GcKSKSKwTIc

1:41Some aren't going to change anything. They're going to keep all the Catholic doctrines about these sacraments. Luther's going to do one thing. Zwingli is going to do one thing. Calvin's going to do one thing. And you'll see that they're really trying to struggle through these and see what they can figure out from Scripture. Okay, so we are going to observe, or not observe the ordinances. We're going to look at both the ordinances in Scripture and then talk about where each of the reformers were and maybe some dramatic debates and things like that in church history. And we're going to try and do it all before 10 o'clock so that we can beat the nursery workers to breakfast and be the first in line.

2:27Pray with me as we get started. Father, we pray that you'd bless this time. I pray that you'd help us understand the scriptures, help us understand the things that you've commanded us to do. I pray, Lord, that this lesson wouldn't be boring or anything, that people wouldn't lose attention, but that as we look at the scriptures and as we weigh what these men have said about them, I pray, Lord, that you'd help us evaluate these things in our own mind so that we can have a clear conversation. Conscience about them and understand what you want us to do. In Jesus' name, amen.

3:07Yes. These sacraments, not the ordinances that we observe, did the sacraments more or less replace the Holy Spirit? I'd say that they would say that that's what gives them their power. They would say that the Holy Spirit is working through the sacraments or something like that. Good question. And honestly, a sacrament in itself is a fine word, except that it carries this connotation that they put into it. If that makes sense. As we go through it, there's a couple times I'm going to quote from this book. So if you have been really loving Pat's class, which I'm sure you have, and you've just gone crazy about church history and you want to learn all that you can about church history, there's a few big books you could do. Or there's some several volume series you could do if you want to read all about it, know every detail. One is Big and Green by Roger Olson called The Story of Christian Theology. And he goes doctrine by doctrine and traces the story and the people involved. And it's pretty fun. So if you are a big researcher and you want to spend hundreds and hundreds of pages reading about that, then go for it with that book. Yes. Stop on that book at the Reformation. Yeah, stop on that book at the Reformation. It gets a little fuzzy after there. You can talk to me about it if you really want to read that book. But if you don't want to read hundreds and hundreds of pages and you just want to read one smaller book that's very good and very readable, I really recommend this one. It's a lot of fun. So, this is just about the Reformation. It's not about all the church history, but he does a really good job. It's really easy to read. Erwin Lutzer was the pastor after Warren Weersby at Moody. So there are other pastors mixed in there, but it was Dwight Moody and then Warren Weersby for a time, and then Erwin Lutzer, and now it's somebody else. But, anyways, Erwin Lutzer has written a really helpful book. It has pictures on like every page. Sometimes the picture takes up like half the page, like this one. Okay? So it's really good to read. It's really helpful. We'll read from it just because it's really well written. He's got some good quotes in there. But I really recommend it. Another resource is this one.

5:35God's Prevailing Work is a little workbook that goes up from the beginning of church history to the Reformation. So it stops in 1517. I'm going to give away five of these tonight at the evening service. So if you want to come and get a workbook that you think you'll work through to learn more about church history, then come tonight for the evening service. Okay. All of that said, I want you to turn to Matthew 20. We're going to flip to a few different places. Matthew 26, to start, we're going to read just a few verses about the Lord's Supper. Matthew 26, verse 26. Matthew's account and Mark's account include almost the same words. They're very similar. And you can imagine as Jesus is administering the Lord's Supper that he's saying several things. He'll say one sentence and say another sentence, and maybe the biblical authors, they're not including everything. And so we'll see that actually Luke includes a few extra phrases that are also included by Paul in the account that we'll read. But first, let's read Matthew's account, verse 26 of Matthew 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.

7:01And he took a cup. And when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, Drink of 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 the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom. So those are familiar verses to all of us. And you can remember, does anybody remember what the Catholic doctrine is?

7:30Of the body and blood of Christ is called transubstantiation. What does that mean? They're literally transformed into the body and blood of Jesus. And you can imagine kind of how that doctrine came about. I'd like you to try and think through that with me. They're not reading the scriptures. They're performing this Mass in Latin, and these things are being said. And so while they're there with the bread and the cup, they're saying these words, this is my body. This is my blood. And so they start to think, okay, this must mean that whenever we partake in communion, this is Jesus' body and blood. And so even though we just brought bread and wine into the building, whenever we hand it back out, it becomes real body of Christ, real blood of Christ, through a mystical transformation.

8:34Yeah, the priest's power. And that's where it comes down to the idea of grace is imparted to you, like we talked about earlier, through the sacraments, because the priest's power has actually changed that into the body and blood. And then you are partaking of that, whether you believe or not. And so it's helping you spiritually, is their thought process. Okay. Yes. Yeah. Having been a Catholic, is that I think that a lot of it comes from a partial reading. We only read part that said we were only read the part that was read to us was the part that said, This is my body and this is my blood. And a lot of my conversion came out of reading the whole thing, the whole chapter of John, chapter 6, at one time, and the last verses which say that the physical is nothing and the bad is spiritual. Right. And that is a big part of it is John chapter 6. So if you remember, when Pastor Thomas went through John chapter 6, he talked about how that gets really mixed up with communion. So Jesus in that is talking about eating his flesh, that his followers need to eat his flesh and drink his blood, and they're partaking in a spiritual life by basically participating in the cross. He's saying you apply the cross, my sacrifice on the cross to your salvation. Well, you can see how easy it is, and maybe you remember when Thomas preached this, you can see how easy it is to import those ideas into communion.

10:08So in a mass, they're going to quote part of those things where he says, you need to eat my flesh and drink my blood. And then they'll quote this, it says, take, eat, this is my body. And so you're sitting there thinking and putting two and two together, okay, I need to do this. This is his body. I need to partake. But you remember in John 6, he's using a Figure of speech to talk about the cross. And in communion, he is talking about the Lord's Supper. The Lutheran doctrine?

10:40Consubstantiation. What does that mean? With, yeah, with. Right. And you may have heard the quote. He says something like in, with, and under, or something like that. So he's saying, you know, it's silly to think that it actually becomes the body and blood, but he didn't want to abandon the idea that Christ was indeed physically present in the Lord's Supper. And so he says, whenever you take the bread, the bread is still bread, but you also are taking the body, which has come to dwell with the bread. So the bread doesn't become the body, but the body comes and dwells with the bread. That's consubstantiation. It means with.

11:26That was Luther's position. Does anybody remember Zwingli's position? This is the one that we line up with. In this case, not in baptism, we're going to line up with Zwingli, and it is the memorial Lord's Supper. That we are doing this in remembrance of Him. So turn to 1 Corinthians 11. You remember that Zwingli, he, in 1519, so two years after Luther nails his 95 thesis, in 1519, he begins to take his congregation verse by verse through the New Testament.

12:15He's convicted about this. He starts in Matthew and he goes through the whole thing. Because of that, he eventually, a year later, because of what he's discovering in Scripture, he renounces his Catholic post. He steps down, but then almost immediately after, in his city, they make him the city priest. So he steps down as the Catholic priest and cuts off his ties with that church, but the city has grown so used to his preaching, his expositional preaching, they just make him the city priest. They say, okay, if you're not going to do this through the Catholic Church, we still want you. We're just going to hire you. The city's going to hire you. Well, then, you remember, he keeps refining his convictions from what he was taught in the priesthood. He keeps reading scripture. Did you guys talk about the sausage supper?

13:05Yeah, okay, so he gets together with those guys, and he doesn't have the sausage himself, but they all have little bites of sausage, and it's scandalous. And the issue is they weren't supposed to be eating that meat at that time, and they broke the rule of the church. And Zwingli didn't eat, but he defends the guys who do. And so you can tell he's refining his convictions. You might have talked about how. He became against the images that people were revering in the churches. He has them all taken down off the walls. He is against musical instruments or church liturgy. He basically strips everything down in the church and says, okay, this is all really fancy, but it's all distracting us. And you might have heard the quote before that basically churches in his region became four bare walls in a sermon. Have you heard that before? Four bare walls in a sermon. So they're getting rid of all of these things that they consider to be Roman Catholic trappings that aren't in Scripture. Okay?

14:12Well, he is in Switzerland, and Luther is in Germany, and there's this guy, Philip of Hess. Did you talk about him? And he wants to bring these two movements together. He likes the Reformation. He wants to unify them so they can maybe stand against the power of the Catholic Church or at least grow together as brothers in Christ. And so he arranges for Zwingli and Luther. They had heard about each other. But Zwingli, even though he comes a little after, he says this, I did not learn my doctrine from Luther, but from God's word itself. So he's clear that he's learning this stuff parallel to Luther, even though they end up with a lot of the same conclusions. And so Philip of Hesse is going to bring them together, and you can see why they would want to, right? How great would it be to have the whole church? Movement in this country, in this country, they come together. These two superstars, Luther and Zwingli, are coming together and everything's united, and it's wonderful.

15:12But the problem is, they disagree about the Lord's Supper. Did you talk about this debate at all? So they come together, and they're talking about the Lord's Supper. Luther's position very strongly. I'm going to read to you a quote from this book once I know what page it's on. No pictures on this page, but there's a really good quote. So here's Luther's quote: He's talking about his position. He believes that the body still dwells in the blood, in the bread, and the wine. Zwingli is now taking the position that, no, the Lord said, do this in remembrance of me. There's nothing mystical about this. We're just doing this ordinance because God told us to, Jesus told us to, and it's going to help us remember him. Well, listen to what Luther says. Your basic contentions are these. In the last analysis, you wish to prove that a body cannot be at two places at once. Okay, so Luther's saying, look, your arguments are just that you can't have a body in more than one place, which we'd say, you know, that's true, right? My body can't be in two places.

16:29I don't. Not question how Christ can be God and man, and how the two natures can be joined, for God is more powerful than all our ideas, and we must submit to his word. Prove that Christ's body is not there when the scripture says, This is my body. And so, Luther's saying, Your only argument is that a body can't be in two places, which is not, that wasn't his only argument. He's saying, I know we don't understand it, but I say that there's lots of things in scripture we don't understand. So, I say a body must be able to be in two places if it's the body of Christ. And he said, This is my body. You see where he's going with that? He says, Rational proofs I will not listen to. Corporeal proofs, arguments based on geometric principles, I repudiate absolutely. God is beyond all mathematics, and the words of God are to be revered and carried out in all. It is God who commands, take, eat, this is my body. I request, therefore, valid scriptural proof to the contrary. So, he's saying, Okay, he said, This is my body, I'm going to believe him, this is my body. You show me a scripture that disproves it, and then I'll believe you. Okay, so you can see he's getting very fiery, and you might remember he's scratching on the table, this is my body, with some chalk, and it's very heated. Okay, so here's what Zwingli says: it is prejudice, a preconception, which keeps Dr. Luther from yielding his point. He refuses to yield until a passage is quoted that proves that the body of the Lord's Supper. Is figurative. Comparison of scriptural passages is always necessary. Although we have no scriptural passage that says, this is the sign of my body, we still have proof that Christ dismissed the idea of a physical meal.

18:18You yourself have acknowledged that it is the spiritual meal that offers solace. And since we are agreed on this major question, I beg you, for the love of Christ, not to burden anyone with the crime of heresy because of these differences. Okay, so Zwingli is saying, look, you're calling all of us heretics. I'm asking you, please don't call us heretics. We know all over Scripture that there are figures of speech. Another one of his big points was that we separate the words from Christ, but his point is when Christ said this, he was in the room. He hadn't died yet or risen again. He's standing right there. And so when you're a disciple and Jesus is handing you this bread and he says, this is my body, you automatically understand.

19:06No, it's not. Right? You're standing right in there. You automatically understand he's using a figure of speech. And that's Zwingli's point, is Scripture uses figures of speech all over the place. So we don't need to say, we don't need to import into this word this idea that it was literally his body when he was giving it to the disciples. You see the two arguments there? Okay, look over at 1 Corinthians 11 down in verse 23. For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, 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, The cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. 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.

20:26And we'll stop there for now. But you see, those words that Paul is using follows most closely Luke's account of the Lord's Supper. And he is saying these things, I think, clearly in a figure of speech and saying, look, whenever you do this, make sure you're doing it in remembrance of me. Verse 26 again, for as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. And so you can tell, in that context, there's nothing about how you need to make sure you're doing this every week. Sometimes every day in different churches, you need to make sure you're doing this every week because this is going to support your spiritual life. This is going to give you more spiritual insight, or it's going to cause you to spiritually grill. That's not the idea that Paul is sharing with us. He's saying, no, you get together for this meal and you remember the death of Christ. And as you do so, you're proclaiming it and you're fellowshipping with one another as you do this. Okay? Well, they never saw eye to eye at the end of the debate. I don't know if Pat mentioned this to you. At the end of the debate, someone tried to get them to shake hands, but Luther wouldn't even do it. He didn't even consider these people who had the other position Christians. He didn't even want to give fellowship to them. He considered them heretics. And you can kind of sympathize a little bit with Luther. We don't agree with Luther. But you're in Germany, and you're hearing about these people following Zwingli in Switzerland. And you hear, okay, they're eating sausage on the wrong day. They just destroyed all the artwork and got rid of it. They got rid of liturgy. They're not following any tradition. You know, Luther's probably thinking, you know, these people are cuckoo. They've gone off the wall. They've taken what we started in the Reformation, and they've just gone off the deep end. They're getting rid of everything.

22:29And so, But as he's coming to this debate with that preconceived notion, he's just thinking, okay, they're just trying to get rid of something else. They're just abandoning everything. And Luther, in his conscience, is saying, it says, this is my body. Why wouldn't we assume this is his body? You see kind of where I'm going with that. And so he thinks these people are just going crazy. He's not even going to shake their hand when they leave. He's going to go back to Germany, and the two movements are going to be split for good. Okay?

23:01Any questions or thoughts? Yeah, Jackson? In the Catholic Church, I know there's a lot of rules about disposal of the elements and also keeping the unused elements around to basically be worshipped in hours outside of the Mass, which is interesting because in the Bible there are no rules about disposal. And you would think that if they actually do change substance into the actual body and blood of Jesus Christ, that they would that there would be strict rules in the Bible about how to dispose of it, in the sense that, you know, even in the Old Testament, there's all of these rules, specific rules about how, you know, sort of conduct oneself in the house of God and the elements. And it's there. But then, when Christ comes and fulfills all of that, He's you know, since He's fulfilled it, we don't have to follow those specific rules because He's fulfilled it. And so you could understand why they would feel the need to have all those rules and ceremonies. And the church that I grew up in, which is a Protestant church, they still had the same doctrine about the Lord's Supper. And so the box that they kept it in after it became the body and blood of Christ was just a little box in the back, but it was called the tabernacle. Now, why would it be called the tabernacle, just a box? Well, it's because they believe God's in that box.

24:38They just became the bread and the wine just became the body and blood of Jesus. And so I was an acolyte. I had to wear white robes and I had to wear gloves so that I didn't touch this stuff that only the priest was supposed to touch. And you know, when you're little, you just walk around with a candle as an acolyte. But as I grew up and grew older, you know, I had to follow all these customs and rules. Every time I walked across the aisle, I'd have to stop right here and bow down to that box because that's the tabernacle. And then I'd have to keep walking. And I did all of that as a teenager. And you can see none of that is in this text. You can see none of that pump and circumstance. Yeah, James? I've mentioned this before, but even in less illiterate Protestant denominations, that they still, to a certain extent, Respect the elements. So, the Methodist Church, they won't throw away the bread because it's been, at the very least, in their mind, it's been blessed. So, why would they throw away less? Not not they don't go to transubstantiation, but you can go in the Monday after, eat a Monday of the wine bread or whatever. What was that stuff called?

25:53The kings of wine and bread? I know in the first few centuries or so, there were a lot of different ideas floating around about what was going on with communion. I think the real presence of the Lord is something along the lines of consubstantiation. But do you know when prevalence of full-on transubstantiation and tabernacles and all that really came about? I don't know. I think it was gradually, but I don't know, I can't answer you. I'll tell you guys another time. Dustin? That's okay.

26:34Just one comment about another problem with the body and blood becoming the actual body and blood is that was a way that the Catholic Church could withhold grace through interdiction. Right. So they could take a whole country and say the whole Frankish kingdom is now not able to communion. Power is growing up. So that's a problem why we're talking to this paper of the By the way, do you guys know what the word Mass comes from? It's not from Scripture.

27:07It's another little piece of trivia. You know, the Mass is in Latin, and at the end of it, the priest says, you are dismissed. And the word for dismissed, I think the people didn't understand it or something, but he'd say it in Latin, and it's Mass. And so you're dismissed. That's what it means. And it just came to mean the whole thing. Okay, so you have the Catholics believing transubstantiation still today. You have Luther believing consubstantiation, and the Lutherans still believe that today, so that it doesn't become the body and blood, but that the body and blood dwell with it. You have Zwingli during the Memorial Lord's Supper. You have Calvin later.

27:55He kind of takes a middle road, and he wants to emphasize the word communion. And so he's saying it's not what Luther says, it's not what the Catholics say, but it's also not as far as Zwingli says. And a lot of denominations still believe this, maybe Presbyterians, maybe even a lot of Baptists and things like that. But it's that God is communing with us in a special particular way as we partake in the Lord's Supper. It's got nothing to do with the elements themselves, but when we come together, God is communing with us in a special way. He gets that fair. From 1 Corinthians 10, verse 16, the cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? And that word participation can also be translated communion. And so he would say, okay, at least we have to say that even if it is just a memorial Lord's Supper, that the Lord dwells with us in a special, more intensified way during the Lord's Supper. The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ?

29:11But then we have to keep going a little further. If you remember, let's start back in verse 14, what this context is about. He's saying, therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry. I speak to sensible people, judge for yourselves what I say. The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of one bread. Okay, so the issue is that he's saying, don't go into idolatry, don't worship these idols, because when you come and you take the Lord's Supper, you're participating with the rest of your church body in a union. Unified way to do this thing. You're participating in having communion. Verse 17, because there's one bread, we who are many are one body. And so idolatry doesn't work because then that's going to split you up into these different allegiances. Look at verse 18. Consider the people of Israel. Are not those who eat the sacrifices participants in the altar? So they're all participating together is the idea in the altar. Verse 19, what do I imply then? That food offered to idols is anything? Or that an idol is anything? No. I imply that what pagans sacrifice, they offer to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be participants with the demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake in the table of the Lord and the table of demons. Shall we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than He? So you have this idea where you're becoming part of this body as you take this Lord's Supper. How can you become part of two different bodies? Aren't you going to provoke the Lord to jealousy? How can you justify this if they're doing this demonic worship and you're trying to worship the Lord and you're trying to do both? Is the point. Yeah, Michael? Going back for a second, in 1 Corinthians 11, 27 through 32, is that a section of scripture where it talks about taking it unwordingly and becoming ill and sick and things like that? Yes. Do you think that the Catholics and the transubstantiation?

31:38I think so. Or it at least goes with that idea. It makes sense, right? If you are handling something supernaturally, you better not do it unworthily. But if you remember in that context, it's about the fellowship. Look down at verse 33. 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.

32:07So, in that case, it's really kind of treating it as though it's just a normal meal and just a kind of spark of God. Yeah, yeah, and I think that there was, you remember, the love feast back then, and I think they did incorporate into another meal. We kind of do something similar. If you noticed, every time we have a fellowship meal, that's also when we take communion, the prayer service. Yeah, Michael. The Jews call that an Ode.

32:29Okay. So, usually in this they do a domestianic Christian community as well. They have a meal after the service. Yeah, and we kind of try and keep the same principle. But you can tell what he's getting at is this is supposed to be a memorial time, and it's supposed to be a time to bring the body together in fellowship. If you're trying to also bring your body together with a group of people who are worshiping a demon, it's not going to work. If you're trying to split apart the body, By making sure only some get to eat or something like that, that's not going to work. This is a Lord's Supper you're meant to bring together as a body, things like that. Okay? So, that is the Lord's Supper. We have 15 minutes to talk about baptism, so we're going to hustle, okay?

33:18Rosemary, did you? I could tell is pent up. I just think that it's really important to bring that part about in my limited study of the Bible, and I know you know more references than I do, that it's about having God's words so close to you that they are as eat and drinking. And that is said several times in the Old Testament. Psalm 107 says, It says they were hungry, but they turned to the Lord, not that they ate. Yeah.

33:51Yeah, we need the meat of the word. We need to long for the pure spiritual milk, things like that. Okay, so baptism. There are our brothers and sisters in Christ who believe something very different about baptism than we do. And they're some of our closest brothers and sisters in Christ, even today. Some people who believe maybe every, you know, it's essentially everything about doctrine and scripture can be exactly the same as us, and yet they still want to. Baptize infants.

34:33In contrast to that, we would take the position, that's what the name Baptist in our church means, Immanuel Baptist Church. We identify with the Baptist church because we believe in believers' baptism. Now, we want to be careful right at the beginning of this conversation because it's a sensitive conversation, right? We want to be careful right at the beginning because we don't want to say something like, just because they have a different doctrine of baptism, that means there's no way they can be saved. That's not true. We also want to be sensitive because we're talking about children here. And when children are born, when babies are born, there is this desire in parents to do something.

35:17They're anxious about their child. They want to make sure that their children have a relationship with God. And you can imagine in this generation, when they're going through this, they might have been even more so because for generations they've been told over and over and over, your baby needs to be baptized. It's vitally important for his spiritual health. He needs to be baptized. And so, built into parents is this habit of we need to make sure this is done. Maybe they're a little superstitious about it. And then some guy comes and says, no, you don't need to baptize your children. And all of a sudden, you know, it's going to make you worry a little bit, right?

36:01It's going to make you think, well, I've been doing this for 20 years. We already have four kids. Are you telling me I did something wrong with those other four kids, and now this new kid I shouldn't baptize? You see how that would be a difficult doctrine to come out of. And so, Zwingli, back to our guy, he has come to the scriptures over and over and over again. And he has reformed his view on many of the doctrines of faith and many of the practices of the church. But this one, he doesn't go all the way. Early on in his teaching, he seems to indicate that they should get away from baptizing infants and they should go to believers' baptism.

36:50But then he goes back on that. The issue is, there are certain young men, and you can tell the same thing today, right? There's a famous preacher, John Piper, John MacArthur, or something like that. Young men are going to hear the preaching and they get all excited about it and they want to go to his church. They want to learn everything they can. Well, I think that's happening in this generation. There are young men who are like, wow, Zwingli is right and right and right and right. He's reading the scriptures. This is so exciting. He's getting rid of all this fake stuff. He's going back to the Bible. This is awesome. They go to his church, and almost right away, they have a couple disagreements with him. They're saying, Hey, you went all the way on these other things, but you didn't go all the way on this. And these two things are tied together. The first one is the church and state. You guys talk a lot about this with Pat. The first is the church and state, is that the reformers couldn't even get out of the mindset that the state was supposed to have an official church, and that everyone in the state, therefore, everyone in Germany, everyone in Switzerland, since you're a part of this country, you are Christian. Okay?

38:03That's the first one. And the second one that is tied to that is this infant baptism. The reason why they're tied together, if you think about it, is because that's where this citizenship in the state is bestowed, is as they're baptized as a baby. That's how the state has authority on them. That's how they're regulated and things like that. That's how they're brought into the church as infants and brought into the state as infants is through this tradition of infant baptism. Yeah, Michael? That pattern, that state-sponsored religion, is that really going back to Constantine and his announcement of Rome, kind of sweeping the hay from everyone in the morning and happy mind that you're all Christians now? Yeah, it is. It's totally from Constantine, and I think these young men realize it. I think they're saying, look, you're just taking that from Constantine and the Catholic Church. You're keeping that, and it was never part of Scripture, clearly from the words of Jesus. We are not, as the church, supposed to be the ones who. in charge of punishing people and putting people to death and things like that. We're going to leave the state to the state and we're going to just follow what the Bible says. Well, a couple of those men, you might have heard the name from Pat Conrad Grable and Felix Manns, they are going to, those are the two young men I was referring to, they're going to differ with Zwingli. And eventually, Zwingli is going to be so strong in the position that he's going to support in their city, their nation-state, which if you think about it, if the church and the state are united, then what is something new specifically that the state then needs to punish, that it wouldn't ordinarily punish? Heresy. Heresy. Right? If the church and the state are together, then they need to punish heresy as the state, because the church is supposed to protect the doctrine. And so in Zwingli's mind, and the other reformers, they are thinking these people, they're going off the deep end. They're all re-baptizing each other. That's what Anabaptists, this early movement was called, Anabaptists. And that just means, again, baptism, right? Because they were all baptized as babies. But then they come and they realize in Scripture, no, we need to be baptized as believers. Jesus said, go and make disciples and baptize them, right? So he's saying, so. So they're saying this is supposed to be something that a disciple of Christ does, not just everybody in the whole country. I lost my train of thought. But excuse me. So they are coming to this knowledge. It's supposed to be believers, and so they're all baptizing each other again. That's what Anna, again, baptism, Anna Baptist.

40:51So they're all doing this. The reformers, they're called the magisterial reformers. Have you heard that phrase? Magisterial reformers, guys like Luther and Zwingli and Calvin. It's not because we look at them and they're so magisterial, you know, they're so scholarly and it's so fancy or something like that, right? It's magisterial because it's the Reformation, it's the part of the Reformation that is connected to the magistrates, right? The state. It's the reformers who reform the doctrine but then want to keep church and state together. The other reformers are called the radical reformers, not because they're so rad, but because they want to go back to the roots of Christianity before it was connected to the state. Okay, so you have these two groups, the magisterial reformation and the radical reformation. It's the radical reformation that the Anabaptists form. They're baptizing each other, and of course, Zwingli, you might have known this. And he supports this edict in their city that anyone Who baptizes someone else needs to die. And so, on the one hand, we can look at someone like Zwingli and say, thank you. You know, we are so grateful that God used this man to bring a knowledge of the scriptures back to the church, and he reformed so much. But I think we would also say clearly he is confused about this. He couldn't fathom a church that was separate from the state, and it caused him to misinterpret scripture in this way. And because of that, these two students of his and many others, because of this edict, they were killed. Many of them were drowned under Zwingli's supervision.

42:52The idea being, if they're going to jump in the water and baptize themselves, then we're going to just put them in the water. And they were drowned. I've heard that before, yeah, I think so. So that's an uncomfortable part of church history. But again, if we're trying to sympathize with the reformers, which I think is good for us to do, they're thinking that the church and state are together. They're thinking it is their God-given duty to protect the church from heresy. They view this as a heresy that's messing everything up because it's blending the lines of citizenship.

43:30Making mothers fear for their children and things like that. And so they need to put a stop to it, and that's how they try and do that. I say it was certainly misguided, but it is what it is. Really quickly, today, obviously, you know, those denominations I mentioned earlier that are really close cousins to us, that we love and we fellowship with, and things like that, they are obviously not still putting people to death for baptizing each other, right? So, where does their doctrine of infant baptism come from? And it comes from this idea of a covenant community. We're just going to zoom through this really quickly. They would say their first line of defense is they would say, in the Old Testament, the sign that they became a Jew was circumcision. In the New Testament, the sign that you become a Christian is baptism, the outward sign. Okay, well, in the Old Testament, their outward sign they did when they were babies, right? They were circumcised when they were babies. Therefore, the New Testament sign needs to be done when they are babies. You see the logic there? So they're saying if they did it, we should do it. We would say, you know, that makes a lot of sense, but that's just not what we see in Scripture. He doesn't tell us to use that logic. Their second line of defense is the household issue. Have you guys heard this before? You remember in the conversion of Lydia in Philippi, or maybe the Philippian jailer, it will say, Something and you guys can turn to Acts 16.

45:05Yeah, Cornelius. There's several places, but turn to Acts 16. We'll just look at one. But basically, it would say that they believed and were baptized them and their entire household. And they would say, well, surely the household had children. And he didn't say all the adults in the household. So it must have meant that just like we logically deduce, they were baptizing children. So look at Acts 16, verse 1, verse 33, actually. So it is with Lydia in the early verses, but look down at verse 33.

45:54And he took them the same hour of the night and washed their wounds, and he was baptized at once. That's a jailer. He and all his family. Okay, so you see how that says, okay, this guy becomes a believer, and he's baptized, but also so is his whole family. His wife's baptized, his kids are baptized, his babies are baptized. You can see they just baptize everybody. The issue is, you know, it doesn't say all those other people.

46:24It also says, look back at verse 30. Then he brought them out, this is a little bit before, he brought them out and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? And they said, believe in the Lord, and you will be saved, you and your household. So then, if we're going to follow that logic, then we're going to say, okay, if a husband becomes a believer, he's going to be saved, and when he's saved, everybody else is also saved in his family. And we say, well, Scripture doesn't support that idea. So if we're following that same logic, okay, a husband becomes a believer, his kids are instantly going to heaven as well.

47:05We wouldn't say that. In fact, it's still tied to belief, and clearly they can't believe. The babies can't believe. Look over at Acts 2. Here's another line of defense that they say. Acts 2, starting in verse 37. 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 so they'll tie those two verses together and say, See, he said, children, right? Repent and Be baptized for the promises for you and for your children. So they'll say that's yet another spot. But clearly, the understanding was they were baptizing their children too. But we would just say that back to verse 38, what is baptism tied to? It's tied to this repentance. Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of your sins. And so we would say, yet again, it is another example of believers' baptism. Okay?

48:31So they have these several lines of defense that they're using, and they're trying to say, see, there's this case, and many of our brothers and sisters, they believe that even today. And we don't think that that disqualifies them from heaven or something like that. But we would say that the New Testament pattern is that people believe first, they repent first, and then they're baptized. Like the Ethiopian eunuch, he believes first, and then he says, Look, there's some water. What's stopping me from being baptized? And the answer implied is nothing, because they go and baptize them right there in the water. We could talk about mode another time, but just real quickly, if you want to talk about sprinkling or dunking or something like that, just remember the word baptism means to dip in water, right? That's what baptize means. It's a transliteration that we have, but it really just means to dunk or to dip. And you have, of course, them doing this at big bodies of water. They go into the water, they come up out of the water, things like that. So that's why we believe in having something like this in our church, a big tub in our church, so that we can do that, so we can stick people all under the water just because we want to follow the New Testament pattern of them doing that as well. Okay, so I know that's super fast to run through baptism. Maybe it left you with more questions than answers, but we can keep talking about it another time. The Anabaptist movement would explode, but also be heavily persecuted. Church historians think that there were more Anabaptists that were killed because of what they believed than there were in the early centuries of the church killed by the Romans.

50:16So you think of Anabaptists as this small, tiny movement way off in Europe. It's not. It was huge. It was people everywhere coming to the scriptures and saying, We believe this. This is what we believe, and we're willing to die for it because we believe this is what Scripture says. And it was a lot, a lot, a lot of people that were persecuted for this. They would start a whole movement. You guys remember the name Minno Simmons? We still have the Mennonites.

50:44He was like this connector of all these churches. He'd travel all around, and these churches that would start to believe this. He would connect them together sometimes underground. And it became this whole movement of people that were being baptized as believers because they believed that that's what the scripture said. They were willing to die for it. So that's all we have time for. We need to go to breakfast, but pray with me and then we'll dismiss. Father, we thank you for this time to learn about the Lord's Supper and baptism. I pray that you'd help us look at the scriptures and understand clearly what you want us to do. I pray that you wouldn't let us be offensive about this. This can be sensitive to so many families and so many groups of people. It can hurt feelings. These can be cherished doctrines.

51:32And I just pray, Lord, that we in our own conscience would inform our conscience with what the Scripture says and then gently defend it with the scriptures. We thank you for these men who have gone before, who have helped lead the way onto these issues, bringing us back to Scripture. And I pray, Lord, that we'd be faithful and obedient. In Jesus' name, amen. The book recommendation, Rescuing the Gospel by Erwin Lutzer. That's good. We ran out of them in the Resource Center. So I recommend Amazon for this one. It'll come quick.