Month: June 2023

Sermon on Baptizing Infants

A Thirty-Five year old sermon outline I found going through my papers:

Baptism of Wesley and Lucas Smith
Sermon on Mark 10:13-16
Twentieth Sunday After Pentecost
October 9th, 1988
St. Luke Lutheran Church
Winamac, Indiana

Text: “People were bringing little children to Jesus to have Him touch them, but the disciples rebuked them. When Jesus saw this, He was indignant. He said to them, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it. And He took the children in His arms, put His hands on them, and He blessed them.”

  1. Baptism is for little children too.
    a. Little children have a place in the heart of Jesus.
    b. Above everything else, infants are people who trust.
    c. God is the one who acts in baptism.
    d. Baptism begins the life of faith in the heart of the Christian.
  2. We sometimes keep children from coming to Jesus.
    a. We adults are temped to make a career of telling children what they cannot do, because it is easier for us that way.
    b. When we do bring children to baptism, we sometimes do not follow through on our promises to God to raise them as Christians.
    c. We often undermine a child’s trust by our “experience” and by our failures.
    d. We must take our responsibility to raise our children seriously, for He will call us to account.
  3. Yet God calls children own in Baptism.
    a. In baptism, God children as His own.
    b. In the waters of Baptism, they are united to Jesus in His death and resurrection.
    c. God has promised to care for them by His Spirit and keep them in the faith.
    d. From these assurances, we draw the strength to bring our children to Jesus.
    e. In all this, we can look forward to the day we are together with him forever.

Rev. Robert E. Smith
Concordia Theological Seminary
Fort Wayne, Indiana

©2023 Robert E. Smith. All rights reserved. Permission granted to copy, share and display freely for non-commercial purposes. Direct all other rights and permissions inquiries to cosmithb@gmail.com

One God in Three Persons

Encore Post: “In the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.” These words are very familiar to us — especially those of us who grew up in a Christian Church. They are ancient, too. Jesus gave them to his apostles just before he ascended into Heaven. (Matthew 28:19) As simple as they are, they contain a riddle — a mystery as theologians call it. The word “name” is singular, but three persons have that name. As we have seen before, this should not surprise us. God is our creator and we are his creatures. Sooner or later, we are not going to understand him. So, Christians have come to the conclusion that we should accept the way God describes himself in the Bible and not try to put it all together  when we discover it doesn’t make sense to us. 

The first thing we observe is that the Bible is very clear. There is only one God. Here Jews and Muslims agree. But the Scriptures are also clear. At every turn in the New Testament, Jesus is called God and the Holy Spirit is called God. The church from the second century on used the word Trinity to describe it. For Jews and Muslims, this is blasphemy.

So, we believe that God is one, but that three persons are God. With the Bible, reject any view that tries to solve the riddle by saying there are three gods, that one or another are not God or turns god into one being with three states. We are content to marvel at our Creator and love him as he is.

©2018 Robert E. Smith. All rights reserved. Permission granted to copy, share and display freely for non-commercial purposes. Direct all other rights and permissions inquiries to cosmithb@gmail.com