The Two Ordinances (Sips & Dips)

Necessary Obedience

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If you were to walk back in time and shuffle your catalogue of thoughts, which files would you pull to remind yourself of the finest counsel you’d ever been given? Would it come from a parent? Perhaps a teacher or professor? Coaches and mentors are often the fine repositories for learning… where would you turn? To whose influence would you most likely listen in the moment where a decisive position had to be taken?

When faced with a crucial decision, it may be that you aren’t looking for the most perceptive decision as much as you are the most certain decision. Decisiveness is the comfort that you and I seek. Many times, those influential figures from our past have just the right course of action to help us gain comfort, by making a decision. They know how to couch or decision in terms of the past and in the vernacular of the present. Their advice is both ancient… and applicable.

Intro 2 Option...

In 1998, a group of young men sat in their locker room in Hurricane West Virginia - The “Running Redskins” and received a rousing speech from their coach before taking to the court to content with their arch rivals… The “Winfield Generals.”

In that speech, Coach Skip Cremeans informed each player among the starting 5 that their counterpart opponent was able to out-skill them. Pound-for-pound, they were better rebounders, better ball-handlers, faster, able to jump higher, and had put up more points on average than any team in the county and most teams in the state. After an otherwise riveting warm-up… the team was now hit on the nose with a crushing emotional and physical blow. They. Were. NOT. As good as their opponents…

What happened next?

It wouldn’t be a good story if I just said, “They lost!”

But, it’s an incredible account to tell when I share how it unfolded.

The last thing Coach Cremeans told his Running Redskins was this… “Boys… those guys are better than you. One-on-one. But team vs. team, they can’t hold a candle to you. Play our game, play the way we’ve practiced, run the ball and keep down turn-overs, play. as. a. team! And you’ll win tonight.

3 overtimes.

Highest scorers - predictable.

Best rebounders - as predicted.

Winning shot?… By the least likely to score from the least likely to assist… But it was executed because our coach commanded it!

And that brings us full circle.

Baptism and Communion

Our covenant comes to a powerful climax with these words,

“… and observing the ordinances (Baptism and the Lord’s Supper), knowing our labor in the Lord shall not be in vain.”

Paragraph 5 - SCBC Covenant

You see, an ordinance is a command. Our covenant has lead us to the point where we have explained who God is as revealed in the Scriptures, it has

Today, we will address these two “ordinances” - baptism and communion (or the Lord’s Supper) - in that order. In part, it is because, we believe that it is belief which preceeds baptism, and believers who have shared publicly that they are in fact joining Christ and his people at the table He has prepared for those people.

Let’s also begin with two ideas in mind:

Why do we call these memorials “ordinances”? Aren’t words such as “sacrament” fitting?

Secondly, there is Scriptural evidence for linking these practices historically and theologically.

Let’s first read Matthew 3:13-17

Matthew 3:13–17 ESV

13 Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John, to be baptized by him. 14 John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” 15 But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he consented. 16 And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him; 17 and behold, a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”

The Scriptures, we declare, to be the commands of God, for the people of God, to faithfully follow God. In this particularly passage, it is evident that Christ himself believed in the act of baptism to identify himself with a greater mission. “I need to be baptized” signifies that what Jesus is doing was what was both right and fitting. Jesus did not approach baptism as an option, as something to pursue if he so desired, or as something to accept if others were in support of it… he spoke of it as a “need.”

Christ actions, therein left us with an important example to follow. He knew what must be done to fulfill all righteousness and so he acted to fulfill all righteousness. In like manner, we are accredited as having taken part in death and burial and resurrection to new life by being baptized. We now are buried and raised! Therefore, we have a new identity.

Romans 6:3–4 “3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” As well as Colossians 2:12 “12 having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead.”

Christ recognized baptism as something that “need” be done to enact all righteousness. We, in faithfulness to the one who has given us a new identity, are to follow his example because he recognized it as a command to be obeyed; not as an option to be delayed…

Working in children’s ministry, you may have sat with me as I spoke to your child about baptism. One of the topics we cover in those conversations is “Why” we encourage baptism. The simple saying I give to kids is that Jesus led by example and obeyed in being baptized. Then he commanded that we go and do likewise!

Matthew 28:18–20 ESV

18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”