Sermon Notes for Third Sunday after Pentecost: Sacraments, Part One

Signed, Sealed, and Delivered
1 Corinthians 10:1-4, 14-22
Third Sunday after Pentecost
June 21, 2009

I. This is Impossible!
A. The Limits of Language
B. The Troubling History of the Mysteries
C. The Lack of Consensus in Reformed Circles
D. Modern Evangelical Theology that Separates Christ from his Graces
E. The Spirit of our Times
· Drive Through and Lecture Hall/Lab
· Hatred of Ritual and Tradition

II. This is Important!
A. This is how Christ is Given to Us – 1 Corinthians 10:2-4
1. We must rid ourselves of the notion that we have the gifts of Christ Jesus without the Giver of the Gifts
· “Means of Grace”: OK, so long as we don’t think of grace as a ‘thing’ we get as opposed to Christ himself. The sacraments are ‘means of the Spirit’ giving us Christ himself, and all of his benefits.
· We have Him through the agency of the Spirit
- WSC Q. 92. What is a sacrament?A. A sacrament is a holy ordinance instituted by Christ; wherein, by sensible signs, Christ, and the benefits of the new covenant, are represented, sealed, and applied to believers.


B. This is how the Church Makes Disciples, Identifies her Members, and Nourishes them in the Faith: Matthew 28:18-20; 1 Corinthians 10:16-17
· WLC Q. 162. What is a sacrament? A. A sacrament is an holy ordinance instituted by Christ in his church, to signify, seal, and exhibit unto those that are within the covenant of grace, the benefits of his mediation; to strengthen and increase their faith, and all other graces; to oblige them to obedience; to testify and cherish their love and communion one with another; and to distinguish them from those that are without.
· Muslims believe in the Sacraments more than many Christians!
· Always Connected to the Ministry of the Word
- Separation reduces the sacraments to ‘superstition’ or the word to pure rational proposition
- Their union provides the regular means by which God saves his people from their sins and for his purposes.



C. This is how We Strengthen our Faith: Signs and Seals
1. Internal and External
· WLC Q. 163. What are the parts of a sacrament? A. The parts of the sacrament are two; the one an outward and sensible sign, used according to Christ’s own appointment; the other an inward and spiritual grace thereby signified.
2. Never Naked Signs (some modern views of ‘symbols’)
· Musterion à Sacramentum
· There is, in every sacrament, a spiritual relation, or sacramental union, between the sign and the thing signified: whence it comes to pass, that the names and effects of the one are attributed to the other. - WCF 27.2

III. This is Instituted by Christ
A. Christ Commands Baptism and the Supper/Eucharist
B. The Apostles Insist on These and ‘Traditioned’ them to the Church – 1 Corinthians 11:2, 23
1. Rite of Initiation: into Christ and his Church
2. Rite of Commemoration and Communion: into the Heavens
· Anamnesis – making the past present in such a way that the historical reality is now our reality


IV. This is How He Comes to Us - The Holy Spirit
A. Real Absence
1. The Ascension is Real: Jesus has Bodily departed and will not be here bodily until he comes again at the end of history
· John 14:3; 16:5-15; Luke 24:50-52; Acts 1:9-11

2. The One who is truly God and truly Man – natures joined, but not confused

B. Real Presence
1. Pentecost is Real: Jesus has Poured out the Holy Spirit on the Church to make him present with us to the end of the age
· John 14:15-18; Matthew 28:18-20; Acts 2:1-4, 30-36
2. The God-Man is Bodily at the Father’s right hand, and is with us through the Presence and Power of the Spirit.

- WLC Q. 161. How do the sacraments become effectual means of salvation?
A. The sacraments become effectual means of salvation, not by any power in themselves, or any virtue derived from the piety or intention of him by whom they are administered, but only by the working of the Holy Ghost, and the blessing of Christ, by whom they are instituted.

C. So…
· If we are to receive him here, the Spirit must be the One who unites us to him in Baptism (and so we are born of water and the Spirit, the One who was ‘hovering over the waters’!), the same Holy Spirit who opens our hearts and minds to the Scriptures causing us to be born again to a living hope through the incorruptible seed of the word of God.
· If we are to eat his flesh and drink his blood (and remember his body is in heaven!) then the Spirit is the One by whom we must ascend into his presence and there receive by faith Christ and all his benefits offered to us in the Supper.

Lets finish with a quotation from Chapter 21 of the Scottish Confession of Faith, written under the valiant ministry of John Knox, taught of Calvin, pre-dating Westminster by some 80 years.

“And thus we utterly damn the vanity of those that affirm sacraments to be nothing else but naked and bare signs. No, we assuredly believe that by baptism we are engrafted in Christ Jesus, to be made partakers of his justice, by the which our sins are covered and remitted; and also, that in the supper, rightly used, Christ Jesus is so joined with us, that he becomes the very nourishment and food of our souls. Not that we imagine any transubstantiation of bread into Christ's natural body, and of wine in his natural blood… but this union and conjunction which we have with the body and blood of Christ Jesus, in the right use of the sacraments, is wrought by operation of the Holy Ghost, who by true faith carries us above all things that are visible, carnal, and earthly, and makes us to feed upon the body and blood of Christ Jesus, which was once broken and shed for us, which now is in heaven, and appears in the presence of his Father for us. And yet, notwithstanding the far distance of place which is betwixt his body now glorified in the heaven, and us now mortal in this earth, yet we most assuredly believe that the bread that we break is the communion of Christ's body, and the cup which we bless is the communion of his blood. So that we confess, and undoubtedly believe, that the faithful, in the right use of the Lord's table, do so eat the body and drink the blood of the Lord Jesus, that he remains in them and they in him: yea, that they are so made flesh of his flesh, and bone of his bone…”

Brothers and Sisters, either we believe the Holy Spirit is working according to his will in the Sacraments or we do not. Those who did not tended to the negligence of their ministry or the negation of their gracious effects. We must say ‘No’ to this trend and embrace afresh the mystery of grace – the sacramentum of Christ - through the power of the Spirit and the Word.