Radio Sermon 28

What About the Babies?                                                             <return to table of contents>

Many years ago Mark Twain delivered a speech entitled, "What About the Babies." It was a very entertaining and delightful speech delivered to a very select audience made up of statesmen, generals, and prominent businessmen. He began by saying, "We might propose a toast to the fine generals here but that would include only a few of us. We might propose a toast to the statesmen among us but that again would include only some of us. We might even propose a toast to the lovely ladies among us, but that would not include all of us. There is just one thing we all have in common -- we've all been babies." And Mr. Twain's comments are true. Today, study with me the question, "What About the Babies?"

What about babies? The word of the Lord has a lot to say about them. One of the purposes God established the marital relationship was to produce them. Babies come to our homes as gifts from God and with the gift comes the responsibility laid on parents to bring them up in the right way, so when they are older they will never want to depart from the way that is right.

Children should become a very serious concern for every responsible person who marries and establishes a home. We hear so much about neglected children, children who become innocent victims of terrible abuse. How tragic it is to think that a grown person could ever be unkind, even cruel to a very precious little bundle of joy. But sadly it does happen.

Not all abuse to babies comes in the form of physical abuse. I believe some children are abused very early in life by being deprived of something that is more important to them than their z84 formulas, pabulum, or medicine. That of which a child is deprived that is the most important is love and concern. A child needs love and concern more than food and medicine in order to develop normally as a social being. This is not to say that physical care is relegated to a position of lesser importance -- it is to emphasize the importance of providing that which will help a child develop normally with a sound mind, a proper attitude toward life, and with a well balanced psychological stability. But sadly, many babies never even know their real fathers. Just recently, a CBS news program noted that over 30 % of the babies born in one of our largest cities in this nation never know their fathers. Either through being born out of wedlock, or by a father's desertion of the mother, the child never knows the father at all. The break up of homes in our nation is causing much more problem than a strain on the economy in the form of welfare checks. It is eating the foundation right out from under any kind of morality.

God Almighty will hold us accountable for the way we handle our obligations in all realms of life. We are responsible to obey God and honor Him in society, in the domestic circles, in spiritual relationships, and in every other area of our earthly existence. It is a duty from which we may never abdicate. In one of those very beautiful Psalms called, "The Psalms of Ascent," (Psalms often chanted by the Jews returning to Jerusalem annually to worship Jehovah) is found this beautiful thought.

"Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord. The fruit of the womb is His reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, So are the children of one's youth. Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them" (Psalm 127:3-5a).

Babies deserve a good home, for they did not have the chance to select their parents. God made the selection and insists that we do what is right for them. But, let's think of another aspect of babies.

What happens in the very sad and unfortunate event that a baby should die? I can think of nothing more traumatic and soul wrenching that can happen to a young married couple who lose a baby to death. And it can and does happen. To be able to accept it and understand it is not an easy chore. Many parents blame God and turn their back on Him. But God is not to blame. God's establishes a natural law of production in humans and also a natural law in nature. Abiding within the confines of is natural law will sometimes bring adverse circumstances; circumstances over which humans have no control. So, we accept what living in this world brings -- both the sweet and the unsweet.

But a deeper question remains. What happens to the baby at death? Many years ago, there was a man named Augustine. He held to a view that led people to conclude that all babies are born in sin. I have a book in my library that is very old. It is the 1902 edition of the Methodist Discipline. On the article entitled "Of Original or Birth Sin," it reads:

"Original sin standeth not in the following of Adam (as the Pelagians do vainly talk), but it is the corruption of the nature of every man, that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam, whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and of his own nature inclined to evil, and that continually." (Page 5). This is why infant baptism is administered -- at z84 least why it was originally administered. Again from the same book we read the minister's words which must be used when administering baptism to an infant. It reads:

"Dearly beloved, forasmuch as all men are conceived and born in sin, and that our Saviour Christ saith, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God: I beseech you to call upon God the Father, through our Lord Jesus Christ, that of his bounteous goodness he will grant to this child, now to be baptized with water, that which by nature he cannot have: that he may be baptized with the Holy Ghost, received into Christ's holy Church, and be made a lively member of the same." (Page 219).

This is an ancient book -- it was written back in 1902 and stated the view that since babies are born in sin they must be baptized in order to have their corrupt nature removed. An old New England Psalter (or prayer and hymn book) has the line: "In Adam's fall, we sinned all." This is the theory known as total, inherited depravity. It opines that since Adam and Eve fell by transgression in the Garden of Eden, all who are born are born depraved, regardless of how good and holy their parents may have been. What is called the "Adamic Nature" is transferred to the child at birth just the same way its little traits peculiar to it are given.

The truth about babies is that this doctrine is simply not true. To offset the hideous doctrine that little babies are born as sinners we have but to turn to the New Testament and read something about Christ and little ones. One time when Jesus was teaching the people, a few of the mothers in the crowd brought their little babies to Him just so He could touch them. Listen to the passage -- Mark 10:13-16.

"Then they brought young children to Him, that He might touch them; but the disciples rebuked those who brought them. But when Jesus saw it, He was greatly displeased and said to them, 'Let the little children come to Me, and do not forbid them; for of such is the kingdom of God. Assuredly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will by no means enter it.' And He took them up in His arms, put His hands on them and blessed them."

That is sufficient to show clearly that babies are brought into this world pure and sinless. God's kingdom is to be filled with the quality one finds in children. That means that the kingdom of God must be filled with those who trust and love the Lord -- not those born in sin.

Another passage clearly refutes the absurd notion that children come into the world guilty of the sins of someone else. Listen:

"The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not (did you get that friends?) shall not (I repeat) bear the guilt of the father, nor the father bear the guilt of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself" (Ezekiel 18:20.

There is a good story that helps explain all of this. It happened to a man named Alexander Campbell. He was a young man preaching in Virginia in the early 1800's and was trying to restore, to the best of His ability, the preaching and practices of Christ and His apostles. He determined not to be bound by z84 human disciplines and creeds, just by the Bible itself. He was challenged by a Baptist preacher to publicly debate the issue of infant baptism. At the time he was a member of the Presbyterian church. The Presbyterians adopted the practice of infant baptism being performed by sprinkling water on the child a long time before that and Campbell has accepted it without question. Campbell quickly signed the propositions to defend the Presbyterian practice of infant baptism by sprinkling. The debate, however, never was held. Mr. Campbell went to the Bible to find some scriptural justification for the practice and found none. In addition he found no basis for it since he learned quickly that the Bible does not teach that all children are born in sin.

Not long after that he and his wife were blessed by the birth of their first child. He now had to decide personally. What should they do? Should they have the child baptized? After a long study of the problem they concluded that it would not be done. This led them to a further conclusion. If the baby could not be scripturally baptized, why had the church begun the practice? They learned that the underlying basis for infant baptism was this false idea that babies are born tainted with an imaginary "Adamic Nature." Thus, they rejected the entire thing. But that led to another conclusion. If the baby did not need baptism, and since both he and his wife had been sprinkled as babies, then they in fact had not been scripturally baptized. So, they resolved it by both being immersed in water for the remission of sins.

Many have long since given this view of infant damnation by inherited total depravity up. Yet they retain the practice of infant baptism in the form of sprinkling. It is called "Christening" a child. There is no Bible authority at all for it. Hopefully it also will be abandoned and all of us will return to the Bible for all that we believe, preach, and practice.

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