24. On Families 2
When we admit adults into the church, we also bring in families. And I love the way the Bible treats families. It doesn’t divide the families up. When it is time for worship, Scripture says, “Gather the people together, men and women and little ones… that they may hear and that they may learn to fear the LORD your God and carefully observe all the words of this law.” God takes the families as a unit. He makes promises to families. He made His covenant with Adam’s family, with Noah’s family, with Abraham’s family, with Moses, Phinehas, David, and many other families. When Zaccheus believed, salvation grace invaded his whole house. Christ said to him, “Today salvation has come to this household, because he also is a son of Abraham; for the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.” And that is why the Old Testament had entire families circumcised and why in the New Testament entire families were baptized.
As the children are baptized this morning, let’s remember the words in Luke 18:15-16:
Then they also brought infants to Him that He might touch them; but when His disciples saw it, they rebuked them. But Jesus called them to Him and said, “Let the little children come to Me, and do not forbid them; for of such is the kingdom of heaven.”
If Christ included infants and little children in the kingdom, who are we to reject them? No, God has always dealt with families in the covenant.
In Acts 3 Peter said, “Repent and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus…for the promise is to you and to your children, and to all who are afar off” (Acts 2:38-39) — many generations were included. In the next chapter Peter promises “you are sons…of the covenant which God made with our fathers, saying to Abraham, ‘And in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed’” (Acts 3:25). Praise God for His covenant with the family. Praise God for the promise in Acts, “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved; you and your house.” I don’t know about you, but those words, “and your house,” are a wonderful comfort to me. Those words are strewn throughout Scripture. Seven of the baptisms mentioned in the New Testament are household baptisms. The others were not household baptisms simply because there were no children present. Christ was not married, nor was Paul. The Ethiopian Eunuch could not have children.
And so this morning we too are receiving these families into the church as families. Baptism is a sign of what God has promised to the family, and it is a seal or pledge of those promises. As the parents claim that promise in faith, God will fulfill the same. Raise up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.