Word of Salvation – March 2025
Sacramental Religion
Sermon by Rev. John Westendorp on W.C.F. ch.27 & 1Cor.10:1-5
Reading: 1Corinthian 10:1-17; Westminster Confession of Faith – ch.27
Singing: BoW.480 Christ is made the sure foundation
– BoW.393 I am the way
– BoW.023a The Lord my Shepherd rules my life
– BoW.089a My song forever shall record [1-4,12]
Theme: Christianity is a sacramental religion in which God confirms the gospel to believers thru sacraments.
Introd: The Christian faith is not exclusively spiritual or other worldly… it takes what is created seriously.
Let me explain what I mean by telling you a little about Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy.
Mrs Eddy was the founder of a group who call themselves Christians.
But they don’t take seriously this physical world that God made.
In her book “Science and Health” she denies that matter exists (page 278).
Of course, if that’s true, then we cannot have physical bodies either.
And that is exactly what she taught (page 475).
The religion that Mrs Eddy founded is called Christian Science.
But as someone has said: Christian Science is neither Christian nor Science.
Their problem is that it’s extremely difficult to live in a physical world while denying the physical.
In Geelong the Christian Science Church is next to the Reformed Presbyterian Church.
A storm once blew over the fence between the two churches.
So a Christian Science elder came to ask the RPs to go halves in fixing the fence.
Their Minister replied: “What fence? There’s no fence there. Fences don’t exist.”
In contrast Biblical faith takes created reality seriously and it takes our physical bodies seriously.
We see that right through the Bible from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22.
But we see it especially too in the sacraments.
The Lord ordained for our use the water of baptism.
So we experience that water of baptism with our physical bodies.
The Lord ordained for our use the bread and the wine of the Lord’s Supper.
So we taste those elements with our physical mouths.
Christianity is a sacramental religion… a religion that is not exclusively spiritual and other worldly.
Instead – also thru the sacraments – it takes seriously this physical creation and our physical bodies.
A] SACRAMENTS AS HOLY SIGNS AND SEALS.
- Of course you won’t find the word ‘sacrament’ in your Bible.
It’s just a handy word to sum up the two rituals Jesus instituted for His church.
We use that word ‘sacrament’ to refer to both Holy Baptism and the Lord’s Supper.
The W.C.F. calls those sacraments holy signs and seals.
We’re all familiar with signs.
A road sign is not the reality… but it points us to the reality.
However there is a very close connection between the sign and the reality.
In the words of the WCF: there is a certain link between a sign and the thing signified.
So too the physical ritual of the sacrament links us with the spiritual reality.
The water of your baptism links you to the washing away of sin through Jesus.
We are also familiar with seals.
The sealing of an envelope assures you that the contents won’t be tampered with.
The seal on your electricity meter assures you that the reading is correct.
Similarly the physical ritual of the sacrament reassures you about the spiritual reality.
So as you eat bread and drink wine at Lord’s Supper, it reassures you about the gospel.
These sacraments belong within “the covenant of grace” and are God’s picture language of the gospel.
These sacraments visibly “represent Christ” to us.
- Our Reformed Confessions are very careful when they speak about the sacraments.
There was a lot of unbiblical thinking about the sacraments at the time the Confessions were written.
And there still is.
Some people talk about the sacraments as if they actually change something inside you.
For example, there’s the idea that at Baptism the seed of faith is planted in your heart.
And that later – if the conditions are right – that seed of faith will germinate and grow.
Or there’s the idea that at your baptism your original sin was washed away.
The sin we share with our first parents, Adam and Eve… our corporate guilt with them.
Some Christians teach that this is removed in our baptism.
Over against that we prefer to speak of the confirming nature of these sacramental signs and seals.
Sacraments don’t create faith but, in the words of the WCF “they confirm our interest in Christ”.
IOW God uses them to help you to grow in your faith.
That’s why we call them a “means of grace”.
If that’s true then the Sacraments are not an optional extra that we can take or leave.
You and I are obligated to their use.
So we don’t stall with baptisms… and we don’t deliberately skip Lord’s Supper.
I’ve argued out the importance of the sacraments at times with my Salvation Army friends.
They don’t have sacraments.
William Booth didn’t want to have Lord’s Supper because of the risk to alcoholics.
And he found that baptism caused division in the church so he ditched it.
But they do have a way of getting around that.
They argue that every meal is a reminder to feed on Christ by faith.
And every time you wash you are reminded of Jesus washing away your sin.
My problem is that Jesus commands us to do these things that He has instituted.
And we participate in them in order for our faith to grow stronger.
- The W.C.F. also makes another valid point about the sacraments.
The sacraments set you apart from the rest of the world.
Your unbelieving neighbours do not practice Holy Baptism.
(Or… if in some rare instance they do… then they do it out of superstition).
Your non-Christian workmates do not receive Lord’s Supper.
(Or… if in some rare instance they do… then they eat and drink judgment on themselves.)
The sacraments mark off a visible difference between the church and rest of the world.
IOW they set us apart as belonging to the Lord.
That becomes very obvious in 1Corinthians 10.
Paul mentions there two things that are a kind of foreshadowing of the sacraments.
The people of Israel were all baptised into Moses in the cloud and in the sea.
They all ate of the spiritual food… the manna, and drank from the spiritual rock.
Like sacraments those physical realities had a kind of spiritual meaning.
And that set them apart from the Egyptians and from the rest of the world.
Others did not cross through the sea or eat of the manna.
Those people baptised into Moses were God’s covenant people.
Those who ate the manna and drank from the rock were the people God saved.
So we have this lovely idea that our participation in the sacraments sets us apart.
They mark you as being one of God’s very special people who have been saved through Jesus.
B] ESTABLISHED BY THE POWER OF THE WORD.
- Unfortunately the sacraments have often been viewed as if they work in and of themselves.
Some people treat them as if there is some inherent power in baptism and Lord’s Supper.
That was taught by the Roman Catholic Church at the time of the Reformation.
They held that the sacraments communicate grace to someone’s life regardless.
So the idea was that they work whether you participate as a believer or as an unbeliever.
Rome taught that this is always so unless you actively resist the grace of the sacrament.
In that approach the sacraments almost become a kind of magic potion.
And there are still many people who act as if the sacraments work that way.
Nominal church members who think God blesses them simply by them going thru the motions.
For example some folk see (what they call) Christening as a kind of heavenly insurance policy.
In Tasmania we had a man from the country who came into town and said to the pastor:
“My wife had to come into town to get her hair done. And I needed to get the car done.
So we thought that while we were here we’d see you about getting the baby done.”
I worked with a man who routinely went to Mass a couple of times a week.
He gave little evidence of living the Christian life… but he couldn’t miss out on Mass.
And he talked about it as if it would automatically bring him a blessing.
As if by your participation you automatically get your spiritual fix.
The W.C.F. stresses that there is no magical kind of power in the sacraments.
So just going through the motions is not going to do it for you.
Nor are the sacraments effective because of the godliness of the person administering them.
Lord’s Supper doesn’t work for us just because the Pastor is particularly pious and spiritual.
The only effectiveness of the sacraments comes from God’s Spirit working through them.
It is because God has decreed to bless our lives in this way.
Blessing comes only as His Spirit works in the believer’s heart thru these sacraments.
- Here we need to understand the origins of the sacraments.
We have always defined a sacrament as a ritual instituted by Jesus Himself.
And if it wasn’t instituted by Jesus then whatever it is it isn’t a sacrament.
So in support of both Baptism and Lord’s Supper we have words of institution by Jesus.
Scripture has left us some very clear instructions about these things.
In Matthew 28 Jesus sends His disciples out with the Great Commission.
And He tells them to baptise in the name of the Father, the Son and Holy Spirit.
And it is His words of institution that gives Baptism its effectiveness in the life of a believer.
Or think of Jesus at the Passover the night before he died – He instituted the Lord’s Supper.
He takes the bread and the cup and tells them to eat and drink in remembrance of Him.
And those words of institution gives that ritual of Lord’s Supper its effectiveness for us.
So all the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ lies behind the sacraments.
These things are not a human invention… the church didn’t make them up.
That’s why I have a problem with the way the Salvation Army has reinterpreted them.
You cannot say you are obeying Jesus if every washing becomes a baptism.
You cannot claim obedience by trying to make every meal a Lord’s Supper celebration.
I don’t believe we have the liberty to dismiss those church rituals in that way.
- Perhaps we could put it another way.
The sign of the sacrament is closely tied to the spiritual reality to which it points.
That means that there is an implied blessing in each sacrament.
The way that works is like this:
God uses the water of baptism to point us to the washing away of sin by Jesus.
So God is in effect saying:
Just as dirt is washed from your body by water so your sin is washed away by my Son.
God uses bread and wine of the Supper to point us to the nourishment we receive from Christ.
So God is in effect saying:
Just as bread and wine feed and nourish so you are nourished by the death of my Son.
That’s why the WCF says that there are promises of benefits that are inherent in the sacrament.
But the trouble is that those promises implied in the sacraments are to be received in faith.
That’s just the problem in 1Corinthians 10: The people of Israel did not receive the blessings in faith.
In fact, did you notice that there is a huge contrast in 1Corinthians 10?
Five times Paul speaks of something happening to all.
All of them were under that wonderfully miraculous cloud.
All of them passed through the sea to safety.
All of them were the Baptised into Moses.
All of them ate the manna… the supernatural bread.
All of them drank the miraculous supply of water.
All of these privileges were freely available to all the people.
But then comes the crunch: nevertheless…! Nevertheless God was not pleased with most of them.
What a tragedy… five times “all” and then that word “most”.
Most of them never made it to the Promised Land: Their bodies were scattered over the desert.
Why did that happen? They missed out because of unbelief. Because they lacked faith.
There is no blessing in sacraments that are not received in faith.
C] THE ONLY BIBLICALLY VALID SACRAMENTS .
- If we define sacraments as those instituted by Christ Jesus then that also determines their number.
We must have a Biblical warrant for them from the lips of Jesus.
And that’s true only of Baptism and Lords Supper.
Here again the Reformation had a problems with the claims of Rome.
Rome’s mistakenly claimed authority for 5 extra sacraments. Rome also included:
– Marriage… which they still regard as a sacrament.
– Holy orders… that’s being ordained as a Priest or a Nun.
– Penance… that’s when their people confess sin in the confessional.
– The last rites… a ritual for those who are dying.
– And confirmation… or what we call Public Profession of Faith.
Obviously if you are a Roman Catholic you can never have all 7 sacraments.
Because you cannot be in holy orders and be married.
More seriously we need to ask whether these five extra one were instituted by the Lord Jesus Christ.
The only one that comes close is penance.
Because we have the words of Jesus: If you forgive the sins of anyone they are forgiven.
If you retain the sins of any they are retained.
So some people have argued in favour of retaining penance as a sacrament.
Marriage is a creation ordinance… not a sacrament.
And the rest don’t even come close to being rituals instituted by Jesus.
- The WCF also points out that the sacraments belong within the organised church.
The sacraments are not for freelancers.
They have been entrusted to the church as it is governed by its office-bearers.
And if that’s so they should be dispensed only by those ordained to do so.
I have problems with those who baptise outside of the organised church.
And on a few occasions I have come across people who baptise as freelancers.
That’s not how things ought to be – normally. Okay… there are exceptional circumstances.
On the mission field or in some remote setting where there is no church.
Perhaps in those situations we should allow some leeway.
I am also familiar with people who have private Lord’s Supper celebrations.
And again I want to say that this is not how things ought to be – normally.
Again… there are exceptional circumstances.
In concentration camps during the war Christians got together and had Lord’s Supper.
Again it’s an abnormal situation where we want to give some leeway.
But the point is that the sacraments have been given to the church.
Baptism is into Christ… but it is also an initiation into a local church community.
And Lord’s Supper is sharing in Christ… but it is also the fellowship meal of the local church.
When we say that the sacraments may be dispensed only by an ordained minister of the Word
then we are not trying to put those who are ordained above others.
As if we regard them as some new kind of priesthood.
No! We do it only for the sake of orderliness in the church.
And also to recognise the connection of the sacraments to the preached Word.
- Finally… it’s helpful here for us to make important connections back to the O.T.
Our two Sacraments were instituted by Jesus in the N.T.
But both Baptism and the Lord’s Supper had their O.T. precedents.
There are two equivalent sacraments that one finds in the old dispensation.
At this point we have to move beyond 1Corinthians 10.
Baptised in Moses. Eating the heavenly manna and drinking from the rock that followed them.
They were sacramental in nature: Physical realities with a spiritual meaning.
But… they were not the two O.T. sacraments.
They were merely shadows of what was to come.
The corresponding two O.T. sacraments are, of course, circumcision and the Passover.
And that’s not me making the connection… not even the W.C.F. which came up with that.
The N.T. itself makes the connection.
In Col.2:11,12 Paul links circumcision to Christian Baptism.
And he makes clear that baptism has now replaced circumcision.
Because Jesus has shed his blood, the bloody ritual of circumcision is replaced.
At the Last Supper Jesus links the Passover with the Lord’s Supper.
He takes the elements of the Passover and gives them new meaning.
Because He, the Passover Lamb, is about to be slaughtered.
So it’s a wonderful blessing that ours is a sacramental religion. I’m glad I’m not Christian Science.
In the sacraments God stoops to our weakness.
And He uses the material and the physical to encourage our weak faith.
Through those physical signs I am drawn into ever closer fellowship with my Saviour and Lord.
Let’s make sure then that we value the sacraments as a means of God blessing us.
Amen.