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0:45Baptism and the Lord's Supper. So that's what we're going to be talking about tonight. Why do we understand that there's only two? What do we understand about those two? What is baptism? What is the Lord's Supper? Why don't we call the Lord's Supper Eucharist or Communion like some other traditions, at least in our normal language? Why do we call it the Lord's Supper? Things like that. We'll look at some of that history. And a lot of that history is going to revolve around the Reformation.

1:18So some more trivia questions for you. Who hung up the 95 Theses? Martin Luther, what year did he do it? 15, 17, long ago. Yeah, so Martin Luther is really figurehead, I can't think of another word, but a figurehead for the Reformation happening with hammering on those 95 theses on the door in 1517, this break from the Catholic Church because they had rediscovered so many truths from Scripture that had been trampled upon by the church. As they decided to return, as they were convicted to return to the Scripture being their guide for faith in practice, they realized how many areas they had gone astray. And so it led to this explosion theologically. It led to them having to figure out so much. And I don't believe they figured everything out in that first generation, but I think they returned to a lot of biblical doctrine in that first generation of the Reformers because they were convinced that Scripture is the guide, and Scripture is God's Word, and that should be our guide. So there's this explosion theologically, and then that caused there to be an explosion of Reformers and Protestants all over the world.

2:44It was contagious. It was like a wildfire that once the word of God got out and so many people realized that they had only partially understood the gospel or maybe not even understood it at all or only partially understood the scriptures or not understood them at all. It just Exploded all over the world. And as a result of that, they needed to figure things out again. One of the things that the Reformers were unified on would be something like solifide, right? Faith alone. That it's not by works in any way that we're saved. It's by faith that we're saved. When we come and we trust in Christ, God forgives us. We didn't earn that salvation. It wasn't by works.

3:28There are other things that the Reformers were not necessarily unified on. That as they were still figuring this out, they would fight with the Catholic Church and they would fight with each other big time. And they would get in arguments. And two of those things were baptism and the Lord's Supper. And in a lot of ways, you can't blame them, right? They've been smacked in the head by Scripture. And they've seen, you know, wow, what we have done is not what Scripture says about the Lord's Supper and baptism. And yet, it's what we've always done. You know, you have that tension of this is what I grew up with. This is what my kids and my grandkids grew up with. This is what my granddad did. This is how he did the Lord's Supper. This is how he was baptized. I was baptized as a baby. All of those kinds of things. There's so much tradition, and it just like you can feel that tension. And maybe that's occurred to you, happened to you in your life.

4:30You've noticed something from the scripture and you know it's true, but you've believed something for a really long time, and it just takes a little bit to sort that out in your heart as you are corrected by the truth. Well, I think a lot of that is what's happening in this generation. So, one of the things that is happening is this idea of the sacraments. The Catholic Church had seven sacraments, and so did the church that I grew up in, the Episcopalian Church. They had seven sacraments, and sacraments were really to them more than a symbol. More than a symbol. It was a way of actually imparting grace into someone's life. Have you heard that before? That it didn't matter about the faith of that person who's participating in the Lord's Supper or being baptized. That didn't matter. What mattered was the faith of the priest up at the front, and his faith mattered. And so, when the communities are coming, even if they're unbelievers and they're continually participating in baptism and the Lord's Supper, those were kind of like means of God's grace being pumped into them through the priest, because it was the priest's faith that mattered. Well, the reformers are going to react against that idea. The seven sacraments for the Catholic Church were baptism, the Eucharist, which just means the thanksgiving. It's their role. Word for the Lord's Supper, also sometimes called communion, especially by Lutherans. So the baptism, the Eucharist, confirmation, why do you need confirmation? You remember what confirmation is in the Catholic Church?

6:15Confirmation is when you become a teenager, and so you need it because if you're baptized as an infant, there needs to be some, when you're mentally able to have faith, you're supposed to be confirmed into the church. So that was another sacrament for them. Another one was reconciliation, or we might recognize that as the confession, confessionals in the Catholic Church, the penance that they would have to do. That was a sacrament for them. It still is. Another one is unction or healing, anointing by oil. That was another duty that the priest would perform so that people could come who were sick and be anointed with oil and be healed. That was another sacrament. Another sacrament in their church was marriage, something we obviously believe is biblical and true. And holy orders or ordination of the priests in the priesthood. So they would have seven sacraments. And for them, those are, again, more than a symbol. Those are something that is imparting grace. Well, the Reformers reacted against that and said, no, if it's faith that matters, if it's faith in what God has revealed in His holy word, faith in His Son, faith in the Son sacrificed for our sins. Sins, then it's not about the faith of others pumping grace into my life. It's about me participating and following the Lord's commands. And so they said, really, there is only two physical things that the Lord commanded that we do, that the Lord Jesus commanded for the church to do. And those two things they began to call ordinances instead of sacrament, just because especially Zwingli, a guy we'll talk about tonight, he started to realize sacraments has this kind of ritualistic feel to it, just in the word. It has this feeling of a religious ceremony to go through. And they were saying, no, these are ordinances, as in these are the things that the Lord has ordained for us to do. He told us to do this, basically. And those are baptism and the Lord's Supper. So, two ordinances. That person that I mentioned, Ulrich Zwingli, I say Zwingli. Other people say Zwingli. You can say whatever you want. But I say Zwingli, and that's what I'll say tonight. But he is central in both of these debates. And on one, he's on our side. And on the other, he's on the other side. And you'll see what I mean in just a minute. But he was a powerful figure. If I asked you who the skinny-nosed, long-bearded Swiss reformer was, you'd probably tell me, John. Calvin, but there was another one, and his name was Ulrich Zwingli, and he was so important for both of these debates. He was born in 1484, and he would become convinced that the Scripture is God's Word, that's our authority, and it's the whole thing. He would react against Luther, who kind of began to form a canon within a canon, the most important part to Scripture over others. Zwingli would say, you know, no, we don't want any of that. It's all of Scripture, and we would agree with him on that. All of Scripture is from God. And that led him down a road of beginning to change where he was already a leader, change in his views, especially on the Lord's Supper. And this was his biggest fight. So we're going to start with that first.

9:51Does anybody remember the name of the position of the Catholic Church on the Lord's Supper? What's a key word? Transubstantiation, right? Anybody know what that means? Literally the law, body, parts, and Jesus. Right. When you participate in the Eucharist, what's happening is Jesus is sacrificed again on the altar. That's why they call it the altar up in front of everybody, not the pulpit or something like that. They call it the altar because it's a sacrifice where they keep the bread and the wine. They call that the tabernacle because it's housing God. Because when you participate in the titanium, The Eucharist, the bread and the wine actually physically change into Christ's body and blood. It's transubstantiated. And so you are participating in a re-sacrifice of Christ on your behalf for your sins. That's why it imparts grace to you in their theology. Well, you have Luther reacting against that pretty early on. That idea was despicable to him. He didn't see it in the scriptures. And so he began to say, no, that's not what happens. The bread and the wine are not changed into the actual body and blood of Christ. Instead, what happens is since Christ is omniscient or omnipresent, then we can know that in the bread and the wine, whenever you take that, whenever you participate in the Lord's Supper, you're just eating bread and wine, but also with it, you're eating the body and blood of Christ, which is in, with, and under. Do you remember that phrase? That's what he used to say. It was in, with, and under the bread. That was kind of his key phrase. Does anybody remember what the long term for that was? Consubstantiation. Con just means with. So he was very adamant that it is with. So when you participate in the Lord's Supper, no, it doesn't change. The bread and the wine don't change to body and blood, but the body and blood of Christ is there with it. So you are ingesting body and blood of Christ with the bread and the wine because it's in. With and under the bread and the wine, consubstantiation. Well, Zwingli would go even further than this. He would not accept the Catholic position, and he didn't think that Luther went far enough. He would say, what we believe in this church, that the Lord's Supper is a memorial Lord's Supper. Have you heard that term before? And the main place we get that word from is from Scripture that when Christ is commanding his disciples to continue this, he's saying, do this in remembrance, right? He's saying, do this to remember me. When you eat the bread and drink the cup, you do this in remembrance of me. It's not about mixing passages. You know, I remember clearly when Tom went through John, and we had the passage where a lot of people left, not our church, but in the scriptural text. A lot of people left because of what Jesus said, talking about you need to come and eat my flesh.

13:06And in the Catholic Church, and I believe in some of the early Reformers' ideas, those kind of texts had gotten mixed together where they believed that being part of a Christian, being part of being a Christian, was that you needed to ingest the physical body of Christ. And that's what communion is. That because of their tradition. That was hard for them to let go of, I think. And they weren't clearly separating those scriptures out and seeing this is two different contexts. Jesus was speaking in a way here, and he wasn't talking about the Lord's Supper when He said, Eat my flesh.

13:47So it is a memorial Lord's Supper. Well, there is an event in 1529. This is just two years before Zwingli's death, where somebody brings together Zwingli and Luther to kind of duke it out on this because they're not the same. They both know that they're against the Catholics and they're against transubstantiation, but they're not the same on this. Is there a way to get a clock up in the back? Otherwise, I'll keep you guys forever. Sometimes it's up on the screen. If not, it's okay.

14:26Yeah. We'll know it's time to go when it gets dark. So that event was called, thank you. That event was called the Marburg Colloquy. And it was a pretty dramatic event. If you studied church history, you might remember it because it's two men that agreed on a whole lot, salvation by faith alone, through Christ alone, Zwingli and Luther, very vehemently. Disagreeing with one another at this colloquy. It was a meeting where they were hoping they could kind of sort it out. At least the people who brought them there were hoping they could sort it out, figure it out, get to the bottom of the theological issue. And instead, there seems to be a lot of yelling and anger.

15:20Zingli would argue that what Luther was doing when he was saying, speaking of consubstantiation, when he's saying that the body and the blood are in and with and under the bread and the wine, that that's being a little too literal with the text. On the other hand, Luther is saying very loudly, if you remember this event, he's shouting, it seems like. He's saying, Jesus said, this is my body. Those are Jesus' words. At the Lord's Supper, we can turn there. Turn to Matthew 26.

16:14This is what was so important to Luther. Matthew 26, 26. Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread and, after blessing it, broke it and gave it to the disciples and said, Take, eat, this is my body. And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, Drink it all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. I tell you, I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom. So, this is a special meal that he had been waiting to have with his disciples in the upper room, the Passover meal. And he gets to the bread and the wine, and he tells them, He gives it this new significance: Take, eat, this is my body. Well, Luther sees that and says, He says, This is my body. And so, when we are participating in the Lord's Supper, then we need to also have that mindset. This is Christ's body. And so he said, That's why it has to, even though we reject transubstantiation, it has to be consubstantiation, that at least the body is there with the bread, in it, with it, under it.

17:29I think that one story I heard about this, and maybe this is totally fictional, but that there was some table flipping and things like that. And then one time Luther was quiet for a long time, and people didn't know why, and he was crouching behind a flip table, and he just carved it out on the bottom of the table. Have you guys heard this story? Maybe it's fictional. Maybe I dreamed it, but that he just carved out on the table, this is my body. You know, that's his whole, that's his hang-up. Get over that. And of course, Zwingli is saying, you know, that's being too literal with the text. If you just look at the context, he's literally there with his disciples when he says that, right? He's sitting right in front of them. And so it's very clear when he says, take, eat, this is my body, they would not have assumed, oh, wow, he just got into that bread, right? They're not assuming something like that. They're assuming, he's talking figuratively, that he's talking about this body, this bread that is broken, and that he's instituting this new feast to remember. Take, eat, this is my body.

18:40Drink it, all of you, for this is the blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. So, Zwingli is saying he's being too literal. Zwingli is saying that it's too close to the Roman Catholic Church, that Luther is pretending like he's different from the Catholic Church and their view of transubstantiation. But really, it's the same view is what Zwingli's saying. You didn't really change that much. You just kind of changed how you said it. You still got some kind of re-sacrifice, some ingestion of Christ's sacrifice that you need instead of remembering the once-for-all sacrifice that happened on the cross.

19:23Afterwards, Luther would respond to things like this by saying that he thought that Zwingli and all his followers were blinded to the truth. And it sounded like he just thought they were all unbelievers for thinking that this was a memorial Lord's Supper. So they were intense. Zwingli also countered Luther, saying that it's just disgusting. It's a disgusting pagan idea, was one of Zwingli's point. It's a cannibalistic idea. That's why we had to get rid of it from that Catholic doctrine. And to which Luther, do you remember this part? It's another heated moment.

20:01I think if there was Twitter, Luther would have been all over Twitter. I think we would have, his quotes would be everywhere. But Zwingli said, it's just disgusting to say that we're physically eating the body of Christ, to which Luther stood up and shouted. This is how the story goes. Shouted at the whole assembly, I would eat dung if God commanded it. Seems like a noble, you know, it's just, they're really angry at each other. And you can commend the commitment to Scripture. Luther is going with his conscience. He thinks this is what the scriptures say. And I think that Zwingli gets it right. Let's turn over to 1 Corinthians 11.

21:00This is a passage we read often. We usually turn to this every time we participate in the Lord's Supper together. In fact, it calls it the Lord's Supper in this passage. So look at verse 17, 1 Corinthians 11, verse 17. But in the following instructions, I do not commend you, because when you come together, it's not for the better, but for the worse. For in the first place, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you. And I believe it in part, for there must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized. When you come together, it is not the Lord's Supper that you eat. For in eating, each one goes ahead with his own meal. One goes hungry, another gets drunk. What? Do you not have houses to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I commend you in this? No, I will not. Let's stop there. So he calls it the Lord's Supper there. And remember, in the early church, they usually combine that with something like a love feast, something we see in Acts, where they're eating together and participating in the Lord's Supper. But here, the issue is they're not loving each other. They're coming together with selfish hearts. They're not choosing to eat at their home. Instead, they're trying to get to the feast early and eat all the bread and drink the wine so they can have the fullest belly and get drunk on the wine. And it's just a disgusting situation. He's saying, when you do that, that is not the Lord's Supper. You might call it the Lord's Supper, but that is not the Lord's Supper. Verse 22, for I 28. 23. For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus, that the Lord Jesus, on the night when he was betrayed, took bread. And when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me. In the same way, also, he took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant and my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

23:03And so, if we're just looking at this text, I think it's pretty clear that this is in remembrance of him. That's what Paul is teaching. He's teaching what he received. He's passing this on and saying that the Lord said, Do this. Eat the bread, drink the cup in remembrance of him. Not only in remembrance, but also because they're proclaiming the Lord's death. As they remember it, they're also proclaiming it to anybody who comes. They're proclaiming the Lord's death until he comes. While we wait for Christ to return, we continue to participate in the Lord's Supper. He gave us that to remember his death and to proclaim it as long as we wait for him to come back. Verse 27: Whoever therefore eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many of you are. Weak and ill, and some have died. But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged. But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world. So, then, my brothers, when you come together to eat, wait for one another. If anyone is hungry, let him eat at home. So that when you come together, it will not be for judgment. About the other things, I will give directions when I come. So, this was something special. This was something that they were supposed to treat as special. They're not just supposed to run to the church and think free food and eat all the bread and drink all the wine. If they're hungry, they can eat at home first. And then you come and you worship with the body. You remember the Lord together. You proclaim his death together until he comes.

24:50Any questions on the Lord's Supper? Well, let's move on to baptism. Before we do, there's another thing I wanted to review, and that's this concept of the magisterial reformation or the magisterial reformers. Have you heard that term before? I wasn't in here, so maybe Pat covered all this. I was with the kids when Pat was doing his series. But the magisterial reformers, it sounds like we're speaking about them as. They are majestic, right? You know, the majestic reformers, Luther and Calvin, we put them on a pedestal, and that's what it sounds like when we say magisterial reformers. That's not what it means. Does anybody know what it means?

25:48No? Close. Right. There's a word that's very similar that we use a lot. Maybe not a lot, but sometimes. Magistrates, right? That it is the state, it is the people in control. These magisterial reformers were called that because as they're leaving the Catholic Church, again, yes, they change a lot. They get so much right, they return to scriptures. One of the things that they never really get past, that first generation of reformers, is the connection between church and state.

26:32It's not we're going to leave the Roman Catholic Church and the Holy Roman Empire so that we can be a free church away from that. It's something different. It's we're going to leave that and we're going to start our own cities and states, and they're going to be reformed Protestant cities and states so that the government is Christian. And all the people are expected to be Christian. That's a big difference between them and us. We would say, you know, that's not really the calling of the church. The calling of the church is not to take over the world and kill everyone who disagrees with our doctrine.

27:22The calling of the church is to be faithful, to walk according to the scriptures, to be as faithful people. It's not to be taking over the world as Christians. Well, this would lead to extra heat in all of the debates that happen in this situation, in this generation, is what I meant to say, including the Lord's Supper debate that we just said. Because whenever a church decides we're going to leave behind this old understanding of the Lord's Supper, if there's a group of believers that decides that, or if there's a parish priest, a priest who's maybe the priest of the cathedral over the whole town, and that priest decides he's going to become reformed because he wants to get back to the scriptures, and so he leaves and he wants to follow Zwingli, and so he's going to take him and his whole cathedral, which means he's taking his whole city or county into a different theology.

28:22And so now, if he's the priest there in that cathedral, it's more than just, oh, my pastor changed his view. It's my whole country just changed their view, or at least my whole city just changed their view because he changed their view. And you can't go against it. It's punishable by the government. Well, as we think about baptism, what's one of the biggest obvious differences between us and Catholics in baptism? Infant baptism, right? And immersion. He gave me two. That was great. But I was going for infant baptism, or really even any baptism on an unbeliever. It doesn't have to be an infant. They would baptize other unbelievers as well. Again, because in their view, what matters is the faith of the priest, not the faith of the person. And so as they are baptizing the infant, they are imparting grace onto that infant.

29:29Some of them would say that it is erasing some of that original guilt or original corruption that everyone is born with if they're baptized. They would say that you need to get your baby baptized right away because if your baby dies as a child, you want him to be baptized so that he can go to heaven. You have all kinds of statements like that. There is grace that is imparted to the baby when it's baptized. In Roman Catholic doctrine. Well, the reformers would react against that a little bit. And this is one of the issues that I think they just couldn't quite get over because it's hard to break from tradition on this issue. And maybe you've been part of a family where that's true for you. I'm part of a family that that's true for us. Where it was, whenever some family members of mine became Baptists, it was incredibly awkward for our family because they had been baptized as babies and the whole family was there.

30:42Mom and dad were the ones that were so excited to see that baby baptized. The grandparents were there, they bought the dress. Uncle so-and-so, they're the godfather, they were there at the baptism. And so, all of a sudden, when this still happens today, when your family becomes a Baptist or something and you respond to the conviction, I believe from the word that baptism is for believers, there's fallout in a family. It's awkward. And I think that they're experiencing that on like a whole generational scale.

31:20Not only that, it was even more heightened for them because being baptized as an infant is also like your entry into citizenship. As the church and the state are combined. So it's even more than what we would think of. It's them urgently needing to impart grace to this baby because they really want that baby to be able to go to heaven if the baby dies, which a lot of babies did die in that day. And so there's all of that urgency packed in. There's all of the urgency of family tradition. You know, for six generations back, every single one of us has been baptized as a baby. Or you have husbands and wives, and the husband wants the baby to be baptized, and the wife has learned from the scriptures, and she believes in believers' baptism. And it's a couple. They share the baby, right?

32:14So there's that tension. And then there's the tension of citizenship. So there is so much around baptism. Well, Luther reacted against what the Roman Catholics taught. He did teach that babies could be regenerated at baptism, but only if the baby had faith. And that makes us want to chuckle. But that's where he landed. That the baby could be regenerated at baptism, but only if the baby had faith. And people would push him on that and say, How in the world can you say a baby has faith? And he would respond with something like, you know, it's the mystery of God. We don't understand. All I know is that we have always, and people have pushed him, the Anabaptists would push him on this and say, You know, how can you say that when the scriptures are so clear that people who believe became baptized, how can you continue to baptize infants? He would say, Look, this is what we've done for, I'm paraphrasing, he spoke in German. But he would say, Look, this is what we've done for 1,500 years. We have quotes from him of just saying, This is what we've always done. Why would we just throw out all of this tradition unless we had a really good reason to do so? And so I think he's appealing to tradition and I think feeling the weight of that tradition. But he also understands that salvation is by faith alone. And so the only way he can put that together is to say, okay, we're going to keep baptizing babies, but we know that they're only saved when they're baptized. The baptism only matters if that baby actually has faith when he's baptized or she's baptized. And that's kind of where he landed. Continue to baptize infants.

33:56Well, Zwingli, the star of our last topic, the Lord's Supper, he would react against the Catholics. He would also react against Luther. He would come a little bit further. And in his preaching, he started, it was so close, it almost sounded like he was going to go with the scriptures. He had some students, they were studying the scriptures together. He started taking a few steps down that path of believers' baptism. It was encouraging, and it was. At least as you read history, it's encouraging to see those steps. But then at some point, it just got, there was too much collateral damage for the reasons we mentioned earlier. Families ripped apart, citizenship destroyed, tradition destroyed. So much collateral damage that he snapped back and wholeheartedly returned to infant baptism as something that is very important.

35:03Well, he still differed from the Catholics and Luther. The Catholics still believed in that imparting of grace in the baptism, maybe covering their original guilt, saving the baby from damnation if they die in childhood. Luther saying that the baby would have faith and that's why they would be saved after baptism. Zwingli rejected both of those. He said, you know, the baby can't have faith. He's just a baby. He doesn't even understand yet. And so he would really, and actually, just this week, it was very timely. One of our professors at the seminary, Dr. Peter Gaiman, spelled G-O-E-M-A-N, if you want to write it down, he's got a podcast called The Bible Sojourner. And I think that's the name of it. Daniel, is that right? Bible Sojourner, Peter Gaiman. You should listen to it. It's wonderful. He's got like 100 episodes now. It's been going on for a couple of years. Is that true? Do you have like 100 episodes? Okay, he's got 100 episodes now. He just did one on baptism and faith and the connection between baptism and faith, and he looked at some of this as well. If you want to do extra study, listen to that podcast. Anyways, he rejected that idea of connecting faith to baptism. He would say, We're still going to baptize an infant because that's what we've always done, but it's got nothing to do with their faith. And really, it's got nothing to do with their salvation. He would reject the baptismal regeneration that the Catholics taught and that Luther kind of taught, baptismal regeneration, that we're regenerated when we're baptized, even if we're an unbeliever. He would reject all of that, but he didn't want to get rid of infant baptism.

36:48And it led to all kinds of bad stuff. The young adults last semester, we studied the church, ecclesiology, and we studied the end times, eschatology. This was on Thursday nights. And we had a great time. At least I had a great time. I don't know about the yags. But one of the topics we had to cover was this relationship between Israel and the church, the distinction between covenantalism and dispensationalism, what all those terms mean, what the difference is. And as we were studying the history, we talked about Zwingli because this is when covenantalism. Covenant theology begins to form, and its seed is with Zwingli.

37:38He needed a way to continue to have requirements for baptism. If he's not going to get rid of infant baptism in his city-state, he needs a way to theologically justify this against the Anabaptists. And for the first time, we start to hear about this idea of covenant theology. Now, it's not going to form in its totality, all the young adults know this, for another 100 or 200 years, covenant theology. There's several components that are going to be added to it, to where modern covenant theology is this whole system with three different covenants that are theological covenants not found in Scripture, but are supposed to overarch the scriptures. None of those are formed yet in Zwingli's day, but he begins the seed of the first one. And that's sometimes called the covenant of redemption.

38:32Today, not by him, but today, that's what we refer to it as. And it's this idea that there's always only ever been one controlling covenant between God and mankind. And that covenant spans every generation. It just takes different forms. And so he would point to the Old Testament, and he would say, you see, God had this covenant with the Jews. They were his chosen people. They had certain rights. Rules and regulations in their covenant, and that covenant gets transferred from them to the church. Now, the church is his covenant people, his special way. They've carried on the mantle of Israel. Israel has become the church, or the church has replaced Israel, or language like that.

39:20How does this play into baptism? What do you think? Circumcision, right? Now, all of a sudden, you have this theological justification for we have to do something to infants. Because if there is this continuation of a covenant that carries on from all of biblical history, and in the Old Testament, that covenant, there is a sign of the covenant, and that sign was circumcision, and that was supposed to be given to the babies on the eighth day. And then we know that that covenant was passed to the church, only baptism has replaced circumcision. Well, then it's very clear to see. Obviously, if we were circumcised on the eighth day, we should be baptized on the eighth day. We should be baptized as an infant. That's how we enter into God's covenant community, God's covenant people.

40:14You see the connection there? So, none of covenant theology is formally defined at this stage in church history, but Zwingli forms. Finds it a way to argue against the Anabaptists. And the tragic part is that many of these Anabaptists are his own students, his own students that began to walk down that road with him, controlled by the scriptures, saying, What we see in the New Testament is the apostles saying, believe and be baptized for the forgiveness of your sins. That they started down that road with him. He snapped back and came up with this theological system to justify, the theological system that's still permeating the church today.

41:08He snapped back for that reason, because he just, there's too much collateral damage dealing with infant baptism. And some of his pupils, his star students, became the earliest Anabaptists. There was a night, January 21st, 1525, where several of his students and others got together. They had been convinced by the scriptures and believers' baptism. They wanted to obey the Lord. They thought that their infant baptism wasn't a real baptism because they weren't believers. And so they didn't call it being re-baptized. That's what Anabaptist means, baptized again. That was a derogatory term put on them that they didn't like. They would say, no, I was never baptized. That wasn't baptism. You sprinkle. Me with water, but I wasn't a believer, and that wasn't a baptism. So they became convinced that they needed to follow the Lord in true baptism, to follow the scriptures. And on that night, two of his students, Felix Menz and Conrad Grable, along with others, they began to baptize each other.

42:22That sounds like something innocuous to us, not too important to us. You know, people in a house just baptizing each other. For them, it was pretty revolutionary. They saw Zwingli start to go that way. Zwingli's got all the power in this church, city-state. They saw him snap back. They decided, no, this is the way the scriptures go. And so this is not just two churches disagreeing. This is them going against their government because they believed in believers' baptism.

43:04And it would infuriate the reformers. And this is kind of the dark side of the Reformation. And the part that we never like to talk about with Luther and Zwingli and others, that this group, sometimes they're called the radical reformers, or sometimes they're called the Reformers' stepchildren. There's a lot of different groups among them, but the the most prominent one was the Anabaptists, which we studied this summer. They I just lost my train of thought. Oh, yeah, that's this is the the dark side. The Reformation that we don't like to talk about, that those magisterial reformers would begin to persecute these radical reformers.

43:59Now, the radical reformers weren't always kind. You know, sometimes they're barging into church services, running down the aisles, screaming, you know, this is not real baptism. And so you can tell this is it's it's not, you know, they're not always likable. In fact, some ex there's an extreme sect of them. Maybe y'all already talked about this, but there's a rebellion. And so then it just got Anabaptists are assumed to all be rebels and they're trying to hurt people and be heretics. So so anyways, they're start they they start to be killed as heretics, not just by the Catholics, but also by the reformers, those magisterial reformers. That was on 1525, was that January 21st, 1525? By the end of that century, one number I read was 10,000. 10,000 Anabaptists were killed just because they wanted to be baptized as a believer and killed in gruesome ways. And Just a sad part of church history, including Zwingli. Zwingli thought that they were just going to destroy Christendom. And maybe he had started to see the biblical merits of believers' baptism, but he believed there was going to be so much collateral damage, society turned upside down, all of that kind of stuff. And so he was in on it too.

45:25His student, Felix Mennz, one of his star pupils, one of his protégés, was the first person martyred, killed, because he was baptized again as an adult. So Zwingli is front and center and adamantly takes the side of infant baptism. Let's look at a few passages before we close. First, we have Matthew chapter 3. We have John the Baptist described at the beginning with his special clothing, special food. Verse 11, he says, I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand. He will clear his threshing floor and gather. His wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will not burn, or the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire. So you have the ministry of John the Baptist as the forerunner of Christ and really a national sensation, right? The whole nation is coming out to him. All of Jerusalem and Judea is coming out to him, being baptized in the wilderness. That word baptized is a transliteration for us.

46:59And maybe you've heard that before, but the Greek word is just baptizo. And I don't know why that word gets transliterated when so many others don't. Transliterate means you just take the letters and you put it in your language instead of translating it into what the word would mean, which is something like immerse or dip. And so when he's talking about them immersing people in the water, he's saying he baptized them in the Jordan. He immersed them in the Jordan for repentance of their sins. And he says, the one is coming. I'm baptizing you. I'm immersing you in the water. One is coming whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you. He will immerse you with the Holy Spirit and fire. I think that's kind of an either or.

47:43Some people think that it's the Holy Spirit and the tongues of fire, like on Pentecost. But I think in the context, fire is not good at the end of verse 12. And it seems like this is an either or, that Christ is the one who's going to either immerse you into the Holy Spirit. Or immerse you into fire in judgment. So his power is so much greater than John. But you see this forerunner of baptism, of Christian baptism in John the Baptist. And of course, in the next story, verse 13, Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, I need to be baptized by you. And do you come to me? But Jesus answered him, Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness. Then he consented. And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him. And behold, a voice from heaven said, This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased. So Jesus is baptized, and the Spirit descends, and the Father's voice comes from heaven. All members of the Trinity, one God, three persons present in one scene at the baptism of Christ when he is immersed into the Jordan by John. Now, John's baptism is a baptism of repentance. It makes that very clear in the Gospels that people are supposed to repent of their sins and be baptized by John. That's what it's signifying. For Jesus, you can see why John would ask the question, I'm going to baptize you, you should baptize me. You know, you don't have anything to repent of. You're the one who's greater. I'm not even supposed to be able to carry your sandals, right? And yet you're asking me to baptize you, but Jesus says, Do this. This is part of fulfilling all obedience.

49:36We don't get the insight into exactly what he means by that. It is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness. Usually, the interpretation of that is something that he's been commanded by his Father, commanded by the Holy Spirit to do this, or this is something that all the righteous in Israel are supposed to do to go get baptized with John. And Christ is identifying with his people, even though he doesn't need to repent, he's going to go with the faithful and go be baptized by John. But whatever the case, this is a righteous thing for Jesus to do, and he is dipped in the water and immersed. Well, you can turn over to Acts chapter 2. Along the way, in the rest of the Gospels, you have Jesus' disciples baptizing. And remember, people come and ask questions about John's disciples baptizing and Jesus' disciples baptizing. And so there's a transition there as Jesus' disciples begin to baptize others. And in Acts chapter 2, after Peter's amazing sermon, if you haven't read it in a while, I encourage you to read Acts chapter 2 afresh, the whole book of Acts.

50:44Acts chapter 2, at the end of his sermon, verse 37. Let's start in verse 36. Acts 2, verse 36: Let all the house of Israel, therefore, know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified. Now, when they heard, This, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, Brothers, what shall we do? And Peter said to them, Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself. And with many other words, he bore witness and continued to exhort them, saying, Save yourselves from this crooked generation. So those who received his word were immersed. And they were added that day about 3,000 souls. So at the end of his life, after his ascension, Christ, I mean, before his ascension, after his resurrection, Christ commands them to make disciples and baptize them. You remember in the Great Commission, he commands them to immerse them, to baptize them. And the apostles take that right away. Peter, at the end of his sermon, when people are asking, what do we do? He says, repent and be baptized. This is something you're supposed to do as a new Christian. And it's a pattern that they started right away. Those who received his word were baptized, and they were added that day about 3,000 souls. There are several other places we can go to in Acts to look at other times where they speak of baptism and people being baptized, and maybe another time we'll have time. No, let's do it. Let's do it one more time. Acts chapter 18.

52:32You remember the Philippian jailer? They were singing in the jail. Oh, I got the wrong chapter. 16. Thank you. Yep, 16. The Philippian jailer has been hearing them singing, and then the jail is broken open, and he's terrified, and he says, What Paul cried with a loud voice. The soldier is about, this is verse, I'm sorry, I'm scattered. Verse 28. So the soldier is just, he's about to fall on his sword. It's not a good situation for him. But Paul cried out, verse 28, with a loud voice, do not harm yourself, for we are all here. And the jailer called for lights and rushed in, and trembling with fear, he fell down before Paul and Silas. Then he brought them out and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? And they said, believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.

53:33Okay, pause there for just a second. The answer there is believe, right? What do I do to be saved? Believe. It seems like he could be saying, believe in the Lord Jesus, and you and your household will be saved. Have you noticed that before? Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, you and your whole household. I think theologically we'd say maybe there's another option there. Maybe he's saying something like, believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved.

54:01You and your whole household can do that. Anyone who believes will be saved. Something like that. Well, verse 32, it says, They spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. And he took them the same hour of the night and washed their wounds, and he was baptized at once, he and all his family. And he brought them up into his house and set food before them. And he rejoiced along with his entire household that he had believed in God. So he was baptized at once in response to this because of his faith, he and his household. And I turn to this text specifically because this is one that's frequently brought up in support of infant baptism. This is one of the only places they turn to scripturally besides the circumcision baptism connection that they've said with that one single covenant, the thing that Zingli started. But they would say, you see, he believed and he was baptized, he and all his family. And surely there were babies in the family. That's kind of the point. It doesn't say the whole family believed and then the whole family was baptized. It says he believed and then his family was baptized. And so we should, as Christians, baptize our family, and our families can be saved. You can see what they mean by that, or where they get that idea. I think that, again, theologically, we'd say that this offer was for him and his whole household. And if his household is being saved, then that's because his household believed. And if his household is being baptized, it's because They believed. I think that this testimony of the scriptures is clear throughout that baptism is something that happens by immersion after you believe. So we've seen this pattern in Acts. We saw it in the Gospels. I think that the Anabaptists got it right. I think that they were convicted by the scriptures that even though it was hard for them, they were leaving behind all the tradition. They knew what they were doing in their generation. And they knew that they were going to be killed for this. And they still did it anyways.

56:01They would be persecuted for this stand. And I think it's important for us to remember that. Important for us to remember how important this was for them. Important for us to remember how important the scriptures are. I'm using that word so many times, I'm sorry, but just how faithful we want to be to the scripture in both of these issues: the Lord's Supper and baptism. I think that it got corrupted century after century. I think it got worse and worse in the Roman Catholic Church. I think the reformers saw so much bad theology and reacted against that in the 1500s. And in many areas, they came out, and Zwingli seems to have come all the way out on the Lord's Supper to a memorial Lord's Supper, as we find in the scriptures. But he didn't seem to come all the way out on baptism. He said that baptism doesn't save the baby. That was at least something good he did, but he still said, for the sake of tradition, we need to keep doing this and came up with that covenant system to justify it. So that was a whole lot of history and scripture mixed in there, but I hope that you have a good idea of why we do things the way we do in this church. In this church, we do not have a priest that dispenses the elements that we need incense and genuflecting. You guys know what genuicing is? It's like this kind of thing. Before the elements, before the tabernacle where the body and blood are, because we don't agree with them that it had been changed into another sacrifice of Christ. And so we don't need the religiosity around it. Yes, we, like Corinthians says, we're going to be respectful. We're not going to come and somebody just come and take the tray and eat all the crackers if you could do that.

57:59So that nobody else can participate in the Lord's Supper. But we view it as a memorial Lord's Supper. Baptism we view as a sign of faith. That's why it's believers' baptism. It is not something that if Tom baptizes somebody, he's not imparting his faith into that person. Tom is not going to baptize an infant in this church to try and cover over their sins or regenerate their hearts. That's not going to happen. And the reason is because of the scriptures, we believe. Driven to those positions. So, any questions as we close?

58:38If you have more questions as you think about this, I know that for some of us, this is a very personal issue. This is something in our families that's hard to deal with. And these can be things that rip us apart emotionally. For some of us, we grew up with Memorial Lord's Supper and believers' baptism, and this is no big deal. We heard this a thousand times. For some of you, I know it's different. And so, if you need to talk about it, talk about it. Come and talk to me and Tom about it. We'd love to talk to you about that. But let's pray. Father, we're so grateful for your word. We're so grateful that it's so clear for us. We're so grateful that we don't need to make up our own religious rites. We don't need to make up our own ceremonies. Instead, you've given us these ordinances that we can remember and worship and express our faith. Father, I pray that you would help us do these things according to the Scriptures. Help us have a heart that trusts you and knows your word.

59:39Help us grow in maturity as we walk in faith. We thank you, Father, in Jesus' name. Amen.