What Is An Ordinance And Why Are There Two?

an outward sign of an inward grace.

That might be one of the most universally declared statements on the ordinances. They attribute it to Augustine. I'm not sure if it goes before him. An outward sign, there is something to the ordinances that there is a ritual, there's a rite, there's a sign, a physical activity. I want to go further than that and make it clear that Jesus commanded these signs for all churches at all times. So there's something about Christ giving a very specific instruction for them, and then the church receiving that instruction, and we see those continued on in the epistles, and we see it continued on in church history. There are visible signs, so most of what we do is word-centered. Right now I'm teaching, I preach, it's word-centered. We just prayed, word-centered. Earlier we sang, thank you Blake. It was word-centered. Most of what we do is word-centered. The orders that stand out in that, they're physical activities. They are a physical act that we're doing together. At some level, I think God gave us these, just like he gave circumcision and Passover, kind of make the children interested, something to see and ask questions about, something to participate in, something to unite God's people. The ordinances are God's visible signs to help the church celebrate who Christ is, what he has done. The visible signs help identify who belongs to the church. They help bless those who are coming and receiving these as members of the church. They also are a unique witness to the world. So the significance of what makes something an ordinance or a sacrament commanded by Christ for all Christians as a visible sign that points to him and his specific work. So baptism points to his death and resurrection, Lord's Supper, this is my blood. Some would believe that marriage is a sacrament or an ordinance the same way. I would not say it passes the test for what an ordinance is. Christ does command and bless marriage. The gospel is tied to marriage according to Ephesians 5. However, it's not a new activity given in the new covenant. It goes all the way back to creation. Christians get married, non-Christians get married. It isn't new in the new covenant as a sign that points specifically to Christ and his work. It is something God gave us from all creation that then we understand has a new meaning in the gospel according to Ephesians 5. Second question, what do we call those two rites or ceremonies. And there I'm just trying to be even-handed to make sure. Many prefer the word ordinance. Others prefer sacraments. We call them ordinances because Christ has ordained them. He has declared them. He's given these as very unique, specific activities, again, for the church. Sacraments is interesting. In a few passages in the New Testament, the word that we see in English, mystery, the Greek word is mysterion. Well, the Latin Vulgate translated that word sacramentum, and that is actually the foundation for why they're called sacraments. Augustine especially popularized calling not just what we would call the ordinances or sacraments, sacraments, but he called many things sacraments. Um, so anything that has a mystery of the hidden grace, um, that that is where that, uh, declaration of sacrament comes from. Uh, they are sacred. because Jesus, our Holy King, commanded us to do them. So I don't think there's anything wrong or preferable about either one of these. Normally ordinances are tied to, and this is more like how they're popularly used maybe, folks oftentimes think ordinances, well, that means you're a mere memorialist and sacrament means you believe in the priesthood as the one who makes them effective. I don't think either one of those have to be necessarily true. It's kind of like the way we talk about them sometimes. I'm going to pause now and play my game that somebody has to ask a question before I move on. Yeah, Daniel. Make it easy because I'm running out of time. Yeah, it was not commanded in the old. It is practiced. It has a symbolism. It takes on a new meaning. It is used. It's tied to the washing of the ceremony, even. But the way it is placed as a whole new way of entering into the church, it takes on a whole new meaning. Yeah, that's a good question. Keep the rest of them easier, though, Daniel. All right, how many are there? I've already said two. I'm going to ask this. So Protestants, we believe baptism and the Lord's Supper. The Catholic Church says there must be seven. And if you don't say seven, you're anathematized. I say that because I want to make sure our posture is right. I want to make sure when we're binding your conscience, it's clear in scripture. Historically, you can see whenever someone insists on tradition is usually the detriment of God's word. So, so to say it must be seven or your anathema means it must be clear in scripture. These are prescribed and must be clear in church history. And I can tell you that, uh, not all of the seven are clear in the first thousand years of the Christian church. Uh, they hold, they, they separate them out into three different categories. Initiation sacraments, that's baptism, confirmation, and the Lord's Supper or Eucharist. Confirmation is when someone comes of age, they are anointed, it's also called the Chrismata, the anointing, that is when the Holy Spirit would renew, the child would be able to have faith, and then they would be able to go into the Lord's Supper. They actually describe confirmation as completing baptism. Because in infant baptism, they believe original sin is washed away, confirmation completes baptism, and then they're able to enter into the Eucharist that washes away venial sins. A lot of new terminology, maybe, for many of us. Again, just introducing kind of concepts. Then they have healing sacraments. That is healing the sick, which would also include extreme unction, which would be last rites on a deathbed, and then penance, confession, and then they have service sacraments. That is either you enter into holy matrimony or you are married to the church as a priest or some other holy order. We will consider Anabaptists very briefly. They have a third, so Baptism, Lord's Supper, they would include foot washing as a ordinance or a sacrament. It is commanded clearly there in John 13. It does not pass the test of any historical, or very little historical recognition in universal practice. The next question, what is agreed upon? And this is where I'm trying to be as lowercase C Catholic and universal as possible. First, what most believers, I have to say most, because there's nothing that's universally believed by everyone who's ever confessed Christ, because there's some groups who don't think there's ordinances and that might make them not Christians. First, the ordinances, they belong to the church and are to be administered to the church. I say that to be really clear. Our individualism in Western society kind of confuses what these are. They are a blessing from God through his church to include you in Our individualism sometimes thinks, well, I'm going to go do that. I'm going to take that. It's me. No, they're only rightfully done in the church. They're only rightfully done as you are being received into the church. So they belong to the church. It's what Christ has given the church to use, to bless. And they're administered by the church. Then there's like 20 more questions, such as, well, who can administer them in the church? Does it have to be a priest? Do they have to be specially ordained? Those are questions for another time. Another clear, close to universal teaching is that baptism is the one-time entrance into God's people, and it is a prerequisite for the Lord's Supper. That is why on that little sheet in front of you, If you have been baptized, we say you should hold off on taking the Lord's Supper, even if you're confessing Christ, because baptism precedes Lord's Supper. So I would say that is clear from tradition. It's also important to recognize that's clear from what the nature of the ordinances are. Baptism is how you are first identified as a believer. The Lord's Supper is how you regularly are reminded, and you regularly rejoice, and you regularly give thanks. Regarding baptism, here's one of the things most agree. For baptism, it relates to circumcision somehow, right? And we'll have the category here directly or indirectly, and you'll have to come back in three or four weeks to find out what that means. But it relates to circumcision in some way because circumcision was how you entered, the sign of entrance into the covenant, in the old covenant. uh... and as the people of god and the new covenant is baptism so there is a correlation uh... to the element necessary for baptism is what? water i did once meet a real like strict immersionist who said uh... he he he somebody became a believer like Not able to, like, really, really not well. At the end of their life, whatever it was, they couldn't be immersed in water. So, his solution was to dig an empty grave and baptize the person in the grave without water. I would have suggested sprinkling because that would be much more focused on the one thing that almost everybody agrees, like, water has to be present. Now, how much water, that's something that's debated. The third thing in baptism, so you got, it relates to circumcision somehow. Water must be used, not should be. Third, it has to be done in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, as Christ commanded. The whole sign is that you are united with Christ, and therefore you are being united in the name of the God who has saved you. And then fourth, as I've already mentioned, it is a one-time entry into the visible church. Re-baptism should not be a thing. We should get rid of that in our vocabulary. Anabaptists were just the ones who said, my infant baptism, it wasn't baptism. So since I haven't been baptized, I need to be baptized. They called it anabaptist. baptized again, but there is no such thing as being baptized again because there's one baptism. The things agreed upon in the Lord's Supper. Again, it relates to the Passover. Very clearly, Matthew 26, at the Passover, Jesus institutes the Lord's Supper. Again, directly, indirectly, you have to come back to find out. The elements, bread, fruit of the vine. are necessary. Now, lots of folks like to decide, you know, does it have to be a certain kind of bread? What we do that's gluten-free, like, barely passes the test, I think. Does it have to be wine or does it have to be fruit of the vine? The technical phrase in scripture is fruit of the vine. Thankfully, we don't have to have fermentation with today's technologies, but some folks actually doubt that anything less than wine is true Lord's Supper, but the elements are bread, fruit of the vine. Third, it reminds believers and leads them to confession and thanksgiving. There's a way in which the Lord's Supper is meant to cause you to reflect, confess, rejoice, and the baptism is the one-time entry. The Lord's Supper is the regular, repeated reminder. that you are united with Christ and his church. Uh, now just to kind of mention this excommunication is holding back the Lord's supper. Again, that that's where it's significant that it belongs to the church when the whole, the church would withhold it. It is withholding their affirmation of your salvation. They are not withholding salvation. We don't have that authority. I don't think we have that authority. We withhold that affirmation and assurance of salvation. So those things are agreed. There are so many fun disagreements when it comes to baptism and Lord's Supper. Should you baptize three times? Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Should it be four? Should it be backwards? How much water? What kind of water? Should it be sprinkling, pouring, full-on immersion? How much water do we need? Lord's Supper, how often, how do you get it? Like some people are very committed that you're supposed to come forward, we pass out plates. There's so many different things to think about. Here's where I want to introduce a tool. We need to think about pure and true. Pure and true. the true baptism, true Lord's Supper. And then there's a sliding scale that we call pure. A true church is one that preaches God's word, rightly administers the sacraments, and exercises church discipline. And that's a true church. The purity level is how pure you would be practicing the sacraments. So a church can be true and apply the Lord's Supper or baptism wrongly. That would make them less pure. I say that because we need to have that category that, I actually am very open-minded as to the different ways baptism and Lord's Supper could be practiced. And even what they mean, and even how Christ is related to them. My problem is when somebody says, it must be this way. That's not clear in scripture. Does that make sense? So when somebody says, the only way it can be the true Lord's Supper is when it's done A, B, C, D, E, F, and you don't have a single text of scripture to tell me A, B, C, D, E, F, like you can say that's how it should be done or how I want it to be done, but for you to say it must be done and is only the Lord's Supper if it's changed in this way, you're going beyond scripture and binding the conscience in a way that I believe is unhelpful. So that's where I wanna make sure we, We can't be gracious in thinking through God's, we wanna be true to what God has said. My main concern when somebody says it can only be this way, when scripture has not said it is only that way. I don't have any time. I'm gonna pause for a question though. If somebody raises their hand quick, yep, Andy. It was practiced in, well just like circumcision was actually not new to Abraham. Abraham was practiced, it had been practiced in Israel before John the Baptist. I don't know if we know who the first baptizer is. It's just important that we know it wasn't Baptist, I'm just kidding. Cheesy joke. Significant historical developments, this is just for you to Google later in case you're really interested. The first one is the Donatus Controversy. Raise your hand if you've ever heard of that. Just trying to identify the nerds. All right, there we go. This is a early church controversy that after the church is out of persecution, there is a dilemma. What if I was baptized by somebody who had denied Jesus Christ in the persecution? It was a real controversy because if your baptism is in some way related to the person who baptized you, which it should be at some level, what if they denied the faith? What does that mean about your baptism? Should you be baptized? Because that no longer counts. What if you were served the Lord's Supper by somebody who denied the faith? What does that mean about what you have received? That's the first real controversy over the Lord's Supper and the ordinances is the Donatists How important is it that the person who is administering it makes it effective? Augustine was part of this controversy, and the church, I believe rightfully declared here, it is not the effectiveness of the person administering it that makes it effective. Now at the same time, the Catholic Church will say it must be done by a priest, There is something about the person administering that makes it effective, but it isn't that person's ability or work to do it. The other one is Augustine, again. He's my favorite theologian, but I disagree with him on a number of places. Here, he seems to be one of the key figures that made infant baptism the predominant practice and taught that it washed away original sin. A significant change. And about the same time, the church and state are uniting, and it does make sense. Infant baptism only really makes sense whenever they're a church-state union. The next development would be Aquinas, who formalizes the language of what we call transubstantiation. Up to this point, it would have been held to a mystery with belief growing that it would have been the body and blood in the way that Aquinas eventually formalized. Aquinas, as a good theologian, initially resisted this instruction from the Pope to formalize the language of transubstantiation. Because as a good theologian, he said we should leave mystery as mystery and not bind extra-philosophical language to remove the mystery. But he lost the argument with the Pope, and now we have that formal language. We have Calvin and his view of baptism, which is a novel view of infant baptism. Calvin's view of infant baptism is very novel to Calvin, because up to from Augustine to Calvin, Uh, infant baptism was regenerative. Calvin took away the regenerative and made it, you somehow entered this new thing called a covenant community. So it is novel. Uh, you have the Marburg colloquy. That's, uh, an art, a meeting with Zwingli and Luther. And the only thing that disagreed upon was the Lord's supper. Um, and it was about the presence of Christ in the Lord's supper. And then the Anabaptists, this is where Conrad Grebel, John Smith, Conrad Grebel especially, goes further than his discipler, Zwingli, and believes baptism is meant for only believers. If you want to read somebody really cool, you want to look up Felix Mons, I think I'm saying his name right, he's another disciple of Zwingli that Zwingli puts to death because Mons is ordered, you must baptize, the state ordered Mons and others must baptize their babies. And he said,

the Bible does not say that. We will not do so.

So he was drowned. Last historical interesting anecdote, Robert Lewis Wilkin was a great professor of the patristics at the UVA, also a Roman Catholic. And on page 37 of his book, The Spirit of Early Christianity, he says,

in the early church, only adults were baptized.

Just going to lay that out there for you. All right, major questions. These are questions I hope to answer, maybe. First, how do the ordinances relate to God's grace? One of the more significant ones, because, you know, you have memorialists here, you have they effectively save regardless of faith over here, and then you've got lots of room between of they encourage, they bless, they sanctify, They unite the church. How do they relate to God's grace? Mere moralist would be they, you're only remembering in an intellectual way. And then over here, you've got saving grace and there's a lot of room between as to what they actually do. I'm a big believer that when God says something must be done and a faithful spirit indwelt believer does it, God does something with that uniquely in his grace. So we're here somewhere. What makes them effective? Is it the person receiving the ordinance? Is it their faith? Is it someone else's faith, the officiant, the parents? Is it just God's sovereign will that makes it effective? Related to that, who should receive the ordinances? Is it faith alone? Is it being born into a Christian family? Is it being born into a non-Christian parents, but their parents were Christian, like how far back of the generation do you have to go if you're going to follow that reasoning? Is the rule for who receives it different for baptism and Lord's Supper? Is it baby, baby, believer, believer, baby, believer? What do they accomplish? Is it saving grace? Is it affirmation of salvation? Similar to that first question, but kind of a more practical way of asking it. How does the triune God relate to them? Is Christ present and how? Right, so this would be transubstantiation, consubstantiation, mysterious union. How is Christ present in the ordinances? And then what role do the ordinances play in a regular worship service? Such as how often should they be observed? What role should they play? How central should it be? How do they relate to the other elements? Here's some significant questions related to all those. What is new about the new covenant? How you answer that has a significant impact on what you're going to say these ordinances are and how they function. And that will also have a significant impact to this other question, what is the church? Is a church a new kind of people than the people of Israel? I want to close with this. The most significant doctrine that I would want anyone to ever know and understand is the doctrine of union with Christ. That is the whole sum of what salvation is. When you are united with Christ, his death forgives you. When you're united with Christ, his death frees you from the penalty of sin and the power of sin. When you're united with Christ, his resurrection gives you new life to walk in a new way according to his Holy Spirit. When you're united with Christ, you're adopted into a whole new family in the love of God. Baptism and Lord's Supper are the way that we celebrate regularly, as a church, our union with Christ. We are baptized in the name of Christ, having been united with Christ. That sign is significant as a celebration. When somebody new is professing faith in Christ because they've been newly saved, newly united with Christ, they are then given the visible sign of being united with Christ. Because they're united with Christ. You're being baptized in the name of Christ because you're united with Christ. Union with Christ is what connects you to the universal church, God's people. Baptism is how the local visible church identifies that you are united with Him and united with them. The Lord's Supper is the regular way in which we remember Christ came to free us, to save us, to forgive us, to give us new life. Again, baptism is the first way in which you are brought into the local visible body because you're Christ, being baptized in His name, and the Lord's Supper is the way we regularly rejoice in that union together. If there's anything I hope you take away from the lessons is simply that in baptism, Lord's Supper, we are rejoicing together that Christ has come to die and rise again so that we can be united with him for salvation. Will you pray with me? Father, we thank you for your word that you have given us all that we need for life and godliness in your scriptures. We do thank you that we can look to tradition and we can look to those who have gone before us and we can learn from them on how to understand your word and practice it. I pray that we most of all here as a church would be united in the way we rejoice when someone is baptized and we're bringing them into our visible body because of what you've already done in them. that we know how to rejoice greatly in the Lord's Supper as we are united together in our union with Christ. In his name we pray, amen.