"The Sacraments"

Order of Service

• Call to Worship — Psalm 45:6-17
• Hymn — My Heart Is Overflowing (#45B)
• Prayer of Invocation
• Catechism Reading — Heidelberg Catechism, Lord's Day on the Second Petition
• Hymn — I Lift My Eyes Up (#121B)
• Pastoral Prayer
• Sermon
• Hymn — The Lord's My Shepherd (#23A)
• Benediction — 2 Corinthians 13:14

Sermon Title: The Sacraments — Sign, Seal, and Spiritual Grace

Scripture: Exodus 20:22-24

I. The Sacraments Are a Sign

• A. Scripture uses signs throughout redemptive history as meaningful, covenantally loaded markers.

  1. Lights in the heavens as signs — Genesis 1:14
  2. The rainbow as the sign of the Noahic covenant — Genesis 9:12-13
  3. Circumcision as the sign of the Abrahamic covenant — Genesis 17:11
  4. Baptism as a sign of union with Christ in his death and resurrection — Romans 6:3-4
  5. Bread and wine as signs of the body and blood of Christ in the Lord's Supper

• B. A sign is not a bare piece of information — it carries the word of God bound up in it.

  1. Illustration: a stop sign has no intrinsic power, but the law of the land is bound to it; to honor it is to obey; to disregard it brings penalty
  2. In the same way, God's covenant word is bound to the sacramental signs; to receive them in faith brings blessing; to disregard or abuse them brings judgment
  3. 1 Corinthians 11:27-29 — eating and drinking the Lord's Supper unworthily is to eat and drink judgment
  4. The waters of Noah's flood illustrate two baptisms: blessing for those in the ark, curse for those outside — 1 Peter 3:20-21
  5. John the Baptist declares Christ will baptize with the Spirit and with fire — blessing and curse are two sides of the same covenantal coin

• C. Modern evangelicalism has largely lost a serious understanding of the significance of the sacraments; they must be approached with reverence and faith, not treated as light or casual observances.

II. The Sacraments Are a Seal

• A. The distinction between sign and seal: the sign pictures the things signified; the seal actually does something — it confirms and solidifies God's word of promise to the heart of the believer.

• B. Romans 4:11 — Abraham received circumcision as a seal of the righteousness he had by faith; it is not a seal of the individual's faith but a seal of God's word of promise, received by faith.

• C. The Reformed position stands between two errors:

  1. Rome: everything saving is in the sacrament itself (ex opere operato)
  2. Anabaptists: the sacrament is merely a memorial with no real sealing power
  3. The Reformed/biblical balance: the sacrament truly represents and conveys what it promises when received in faith, because God has bound his word to it — illustrated by a check that genuinely represents and can be cashed for real money

• D. The rainbow illustrates the sealing function: given precisely when the promise of no future flood seems threatened, it seals and confirms the Noahic covenant to Noah's heart — Genesis 9:14-15

• E. Acts 2:38-39 — baptism, like circumcision, is a seal of God's covenant promise to believers and their children, to be received by faith as Abraham received circumcision.

• F. The "word versus sacrament" dichotomy common in evangelicalism is self-contradictory: the sacraments are designed to enhance, confirm, and seal the word; to be word-centered is to embrace the sacraments as seals of the covenant promise in Christ.

III. The Sacraments Are Spiritual

• A. A right understanding of the sacraments begins with the foundational truth that God is a spirit with no body; nothing material can contain him — yet he is pleased to condescend and meet his people through material, physical means he himself appoints.

• B. The second commandment forbids man-made images not because God cannot use material means, but because God alone sovereignly determines how he condescends and meets with his people — Exodus 20:22-24

  1. God reveals himself through his word spoken from heaven
  2. Therefore no gold or silver images are to represent him
  3. Yet he himself appoints an earthen altar as the place where he causes his name to be remembered and promises to come and bless his people

• C. The language of Exodus 20:24 ("wherever I cause my name to be remembered, I will come to you and bless you") directly parallels Christ's institution of the Lord's Supper ("do this in remembrance of me") — the God who is uncontainable spirit meets his people covenantally through divinely appointed ordinances.

• D. 1 Corinthians 10:1-4 — Paul identifies the physical manna and the physical water from the rock as the same spiritual food and drink, because the spiritual rock was Christ; there is a real spiritual presence of Christ conveyed through the physical elements God covenantally appoints.

• E. False alternatives that arise when this is misunderstood:

  1. Asceticism — denying the material world to attain God
  2. Legalism — adding extra rules to secure access to God
  3. The sacraments correct both errors: the God who is pure spirit meets us through his ordained, physical signs and seals in and through the incarnate Son

• F. Summary: the sacraments are not idolatry (man containing God in man's way) but are God's own appointed means of meeting man in God's way; receiving them by faith is receiving Christ, because the gospel is signified, sealed, and spiritually applied to the soul through their rightful use.