The Salvation of Babies Who Die, Part 2

Selected Scriptures

     This is Part Two of a subject I began last Sunday night, "The Salvation of Babies who Die."  Very thankful and gratified for the response I have received to Part One.

     Last Sunday night when I finished the message, there were certainly three or four, maybe five or six sets of parents who came up to me and thanked me for the message because they had recently lost little ones.  Some after the majority of the pregnancy period, some at birth, some a little while after birth, some after a few months, some even after a couple of years and they all expressed their gratitude for now having the confidence to believe that the eternal destiny of their little ones who died is settled and that they are in heaven with the Lord.

     I was at a medical conference this last few days, just got back last night.   This question came up because these are medical people who work at Third World countries where they see a lot of death, childhood death, infant death.  And I was talking to one neo-natal nurse, a nurse who works in a very difficult situation with preemies who never really knew what to tell parents about what happens when the little ones die.  Her joy was almost overwhelming when I explained to her what I believe the Bible teaches about their salvation.  And so, from an anecdotal or a very personal perspective, this is an important matter...a very important matter to the parents here tonight should one of their little ones die. 

     Beyond the personal and the anecdotal and the individual, there is the reality that millions, even billions through human history of human beings have been conceived and died before they ever reached a condition of accountability, before they could ever understand law and grace and sin and salvation, before they could ever consciously reject the truth.  What is their eternal destiny?  Well the Scripture waves very heavily on the fact that they are received into heaven as redeemed souls to live forever with God.

     Last Sunday night I endeavored to show you from the theological side why this is true.  Tonight I want to show you from the textual side the support for that.

     Now just briefly to recap what I said last week to sort of get you in the flow, we asked the question...who are we referring to when we talk about these infants, these little ones, these children who dying are saved?  And the answer is this, those who have not reached sufficient mature understanding to comprehend convincingly the issues of sin and salvation.  And let me say as a footnote, that does not apply to the heathen.  Adult heathen are caught up in the Romans 1 passage, when they know God they glorify Him not as God, become empty in their imaginations, create their own gods and worship the creature more than the creator.  We're not talking about them, we're talking about those who have not reached sufficient mature understanding to comprehend the issues of sin and salvation.  I told you there is no age of accountability, but there is a condition of accountability and it is true for children and it is true for some adults who are mentally retarded or handicapped.

     Second question we addressed, and this is a quick review, are all such souls conceived as sinners?  Are they guilty before God and worthy of death?  And the answer is yes.  The Bible is very clear that all are sinners, that we are conceived in iniquity, that we are wicked from the point of conception because we bear the guilt of Adam's sin and we bear the fallenness of Adam's nature passed down to us.  All who are conceived from the moment of conception possess within them the power of sin, it is in their humanness.  And they bear guilt before God.  If infants were not sinful, if they were morally neutral there would be then no basis for them to die because it is the wages of sin that is death.  But it is their inherited sin nature that plants in them the seeds of death.  And for most who are conceived it makes survival at least as if not more difficult than life.  Avoiding death seems to be harder than just living.  From the time of conception there are so many things that threaten that life.

     Since it is true that all those that are conceived are depraved sinners, what implications does that truth of depravity have on dying children and their salvation?  Well, it makes their salvation solely a matter of sovereign grace. They don't deserve to be saved because they are guilty sinners by inheritance.  If they are saved it is by the sovereign grace of God based on nothing that they can do, nothing they can achieve and nothing they can merit.  The salvation of those souls then is absolutely consistent with the salvation of adults which is also based on sovereign grace apart from anything that they can do.

     And the fourth question we asked, by what means are infants saved when they die in a condition prior to accountability?  And the answer, they are saved through the sacrificial work of Jesus Christ, His death for them because He bore the wrath of God for them as for all who could and would believe.  They're saved then by grace, by sovereign grace.  The only difference between their salvation and ours is faith is a part of ours...it's not a part of theirs.  But then again, faith isn't something we contribute, faith is a gift from God.  So they are saved by grace in sovereign election so that the work of Christ is freely applied to them.  Ours is justification by faith, theirs is justification without faith because without the knowledge and ability to understanding convincingly sin and salvation, they cannot exercise that faith.

     We also ended last time by saying Scripture nowhere teaches infant damnation, nowhere.  But Scripture does teach, according to Revelation chapter 20 verse 11 and 12, remember is that all the people who are sent to hell forever are sent there based upon a record that God has kept and it is a record of their...what?...their sins, Revelation 20:11 and 12. 

     Dominant sin that they commit is unbelief, unbelief. Tied to that unbelief is a rejection of their true condition and a rejection of God's provision.  So they are a guilty of a failure to recognize their own sinful condition and a failure to believe what God has revealed to them...whether in the case of a heathen who needs to believe the revelation that God has placed in creation and conscience or whether someone has actually heard the gospel and rejected that.  It is their rejection and unbelief that is the dominating damning sin.  But their judgment comes about based upon the record of the consequence sins to their willful unbelief.

     Children don't fit into that category.  It is true they sin, little ones sin.  Little children disobey, they're selfish, they're angry, etc.  But they are incapable of understanding the moral essence of that sin.  They are incapable of understanding God.  And they are incapable of understanding the gospel.  They are incapable of exercising a true repentance toward God and a saving faith so that they are with excuse.  Whereas the pagans in Romans 1 are without excuse because they are capable of knowing and understanding the revelation God has given them in creation and conscience and they are capable of faith.  So unbelief for them is a willful choice. 

     And so, in sort of summing that up from last time, all who die without reaching the condition of accountability are graciously forgiven and saved by God through the work of Jesus Christ, being elect by sovereign grace and innocent of willful rebellion and unbelief against God and therefore accumulating a life of sinful works by which they would be justly condemned to eternal punishment.  That's what we framed for you in our last message.

     Now, I want to go to some supporting scripture because I want you to understand how the Bible speaks to this issue.  This is very helpful material.  I've never really in the past, although I know what I believed and I've hit on it here and there, I've never done so much reading and pulled so much together in my own thinking which I'll try to distill down and give you a portion of.

     I want us to look at the Old Testament and the New Testament, okay?  And each of those under three headings...innocence, ownership and salvation...and those are not particularly brilliant categories, they're just simple ways we can split the material down.  We'll look at the Old Testament and we'll look at the category of innocence, and then the category of ownership, and then the category of salvation.  We'll do the same with the New Testament.  I think you'll find this very, very revealing.

     We'll start in the Old Testament.  And what we're looking for in the Old Testament is passages that indicate that these little ones are before God innocent.  That is that they do not have culpability for which divine judgment is the just punishment.  Let's go back to Deuteronomy chapter 1, and obviously I can't go through everything around these passages but we're going to really kind of laser in on the key statements that are made because we need to cover a number of these.

     Deuteronomy chapter 1 verse 39, obviously we're in the context of Israel's history and is replete throughout Israel's history, they sinned against the Lord, as verse 41 says.  Verse 37 says, "The Lord is angry with them."  Verse 39, Deuteronomy 1, "Moreover, your little ones who you said would become a prey and your sons who this day have no knowledge of good or evil shall enter there and I will give it to them and they shall possess it."

     Let me give you the picture here.  They're ready to go into the land.  They've come out of Egypt, ready to go into the land of promise.  And God says to them, "I'm angry with you, you sinned."  And I don't need to go through the litany of sins that they committed while they were in the wilderness, including the golden calf, the sins of unbelief regarding the spies going into the land and the people not believing.  But what you need to understand here is God basically said to them...You're not going into the land, you're not going in because of your willful rebellion, because of your willful sin.  But your little ones who you said would become a prey if you went in and took the land, even though I told you I would fight for you and with you, your little ones who this day have no knowledge of good or evil, they'll go in and I'll give it to them and they'll possess it.

     And what God is saying is your rebellion, your rebellion causes you to forfeit this blessing.  I'll give it to them because they don't bear the same culpability that you do.  It's not to say that they were not depraved, all who are born are depraved.  But because they had no true understanding, no knowledge of good or evil, in a simple way they knew what their parents told them to do and they knew if they did it or didn't do it, but they had no true understanding regarding sin and righteousness.  They had no true understanding of their condition or God's remedy for that condition. They had no true understanding of rebellion and unbelief.  God says...So because they really don't know good or evil the way you do, you won't get that land and they will.  And in a sense, God blessed their innocence.

     Turn to Jeremiah 19:4, "Because they have forsaken Me and made this an alien place and have burned sacrifices in it to other gods..."  Again, you know the story of Jeremiah, you know that God called Jeremiah to be a prophet and Jeremiah to come and speak of the judgment, the exile of Jerusalem, the judgment that was going to fall on Judah, the southern kingdom and Jerusalem, we know it as the Babylonian captivity.  And this is just a rehearsal of the same thing...they have forsaken Me, they have made this an alien place.  In other words, they have made it a place of idolatry.  They've burned sacrifices in it to other gods.  Neither they nor their forefathers nor the kings of Judah had ever known, because they have filled this place with the blood of the innocent.

     Now who are the innocent?  Well the best understanding of this passage is that it's a referral to the sacrifice of babies because in the next verse they built the high places of Ba-al, or Baal, to burn their sons in the fire as burnt offerings to Ba-al, a thing which I never commanded or spoke of, nor did it ever enter My mind.  You burned your babies.  You remember passing children through the fire of Molech.

     But the thing that I note here is that these are called innocent...innocent.  You burn the innocent.  God viewed them as innocent, even though they...they're not baptized babies of quote/unquote believing parents, these are the children of idolaters.  They would be outside the faith of Israel, even though they would be Jewish people.  It would be outside the will of God.  They would be...they would be essentially pagan Jews who were worshiping idols, burning their babies.  And even the burned babies of idolaters are viewed here as innocent.  That is God's assessment of them.

     Turn to the little prophet Jonah...Jonah.  And this is another just an interesting insight into the innocence issue of the little ones.  Jonah chapter 4, it's the last chapter, the last verse of Jonah, the eleventh verse of the fourth chapter.  God wanted Jonah to go to Ninevah, as you know, and preach and he did but Jonah hated it because he hated to see Gentiles sort of adopting his God because he hated Gentiles.  That's kind of the way it was.  And they didn't really want to include them.  Jonah wanted Ninevah, frankly, just wiped out.  He would have been happy if God had just destroyed the whole city.  And so God told Jonah that that wasn't appropriate in chapter 4 verse 11.  "Should I not have compassion on Ninevah, the great city in which there are more than 120 thousand persons who do not know the difference between their right and left hand, as well as many animals?"  Those animals even are creatures that I have made and the breast of the field shall give Me honor, He said in Isaiah.

     But what about the 120 thousand persons who don't know the difference between their right and their left hand?  This is referring to the little ones, the children, to the mentally retarded, or handicapped.  Am I just going to go in there and obliterate 120 thousand people who really don't know the difference in what they do?

     You see here that God has restrained His judgment on Ninevah for the express reason that it isn't just to bring that destruction wholesale against those who are, in the words of Jeremiah 19:4, innocent.  So you can see in the Old Testament there are passages, and I haven't given you all of them, there are others, that do indicate this matter of innocence to be a reality.

     The second is the issue of ownership...ownership, which goes a little beyond innocence.  Innocence is just a categoric definition, ownership personalizes it with God, and I'll show you this from a number of Old Testament passages.

     Jeremiah chapter 1...Jeremiah chapter 1, here we have Jeremiah introducing himself as the son of Hilkiah and one of the priests in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin.  "The Word of the Lord came in the days of Josiah, the son of Amon, king of Judah in the thirteenth year of his reign, came also in the days of Jehoiakim, son of Josiah, king of Judah until the end of the eleventh year of Zedekiah, the son of Josiah, king of Judah, until the exile of Jerusalem in the fifth month," and this is the whole thing leading up to exile.

     And then verse 4, "Now the Word of the Lord came to me saying..."  Here's the first message that Jeremiah ever got.  "Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.  Before you were born I consecrated you.  I have appointed you as a prophet to the nations."  Now this is consistent with Psalm 139.  In Psalm 139 I read to you last time, and I won't go back over it, but I think you'll remember Psalm 139 because it is so unique where David says, "You formed me from my inward parts, You wove me in my mother's womb.  My frame was not hidden from You when I was made in secret, skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth.  Your eyes saw my unformed substance and in Your book were all written the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there wasn't one of them."  That's very parallel to this.  God says not only do I deem you at that point as innocent, but I knew you then, you were a person then, you were known to me then.  Not only did I know you but I had already set you apart for that determination that you would be a prophet.  You were Mine even then.

     In Ezekiel chapter 16 another remarkable statement that expands one's understanding of what I just read.  You might say, "Well that's reserved for a prophet, that's reserved for a prophet."  Well, it's also what David said was true about him.  "Well," you say, "those are special people.  Jeremiah is a special person.  David's a special person.  Maybe the Lord knows them in a special way.  Maybe He has saving intent toward them.  And after all, they grew to adulthood and they believed."

     But it's much broader than that.  Verse 15 of Ezekiel 16, this is a terrible indictment of Jerusalem, terrible indictment.  Amazing chapter, really.  Verse 15, "You trusted in your beauty, you played the harlot.  Because of your fame you played the harlotries and every passerby who might be willing, you prostituted yourself with every idolater that passed by.  You took some of your clothes made for yourself, high places of various colors, played the harlot on them which should never come about nor happen."  This is a very graphic picture.  He pictures Israel like an unfaithful woman.  And after all that God had done for her, picked her up, back in verse 4, on the day of your birth your navel cord wasn't cut, you weren't washed with water for cleansing, you weren't rubbed with salt, which is what they did to reduce any infection.  You weren't wrapped in cloths, nobody took care of you, you were just thrown in a field.  That's what He says about Israel.  You were just thrown in a field.

     But I picked you up and washed you.  I dressed you and I multiplied you.  Verse 7, You grew up, you became tall, you were well formed and I passed by you and saw you and behold you were at the time for love.  You reached your maturity and I spread My skirt over you and covered your nakedness and I swore to you and entered into a covenant with you, you became Mine.  This is God saying you became My nation, I brought you out of Egypt and I picked you up in the middle of a field and I cleaned you up and I made you My bride and I bathed you and I washed you and I anointed you and now you're a harlot, now you're a prostitute.  Now you dress with prostitute's clothes and you go out in the middle of the streets and you play the harlot with everybody.

     And verse 20, "You took your sons and daughters whom you had born to Me and you sacrificed them to idols to be devoured."  Here they are again burning up their babies.  And then verse 21, "You slaughtered...whose children?...My children," underline My.  You slaughtered My children.  You offered them up to idols by causing them to pass through the fire.  You can't do that with My children...My children.  That's a broad and general statement...My children.

     Turn to Job, again we looked at this briefly last time but it fits in here.  Job 3, Job is in trouble and you know that.  Whatever could go wrong, did.  Chapter 2 verse 9 his wife said to him, "Do you still hold fast your integrity, curse God and die."  Just curse God and die, it can't get any worse than this.  God can't be any harder on you than He's been, just curse God and die.

     Job didn't listen to his wife.  Verse 10 says, "In all this Job did not sin with his lips."  But he did...he did show us his pain.  Verse 11, "Why did I not die at birth?  Just come out of the womb and die.  Why did those knees receive me?  And why the breasts that I should suck?  For now I would have lain down and been quiet, I would have slept then.  I would have been at rest with kings and with counselors of the earth, and princes."

     What he is saying here is it would have been better off if I had been still born.  Verse 16, it would have been better to be a miscarriage.  It would have been better to be an infant that never saw the light because verse 17 says, there if that were true of me I would be in a place where there's no wickedness and where the weary are at rest.  This is the most righteous man on the planet at that time, the most righteous man.  Verse 8 of chapter 1, there's no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, fearing God and turning away from evil.  This is God's man, this is a man with a sound theology and a sound faith and he says, "Frankly, life is so bad I would be far better off if I had been still born, if I had been miscarried, because then I would have been at rest."  You're not talking about annihilation because he said "I would be with kings and counselors and with princes, I would be with people, I would be with those who are at rest."  This is not annihilation.  And it certainly can't be hell because if there's one thing true about hell is that there is no rest.  Certainly if he's going to be in hell, he wouldn't cease from wickedness.  The only possibility is heaven.

     So you see in the Old Testament there are texts that indicate to us the innocent condition.  That is not that they are not depraved, not that they are not possessors of a sin nature and bear the culpability of Adam's sin.  But that there is no willful unbelief, rebellion and sinful behavior which can be held against them because they do not convincingly grasp those issues.  They are innocent.

     More than that, the verses that I've just read you indicate that they are in a special way God's, even the children of pagan idolaters being offered on sacrificial altars are My children.  And they are so much God's that should they be miscarried, they go to a place where they're with others at rest and free from wickedness.

     But there's even more.  You can go from innocence to ownership to salvation in the Old Testament.  Turn to 2 Samuel, this is most helpful...2 Samuel chapter 12...2 Samuel chapter 12.  You know the story, this is David and Bathsheba, an infamous incident in which David committed adultery with a woman who was not his wife.  And in order to continue that relationship in an ongoing way, made sure that her husband, Uriah, was killed.  So David was not only an adulterer, he was a murderer.  Chapter 12 and verse 12 is a good place to start.  Now David had done his sin secretly but the Lord is going to do something before all Israel and under the sun.

     See, David said to Nathan, "I've sinned against the Lord."  Nathan said to David, "The Lord also has taken away your sin; you shall not die."  David was penitent, Psalm 32, Psalm 51 are his penitent prayers.  God forgave him.  "However, because by this deed you have given occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme, you've destroyed your testimony, the child that is also born to you shall surely die."  The child is going to die.  Bathsheba conceived a child, that child was born, that child was going to die.  Verse 15, "So Nathan went to his house," Nathan was the prophet.  "Then the Lord struck the child that Uriah's widow bore to David so that he was very sick."  The little baby got sick.  I think David really wanted that little baby to live because if the baby lived it would sort of be a token of forgiveness and grace.  But God had forgiven him.  He wasn't about to overdo it and David needed a severe lesson and so did everybody else who watched the situation.  But David wanted the child to live.  And I'm sure, like any father, David had a tenderness toward that little child.

     And so, in verse 16, "David therefore inquired of God for the child."  He was so serious he fasted, went and lay all night on the ground.  He prostrated himself on the ground, didn't eat, all night long begged God to save his baby.  "And the elders of his household stood beside him in order to raise him up from the ground, but he was unwilling and wouldn't eat food with them."  All the people who cared for David surrounded him and said...You've got to get up and you've got to eat.  He wouldn't do either.  This is a man in profound, intense pain and prayer.

     Verse 18, "It happened on the seventh day that the child died."  The servants of David were afraid to tell him.  The implication here is he stayed that way over a period of seven days.  We don't know if it was the whole seven days, or every night during the seven days, or what portion of it, but for seven days he went through this fasting and this mourning and this intercession on behalf of the child in a position of proneness or prostrate on the ground.  And they were afraid to tell him that his child was dead.  "For they said, Behold, while the child was still alive we spoke to him and he didn't listen to our voice.  How then can we tell him the child is dead, since he might do himself harm?"  They saw him so wrought with pain and suffering, so profoundly over the anticipated death of this child that they were afraid that if they told him the child was dead, he might take his own life.  In their mind, he had attached his entire sense of well-being to the life of that child.  We just can't tell him, he's liable to do something to himself, harm himself.

     Verse 19, "But when David saw his servants were whispering together, David perceived the child was dead."  Now this is seven days of praying and fasting and prone all night pleading with God.  So  intense that the servants are afraid to even tell him the child is dead for fear that he might take his own life.  They read how serious he was, emotional. 

     So David said to his servants, "Is the child dead?"  They said, "He's dead."  Amazing.  Verse 20, David arose from the ground which leads me to believe he had been there for seven days, the most...maybe the most intense example of prayer in the Old Testament, he arose from the ground, washed and anointed himself.  What that essentially means is he cleaned up, you know, put on his whatever perfume he used, whatever he put in his hair, combed it, changed his clothes which indicated that he very likely hadn't for seven days.  And he came into the house of the Lord and he did...what?...he worshiped. 

     What's going on here?  He didn't kill himself.  He took a bath.  He cleaned up.  He went into the house of the Lord and he worshiped.  And then he came to his house and he said, "Hey, guys, I'm hungry."  So they set before him food and what did he do?  He ate.  And you're saying, "This is an amazing transformation."  And the servants in verse 21 said to him, "What is this thing that you've done?  We don't get it.  While the child was alive you fasted and wept.  And when the child died you got up and ate."  He was backwards.

     Well, he said, "While the child was still alive I fasted and wept for I said, Who knows, the Lord may be gracious to me that the child may live."  That's normal, isn't it, to pray for the life of the child?  I wanted the life of that child, I cherished the life of that child, I wanted that little one, I wanted the life of that little one.  Even though born of sin I wanted to love that child and to raise that child and enjoy that child and so I prayed.  And I said...Who knows, the Lord may be gracious to me that the child may live...I don't know.

     He's very much like us, isn't he?  Just prayed that God would be gracious but he didn't know what God would choose to do.  But, verse 23, "Now that he has died, why should I fast?  Can I bring him back again?  No.  But...here it is...I shall go to him."  Isn't that a great statement?  It's a parting but it's only temporary, I'll go to him, but he will not return to me.

     Nothing to pray for, guys.  Nothing to fast about, guys.  He can't come back but I'm going to him.  His sorrow was instantaneously replaced by hope when that child died.

     This is a man of God in spite of his sins.  Face down on the floor for seven days mourning and fasting and praying with grief, his sorrow so great that the servants think that he might even take his own life.  To their shock when he finds out the baby has died, he stops weeping, gets up, washes, puts on clean clothes and eats and says, "Nothing to be sad about, gentlemen, I shall go to him."  David was a believer.  David sinned.  David was chastened.  And David was forgiven.  He was God's child.  So we know David wasn't saying...I'll meet him in hell. 

     Some people say, "Well, all he meant was he was going to be buried in the same field."  Come on, that's not going to make you clean up and eat.  I'm happy that I'll be lying next to him when I'm dead?  Some say, "Well, that child went to hell because he was born of adultery."  No child, no one pays for the sins of a parent, Ezekiel 18 makes that absolutely clear. 

     There's only one answer to this whole thing and that is that David knew where the child was and he knew there would be a reunion.  And here's the key, David knew where he was going.  It was David who said, "I will be satisfied when I wake in Thy likeness."  David knew where he was going.  He was going into the presence of God.  There was no question about that in David's mind.  He knew when he died where he would go.  Psalm 16, "Thou wilt not abandon my soul to the grave, to Sheol, neither wilt Thou allow Thy holy one to undergo decay.  Thou wilt make known to me the path of life.  In Thy presence is fullness of joy.  In Thy right hand there are pleasures forever."  David knew he was going into the presence of God where there was eternal joy and eternal pleasure.  And if he said, "I shall go to him," then he knew where that child was.  And David it was who gave us the incredibly wonderful 23rd Psalm in which David said, "Surely goodness and loving kindness shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever."  Where do you think he thought the little one was?  In the house of the Lord and that's why there wasn't any reason to fast and that's why there wasn't any reason to weep, clean up...he's with the Lord and you'll be there, too, soon.

     Now I want you to turn a few chapters over to 2 Samuel 18 because I want to show you a contrast.  This wasn't the only child David had.  He had another son whose name Absalom is associated with distastefulness, Absalom.  Absalom was an adult son, a grown son.  Now you remember that Absalom tried to pull a coups on his father...that's the worst, isn't it?  Your own son leading the revolution.  I mean, it was a real tangled mess, you can read the prior chapters.  David was cursed and all kinds of things.  And Absalom was running around the country trying to gather a band of soldiers to himself to go and knock off the palace.  He actually developed a conspiracy and chased David right out of Jerusalem.  Here's his own son trying to kill his father.  And this is the worst of sons, this is no tender little baby held in the arms, this is a wicked, wretched, ugly, selfish, murderous, plotting, conspiring son.  This is a father's worst nightmare...wretched son, sought to kill his father.  He came after him to that effect.

     However, we find in chapter 18 that Absalom ran into a problem literally.  Verse 9, he was riding on his mule, the mule went under the thick branches of a great oak and his head caught fast in the oak.  Folks, if you're riding a horse through the woods, duck before the tree appears.  Absalom didn't duck and his head wedged in a V in the tree and he was hanging there and the mule...swish...kept going.  And somebody saw it and told Joab who was with David.  "I saw Absalom hanging