Baptism Exhortation Feb 4, 2018

Psalm 128 says, “Your wife shall be like a fruitful vine in the very heart of your house, Your children like olive plants all around your table.  Behold, thus shall the man be blessed who fears the Lord.” (vv3-4).

The children of Christian, covenant-keeping homes, are likened to olive plants.  Olive plants were the holiest of all the vegetation in the old covenant symbolic system – the oil flowing from them was a symbol of the Holy Spirit.  And so this teaches us much.

God considers your covenant children as holy and this rite of baptism is that declaration – a declaration made by God through the church.  Because we view our covenant children as olive plants, we are not waiting for their conversion experience; rather, committed to training them up in the fear and admonition of the Lord, we disciple them from the get go as disciples, followers of Christ.  We look for fruit, not for evidence of conversion, but as ongoing confirmation that what God is working in them is working itself out. 

The Holy Spirit is at work already in the lives of your children – God has promised this.  You are to stand on those promises and parent Natalie and her sisters according to those promises, calling upon the One Who also was born, but was born to take away their sin by His death on the Cross.