SA Ep91 - Articles of Faith #14 Two Ordinances

SA Ep91 - Articles of Faith #14 Two Ordinances

In this episode, we examine the ordinances of the church: baptism and the Lord’s Supper. The Bible teaches that these are acts of obedience given by Christ to His church, serving as public testimony and ongoing remembrance of the Gospel. We will look at what each ordinance represents, what they do and do not accomplish, and why they must remain centered on Christ. These ordinances are not empty rituals. They are powerful pictures of the saving work of Jesus Christ.

Transcript

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Welcome to the Seeking Approval Podcast. I'm Dr. Chris Smelser from Iliad Baptist Church. You know life moves fast, and faith is not meant to be rushed. I want to take some time and slow down with you and have some honest conversations from the Word of God about daily living. So join me here today on Seeking Approval. The Philippian jailer asks, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? Paul went on to tell this young man, I presume, that you must believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved. He said in Romans 10 9, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. In Acts 3.19, he also says that we need to repent of our sins and they will be wiped away. And then in Acts 2.38, it mentions repentance and then being baptized. That brings us to our next article of faith, which deals with the baptism and Lord's Supper. Those are what we call ordinances. Some religions have these listed as their sacraments. We need to understand the difference in those two words, because it's very important. A sacrament is something that is tied to the grace and favor of God. And we know that salvation is by grace. So therefore, a sacrament is something that you must do in order to earn or deserve God's grace of salvation. That's not the case. Even though religion, some religions have give a given a list of sacraments, uh some have uh one or two or more than that. I think the uh Catholic Church is the one that has uh probably listed the most of those, which uh to my knowledge, there are uh seven sacraments in uh the um uh Catholic Church. There are the sacraments of Christian initiation and then the sacraments of healing, uh, the sacraments of initiation, baptism, confirmation, and those are done as a as a child or an infant, and confirmation uh is when you are baptized with the gift of the Holy Spirit, which strengthens your faith and commitment. And then you have the Eucharist, which is your first uh communion, uh, which completes kind of the initiation of being uh receiving the blood of Jesus Christ and the body, uh, and that's considered the sacrament of all sacraments. Uh then you have the sacraments of healing, which is the penance and reconciliation, which is offers forgiveness for the sins, the anointing of the sick, which provides spiritual health and peace and sometimes physical healing. And then you have the sacraments of service and communion, which are your holy orders, uh, that's uh ordination of bishops, priests, and deacons to lead minister of the church, and then matrimony, uh, which is a covenant between a man and a woman reflecting Christ's love for the church. Now, those are all tied to the grace and favor of God. Uh the Bible does not uphold that. At no point does the Bible uphold that. People have twisted and uh uh construed verses to make it look that way, but we have to understand uh a little bit more about Scripture when we're dealing with some of these things. So when we come to baptism and the Lord's Supper, these are ordinances, which are uh commands or uh something that has been ordained by God to happen. And Christ actually was the one who gave these ordinances. They're not man-made ceremonies, they're not something to do just because we're part uh of a church. Um they're also not really optional traditions because the church covenant said so, or because the preacher wants to have uh this little cracker and sip of grape juice tonight. Um there are commands given by Christ to be observed by the people, and at the same time, we must understand that these are not sacraments. They don't add to salvation, they don't replace faith, they don't add uh any portion of the comfort or uh the reality of the Holy Spirit uh in your life. They're pictures of the gospel. Baptism being the first ordinance. It's a believer's public testimony of faith in Jesus Christ that after a person is saved, the next step is baptism. Jesus commanded us in the Great Commission of Matthew 28. He said that his followers should go and teach all nations. When you're teaching, that is the how should they hear without a preacher? They hear, they believe, come to repentance, and then baptize them in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost. That shows the baptism follows salvation, follows the teaching, follows the acceptance of the teaching in that. Uh the Bible shows us uh over and over that baptism should happen after a person believes. In Acts chapter number eight, a great account of um Philip who was involved in a great revival. And then the next thing you know, he's in front of an Ethiopian eunuch who's reading the book of Isaiah, chapter number 53. And he asked the question if you ever want to know, okay, what is baptism? Is it baptism into salvation? What is it? Well, the Ethiopian eunuch asked that question. And he was baptized after his faith. Let me let me just look at it with you again. I know a lot of times you're driving, but let me just read this with you. I wasn't planning on uh reading these verses, but um I think it's good uh uh to do that. Uh so we get into the account uh of uh the eunuch in uh Acts chapter 8, verse number 26. Uh and he he that's when he asked Philip, he said, uh, do you Philip asked him if he understands what we're reading? He said, uh understands what thou readest. And the eunuch says, How can I accept a man to guide me? And he desired Philip that he would come and sit with him. That's him teaching, that's him showing. Uh and he read the place uh where the lamb would be slaughtered, and he was in humiliation. And uh the eunuch asked, Well, who who uh who does he who's he talking about? Himself or somebody else? In verse 35, it says that Philip opened his mouth and began at the same scripture and preached unto him Jesus. And as they went on their way, there came unto a certain water, and a eunuch said, See, here is water. What doth hinder me to be baptized? You see, infant baptism was already being uh initiated. It was already happening. And Philip said to him, If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered, I believe in that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. And he commanded the chariot to stand still. He went down both into the water, that means full immersion, went down both into the water, both Philip and the eunuch, and he baptized, which is a full immersion, baptized him, and they were come up out of the water. That again gives a picture of uh being a full immersion, they were coming out of the water, they didn't just grab and sprinkle it on his head, and the Spirit of the Lord caught Philip away. The eunuch saw him no more. That's a pretty that's a pretty intense set of verses there. But the main thing they don't pull out is the question that he asked, what hinders me from being baptized? It was it Philip did not say, well, when you get a certain age, he didn't say, Well, you should have done that when you were born. He didn't say whenever your your priest or bishop or uh holy man gives you your orders. He said, When you believe. If you believe with all your heart, that means with everything that is in you, with all your mind, body, and spirit, if you believe that Jesus Christ is the one who gave his life for you and I, who took our stripes, there's nothing preventing you from being baptized. And that's it. That's what we that's that's what we must do. And that's what baptism is. Baptism is a sign of faith. It doesn't wash away sins. It doesn't uh uh bring, it's not the final seal of approval of salvation. You're not uh you know, standing on the the edge of the limb of salvation that's you know almost ready to break until you get baptized and everything is made whole. That's not it. And when people you know tell me about baptism, you know, well, you have to be because the Bible says you, you know, you've got to be baptized. You have to be able to, and they'll pull out verses, and I always go back for almost any salvation account, for almost any any salvation account where people have made their own man-made rules that you've got to live a certain way, do a certain thing, uh, you know, you've got to be a certain elect or some other thing, or you gotta be baptized. It's by works. I always go back to one thing, then explain the thief on the cross. Was he just a one-off? Was he just like, you know, was he the one that Christ said, you know what, everybody else has got rules, but sir, you don't have them. Sir, everybody else is gonna have to be baptized, but you don't. Sir, everybody else has got to do works, but you don't. Everybody else has got to be elect, but you don't. The only way the thief on the cross fits is if it's salvation by faith. That's it. Faith alone, Christ alone. And then the thief fits. But he doesn't that account doesn't fit in any other framework or man-made idea of what salvation must be, including baptism. And now we move to the the Lord's Supper, and we'll we'll deal with the Lord's Supper, which is yet another ordinance, not a sacrament. The Lord's Supper is a continual reminder, it's to keep in our remembrance of what Christ has done for us. First Corinthians is one of the great uh portions of scripture that deal with this. Uh uh, whenever uh Paul recounts uh the the Lord the last supper that the Lord had with his disciples in the upper room, and he takes the bread and he said, This is my body, which is broken for you. Is that's a that's a great verb in there. Is broken for you, not was, not will be, because was means that it's done and you know can't do anything else about it. Will be is, you know, well, it will be at some point, but we don't know when, and when it's done, it's done. But when it says this is my body which is broken for you, that means it's continual. Salvation is continually open. This cup is the New Testament of my blood. The New Testament. The the testament of the covenant, which he talked about back in uh Jeremiah's day, the new covenant that he was going to make. And these two elements together represent the the the fullness of salvation, the body and the blood together. And it's not the literal. Now, with with uh uh certain again religions, they believe when they take the bread and the and the the real wine that they use, we don't use real wine. We avoid the wine. Uh we we hold to what the Bible says about avoiding intoxicating drink. Um but some religions believe that when the the holy man of their church or um or gathering prays that some special power drops down from heaven and that bread becomes the physical body of Christ and the wine becomes the physical blood of Christ. This is not true. There's no hocus pocus stuff in in in salvation. It's it's a sign, it's a symbol, it's a uh remembering. He said in in the in the memorial statement that he made, he said, this do in remembrance of me. Not this do in order to have salvation, not this do because uh it's tied to your uh faith or it's tied to your religion or it's tied to your hope in heaven. He said, just do it in remembrance of me. Just don't forget me. Don't allow this moment to go away. And that's what we do. We observe it. The Bible has a lot a lot of things to say about remembering and remembrance. I like that um we're told in the Bible, you know, kind of gently, you know, remember your past, remember where you come from, not because you need to dwell on it and remember how you know rotten and sorry we were, but remember where you come from because that's what God, that's how much He loved you. That's why we were your sinners. He sent His Son to die for us. But then the Bible says that God will not remember those things. I'm not gonna remember your past. I'll forget it like it's never even happened. It won't even exist. But I want you to remember where you've come from and what the saving act of Christ did for you. Because if we keep that in our mind, if we keep that remembrance, then we won't be as prone to go back to it, to return to it, to run back to it as a dog returns to his vomit, as the Bible says. We'll be more apt to remember him and remember what he has done for us and the price he paid for us. The Lord's Supper it it speaks to unity of the church. It speaks to the sacrifice that was made. And these ordinances are meant to keep us in remembrance of Christ, but also to keep him in the center. The baptism, it's the death, burial, and resurrection. The Lord's Supper, it's the death, burial, resurrection, it's the gospel preached in two ordinances that we have. And there's a lot of errors surrounding them, some out of ignorance. Uh there's a great account of that of uh one in the New Testament who was um uh who was uh preaching um the baptism of John the Baptist, which was different. It was different. You gotta study scripture to find out why and how, and maybe one day we'll do that together. But the baptism that John the Baptist preached was different because there wasn't there wasn't uh the the grace that had been poured out yet through the sacrifice of the Son. And one young man, preacher, was still preaching the baptism of John the Baptist after Christ had given his life. And so they pulled him aside and they said, Hey, you know, we're glad you're out here preaching, but you know, we need to clarify a few things. Baptism of John the Baptist, that's over. We've got a better salvation. We're not, this is not the blood of bulls and goats no more. This ain't just getting baptized into water in the hopes of salvation to come. Salvation is here now. You need to preach that. Preach repentance unto salvation. So there's a lot of people who have it wrong, some out of some out just out of ignorance and error, some because it's part of the framework that they've been taught. But whatever the case is, we need to take what the Bible says. And the Bible says that the Lord's Supper and baptism, they're not sacraments, and they're not just practices of a religious organization, but the gospel picture. They remind us of where our salvation began and what it cost. And they keep the focus on Christ and off ourselves and off our works. They call us to live in light of what he has done and is doing for us continually, because in the end, these ordinances, they're not about you and I. They're not about the church, they're not about what religion we're part of. They're all about Christ. Thank you for joining us today on Seeking Approval. You know, our faith oftentimes grows in quiet places. I hope today's conversation gave you something worth carrying throughout the rest of this day. And join me, Dr. Chris Smelser, again next time as we continue thinking, learning, and walking together. Until then, grace and peace to you from seeking approval at Gilead Baptist Church.