Passage of the Day - December 15, 2012

Matthew 14:21

²¹ There were about five thousand men who ate, besides women and children.

Luke 9:14

¹⁴ (For there were about five thousand men.) And He said to His disciples, “Have them sit down to eat in groups of about fifty each.

Matthew 21:9

⁹ The crowds going ahead of Him, and those who followed, were shouting,

“Hosanna to the Son of David;
Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord;
Hosanna in the highest!”

Matthew 21:12-17

¹² And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all those who were buying and selling in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who were selling doves.¹³ And He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer’; but you are making it a robbers’ den.”

¹⁴ And the blind and the lame came to Him in the temple, and He healed them. ¹⁵ But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that He had done, and the children who were shouting in the temple, “Hosanna to the Son of David,” they became indignant ¹⁶ and said to Him, “Do You hear what these children are saying?” And Jesus said to them, “Yes; have you never read, ‘Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies You have prepared praise for Yourself’?” ¹⁷ And He left them and went out of the city to Bethany, and spent the night there.

Luke 19:45-48

⁴⁵ Jesus entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling, ⁴⁶ saying to them, “It is written, ‘And My house shall be a house of prayer,’ but you have made it a robbers’ den.”

⁴⁷ And He was teaching daily in the temple; but the chief priests and the scribes and the leading men among the people were trying to destroy Him, ⁴⁸ and they could not find anything that they might do, for all the people were hanging on to every word He said.

***

Wait, wait, wait!  I thought I was supposed to write about baptism.  What is this?  What an odd conglomeration of verses!  What do these verses have to do with baptism?  Surprisingly, a lot.

We must start analyzing the issue of believers-only-baptism vs. infant baptism by knocking down the myths and/or weak arguments.  The largest argument against infant baptism is that there is no mention of children being baptized in the Bible.  This is true; there are no specific references to children or infants being baptized.  However, there were “entire households” mentioned, but many argue that we have no idea what was included in these “entire households”.

But, what does that have to do with the verses above?

We know that the Book of Acts was written by Luke, the same author as the Book of Luke.  Did you notice anything about the passages above?  Did you notice how Matthew adds the detail of children and Luke leaves that detail out?  This neither proves nor disproves anything about baptism, but it does expose how the fact that there is no mention of infant baptism mentioned in the Bible (with Acts having the most accounts) is very shaky ground for restricting infants from being baptized.  If the author shows a pattern for leaving that detail out in other writings, then we have no real way of knowing if children were included in “entire households” or not.  Therefore, we will need to examine the issue in other ways. 

I have not come to a complete conclusion on the matter, and I hope this series will help in that regard.  I also hope that you sharing in this adventure will be as eye-popping as it has been for me so far.

Scripture taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®,
© Copyright 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation

Used by permission." (http://www.lockman.org/)