God's Teachable Moments

Hebrews 10:19–31 ESV

Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near. For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace? For we know him who said, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge his people.” It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

Scripture Reading: Hebrews 10:19-31

Sermon Title: God’s Teachable Moments

           The next several evening sermons from me are going to be taking us through the Catechism’s treatment of the sacraments that we practice. Tonight we are going to be looking at the big picture of what they are about. Before we go any further I want to invite you to open the Psalter Hymnals to page 889, and we will look at questions and answers 65 and 66.

65Q. It is by faith alone that we share in Christ and all his blessings: where then does that faith come from?

A. The Holy Spirit produces it in our hearts by the preaching of the holy gospel, and confirms it through our use of the holy sacraments. 

66Q. What are sacraments?

A. Sacraments are holy signs and seals for us to see. They were instituted by God so that by our use of them he might make us understand more clearly the promise of the gospel, and might put his seal on that promise.

And this is God’s gospel promise: to forgive our sins and give us eternal life by grace alone because of Christ’s one sacrifice finished on the cross. 

           What we hear in those answers and we will look at more in depth tonight is that the Holy Spirit is confirming faith by the sacraments. The sacraments are things we use and for us to see. They are holy signs and seals—that give clarity to the gospel’s promise. Let’s go to God’s word.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, when I worked in Kentucky, we were encouraged to be on the lookout for teachable moments. Maybe some of you have heard of them before. Those are times when in the middle of an activity or serving others, we noticed something that could provide us with a lesson. In our everyday experiences, we catch glimpses of things that remind or connect with deeper truths. On youth trips, it could be as simple as how we saw a member of our group living out the week’s theme of grace. Other times it was a bit more spiritual: in seeing the way a waterfall pours down into a stream and continues on, we might be given a glimpse of the way the way God pours his Spirit into his people and then continues with them in our lives.

With the Scripture that we read about the promises of our faith and the Catechism’s teachings, the sacraments are really God’s teachable moments for us. They are things that we do, that we participate in. We hear the truth of the gospel in the reading and preaching of the Word by which the Spirit works through to produce faith in us, and then the Spirit works to complement or confirm what we have heard in the sacraments. 

Pastor Craig Barnes writes in his book, Body & Soul, “When I stand in front of the Lord’s table, offering [the congregation] his broken body and poured out blood, I present the sacred kiss that communicates the same thing as the sermon, but in ways that go far beyond the limits of words. And when I offer the sacrament of baptism, I’m doing the same thing: bestowing the grace of God in a way that can be experienced and not just heard.”  In being sprinkled with water or in eating a piece of bread and drinking a cup of wine, the feeding of our senses triggers us to hold onto what happened in the sacrifice of Christ. 

His body was given and his blood poured out, in his death we are given the washing away of our sins. That is the lesson we enter into if we believe. The author of Hebrews gets at that in verse 22, “Let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water.” What a clear picture of what it means for the Spirit to bring the good news of God’s word actually into our lives by faith. 

Faith is not a journey that we seek and begin on our own. It needs the Holy Spirit as its beginning and sustaining influence. Our passage tells us that we have the content and the promises of faith only by the blood of Jesus. The reason why we take the practice of the sacraments so seriously is because we believe true faith is to know, to trust in, and also to share in what Christ has gone through and his benefits. In practicing the sacraments, our attention is drawn to the message of grace, but that message is only meaningful if the Holy Spirit is present.  Our entire salvation rests on the Spirit; the Spirit confirms that the sharing in Christ and his benefits instilling and nurturing faith in us. The confirmation that then takes place in these special occasions in our communities of faith tells us that both the sacrifice and the result changes our lives. 

In our baptismal services, we use language that being baptized confirms the promises that God made to Abraham and his descendants of an everlasting covenant, God giving his will to his people, and God’s forgiveness of sin and wickedness.  This is why we hear in the Lord’s Supper formulary, “The sacrament thus confirms us in God’s abiding love and covenant faithfulness.” We trust that the Holy Spirit nourishes our spirits to receive and benefit from our participation.

Zacharias Ursinus, in his commentary on the Catechism, taught that God instituted the sacraments for us, because we are weak. We, human beings, need something tangible, something to practice. Christ’s sacrifice as an event is sufficient, hearing the good news and having the Holy Spirit is sufficient, but it is helpful for us to have something visible and that we can touch. 

When we celebrate the Lord’s Supper or baptism, we typically see a pastor and the elders presiding over and serving the congregation. What deserves even greater attention, though, is the active partnership between the Holy Spirit and we who believe. Those who lead are representatives, but it is the Holy Spirit who accomplishes all of the work. God is the one who continues to reveal the effectiveness of his promises. The sacraments are ways God refreshes us to who he is and how faithful he is as often as we practice them.   

The sacraments are these events, these moments, which God has given us, that connect with our senses. They can help in keeping us from reducing faith to intellectual proofs. But as a pastor once reminded me to always keep in view, “The sacraments are not the thing, rather they point to the thing.” What he meant is that salvation and saving grace do not hinge on the sacraments and our participation in them. This is where it is helpful to look at what it means for our sacraments to be “holy signs and seals.” 

We confessed that baptism and communion as signs more fully declare, more deeply cause us to understand, more clearly teach us about the gospel’s promise. In and of themselves, what we practice when we use the sacraments is nothing extraordinary. To put water on someone’s forehead or to immerse them in a body of water is not so different from taking a shower, going in the river, or squirting some water on your face to cool off. Likewise to have a meal of bread and wine is not unique; these two things might not be staples for us today, but they were regular pieces of the meal back then. So when we participate in the celebrations of the sacraments, it is not the elements or how everything is set up that causes any effect, but it is by faith in the promises that are behind these signs that the Spirit reveals to us in a renewed light what this is all about. 

So too we see the sacraments as seals of the promise. Seals of God’s work to “grant us forgiveness of sins and eternal life.”  The way that we celebrate the sacraments emphasizes that the promise is for the whole body of Christ, whether everyone has the ability to participate or not. We take the elements seeing that God’s grace is for all whom he has adopted as his sons and daughters. But we also participate as individual members; each of us comes recognizing that God created you and I as individuals and the call of faith is offered to each individually. 

When we consider the sacraments as seals, we get an incredible opportunity to give gratitude to God for calling us and saving us. We take very seriously who can participate, not because a physical baptism or taking part in the Lord’s Supper automatically saves or guarantees our salvation, but because we understand faith as something so important and seek to be obedient and as much aligned with the work that the Holy Spirit is doing.  

In Romans 4, Paul focused in on Abraham and what might be considered one of the old or former sacraments, circumcision. Today it is practiced for a bit different reason than what God gave it to Abraham.  God gave it to him as a mark for the male descendants in the lineage that he would bless and work through to bless the world until Christ came. In Romans 4:11 Paul wrote, “And [Abraham] received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised.” We hear there the language of sign and seal, which we use to describe the new sacraments, and we notice they are not intended like a contract. When God gives sacraments, they are not intended to be seen that if you have them you are good to go, but if you do not then you are out of luck. Rather we understand that the grace for righteousness, gifted by faith, is the main thing. Practicing the sacraments are ways that we have an opportunity to see the gift in a clearer way. God provides this even through the realities of everyday practices like washing and having a meal. 

To summarize what is taking place in the sacraments as a whole and with each of the practices. We acknowledge that the Holy Spirit confirms faith in believers; the Holy Spirit is the catalyst that makes faith happen but he also dwells with believers, especially in our corporate acts of worship. When we think about the Lord’s Supper, taking that bread which has been taken from a loaf, we can say that this is a sign confirming that we share in the body of Christ and his sacrifice.  Taking the cup of grape juice or wine confirms that the blood of Christ is poured out for us, poured out and over us to make the atonement. Our celebration is something we do on a regular basis because we are invited to and we often need to be reminded of those things. So too when we baptize a new believer or a covenant child, our use of water is a confirming action led by the Holy Spirit that teaches us how Christ’s blood washes over each of us individually and that the Spirit enters in for the work of renewing us.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, our God is a compassionate God; he wants to see his people learn and grow. The sacraments are great teachable moments because they allow us to join in the experience; we get to do something to practice the story. But our doing can only be faithfully done when the truth is in our hearts and minds. As we walk through the sacraments my hope is that there are things you learn or that cause you to reflect more deeply the next time you celebrate the sacraments. Tonight, if you can take one thing away, it is this, our practice of the sacraments is for us, but it is not all about us. It is about God through his Spirit making his promises real and refreshed in our lives. He is the One who offers to us what we do not deserve; he is the God, who makes covenant with us, putting his law in our hearts and our minds, remembering our offenses and sins no more. Amen.