Dennis Tuuri

of that Lord’s word. The scripture text for today is from Matthew chapter 18. Now read verses 1-9. Matthew 18:1-9. Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

At the same time came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them, and said, “Verily, I say unto you, except he be converted and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name, receiveth me.”

But whoso shall offend one of these little ones, which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depths of the sea. Woe unto the world because of offenses, for it must needs be that offenses come. But woe to that man by whom the offense cometh. Wherefore, if thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off, and cast them from thee. It is better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire. And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast from thee. It is better for thee to enter into life with one eye rather than having two eyes to be cast into hellfire.

Let us pray. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you, Lord God, for the instruction it gives us about the children of the church. We pray, Lord God, that as you would have your spirit now open up our ears and our eyes to behold things out of your law, we might be built up, Lord God, so we would not give offense to these little ones you placed in the context of our visible church. We thank you, Father, for your word and pray your spirit would illuminate it to our understanding. In Christ’s name we ask it, Amen. You may be seated.

This will be the sixth and concluding sermon on the first head of doctrine from the Canons of Dort, that head of doctrine being of divine election and reprobation. By way of review, we have spoken up to now about the golden chain from Romans chapter 8 that begins with God’s foreknowledge—that is, his fore-love of the elect from all eternity. He has known us the way he has not known the other nations of the earth, so to speak, the way he knew Israel, as recorded in the Old Testament prophets—that is, that he loved her, that he loves us eternally. That results then in our calling and our predestination, or our election rather, our predestination, et cetera.

So the golden chain is one piece originating in God’s love of particular people, not based on anything in them, but based purely on the good pleasure of God. We said that the doctrine of unconditional election, then, or the divine election of God of some and not others, is God’s overall absolute sovereignty in all things. So it isn’t just a doctrine to be restricted to God’s sovereignty—that is, to salvation—but rather the backdrop for the entire picture is God’s sovereignty in all things.

We said also that we then went to a definition of unconditional election from Ephesians 1 and the Canons of Dort, and spoke of what the specific elements mean—not conditioned upon anything in men. It is an eternal, unchangeable predestination of a particular, specified number of people on the basis of God’s good pleasure solely for the purpose of the glory of his praise.

So we then centered in that sermon on the particular definitions and definitional elements of unconditional election. We then went to a couple of the other doctrines that the Canons of Dort produce out of the doctrine of God’s divine election of some. One is the assurance that is pictured for us in Romans chapter 8, linked to God’s election. If it were conditioned upon our works, there would be no assurance. And the other is the doctrine of reprobation that we spoke about last week from Romans chapter 9.

And very importantly, divine election implies—if there are no scripture texts to say that this was true—a divine reprobation. But the scripture does explicitly speak of this in Romans chapter 9. It speaks of the fact that not all Israel is Israel. There’s a definition of people that are reprobate from before their birth, even pictured by Esau as opposed to the one that he loved before birth, Jacob. You also pictured the reprobation of Pharaoh and the vessels of wrath fitted for destruction.

But in each of these, we said that the reprobation of Esau, Pharaoh, and the vessels of wrath fitted for destruction is really for the purpose of the election of God’s people that he loves. That reprobation is a doctrine and a reality that serves the greater doctrine of election. And it is to be received—the emphasis—whenever we speak of these doctrines. It’s not a dualistic situation. God’s overarching motivation is primarily pictured as his election, his demonstration of his love, and reprobation serves that divine election.

You could think of this as a picture. Thinking about what this is, last week. So we try to paint a picture here of this first head of doctrine of the Canons of Dort. And the picture doesn’t have a frame, see it hanging on a wall, but the picture doesn’t have a frame because the overall background for this picture is not confined to the picture—a picture entitled “Unconditional Election” or “Divine Election.” But the background isn’t just the frame. The background is the entire building, the entire world governed by a sovereign God.

So the context for this picture is God’s absolute sovereignty. The picture we’ve been considering is titled “Unconditional Election,” and it has at the top of it, as it were in a mental image, these golden chains of this link mentioned in Romans 8:29 and 30. So that’s up there as a reminder to us of this golden chain that originates in God’s love for his people.

And on that picture as well, there’s a picture of Jacob. And there’s a picture of Esau painted on this picture. Jacob is a bigger portrait than Esau—a smaller portrait—because reprobation pictured by Esau serves the doctrine of election pictured by Jacob. And then if I wanted to add one final element in this sixth sermon, it would be a child. Jacob has in his arms a child. And Esau has in his arms a little picture of Esau with a child also. And some children are part of the election. And some children are part of the reprobation.

And so we want to talk today particularly about article 17 of the Canons of Dort that talk about the comfort to godly parents of children who die in their infancy. And again, this is really the stress—when we talk about infants, the divine reprobation of some infants is clearly seen from, for instance, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah with all the inhabitants thereof, or the destruction of the entire world in the flood apart from Noah and his family. We know that God brought judgment upon not just adults but upon little tiny children living at that time as well.

But again, the emphasis in scripture is on God’s elect children and the comfort that godly parents can have over those particular children. Now, this particular article number 17 that speaks—and I’ve quoted it here at least a central part of this—that godly parents ought not to doubt the election and salvation of their children to whom it pleases God to call out of this life in their infancy. In other words, who die in infancy.

This particular article, it sort of strikes us as a little funny to be here in the flow of this first head of doctrine. They’re talking about divine election, reprobation, and all of a sudden we have this one statement inserted about children dying in infancy and the comfort of godly parents about those children. Why does this happen here? Well, it isn’t really critical to a definition of either divine election or reprobation. What it is—it’s an apologetic element because of the method of the Arminian attack upon the Calvinists.

The Armenians said that these Calvinists, you know, they believe that these babies are tortured in hell and that God likes that a lot, and they like that fact too—that there are these reprobate babies. So they would use this ad hominem—against the man—as opposed to against the doctrine that the men would teach—to say these men really have no regard for infants.

The Armenians would posit universalistic salvation for all children until the age of accountability, supposedly, and then they would attack the Calvinists. So the fathers of the church, so to speak, when they got together at the Canons of Dort had to deal with this question: “What are we going to do? That’s what they’re saying about us.”

And Homer Hoeksema, whose commentary on the Canons of Dort is large and extensive, in this particular section of his commentary, he quotes from all, I think, all the different groups who are represented at Dort. Remember we said there were some guys from England there, there were some guys in different parts of Holland and guys from different places and other countries. And what Homer Hoeksema does is he takes—and where he gets them—but he takes the transcript of what these various groups would contribute to this discussion that eventually resulted in this particular article, and he quotes them.

Okay. So he looks at them group by group. What the guys from England say, what the guys from South Holland say, what the guys from North Holland say, and he cites them. Let me read you one, for instance, of these quotes from Homer Hoeksema. This is from the particular Synod of South Holland. And we’re quoting now from the Synod of Holland—what they contributed to this discussion. But whether reprobation may also take place in the case of little children of believers who die in their early childhood before the age of speech, without actual sins, concerning this, they are of the opinion that men should not curiously inquire. But setting that there are testimonies of holy scripture which cut off, for believing parents, all reason for doubting concerning the eternal election rather and salvation of their young children, therefore, they hold that men should be at peace and satisfied with this.

And they quote Genesis 17:7, Matthew 19:14, Acts 2:39, and 1 Corinthians 7:14, which we’ll get to in a minute.

Now, that’s the reason I quote that: they say there that concerning the election and reprobation of infants, we want to be cautious, not to curiously inquire too far into this matter. And what they say is, but we can give Christian parents comfort about their children dying before they reach the age of speech or actual sin. Consistently, all the groups that contributed to this discussion avoided an objective statement that said, “All children of believers are elect, and therefore parents can rest assured of their salvation.” They didn’t say that. They didn’t say that in the final draft of the Canons of Dort. And none of the groups represented said that in their contribution to the Canons either. They avoid that statement.

Why? Because the scriptures don’t make it. That’s my point. The scriptures, in fact, give us as an example of reprobation and election Jacob and Esau who come out of the same mother. Right? And so the scriptures say that we want to be very careful not to place an undue reliance upon children being born into Christian families or children being given the external sign of the covenant—baptism in the New Testament, circumcision in the Old Testament—as much as the scriptures want to give us, and that’s my primary point today, is to give the parents of believing children comfort if their children die in infancy, but also comfort that I could extend out from that to say comfort for you as you parent your child as well.

The scriptures do give us repeated emphasis of comfort for these children. But at the outset, I want to make sure that you don’t misunderstand me to be saying that we can be 100% guaranteed that our children are going to be in heaven. I don’t believe we can be. And I don’t believe the witness of the historic church or the Canons of Dort assert that either. But they also don’t say that there’s nothing we can know about it. You know, they don’t say, “Well, we can just kind of hope and wish and pray and hope for the best about our kids.”

Ultimately, we want to say that to God be the glory. The Lord gives, the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. And if that’s where scriptures stop, then we would want to stop in saying just that much as well. But the scriptures do, I think, and the fathers at Dort thought also, give us a little bit more hope than just that.

We’ll look at 1 Corinthians 7:14 in a little bit to talk about the inclusion of children in the covenant people of God who received circumcision and also the feeding of the manna and the water that represented Christ in the wilderness, and then the discernment of the body of Christ today in the New Testament times. And 1 Corinthians 10 does say those things, but 1 Corinthians 10 also warns against an undue reliance upon the external signs. They were all circumcised. They all ate the same spiritual food. They all drank the same spiritual drink. Yet with some of them, God was not well pleased. They died in the wilderness.

So we want to make that caveat at the beginning and put this whole discussion in the context that we understand this is here primarily because of the attack of the Armenians. But nonetheless, it gives us excellent material to talk about the implications of divine election relative to our children, and so we will do that.

Now, the Canons assert then that the comfort—the comfort to godly parents of children—is founded upon the word of God. The quote I give you is preceded by this: “Since we are to judge the will of God from his word.” That’s what it says at the beginning of paragraph 17 of the Canons of Dort at the first head of doctrine. And so they begin with saying that the doctrine of comfort is founded upon the word of God.

We don’t have to say much here, but it is good to remind ourselves again that if you don’t go to the law and the prophets, if you don’t go to the scriptures, you have no wisdom in you. You know, there are pastors and friends of Christians who want to comfort people when their children die, and they want to, for the sake of that comfort, just say, “Well, we can just believe the best about this and give them some kind of comfort that’s based upon some kind of general principle of God’s love for children.” But we don’t want to do that.

We want to, if at all possible, build an understanding for the basis of the comfort of godly parents about their children on the word—on the word of God. It’s not based upon our desire to please people. It’s not based upon our desire to portray God in a light that we think is more favorable to them than the scriptures portray. None of those motivations will work if we don’t make an appeal to logic ultimately. We don’t make an appeal to tradition of the church. We make an appeal to the word of God. And it’s the word of God that must be the standard.

If this doctrine is to be taught, it must be found in the scriptures. And secondly then, I think that the scriptures do indeed teach that this word of God testifies that the children of believers are holy. That’s what this paragraph goes on to say from the Canons of Dort.

So you put one and two together: Since we are to judge of the will of God from his word, that word then testifies that the children of believers are holy.

Now, let’s consider this in 1 Corinthians 7:14. This is the clearest statement of the holiness of children. And you probably are familiar with this reference. 1 Corinthians 7:14. The unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband. Otherwise, your children would be unclean, but now they are holy.

The scriptures assert the holiness of children. Now, commenting on this particular text, J. Alexander, an excellent Reformed commentator from a century gone by, says this about this assertion of the apostle Paul, this particular text. He says, “They are holy in the same sense in which the Jews were holy. They are included in the church and have a right to be so regarded. The child of a Jewish parent had a right to circumcision and to all the privileges of the theocracy. So the child of a Christian parent has a right to baptism and all the privileges of the church so long as he is represented by his parent.”

And, let’s see: “It is most instructive to observe how the writers of the New Testament quietly take for granted that the great principles which underlie the old dispensation are still enforced under the New. The children of Jews were treated as Jews, and the children of Christians, Paul assumes, is a thing no one would dispute, are to be treated as Christians.”

He makes the appeal for another different argument he’s developing which we don’t have to concern ourselves with really in the immediate text. But he makes the appeal here saying, “Well, now you know, if this wasn’t true, then your children wouldn’t be holy.” But everybody knows your children are holy. Everybody in the Corinthian church knows the children of at least one believing parent—that those children are holy and consecrated and set aside for God. Everybody knows that.

He says, and the point that Alexander makes is that this shows continuity with the Old Testament because the Corinthian church is composed of Jew and Gentile. The Jews would have seen children as being holy. If you had one Jewish parent, you had the right to circumcision. You were seen as holy to enter into that covenant people of God in the Old Testament. And so in the New Testament as well, to have this indication to us that this was considered by all the members of the church kind of a state of commonality—that children born to a Christian parent, one Christian parent, are considered holy.

And so there’s this continuity between the inclusion of children in the covenant people of God in the Old Testament church and the covenant people of God in the New Testament church. Very compelling argument when you take it, when you step back a little bit, to just the text and understand who Paul is writing to and what he is presupposing about their view—what they think about the children of the church.

Now, the basis for this can also be seen in Romans 11:16. The basic principle stated there is that if the first fruit is holy, the lump is also holy. And if the root is holy, so are the branches. And so there’s this—there’s this objective assurance of the children coming forth from the root, the branches being holy or set apart in a special sense to God.

In Ephesians 1 and 2, we read: Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, to the saints who are in Ephesus and faithful in Christ Jesus. The epistle to the Ephesians is addressed to the saints—that is, the holy ones—who are in Ephesus. And then later in chapter 6 of Ephesians, we read, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord.” Children are addressed in this epistle. And so, if they’re included back here at chapter 6 as receiving instruction of this epistle, then they’re part of the addressed in verse one, and they’re considered saints at the church of Ephesus.

So they’re considered holy.

Ezekiel 16:20. We could go to a lot of texts based on this Ezekiel passage. But we’ll just do this one quickly. Ezekiel 16:20: We read this. “Moreover, you took your sons and your daughters whom you bore to me, and these you sacrificed to them to be devoured. Were your acts of harlotry a small matter, that you have slain my children and offered them up to them by causing them to pass through the fire?”

Ezekiel—the basis for children being considered as saints, holy ones, in the Old Testament, in the New Testament—is the children are claimed for his. The children of covenant people are claimed by God as his children. He says, “You took my kids and you pass them through the fire to Molech.”

Now, that meant a couple of different things. There was actual human sacrifice that would go on in the history of Israel and Canaan where they would actually kill these kids in the fire. But it didn’t start that way really. Februation is the technical term. Februation refers to the passing through of something through a sacrificial or a symbolic representation of being consecrated to that thing. So you could take—you’ve seen kids, my kid did this last week—got candles and they passed their hand through the flame, you know? You can do that, you can pass things through flame. “Oh, it’s a neat deal, look what I did!” Well, in the rituals of old of pagan religions, that passing something through the fire was a consecration of it to that task.

It’s kind of like it’s kind of like God walking between the slain animals when he cuts the covenant with Abraham. You know, “Well, I passed through this fire, and if I don’t really serve whoever the fire is representing, then I could be—I should be consumed by the fire.” Well, that’s what children were doing. And they were being passed through the fire in terms of dedicating them, or consecrating them, not to Yahweh but to the civil state, Molech. Milcom was the word for state. Molech. So the kids were dedicated to the state through these fires of februation.

Now, I’m not denying there was at times in Canaanite history the incineration, burning up of these kids. But it was also at other times simply a consecration of them. But the point here is that God says, “This is my kids. These children are my seed, ultimately, not your seed. You have them on loan from me to raise them, and you didn’t raise them right, and I’m going to judge you now. I’m going to come down on your head because of what you did to my children.”

Indeed, the prophets tell us that why did God bring a people about? One of the reasons was to seek a holy seed. See, our children are holy because they’re in God—God’s election and God’s providence and his overall sovereignty placed into Christian households. So our children, the Canons of Dort are right, when they say that the word of God testifies that the children of believers are holy.

And then third on the outline—second thing—the Canons, so the Canons are right. You got to go to the word of God. The Canons are right. The word of God says these children are holy. And the Canons also say, and they’re right in this, that the holiness of the children rather is not by nature but in virtue of the covenant of grace in which they, together with their parents, are comprehended.

This holiness is a covenantal holiness—is what the Canons assert. And here we have Genesis 17:7, your text to us, hopefully. We read that, actually beginning in verse 5, God tells Abraham, “No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham—it’s not just daddy anymore, it’s big daddy. For I have made you a father of many nations. I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you. And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your descendants after you in their generations, for an everlasting covenant to be God to you and your descendants after you.”

When God made covenant with Abram, with Abraham, when God made covenant with Adam, when God made covenant with Noah, with Abraham, when God made covenant with David, later on, when God made covenant with Moses, it includes the children. It includes the descendants. It’s not, you know, an individualistic American Western culture, just you and you alone. It’s you and your children.

And indeed, what God is claiming is the future. God is claiming our posterity. I’ve heard of churches, you know, that would say, “Well, you know, we’re not going to really get you to think like us real well, but we’ll get your kids because we’ll have them in catechism class.” Well, that’s what God says. He says, “You know, I’ve redeemed you, and some of us in this church didn’t come from, you know, explicitly Christian backgrounds. Most of us are public school, et cetera.

And God gets us, and he’s certainly going to work with us, but he makes a special thing with our kids because he’s established now, you know, if you want to look at it as a foothold in this particular generational line. And now he tells you to raise your kids as his seed, and they will be better than you are because they will have been taught from the earliest days that Jesus owns them. They’re his kids, and that they’re protected and fed by Jesus as well.

So this holiness of children is based upon their inclusion—not by nature but really on the covenant relationship.

In Acts chapter 2, verse 39, this is the preaching of the day of Pentecost, the manifestation of the church in the post-work of the Lord Jesus Christ. And we read, “Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins. Baptized for the remission of sins.” We’ll talk about that later. “And you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is to you and to your children and all who are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call.”

He says here that God has called your children. That’s what he says. And the significance of this again, like the Corinthians passage, is remembering what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about a bunch of Jews gathered together to hear this preaching. And the first thing that’s asserted in this sermon, or rather in this in the context of this sermon, relative to children is that they, just like the Old Testament, are included in the covenant household of God. The promise unto you and to your children and to as many as God shall call.

So again, the scriptures teach that this holiness of children is because of their placement by God in this covenant community. And so just again, continuity is stressed by Peter in the sermon on the day of Pentecost with the covenant inclusion of children.

So we have comfort then, there’s comfort given, then, to the parents of children of the elect, because the children are holy—sanctified to God—because they’re claimed as his kids, and because they’re in the context this claim to his holiness is based upon the covenant relationship that God has not just with us but with our children.

And as a result, we have comfort on the basis of that. But notice that the Canons are also correct. So they’re correct in saying there’s comfort. They’re correct in saying it’s based on God’s word. They’re correct in saying it’s based on God’s word that teaches that kids are holy. And they’re correct in saying that’s because of the relationship to the covenant. And they’re also correct in saying that this comfort is not just to any old parents—and they don’t even say this comfort is given to believing parents. They say this comfort is given to godly parents. Okay?

In other words, to the extent that a person conforms themselves to what God instructs them to do, to that extent they can appropriate the comfort the Canons say. In a larger sense, so you got somebody who makes a point confession statement of faith: “Yeah, I believe in Jesus. I want a nicer marriage, and I’m a Christian.” And that’s it. And they don’t really mature in holiness or godliness. That parent really is not the recipient of the comfort as the Canons of Dort point out.

And in fact, the Ezekiel text tells us that without godliness and instead if you have idolatry, you don’t have comfort at all in any of your life. You’re threatened and warned by God. So this is to godly parents.

Now, I’d be remiss if I didn’t take this opportunity in the context of this message to exhort us all to godly parenting. If you understand—I know we’re talking about comfort here, but let’s just slip back a little bit to the basis for the comfort, which is that these children are God’s kids and that they’re covenant children, that they’re holy children, they’re God’s children. And let’s remember that today and let’s remember that tomorrow in our homes, in the context of your schooling of them, in the context of fathers working with them and overseeing that schooling, doing the discipline, doing the instruction.

It is, you know, we abhor the sin of abortion in this church, and rightly we do that, and we don’t want to be guilty of somehow failing to nurture God’s kids with physical sustenance, right? We’re worse than an infidel if we don’t provide for our family the basics of life, which are nourishment and guarding, food and a house. God says you’ve got to do that. Now, you may, to do that, you may have to rely upon the charity of the church. That’s not a bad thing in the providence of God. Sometimes that’s what’s called for.

So I don’t mean to imply any guilt here if you’re having a difficult time financially. But to have money and resources and to fail to use them for the physical nurture of our children, we know is horrific, right? You go to a home and you see a dad with lots of money and doing all kinds of things, and the kids are losing weight because he’s not feeding them because he’s stingy and holding on to that money. That’s horrific. And we’d bring them up on church charges right away—I hope we would, at least. I’m committed to doing it. I hope you are, too.

We do that. Horrific. Well, what does it say about if we don’t nurture our children in the word of God? What’s more important? Physical food or the food of God’s word? I’m not trying to, you know, produce guilt manipulation here, but I am trying to give you an exhortation—a renewed exhortation—to feed your children the word of God, to raise them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord Jesus Christ, and to do that by feeding them God’s word, and to do it in such a way as to be winsome in your approach to these children.

If you had somebody else’s children over this week, you would be perhaps a tad more polite, a tad more entreating of them, I think, most of you would be, as you worked with them. I’m not trying to make you feel bad for the familiarity you have with your own kids. It’s a good thing. But I am saying, folks, I tell myself and I tell you that we’ve got to remember that these kids are not an extension of us. They’re not our kids. They’re God’s kids.

Jesus has taken your child up in his—we’re going to have a baptism today. The children are handed over to the elders of the church. They represent Christ taking those children in his arms, as we read about from Isaiah. And then he hands them back to you when you had your children baptized. That’s what you did. He said, “I can’t do it.” And he said, “I know these are your kids.” And he says, “Okay, here they are now. Be careful with them.”

See, that’s what God wants us to remember every time we witness a baptism. That’s what God wants us to remember when we think about our responsibilities as parents. God wants us to do a good job. That means we got to be strict with them, too. It means we’ve got to discipline the way God tells us to discipline them.

So we want to really encourage and exhort each other. You know, these aren’t—the concern that Jerry has for Jerry’s kids. These are God’s kids, Jerry Lewis, the telephone and stuff. These are God’s kids, and we want to recognize that and do all we can to nurture them in the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ. Okay.

So this comfort is due, is given to godly parents. The scriptures and the Canons assert, and this all this truth, then, this fairly basic element of this thing has a relevance then to our own children. Our children are indeed covenant children. We’ve talked about that a little bit in Acts chapter 7.

Stephen, in Acts chapter 7, speaks of the church in the Old Testament, and he shows continuity with the church in the New Testament, to the covenant people of God in the Old Testament. Our children are covenant children. We’ve talked about that. Our children are disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ. In Acts chapter 21, when the disciples go off to see Paul off, to wish him farewell on his journey and have a good time and be prosperous for the Lord, those disciples included little children.

Little children are numbered among the disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ. In Colossians 3 and Ephesians chapter 6, in both of those accounts, we have these instructions given to children in these epistles to the church at Colossae and Ephesus. Why? Because the children are disciples. The children are receiving the instruction of God’s word routed to their particular station and calling. “Children, obey your parents in the Lord.” They’re part of the covenant people. They’re part of the—they receive the covenant law, and they receive discipleship in the Christian faith.

In Acts 15, the decision of the Jerusalem council—one of the things that said there is we don’t want to put a yoke upon the church that the disciples were not able to bear, talking about the disciples of the Old Testament, the yoke being circumcision. Well, there’s a correlation then, without getting into the controversy, the point is that those who received circumcision in the Old Testament from eight days on and older were looked upon and classified in Acts 15 as disciples. Okay.

Okay. So our children are covenant children. They belong to God. Our children are children who are disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ. Our children are members of Christ’s body, the church. And here we’ll turn to 1 Corinthians 10 and 11. 1 Corinthians chapter 10.

I mentioned this before already, but Paul says, “I don’t want you to be unaware that all of our fathers were under the cloud. All passed through the sea. All were baptized into Moses in the cloud and under the sea. All ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank of that spiritual rock that followed them. And that rock was Christ. But with most of them, God was not well pleased, for their bodies were scattered in the wilderness.”

Now, these things became our examples to the intent that we should not lust after evil things as they also lusted. Well, if there are examples in the context of saying we should not lust after evil things, can’t we also look at this pattern of children receiving baptism, receiving sustenance through the nourishment of Christ’s food and true spiritual drink through the rock which was Christ? Also, can’t we see that also as an example to us of our children and our responsibility to see these children as members of the church as it existed in the wilderness, as Steven talked about, and the church as it exists in the context of our day and age as well?

And in fact, this is the very thing that 1 Corinthians in the next chapter, 11, I think, goes on to assert—is that we have to properly discern or judge this visible corporate body of the church. In 1 Corinthians 11, verse 19, we read: “There must also be factions among you, that those who are approved may be recognized among you.”

So he says divisions are coming, but divisions have to exist so that those of you who are approved may be recognized among you. And then in verse 28 he says, “Let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread and drink of the cup. For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judging to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body.”

Okay. The verse, the term used for “approved” in verse 19—”those are approved, some are not.” The verse used for “examine yourself” in verse 28. And then the verse used for “discerning the Lord’s body” in verse 29. These are all the same term. What it says is that those who are approved are the ones who properly discern themselves and discern the Lord’s body.

What this means is that to discern the Lord’s body is to have an apprehension of approval before God based upon our estimation of what the body of Jesus Christ is in terms of the visible body of Jesus Christ. The sins in 1 Corinthians were sins against the church—not sins against the mystical body of Christ, but sins against the visible body of Christ made manifest in the context of the institutional church.

You know, it’s interesting here that, I believe it was Jeff Meyers, pointed out in a recent article that over and over again in this passage of scripture, he talks about the body and the blood, the body and the blood, the bread and the drink—body and the blood. And then when he gets to this place about not discerning, he doesn’t include blood here. Why? Because he’s talking about the Lord’s body in the context of the problem they had at Corinth, which was not discerning the Lord’s body. Some people eating before others, not having a concern or an estimation of the church of Jesus Christ, and so eating and drinking before others could eat and drink.

So 1 Corinthians says, “In order to be approved, it’s a proper discernment of the body of Christ in terms of these divisions amongst the body.” So it all links together to show us that what we have to do, according to 1 Corinthians 10:11, is properly discern the visible church of Christ, and that includes children, because 1 Corinthians 10 tells us that it was all who passed through the Red Sea.

So our children are indeed God’s kids. They’re covenant children. They’re disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ, and they are members of Christ’s body, the church. And on the basis of that, then, we want to make some application relative to the need to baptize these children.

Now, everything I’ve said so far really has been given for the point of demonstrating to you the comfort you may have about your children should they die in infancy. It’s not a guarantee, but it does say that we want to think of our kids the way God wants us to think about our kids. Okay?

What’s most important is that we conform our minds and our hearts to what God’s word says. And God’s word tells you: until they prove otherwise, what God wants you to believe is that he has placed the children in your household because they are members of the elect community of the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s what he wants you to think of them as.

Now, you may doubt that, but I’m encouraging you not to let doubt enter into your mind until they demonstrate their rejection overtly of the Lord Jesus Christ. I’m encouraging you not to treat your kids as neutral as you bring them up, but to rather treat them like the children that God says they are—his kids, covenantal kids, church kids, discipled kids from the earliest days. Timothy received instruction in the word of God.

Jesus says in Matthew 18 here that there are these little children the kingdom of heaven is all about—to enter in as these little children. He says, and he says not to—in verse 6, he says, “Whoso shall offend one of these little children which believe in me? Better if a millstone cast around his neck.”

See, if you’re not a godly parent, if you put stumbling blocks in front of your children continually, then it’s better you had a millstone cast around your neck. I saw an interview with Morton Downey Jr. on TV a couple weeks ago. Horrific drug problem in his life when he was a—believe it was six or seven. He was smoking marijuana cigarettes because his parents were part of the hippie generation of the 60s. They put a horrific stumbling block in front of him. I don’t know his—I don’t think he’s a Christian, but it’s an example of what we can do by either a failure on our part to nurture our children in the scriptures, in Christian discipline and Christian character, or possibly to put evil things in front of them.

But the point here is—so there’s a warning here against ungodly parents. But the point here is that Christ says that these little ones—the word used here refers to toddlers and below. What seems to be the implication of these first six verses of chapter 18 is that these little ones believe in him.

We have a tendency to think of belief as intellectual assent to truth, don’t we? That’s what we think belief is. The intellectual understanding of something, say “okay, I believe that’s true.” That’s not how scriptures use the term belief. Belief is produced by the grace of God. And it is not necessary to have an intellectual comprehension of something to believe in it. In fact, it’s impossible in the context of many of the doctrines that we believe—the Trinity, the doctrine we speak of here, God’s sovereignty and yet our own responsibility. We cannot come to an intellectual fulfillment of what these things mean. But it doesn’t mean we can’t believe them.

And the same thing’s true of our children. Our children can, and the scriptures want us to think of them as believing from the earliest age of life. Jeremiah was called from the womb to be a prophet. John the Baptist rejoices in the presence of Christ while in the womb. Scriptures want us to think of our kids just like that. They want us to say that our children are covenant children.

And as a result, our children also should receive the waters of baptism.

In Colossians 2:11 and 12, we have a correlation between circumcision and baptism given to us. Colossians 2:11-12: “In him, that is in Christ, you were also circumcised at the circumcision made without hands by putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ, buried with him in baptism, and yet you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead. And you, being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, he has made alive together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses.”

So there’s a correlation made in Colossians 2 between circumcision and baptism. Why was this important? This was important because in the early church, the biggest problem they had were the Judaizers who wanted to insist that Christians get circumcised in order to become full Christians. And Paul is saying, and he makes the same allusions in other scriptures and other epistles, that you don’t need circumcision because your circumcision was complete in baptism. Baptism has replaced circumcision.

Now, Colossians, as I mentioned earlier, also goes on then to give instruction to children. And it begins the epistle by saying, as Ephesians did, that it’s written to the saints at Colossae. Okay. So what do we have? Children are addressed in the salutation. Children are addressed in the commandments relative to obeying their parents. And isn’t it plain logic then that tells us that Paul is writing this as well to children?

Our children, through their baptism, have been circumcised and placed in union with the Lord Jesus Christ, and as a result have been placed in the context of his death, burial, and resurrection and newness of life in terms of the new creation. The scriptures teach that our children are to be baptized from the earliest day, as the children were to be circumcised from the earliest days of their life in the Old Testament.

And the—and the scriptures teach us very importantly that we want to think of our children differently as a result of that. Matthew 28: we said our children are disciples. You treat your children as disciples. What are you supposed to do with disciples? Matthew 28 says, “Make disciples of the nations. How? By baptizing them and teaching in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, and teaching them all things that I have taught you to observe—all these commandments of Christ.”

The scriptures say if our children are disciples, then we are to first of all mark those disciples with the mark of ownership, the identification with the Lord Jesus Christ, and then teach them according to these things. If we teach and then move from the teaching into baptism, we’ve reversed the order of scripture. And we’ve not understood what baptism is. Baptism then becomes an individual decision, the mark of someone’s personal choice, as opposed to the mark of God’s sovereign election of these children to place them in covenant homes.

Baptism then becomes a means or a picture that the child has attained intellectual attainment, and it confuses—it leads to a confusion in our Baptist culture. It has between faith and intellectual ascent. Properly put, what we do then at the first is to perform this ritual action that God tells us to do to indicate that our children are already—it doesn’t bring them into the household of God. They’re part of the household. They’re part of the elect community. They’re part of the covenant people. They’re covenant children. They’re church children. They’re disciple children.

And because of that, we mark them with the sign of baptism at their earliest days. And so we will today with the Dalen children.

So the scriptures tell us to do these things. Now, I want to close by talking about something which again could be easily misunderstood. I have already given you a caveat relative to the doctrine of comfort to parents, and that caveat was that we’re not saying here that some children won’t demonstrate their non-election. Some will. We can assert positively, I think, that some children will do that. But what I’m trying to do is to comfort us with thoughts about our children because the word of God tells us to think of them differently.

So I have that caveat in place, and I want to talk just a little bit then about baptism and its relationship to these things. We think of baptism as just a physical action of water. But Christian baptism is the water—[text cuts off]