The Two Ordinances
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Good morning! This normally would be the time when I allow my wife to escape with the children for children’s church, but today we have some important stuff going on, and it’s appropriate to have the whole church gathered together to participate.
So. if you’ve got children with you today — or if you’ve just got grown men who ACT like children — give them something to keep them quietly occupied. It will be good that they are here and that they might have questions when you’re on the way home.
It’s good for them to see how the church operates, and it’s good for them to have some questions about what we do; it gives you as parents an opportunity to talk through some issues and help them understand what it means to be a part of the body of Christ.
I’m pleased to see you all here today, especially after so many of you were here last night for our showing of A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. Wasn’t that a great movie? We had 40 or 50 people in chairs and cars, many of whom were visitors from the community.
It’s a wonderful thing for us to be able to bless the community with these movies, and I’m so pleased we’ve been able to continue doing so. Each time we have shown one, we have had more people than the time before.
This was probably the last outdoor version that we’ll do until the spring, but we might consider an indoor movie night in here sometime during the winter months.
Thanks to all who helped put this together. It’s a joy to see everyone working together to get things set up — even if it did take us three tries to get the screen inflated and pointed the right direction.
I’ll tell you right now that I am just full of joy this morning. It has been a great weekend.
Annette and I had a rare date night on Friday. We all had a great night last night. The parking lot was full of people loving one another and making our guests feel welcome and loved. And I got to ride home with the top down, blasting some old music on the radio.
And today, I get to do something that fills a pastor’s heart with joy. Today, I get to baptize a young woman who has committed her life to Christ and welcome her into full fellowship with this body of believers. And later, she will join us all as we celebrate the Lord’s Supper.
Jesus Christ instituted two ordinances for the church that He left behind to do His work on earth — baptism and the Lord’s Supper — and it is exciting to me that we will be able to participate in both this morning, and to mark the occasion, we will break this week from our study of the Sermon on the Mount so we can give both ordinances proper attention and consideration.
First, we should understand what I mean when I say that baptism and the Lord’s Supper are ordinances given to the church by Jesus. An ordinance is an authoritative order, and Jesus, by His authority as the head of the Church, which Scripture describes as the Body of Christ, ordered that the church participate in both events.
We see His command regarding baptism as part of the Great Commission in Matthew, chapter 28.
“Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
We’ll talk about his command that we observe the Lord’s Supper in a few minutes, but I want to talk for a bit first about baptism.
We see the first New Testament references to baptism in connection to the ministry of John the Baptist, who was sent to prepare the way for the promised Messiah, Jesus Christ.
John, it is recorded in the Gospels, had a message for the people around Jerusalem:
“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
The arrival of the Messiah — the beginning of Christ’s ministry here on earth — meant that the kingdom of heaven had come to earth, and the appropriate response to that reality was — and still is — repentance.
To repent means to turn from your sins. But in order to turn from your sins, you must first admit that you are a sinner.
And not everyone who was following John the Baptist at the time was ready to do that. In fact, he referred to some of them as a “brood of vipers,” and he warned them to “bear fruits in keeping with repentance.”
You see, among the people who had heard about the ministry of John the Baptist were some of the scribes and Pharisees, the religious elite of this time. They didn’t see that they needed to repent of anything.
They meticulously kept the commandments of the Old Testament, at least when it came to their public actions, and they were, after all, good Jews who could trace their lineage all the way back to Abraham, through whom God had promised a great nation that would bless all the families of earth.
But John warned them that neither their good works nor their family tree were the keys to their salvation.
“Therefore bear fruits in keeping with repentance, and do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham for our father,’ for I say to you that from these stones God is able to raise up children to Abraham. “Indeed the axe is already laid at the root of the trees; so every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”
Later, Jesus would use this metaphor about good fruit to describe those who will be citizens of the kingdom of heaven.
“You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles, are they? “So every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. “A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit. “Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. “So then, you will know them by their fruits. “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter.
Those who bear good fruits are the ones who will enter the kingdom of heaven. They are the ones who do the will of God. So, what is God’s will?
It is God’s will that all men and women hear the words of His Son and act on them, that they repent from their sins, believe that Jesus took upon Himself both their sins and the just punishment for them at Calvary’s cross, and follow Him as their Lord and Savior.
You see, salvation was never about doing good things. No amount of good deeds could ever make up for the act of rebellion against a perfect and holy God that even one of your sins represents.
Each one of us has sinned in great ways and small ways — each one of us has failed to reflect the perfect and holy character of the God who created us in His own image.
And the penalty for that rebellion — the penalty for sin — is death, both physical and spiritual. Physical death is the evidence that sin still reigns here on earth. And spiritual death — eternal separation from the God who created us to be in fellowship with Him — is the destiny of all who die without salvation.
But God knew that we would be unable to make up for our sins against Him, and so He came in the person of His unique and eternal Son to offer Himself as the sacrifice that would pay our debt. Our salvation would be — just as it always had been — through faith in Him.
Repent and believe. This was the message of John the Baptist. It was the message of Jesus Christ. It has been the message of the church, all the way back to Pentecost, when Peter preached that convicting sermon that resulted in 3,000 people being saved.
Now when they heard this, they were pierced to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brethren, what shall we do?” Peter said to them, “Repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Now, this line that reads “for the forgiveness of your sins” can also be translated as “on the basis of the forgiveness of your sins.” Forgiveness is based on repentance and trust in what Jesus has done.
Salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. There is no saving power in baptism. Instead, baptism is the means by which a new Christian declares his or her allegiance to Jesus as Lord and Savior.
And so, throughout the New Testament, we see that new Christians were baptized as their first acts of obedience to Jesus, who had commanded this ordinance within the church.
Their baptism was a public statement that they were now to be identified as belonging to Jesus Christ.
Lowered into the water, they were identified with Jesus in His death. Under the water, they were identified with Jesus in His burial. And raised from the water, they were identified with Jesus in His resurrection.
Baptism is a picture of the death of the sinful, cursed person who lived according to the flesh and the birth of the new, redeemed and forgiven believer who has been born again by the Holy Spirit.
Today, it is my honor to baptize a new, redeemed and forgiven believer who has already been, for some time, a beloved part of our fellowship at Liberty Spring Christian Church.
Cat, could you come forward, please?
Now, I have spent some time with Cat during the past few months and have had a couple of chances to meet with her, both when she started attending our services and a couple of weeks ago.
She told me back in the spring about her decision to follow Jesus in faith, and I have had time to watch her grow in that faith and in her walk with Jesus. I was incredibly pleased when she told me a couple of weeks ago that she wanted to be baptized.
Now, Cat, I have a few questions for you before we can proceed.
Catherine D. Ford, do you acknowledge that you are a sinner, and that you can do nothing to earn God’s favor by you own merits?
Do you acknowledge that God’s only Son, Jesus Christ, is God’s only remedy for sin and that placing your faith in Him is your only way to be saved from the just penalty for your sins?
Do you acknowledge that by identifying with Christ through faith — in other words, taking His name as a Christian — that you have died to sin and been raised to newness of life in Him?
Do you then commit yourself to living a different kind of life because of your faith in Jesus and the new life you have in Him?
Excellent. Now, go ahead and step into the water.
Catherine D. Ford, I now baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
DUNK
Buried with Christ in the likeness of His death, and now raised with Christ in the likeness of His resurrection. Welcome to the family, sister!
Now, let me pray with you before you go and change. Could I get the deacons to come and join me here, please?
PRAY
Now, in the early church, a person became a member of a church by baptism (though the term, “member,” isn’t used in Scripture). And since we seek to follow the example set for us in Scripture, it is fitting that we also look at our sister in Christ here as a member of Liberty Spring Christian Church.
But I would ask that the church affirm her membership here. All who would do so, please signify by saying “Aye.” Any opposed?
Very good. Welcome to the fellowship, Cat. Now, go get changed, and hurry back to join us for the Lord’s Supper.
What a wonderful privilege it is to baptize a new believer and welcome her into membership in the church! And what a wonderful privilege it was for us all to be here when she made her first public proclamation of her faith.
I know that Cat has told others about her decision to follow Christ, but there is something special about what she did this morning.
And there is something special that she will do in a few minutes with all of us who have placed our faith in Jesus and been baptized as a public statement that we are now identified with Him in His death, burial and resurrection.
That special thing is the second ordinance commanded by Jesus, the Lord’s Supper.
On the night before He gave Himself as a sacrifice for the sins of mankind, Jesus ate a meal with His disciples. It was the time of the Passover commemoration, but this one would be different than all the other Passover observances they had participated in each year throughout their lives.
This one would conclude with them breaking bread together and sharing wine together. Now, the bread and the wine weren’t what made this meal different. Both were already part of the Passover feast.
What made this different was that Jesus now taught His disciples the significance of both in light of His coming death and resurrection.
Taking a single piece of unleavened bread, he gave them each a piece and told them that it represented His body, “which is given for you.”
Before the night was over, He would be betrayed and arrested, and His body would be beaten and broken, and then, the next morning, it would be hung on a cross. He would give Himself as a ransom for many.
He who knew no sin would have the sins of all mankind heaped upon Him there, and He would experience both the physical death and spiritual death that are the penalty for sin. The innocent one would die for the guilty ones.
Back in that room with His disciples, after they had shared the bread, Jesus poured a cup of wine, and he said, “This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in My blood.”
Under the old covenant, the sins of the people were covered up by the blood of lambs and oxen. But this was a temporary covering. Each new sin required a new sacrifice.
But the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah had told of a time to come when God would make a new covenant with His people.
“Behold, days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord. “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the Lord, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. “They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the Lord, “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”
The old covenant was governed by laws written on stone tablets and on the scrolls of Scripture. But the new covenant would be governed by a law that God would place in them — the Holy Spirit given to all who would follow Jesus in faith.
The old covenant provided for sins to be covered one at a time through the ongoing sacrifice of animals. But the new covenant provides for all sins to be forgiven for those who follow Jesus in faith by the once-for-all sacrifice He made of Himself at the cross.
And, though they did not understand everything He was saying at the time, Jesus was reminding His disciples of this prophetic promise when He said that the wine they would share was the new covenant in His blood.
And then He gave the ordinance, the authoritative command. “Do this in remembrance of Me.”
Baptism is the first public statement by a believer that he or she is “in Christ,” that he or she is identified with Him in His death, burial, and resurrection.
The Lord’s Supper, this second ordinance of Christ, is a regular reminder to baptized believers of the new identity we have in Him. It is an opportunity for us to say once again, “I belong to Jesus.”
Just as with baptism, there is no saving power in what we are about to do. We are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. But, just as with baptism, participating in the Lord’s Supper is both an act of obedience to Jesus and an act of unity within His church.
We share one loaf. We drink the fruit of the vine poured from one cup.
Now, if you are a baptized believer, I want to invite you to join us this morning as we participate in the Lord’s Supper.
As we have learned today, both baptism and the Lord’s Supper were commanded by Jesus as acts of obedience to Him and as ways of proclaiming that we who follow Him in faith belong to Him.
So, if you have made the decision to follow the risen Christ in faith that He is the Son of God and Redeemer of your soul, then I hope you will join us as we participate in this sacred meal that dates all the way back to when Jesus shared it with His disciples at the Last Supper on the night before He was crucified.
If you are a Christian watching at home, feel free to join us with bread and juice or water — the early church used both as part of its communion observance.
The conditions during the Last Supper were different than the conditions we have here today, but the significance was the same as it is today.
Jesus told His disciples that the bread represented His body, which would be broken for our transgressions.
Let us pray.
While they were eating, Jesus took some bread, and after a blessing, He broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is My body.”
As Jesus suffered and died on that cross, his blood poured out with His life. This was always God’s plan to reconcile mankind to Himself.
“In [Jesus} we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace which He lavished on us.”
Let us pray.
And when He had taken a cup and given thanks, He gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you; for this is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for forgiveness of sins.
Take and drink.
“Now, as often as we eat this bread and drink the cup, we proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.”
Maranatha! Lord, come!
Here at Liberty Spring, we have a tradition following our commemoration of the Lord’s Supper.
Please gather around in a circle, and let us sing together “Blest Be the Tie that Binds.”