Word of Salvation – Vol. 30 No. 19 – May 1985
Why The Sacraments?
Sermon by Rev. S. Voorwinde on Romans 4:11a
(cf. Belg. Conf. Art. 33)
Scriptures: Genesis 17: 9-14; 2Cor.1:18-22; Rom.4:1-12
Suggested Hymns: P.H. 217; 25:1,2,8,9; 136:1,6,7; BoW 805:1,2,3; 491
Congregation of our Lord,
Have you ever wondered why the Lord took the trouble to give the sacraments to His Church? Has it ever crossed your mind why at all Jesus instituted Holy Baptism and the Lord’s Supper? As we look around the Christian Church in the world today, then nothing seems to divide Christians more than this matter of the sacraments. With so much diversity in belief and practice in the various churches, you might be tempted to agree with William Booth the founder of the Salvation Army. He did away with the sacraments altogether because they had caused too much unnecessary strife in the church already. Baptism, he said, was not with water but with the Spirit; and every time believers eat together they should think of Jesus who died for them. Well, we may sympathise with the Salvation Army on this point and respect them for many others, but you can’t take this easy way out because it ignores the clear command of Christ.
Christ gave us the sacraments and told us to make use of them. So His reasons must have been very compelling. Even though so much controversy, sadly, surrounds the sacraments they have a part in God’s redemptive plan, and so there must be good reasons for them. So why then did God give the sacraments? In His wisdom He did institute them even though He could no doubt foresee all the difficulty and controversy that would surround them in the ages to come. If that is so, they must serve a very good purpose. Obviously God thought it better for us to have them than not to have them; but why? Why the sacraments? In answering these questions let me do it under three headings:
1. A definition of the sacraments.
2. The sacraments as signs and seals.
3. Some matters of practical application.
So let’s begin with a definition. How would you define the sacraments of Lord’s supper and Baptism? If you were writing a dictionary of Christian terms what would you put under the entry of “sacraments”?
To put it very simply, the sacraments are visual aids to the preaching of the Word. In the teaching ministry of the Church the Holy Spirit uses two aids, the one audio and the other visual. He uses sermons and sacraments. The very promises of God that come to us audibly in His Word, appear to us visibly in the sacraments. It’s as though God wants to enter our hearts by two gates: the ear-gate and the eye-gate. He shows us in the sacraments what He tells us in His Word. And those of you who are school-teachers do this kind of thing all the time. You teach the children a lesson and then you illustrate it by a picture or a drawing on the blackboard. In a sense that illustration adds nothing new, but it simply presents to the eye what you have already presented to the ear – and it’s your intention that with these two together your lesson will penetrate the mind.
But now let’s take this thought a step further. You may have a lesson without visual aids and it will still make sense, you will still be able to teach. It may not be as effective, but the chances are your students will still get the basic message of what you’re trying to get across. But now let’s imagine a situation where as a teacher you have only visual aids but you say nothing. All you do is hold up pictures and do drawings on the blackboard. You write nothing and you say nothing. Obviously such an exercise would not only be meaningless, it would be quite ridiculous. A visual aid cannot stand alone. Without the spoken or written word it makes no sense at all.
And the same is true of the sacraments. They make no sense without the Word. The Word is primary, the sacraments are secondary. God’s Word can stand alone, but not the sacraments. The sacraments depend on the Word for their meaning. When the Word is forgotten the sacraments become either empty symbols or magical rites.
The sacraments then very simply are visual aids to the preaching of the Word. They illustrate its central message. In our Catechism and Confession a different expression is used but the basic meaning if still the same:
Question 66 of the Heidelberg Catechism asks: “What are sacraments?” And the answer is: “Sacraments are holy signs and seals for us to see.”
Likewise in the Belgic Confession, article 33 puts it like this: “They are visible signs and seals of an inward and invisible thing, by means of which God works in us by the power of the Holy Spirit.”
So what I have been calling “visual aids” the Confession and Catechism call “signs and seals.” When they use that expression they are borrowing the language of our text in Romans 4:11 where it says that Abraham “received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised.” I’m convinced that the writers must have had this verse in mind because it is the only text in the whole of Scripture that speaks in one breath of “sign” and “seal”. But this is not a verse about the Lord’s Supper or about Holy Baptism, it is a verse about circumcision.
So were the authors of the Confession and the Catechism justified in taking an expression that Scripture applied to circumcision instead applying it to Lord’s Supper and Holy Baptism? Were they going beyond Scripture or were they simply making a logical deduction?
To answer this question we must first ask what circumcision was a sign and a seal of. In our text it says that circumcision was a seal of the righteousness that Abraham had by faith; and in Genesis 17:11 it says that circumcision is a sign of the covenant between God and Abraham.
So what is circumcision?
(i) It is a sign of the covenant.
(ii) It is a seal of justification by faith.
And now let’s ask ourselves some further questions:
(i) Is Holy Baptism a sign of the covenant?
(ii) Is Holy Baptism a seal of justification by faith?
(iii) Is the Lord’s Supper a sign of the covenant?
(iv) Is the Lord’s Supper a seal of justification by faith?
You get full marks if you answer all four questions in the affirmative. Each of these questions deserves a resounding “yes!” And therefore the sacraments of Lord’s Supper and of Baptism in the New Testament are just as much signs and seals as circumcision was in the Old. They are visible reminders that we have a covenant with God and that we are justified by faith.
And in that sense both Holy Baptism and the Lord’s Supper point us directly back to the cross of Christ. How can we have a covenant with God? Only because of Jesus’ shed blood on the cross. How can we be justified by faith? Again it is only because of Christ’s death at Calvary.
The Old Testament sacraments of circumcision and the Passover each involved blood-letting in different ways and they pointed forward to the bloodshed that would take place at Calvary. Once Christ had shed His blood it was enough and the bloody sacraments of the Old Testament have been replaced by the bloodless sacraments of the New. Just as circumcision and the Passover pointed forward, now Baptism and the Lord’s Supper point back to the crucifixion of Christ.
The bread reminds us of His broken body and the wine of His shed blood; and the water of Baptism reminds us that just as water washes our bodies so the blood of Christ cleanses our souls. The sacraments are signs pointing us back to Calvary. They are also seals, pledging that what was done there was done for us personally. As the Catechism says: “Through the sacraments the Holy Spirit assures us that our entire salvation rests on Christ’s one sacrifice for us on the cross.” (Q&A.67). So far then we have the overall picture of the sacraments as visual aids, as signs and seals.
Now let’s go a little more deeply into this matter of signs and seals.
Obviously we all know what signs are. They don’t exist for their own sake, they point to something beyond themselves. We all need road signs in order to know how to get to places, how far it is and how long it takes. For someone travelling in our area these signs are a great help. They point them in the right direction and help them to their destination.
And in the Bible we often read of signs which are there to help God’s people and point them in the right direction. Miracles are often called signs. They are not ends in themselves but they are pointers to who Jesus really is. There was the sign of Jonah that pointed to the resurrection, and there are the signs of the end which point to the Second Coming. And in this sense the sacraments are signs. They point to the cross. They are outward signs of an inward reality: the covenant that we have with God and our justification by faith.
Then, the sacraments are also seals, and that is slightly more complicated. The seal has a double application – it can be applied to documents and it can also be applied to people. If you have a document that is very official, whether it be a royal decree or a will or sometimes even a passport, you will often find that such a document is embossed with a seal. Such a seal is like a signature only far more official. It’s a real stamp of authority. It carries a lot of weight.
This is how John Calvin explains the use of a seal: “The seals which are attached to government documents and other public acts are nothing taken by themselves, for they would be attached in vain if the parchment had nothing written on it. Yet, when added to the writing, they confirm and seal what is written.” (Institutes, p.1280).
Now do you see the point of the illustration? The government document, the royal decree, in this case is the Gospel or the Word of God. And the seal is the sacrament, It doesn’t give any new information, but it confirms and authenticates what is written. The sacraments are God’s seal on the promises of the Gospel. Baptism is a seal. The Lord’s Supper is a seal. It’s as though God swears that He will stand by His Word.
But then, in the Bible we find not only that documents are sealed but people are sealed as well. In the Book of Revelation the servants of God are sealed on their foreheads and in the epistles it says three times that we have been sealed with the Holy Spirit. Where the sacraments are outward seals, the Holy Spirit is God’s seal in our hearts.
And what might this mean, when a seal if placed on people? Well, seals were used for various purposes in the ancient world. A seal could be used as a mark of ownership or workmanship. A potter would put his particular seal on the vessels or clay tablets he had made. Masters would use seals on branding irons to mark their slaves and their animals. So the seal was a mark of workmanship or ownership.
So when God’s people are sealed it means that He owns them; He has authority over them; they are His workmanship. He is the Potter and they are the clay. He is the Master and they are His servants. And it is in this way that God has sealed us as His people with the Holy Spirit inwardly and with the sacraments outwardly. He is our God and we are His people.
So the sacraments are seals – seals on the promises of God and seals on the people of God. They remind us that His promises are true and that His people are His people.
And now we come to the third point in the sermon where I promised to give you some practical application. There’s been some of that already but I would like this last part to be intensely practical.
By now one point must have become absolutely clear and that is that the sacraments are gifts of God. It is God who takes the initiative. Of course there is the matter of our obedience. We baptise because we want to be obedient to God. We celebrate the Lord’s Supper because we want to obey Christ who asked us to do it in remembrance of Him. But the accent should not fall on our obedience, but on God’s initiative. When Abraham was circumcised he was 99 years old. It was a tremendous act of obedience. But the emphasis should still be on God’s promise: “I will be a God to you and to your descendants after you.” And God said this when Isaac hadn’t even been born.
Yes, in Holy Baptism and the Lord’s Supper we are obeying Christ’s command. For some Christians, for example in Muslim countries, this has been a very costly obedience. But what we focus on here is not on what we do but on what God does. The sacraments are His gifts. They point us to the righteousness He has given and to the covenant He has made. The sacraments are not mainly what you do as a congregation or what I do as a minister, but it is what God does for His people. They are His gifts – signs and seals.
Now, some may ask: “What about all the people around us who have been baptized, and yet make no attempt at living the Christian life? And what about all those who have celebrated the Lord’s Supper for a time and have then fallen away? Doesn’t all this make these sacraments a bit of a farce? Doesn’t it rob them of their value for me too? How can the sacraments be signs and seals in cases like this?”
Once again let me use the illustration of the wedding ring. When your husband gave you your wedding ring he gave it as a token and pledge of his faithfulness and love. When your wife gave you your ring she also pledged her faithfulness and love. And because that is so, you each treasure your ring. You treasure that ring even though there are thousands of couples who have rings but to whom it means nothing at all. The fact that thousands have discarded their rings doesn’t make your ring any less valuable to you.
And so it is with the sacraments. Multitudes of people may treat them lightly, but not you. For you they are precious reminders that you belong to God.
To use the illustration further: When a woman receives a ring from a man, then it’s still only from a human being who could prove faithless. When we receive the sacraments it’s from a God who is faithful. He will not break the covenant. When the covenant is broken it is not God who breaks it. You see, a ring is only as good as the person who gives it. A sacrament too is only as good as the person who gives it. But seeing that it is God who gives the sacrament then surely this is to be a source of great confidence for us:
“Lord at the moment You seem far away, but I have been baptised and in good conscience I can still take part in the Supper; so I know I am still Yours. I receive these gifts and I want to be your child. Thank you, Lord Jesus.”
Again the question may be asked: “Are the sacraments really necessary? Isn’t it sufficient just to have faith?” For salvation you need only faith and not the sacraments, just like for a wedding you can do without a ring, but not without a bride. But if the groom has a ring for his bride, then wouldn’t it be foolish of her to refuse it? You could hardly imagine that, could you? If God gives us the sacraments as signs and seals of His love for us, then wouldn’t we be foolish to refuse these gifts? You don’t have to force a bride to accept a ring, and likewise a Christian will willingly and thankfully accept the sacraments.
God in His wisdom has given us the sacraments. He knows that we need these visible reminders of His love. Sometimes His people have misunderstood His gifts.
Sometimes these gifts have been discarded; sometimes they have been neglected. But God continues to give. He who gave His Son will continue to give His sacraments that remind us of His Son’s cross. His Son was despised and rejected, but He still gave. His sacraments are often despised and rejected too, but He keeps on giving.
What a great God we have! We misuse and neglect His gifts, but still He gives. Our God is the great Giver, as well as the great Lover.
Amen.