The Sacraments
Text: Matthew 28:16–20 and 1 Corinthians 11:17–32 ESV
Join us this Sunday, August 23 to hear from Andrew Knight on The Sacraments, as we continue our series on The Great Commission. We hope you can join us!
Order of Service
Opening Worship
(3:30 PM live, at home/watch parties prior to service)
Sermon Video
If you would like a compiled playlist of the worship set, you can view it here.
TANGIBLE TRUTH
Truth you can touch and taste!
Introduction
As we are nearing the end our series on the Great Commission, we want to give our time on possibly the least focused part of the Great Commission,
“baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” (Matthew 28:19 ESV)
Though this verse is specifically talking about baptizing new disciples into the church, and in front of the church, we will start our time discussing communion—the Lord’s supper.
Explanation
We will discuss both baptism and communion, but to get us all on the same page, I would like to offer a simplified definition and say that baptism is the process by which a believer identifies with and acts out the gospel promises via water, and the Lord’s supper is the process of identifying and partaking of the gospel promises via bread and wine/juice. That is why I am calling this sermon, Tangible (Sensory) Truth: Truth You Can Taste and Touch.
Accomodation
Now, as a disclaimer, I want to pause here for a moment and say that God is accommodating us in the sacraments. He is not numb or ignorant of our deepest desires. You ask any unbeliever, “what would have to happen to change your mind about God?” Number one answer: “if he appeared right here in front of me…”. God is very aware of this and wants to meet our innermost hopes. Most of the Christian faith is not seeing, but believing. Its living blind in a way, but the sacraments or (those Christian practices explicitly prescribed by Jesus to be carried out corporately) are God’s way of accommodation (coming down to our level, associating closely and intimately us). He says, “you wanna see, SEE the sacraments!” In essence, God continues, “I know you can’t see me, but you can see the Lord’s supper. I know you can’t feel me physically, but you can feel the water rush over you. I know you can’t smell me and hold me, but smell and hold my great promises and spiritual presence when you grasp the bread and the juice!” God, in the sacraments, wants to allow us to touch what we trust and have footing for our faith! That’s why I want us to refer to these sacraments as Tangible Truth—truth you can taste and touch!
Application
Though you may have witnessed baptism/communion or undergone baptism/communion, my hope is that during our next baptism/communion that you would approach and participate in it differently and more biblically. Because there are biblical prescriptions for how we are to partake and act our gospel promises, the question is, “Do you know what they are?”
Now, lets pretend we were all about to take communion and a pastor was going to come up and lead us in partaking of the bread and the juice/wine together. Would you be ready? “Ready,” you say. “Aren’t I just following along on queue?” Well, what are you doing to prepare yourself and practice communion in an appropriate and active way? We are not just passive onlookers, but rather we are active players and participants in the church of God. So, I would like you to divide into small groups and read the passage 1 Corinthians 11:17–32 and answer two questions:
1) How do you usually prepare yourself to partake of communion, and
2) How might these verses influence how you partake it in the future?
Communion
I aim to take out 1 Corinthians 11:17-32 and digest it and turn it over in my mind and heart. I look over 17-22 and realize all the divisions, factions, selfishness, and superiority in my heart. There are many ignoble and uncommendable realities in my heart.
And yet in verses 23–26, I have a Christ who willingly and lovingly gave himself to the least deserving. He crucified Himself and placed His bread and wine (emblematic of his body and blood) in my hands saying, “Here, pay your debt with this!” I must drop everything I had hoped I could bring to the table and open wide my empty hands to receive the gifts of grace! Christ says, “This is my body, broken for you…” For me! You see the bread shows me that I crucified Jesus, and yet Jesus is having personal (and public) compassion on me! And as I drink down the juice, I am reminded of a seal! “This is the new covenant in my blood…” Jesus says! You see as we partake, we partake in a promise. We are proclaiming a promise to one another and praising this great slain Promise-maker and Keeper who has made a promise to you (and to me). And this meal (the most expensive meal you will ever eat) gives our faith a surer footing and when this act, combined with faith, fuses, bonds, and coalesces together, God supports and strengthens His people’s soul and spirit! It is his means to ground us and grace us! He invites us into His presence, not physically in the elements, but in this act of worship called COMMUNION. We are communing with God…Thomas Cranmer says,
“Christ is present in the sacraments just as He is present in His word when he works mightily through it in the hearts of the hearers. By this we do not mean that Christ is physically present in the voice or sound of the speaker (whose sound perishes as soon as the words are spoken). Instead by this we mean that Christ works through His Word, using the voice of the speaker, as His instrument. In the same way, he also uses His sacraments, by which He works, and therefore can be said to be present with them.” (Thomas Crammer, Answer to Gardiner)
The remaining verses tell us there is a way and worthy manner to take corporate communion. And there is a way to take it unworthily. And that is made clear by verse 29,
“For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning (or judging) the body eats and drinks judgment on himself.” (1 Corinthians 11:29 ESV)
You see…the table is about judgment! You must have the right table manners in a sense…We must say, as we approach the table, “judgment is due me.” But the table says, ”judgment was taken for me.” You see, most of us think, if you want to be approved before God, then absolve and acquit yourself. But in Christianity, if you want approval, you must accuse yourself. This is precisely one of the reasons why a reformation existed in church history. It used to be the church’s tradition that to have access to God’s Table you must be absolved of your sin by the priest, but it’s exactly the opposite. We know that it’s our self-accusation that avails us of the Divine acquittal that comes by the hands of our justice-serving Jesus! He didn’t sweep our sin under the divine rug; He was slain and died for our sins! If you want eternal life, don’t mis-evaluate. Oh, how pride can make communion nothing more than routine though God meant it to be remembrance, re-examination, and repentance!
A few things to remember…
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We don’t take it alone, but together. Sometimes what helps me to discern my immorality is to see a slew of other people repenting and bemoaning this seemingly unjust transaction at the Lord’s table. I am not just saying something about myself when I partake, but you are saying it to me too. I am watching you practice and proclaim realities and promises to me!
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We don’t rub the bread and the wine on the outside of our bodies, but we digest them inside. We follow an inside-out religion. Our hearts are the contagion, and it is the body and blood of Jesus that covers over it. When we eat, we are expressing not only our need for cleaning, but we are expressing our union. The act of Communion is Union with God. He is in me, and I in Him. We are inextricably joined, and we now live in Him, by Him, and through Him! As we eat, we are remembering and realizing his death is my death, and his life is my life. His moral record is now my moral record! We see at the Supper our great Substitute! We see our judgement in His judgment and his innocence as ours! Our union as expressed and explained in Communion is the air in a Christian’s lungs.
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Sacraments do not save us, but surely strengthen us. The sacraments are a seal, a sign if you will, of God’s great promises to us. As I attended a wedding in Nampa this summer, it was clear that the rings didn’t start or make the couples’ relationship or marriage. In the vows and promises, the ring did not make them married, the covenantal commitments did. However, the ring did show they were married. Every time I glance at my ring, my affections, memories, and wonder of my bride win me over. It helps to remind me of our covenant, strengthen and solidify my commitment, but it is not the source or reason I am married. You see, Communion is His stamp of approval and literally God’s signature in blood that His death counts for me and that He will come again.
Think of it this way: one of our historical confessions of faith, the Belgic confession says it this way,
The sacraments are added or joined “to the word of the gospel, the better to present to our senses , both that which [God] signifies to us by His Word, and that which he works inwardly in our hearts, thereby assuring and confirming in the salvation he imparts to us.” (33)
Another confession, WCF says,
“The grace of faith is ordinarily wrought by the ministry of the Word, but also increased and strengthened by the sacraments (14.1)
Augustine called them a “kind of visible word” and The Puritan Thomas Watson calls them a “visible sermon.” The sacraments are an embodiment of the Scriptures—for our senses to awaken our souls. The Sacraments and Scriptures differ in external form but offer the same Christ only in different ways. Think of them as embodied truth and promises.
Baptism
Now as we turn briefly from a believer’s meal to a believer’s bath (for lack of a better term), how can we approach and actively partner and not just observe in this saving-illustrated sacrament known as Baptism?
So, as we asked beforehand about communion, I will ask of you for baptism…”How do you approach baptism?” Or, “when was the last time you claimed and confessed your baptism at a time other than around a baptismal pool?” Is part of your discipleship a thorough recalling and re-appropriating that we are a baptized people living a baptized life!
Two Things
First, the larger Catechism of the Westminster Confession—series of questions and answers to be learned and memorized to ground one in good faith and practice—says in 1647,
“How is baptism to be improved by us?”
The needful, but much neglected duty of improving our baptism, is to be performed by us all our life long, especially in the time of temptation, and when we are present at the administration of it to others; by serious and thankful consideration of the nature of it, and of the ends for which Christ instituted it, the privileges and benefits conferred and sealed thereby, and our solemn vow made therein; by being humbled for our sinful defilement, our falling short of, and walking contrary to, the grace of baptism, and our engagements; by growing up to assurance of pardon of sin, and of all other blessings sealed to us in that sacrament; by drawing strength from the death and resurrection of Christ, into whom we are baptized, for the mortifying of sin, and quickening of grace; and by endeavoring to live by faith, to have our conversation in holiness and righteousness, as those that have therein given up their names to Christ; and to walk in brotherly love, as being baptized by the same Spirit into one body. (Westminster Confession, 1647.
One way we can improve is by not neglecting it, but re-living it. Tim Chester, an English theologian, calls it our naming ceremony…we go from a singular individual to a public and corporate identity. We gain an invaluable family or new surname, a last name as you will. We are baptized into Christ’s name…or as the Great Commission puts it:
“baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.” (Matthew 28:19 ESV)
At baptism, we are reminded of our new existence, our new life, our naming!! Now to connect these ideas, our name reminds us of our union. We are not our own, but His own!
Second thing, in 1 Peter 3:21, it says,
“Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ…” (1 Peter 3:21 ESV)
As we consider how to improve upon our baptism, we must acknowledge what baptism is. It is a sacrament, from the Latin word sacramentum, meaning a pledge. Its what a Roman soldier did before we entered the Roman army and gave himself to defend the motherland. And this verse recalls this important oath: Commentators have seen it in two ways: 1. It’s an appeal/ask to God for a good conscience, just as in communion we discern and conclude ourselves to be unclean. 2. But it’s also God’s pledge to us…”You are clean; you are forgiven. You are united to the sacrifice of my Son.” And this brings us to some reminders as we attend and actively participate at Table Rock’s next baptism:
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The sacraments are not what we have done, but our reliving in what God has done. It has been said that they are the “act that we do not perform.” You don’t do the sacraments; you participate in them because a great gospel performance has been done for you. We must always remember this and realize that we are not regenerate (or made a Christian by our performance of the sacraments—we are not believers in baptismal regeneration. If we were, I would bump people into small baptismals or pools every chance I got. The mere act does not save you and does not regenerate you. We don’t believe in baptismal regeneration, but rather, we believe in baptismal proclamation. We proclaim what has been done to us and in us!!! We are calling attention to the great gospel promises, not our poor performances.
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The sacraments are for the saved and not the unsaved. One, we just clarified that the sacraments do not save, so they are of no avail to the unbeliever. Unless they are coupled with a heart whose faith is firm, they are impotent. So, just remember and be sobered to the fact that baptism is for the believer and communion is for those who confess Jesus is Lord. The Bible says the sacraments will not only be ineffective if certain Christian traits do not exist in the individual, but the Bible warns with great caution against someone who takes these sacraments and participates in them in an unworthy manner. Those who play with them, or pretend with them, or are numb or unaware of them have great potential of bringing much judgment upon themselves. We do not take the sacraments with levity; we take them seriously or else God warns of severity.
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To baptize is a command, not merely an invitation for those who have believed. These are some of the last words of our Savior to his sent apostolic ones. God wants a ceremony that cements church identification and membership for all to see—believer and unbeliever.
Just as with communion, we don’t do baptisms alone and independent of the body of Christ and vetted leaders. We cannot appropriately identify with Christ nor properly identify with His body unless we do it corporately because it is not only union with the head of the body, but it is also union with the body itself. Do not deprive one another of your baptism. It exists for you, but for us as well. As we watch the great gospel in drama form in baptism, we see that you are IN CHRIST laid to death in the waters, but raised to LIFE in HIS RESURRECTION as a cleansed saint, and we will celebrate the wonder-working, promise-maker, who has made us one with Him, in union through the salvation-displaying sacraments. Come and behold the taste-able, touchable truth: these sensory Sacraments tell the church and the world, I am united to Christ!