the Lord's Supper is every meal in the Old Testament and if somebody wants to say children were not at Passover my response is so what they were at Tabernacles they were at all these other meals even if they weren't at Passover which I think is Highly Questionable I think they probably weren't Passover but we have time to very quickly look at that again my only point is baptism is more than just circumcision it is all these other baptisms in the Old Testament and they apply it to infants just as much as two adults who were in The Covenant so when you start talking about New Testament baptism if it has any background at all it has a background in Old Testament baptisms which applied to babies as well as adults now very quickly let's look at the old creation festivals and then we'll have to draw a line right here between D and E for next week were children included in the feasts and festivals in the Old Testament the meals that people had with God the answer is yes they were Deuteronomy 16 10-14 in terms of Plato communion of course infant baptism would create a prima facie belief that children belong at the table too as a matter of fact if you became unclean you couldn't go to any of the feasts and so being re-baptized baptizing yourself or getting somebody to baptize you to cleanse you was the necessary precondition to come to the Old Testament Feasts somebody died in your family and you had to bury their corpse you were unclean for eight days and if it happened that the Feast of Tabernacles happened right after that you couldn't go you had to be cleansed first so baptism is the doorway into the feasts in the Old Testament in fact let's just stop here well no we'll go ahead and do the feast because this won't take long but let me just insist on that what was the one thing that kept you from going to the face in the Old Testament you could not come to the Tabernacle and offer a sacrifice you were planning to go and offer a peace offering and have a little private family feast offer the peace offering the priest will get some of it you get some of it God would get the fat burned up on the fire and you'd have your own family Festival there with the peace offering and now you know your wife starts your period two days early she's unclean so that blows that can't go there and have the family feast or you've got a white spot on your arm oh no can't go do it well what is the thing that makes it possible for you to go back to the feast being baptized once you become unclean the only way to get cleansed is to be sprinkled with water and there are different kinds of it depending on whether what you get is leprosy or corpse contact or touching a dead animal you may have to wash yourself in your clothes and be unclean until evening okay those baptisms are what bring you to the feast if you're not baptized you can't come to the feast you see the link is tight in the Old Testament and so if children are baptized then they belong at the feast if children are excluded it's because they're not baptized in the New Testament all those baptisms become one baptism but that one baptism is the ticket to the feast it's the white robe that means you stay there remember Lord comes and says you don't have a white robe get out of here well you're not baptized in the ceremonial dimension of things that's what that means okay what about these Old Testament festivals were the children included sure they were Deuteronomy 16 10-14 you shall celebrate the Feast of Weeks that's Pentecost to Yahweh your God with a tribute of a free will offering of your hand which you will give just as Yahweh your God blesses you you shall rejoice before Yahweh your God you and your son and your daughter and your male and female servants and the levite who's near town the stranger the orphan and the widower in your midst remember that the slaves were circumcised now Deuteronomy 16 goes on verse 13 you shall celebrate the Feast of booths or Tabernacles seven days after you've gathered in from your threshing floor in your wine vat Bread and Wine threshing floor and wine Bread and Wine Bread and Wine got that bread and wine all right who's at this Bread and Wine you will rejoice in the feast you and your son your daughter your male female servants Levine stranger who often went on during town okay sons and daughters are at the Bread and Wine now are they always there no they're not required to be there verse 16. three times in a year all your mail shall appear before Yahweh your God in a place he chooses at the Feast of unleavened bread at the Feast of Pentecost and at the Feast of Tabernacles they shall not appear before Yahweh empty-handed every man shall give as he is able the men had to come the women and children didn't have to come but they could come if there was providential hindrances or if there were other problems or difficulties at least the men had to come to represent the family but the women and children could come that's the point Deuteronomy 12 10-13 is it's not just the annual feasts but it's any sacramental communion meal that the people had which is the peace offerings which you could bring I assume you have some familiarity with the sacrificial system the peace offering is in the Leviticus 3 and Leviticus 7 that's the one where you get to eat part of it it's the communion meal that you do kind of on your own and Deuteronomy 12 verse 10 when you cross the Jordan and live in the land which Yahweh your God is giving you to inherit and he gives you rest from all your enemies round about so that you live in security and shall come about the place in which Yahweh your God shall choose for his name to dwell there at that place you shall bring all I command you your Ascension offerings and your peace offerings says sacrifice is the word sacrifice in the Old Testament means peace offering and your tithe and the lifted up offering of your hand and all your choice vow offerings that you vow to Yahweh and you shall rejoice before Yahweh your God you and your sons and daughters male and female servants and the levite okay they're included whichever ones would involve having a meal the children are included in how about the priests the priest got to eat some special food they got to eat some parts of the peace offerings did their children get to eat it with them yes Leviticus 22 1-16 I won't read all of that it's there for you but look at verse 10. Noel Lehman stranger is to eat the Holy Gift this really refers to the peace offering a Sojourner with a priest or a hired man shall not eat why because they are not circumcised but if a priest buys a slave as his property with his money and exodus says you have to circumcise such a one he may eat of it and those who born in his house may eat of his food then it talks about his daughter if his daughter Mary she doesn't get to eat the peace offerings anymore but if she gets divorced or becomes a widow she can come back home and eat of it so forth and so on so you go to have your peace offering you give the wave shoulder and the heave leg to the priest and he takes it home and this is a sacrifice okay and his family can eat it his kids can eat it and this is part of the Feast of the Lord and just one final text of how at the sacramental meals at the Lord's House the children were included before Samuel chapter 1 verse 4 this is a feast that's not named probably the Feast of Tabernacles El Cana had two wives Hannah and penina banana had children Hannah had no children verse 3 this man would go up from his City annually to worship and to sacrifice to Yahweh of hosts and Shiloh the two sons of Eli Hoffman Phineas were priests Yahweh there and when the day came that Al-Qaeda sacrificed he would give portions to penina his wife and to all her sons and her daughters now this is Passover that means that he's sharing the Passover with him which it very easily could be but if somebody wants to say it's not Passover then all right so what the Lord's Supper takes up all of this it takes up all these feasts and of course we'll look at that next time so that's a place to stop what I have tried to do is give you some of the Prima facial reasons for it and basically they are that we should expect that God would restore the whole fabric of life when he restores the kingdom and just as Adam and Eve's children would have grown up knowing the Lord we should expect our children to as they would have grown up in fellowship with the Lord we should expect our children to grow up in fellowship with the Lord they are included the doctrine of infant circumcision and the infant baptisms of the Old Testament such as passing through the Red Sea and the Jordan River and our doctrine of infant baptism in the New Testament also imply that baptism is the ticket to the feast we see that in the Old Testament there are several very clear passages that show children participating in sacramental feasts feasts that are involved with eating with the Lord you see what happens in a sacrifice where this I'll close you kill the animal you skin the animal the priest takes blood and splashes it against the Altar and God sees that blood displayed on the doorpost which is what the altar is it's the doorpost of the Tabernacle it's out there in front God sees it and God is satisfied then the priest puts fire on the Altar and he puts some of the sacrifice and converts it into smoke as food for God that's what it says and then the priest eats some of it and you eat some of it now that's a meal with God and children were included in those meals with God God is part of it the priest he's part of it and you and your kids eat part of it now that's about as much of a meal with God as you can get I don't know how you get any more sacramental than that so if children were included at those kinds of meals then we should expect that our children are included in meals in the New Testament as well unless there's some strong indication that God has changed his procedures which of course there might be it might be the New Testament says hey that was then and now you know things are different baptism is only for adults the Lord suffers only for adults if the New Testament teaches that then we just have to say yep but I don't think it does you see here I wouldn't be here doing this but that would still need to be there but to this point what we've demonstrated is children seem to be included and the reason I think they're included is that salvation restores the whole fabric of life unless you have a particular question about something that I've touched on tonight I don't want to take any more general questions until we've gotten through the bulk of the material but we've gone for about an hour and that's probably enough we're missing Lois and Clark so all right well thanks for your attention I hope this has been helpful and thoughtful stimulating and if you don't agree that's fine the Bible says that God is going to show his love and kindness to thousands of generations one thousand Generations is thirty thousand years so God is going to show his loving kindness for about a hundred thousand years so we're just living at the beginning of church history and if we don't have everything solved tonight that's okay 80 or 90 000 years from now our descendants will owe a whole lot more than we do so we don't have to solve it all we just have to give it our best shot I always try to bear that in mind when I do theology maybe you don't believe that history is going to last that long but I do and so that's closing prayer Father in Heaven thank you for your word and its stimulation and the fact that no matter where we come down when we study it we always find new wonderful things to think about in terms of you and how you do things we ask that as to your church today wrestles with this question and the related questions that you would give us all greater measures of your Holy Spirit and draw us together as we study you and even if we don't wind up agreeing with each other at every point that you would help us to keep the unity of the bond of Peace anyway knowing that we're frail human beings who only see part of the picture and that you have much more to teach all of us before we'll see it all if we ever do I ask now that you bless us as we go our ways we pray in Christ's name amen