Baptism Exhortation

Baptisms

12/3/2017

God is saving the world through Jesus Christ. We believe this to be quite literally true. The knowledge of the Lord will be as the waters that cover the sea. One of the primary ways He saves the world is through ordinary generation, having babies. His blessings flow downhill to our children and our children’s children. We raise them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. They taste and see that the Lord is good.

Of course, there are exceptions to this. Some children despise their birthright for a bowl of worldly pottage and forfeit the grace of life extended to them in the blessedness that is Jesus. But the vast majority of the growth of the church is through having children and raising them up in Jesus. 

Young people, teenagers, youth with a growing chip on your shoulder. Don’t do that. Do not despise your birthright. If you do so now, in the future you may not be able to find a place of repentance, though you seek for it with tears. Believe Jesus now.

Adults, remember God’s promises to you and to your children and believe God in these promises, in baptism, in worship, in communion, in prayer, in bible reading, in discipline. Namely, in all the means of grace the Lord has given you to raise your children in Him.

As we bring little ones to Jesus today, to baptize them and disciple them, we believe that God is saving the world. His kingdom grows until it fills the whole earth. These little ones take their place in the growing kingdom and in Jesus and we entrust them to these parents to be faithful to their calling in Christ. They do not accomplish this task on their own for the Spirit of Jesus is with them now and always. Thus, such parents should have every confidence in the Lord that their children will know and love Him all their days.

This confidence will be manifested by faithful obedience in raising up their children. It is not a faithful perfectionism. These parents are humans, fallible, fallen creatures. They have sinned and will sin, even against their own children, in thought, word and deed. So, we exhort them to not trust in their own abilities as parents but in the enabling grace of Jesus Christ. As they do this, their children will see what it means to be forgiven sinners in Jesus. They, too, will love Him and serve Him, trusting solely in His saving grace.