The Sacraments

Thank you for reading this sermon from Christ Fellowship. I hope and pray that this sermon will be a blessing of grace and truth to you. With that said, let me encourage you not to use this sermon as a replacement for your local church. Christ Jesus did not establish his Church simply for us to consume content. Instead, He calls us to be part of a real, covenant family.

This morning, we’re going to talk about two special elements of worship called the sacraments. The word sacrament is not in the Bible.  

It was borrowed from the Roman military. When a soldier joined the Roman army, they took oaths to serve the emperor and the Roman state. Those oaths were known as sacraments. 

Christians adopted the word in the third century to explain the significance of baptism and the Lord’s Supper in a way the Romans could understand. They were devoting their lives to Christ and His service. 

But there’s much more to it than that. The sacraments are less about what we are promising God and more about what God is promising us, and what He is providing. I’m going to put a definition up on the screen for us. 

A sacrament is a holy ordinance instituted by Christ, in which, by sensible signs (that’s something you can see, touch, taste, feel, and hear, by these signs…) Christ and the benefits of the new covenant are represented, sealed, and applied to believers. 

In other words, a sacrament is something physical that signifies something spiritual. But it’s also something more than just a visual aid. 

Think of it like a wedding ring. My wedding ring signifies that I’m married. Every time I look at this ring, I am reminded that I am loved. I am claimed. I am bound to my wife by a covenant. It also lets other people know I’m married. 

Putting on a ring doesn’t make someone magically married to another person, just as the sacraments don’t make someone automatically a Christian.  

But if I stopped wearing this ring, that would be a problem. I don’t treat it as optional or meaningless because of what it signifies. In the same way, God gave us signs of His covenant grace. We don’t treat them as empty symbols.  

Just as a wedding ring doesn’t make you married but visibly seals and reminds you of the vows you made, so the sacraments don’t create new grace but visibly seal and remind us of the promises Christ has already given us in the gospel. 

In the church, we have two of these signs: baptism and the Lord’s Supper. 

Baptism was instituted by Jesus at the Great Commission, when he commanded us to make disciples and to baptize them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 

The Lord’s Supper was instituted by Jesus on the night before the cross.  

God uses these two sacraments to help us draw near to Him. He created us body and soul, and He ministers to us in a wholistic way – through both the spoken Word and visible signs. 

The sacraments do not create faith where there is no faith, but they nourish and strengthen the faith of believers. 

We include them in worship for that reason, and because corporate worship itself is a form of covenant renewal. Every Sunday, we are rehearsing God’s promises to us.  

Sacraments are also a means of grace. They are not magic and they do not work automatically, but God has promised to use them, together with the Word and by the Spirit, as means of grace. 

The sacraments do not manufacture a new batch of grace every time we use them; instead, the Spirit applies to us and confirms the same grace of the gospel again and again. 

Baptism happens to us once, but every time we witness a baptism we are reminded of God’s grace to us. 

The Lord’s Supper is a regular opportunity for us to experience ongoing covenant fellowship with Christ and with each other. 

That was all an introduction. Our primary text this morning is 1 Corinthians 10, beginning in verse 1: 

1 For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea,  

2 and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea,  

3 and all ate the same spiritual food,  

4 and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ.  

Notice that the Apostle Paul is establishing continuity between New Testament believers and Old Testament Israel. He specifically references baptism and a covenant meal. As the people of God, they were living under covenant signs just as we are. 

5 Nevertheless, with most of them God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness. 

6 Now these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did. 

This is tough language. Paul says that the Israelites shared the same baptism and spiritual food and drink, but most of them still fell under God’s judgment because of their unbelief and idolatry. 

Paul’s point here is not that Christ or His sacraments are unreliable. But participating in the sacraments does not guarantee perseverance or saving faith. 

The Corinthians were tempted to assume that they were OK with God simply because they were participating in the sacraments. But Paul is warning them that idolatry is still dangerous.  

Wearing a wedding ring doesn’t make me immune to infidelity, but it should give me pause. And that’s exactly the point Paul goes on to make. 

16 The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?  

17 Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread. 

The sacraments point us to the deep, spiritual reality that we are united to Christ and to His people in a way that should encourage us in our faith and challenge us to resist temptation. 

Just as the Corinthians were flirting with pagan forms of worship, so we, too, can begin to treat the Lord’s Table and our baptism as a kind of spiritual safety net while our hearts drift toward the idols of our own age.  

The sacraments then become as a gracious wakeup call: the same Christ who feeds and assures us at His Table is the Christ who calls us to flee idolatry, to breakup with our old gods, and to live as those who truly belong to Him. 

When we come to the water and to the Table, we are not just going through religious rituals; we are renewing our vows, declaring with our bodies that we want no fellowship with the darkness that once enslaved us. 

Every time we see the water, handle the bread, and drink the cup, we should hear both comfort and summons: You belong to me, Christ says. You do not belong to this world. 

Now, I want to say a few things about how we do the sacraments here at Christ Fellowship. 

First, when we have a baptism, we do it as part of the worship service. It is the God-ordained way for new believers to profess their faith publicly and for their families to be marked as disciples of Christ. 

It marks our entrance into the covenant community of the church. It also serves as a living picture of the Gospel by portraying our union with Christ in His death and resurrection, cleansing, and new life. 

Normally, we sprinkle the recipient with water because, in Scripture, God so often sprinkles and pours water and blood on his people to cleanse them, claim them, and bring them near—and that is exactly what baptism is meant to show. 

We also recognize that many in our church have different convictions about baptism. Some of you believe that children should not be baptized. Some of you prefer immersion to sprinkling.  

We will not bind your conscience on those matters. You are welcome here. If you prefer immersion, we can arrange that as a public extension of worship. We don’t want to divide as a church over these issues, as long as you’re not going to judge us for our convictions on the matter. 

Now, let’s talk about the Lord’s Supper. We have the Lord’s Supper on the first Sunday of every month, and it happens immediately after the preaching of the Word. 

The first thing we do is pray. I’m not blessing it or consecrating it. Instead, the prayer is meant to prepare our hearts for the Table and to ask God to make it a means of grace for us. Again, it’s not a new form of grace. There’s nothing magical about it. 

After the prayer, I will usually explain who should come to the Table and who should not, because there’s a warning about this in 1 Corinthians 11: 

27 Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord.  

28 Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup.  

29 For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. 

This limits the Table in three ways. It discourages unbelievers from coming to the Table, because outside of Christ they aren’t welcome. It prevents young children from coming until they are old enough to discern the Table’s meaning.  

And it also discourages believers from coming to the Table if they aren’t coming with humility and honesty. None of us is worthy to come to the Lord’s Table, but we are instructed to come ready to confess our sin, to seek reconciliation, and to trust in Christ. 

In other words, the Table means something and we don’t come to it flippantly. We examine ourselves. We come to it the same way we receive Christ – in repentance and faith. 

As the pastor, I serve the meal from behind the Table. I don’t stand between God and the congregation – only Christ can do that. I also eat and drink it with you because we are the same. 

All of this is important. We don’t want to get creative with the sacraments, nor do we want to be superstitious about them. Without faith and the power of the Holy Spirit, they are empty rituals. 

But when the local church uses them correctly, God promises to use them for our good and for His glory. 

Because our memories leak and our faith is often weak, Jesus doesn’t just tell us the gospel—he shows it to us in water, bread, and cup, so that we keep remembering, trusting, and drawing near to Him by faith. 

Imagine a soldier deployed far from home. 

In his pocket, he has a letter from his wife and kids, and a worn photograph taken on the day he left. The letter tells him, in words, “We love you. We’re waiting for you. Don’t give up.” The photograph shows the same reality in a different way: there they are, waiting for me. 

These things will mean the most to him on the worst days. Memories of hugs, the smell of home, and the sound of their voices.  

They don’t magically remove him from war. But they make his family’s love feel present to his heart in that dark place, and that remembrance strengthens him to keep going. 

The sacraments work like that. The gospel is proclaimed in words—God’s “letter” to us in Scripture and preaching. But Jesus, knowing how fear and sin and pain make the words blur, also gives us pictures we can hold: water on the head, bread in the hand, wine on the tongue.  

The sacraments are like Christ pressing a picture of his own pierced hands into ours and saying, “This is for you. Remember me. I am not going anywhere.”  

And that visible, tangible remembering is often exactly what keeps a weak believer from laying down their arms and walking away.