Church - Part 5
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Welcome...
Introduction…
Continuing our series on what is the church
Pray
Heavenly Father, please give me clarity in the words I speak.
Please fill us with the truth of your word and grant us
repentance where there is sin,
understanding where there is confusion, and
wisdom where there is foolishness.
Open our ears and our hearts,
Turn our affections towards you,
And make yourself our greatest joy and treasure.
In Jesus name, Amen.
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Without a correct view of the church, a person will not have a correct view of what it means to follow Jesus.
Mark Dever was asked,
“Is it possible to be a Christian and not be a part of a church?”
I think his response is brilliant,
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“Being part of a church won’t save you, and not being part of a church won’t damn you. But it’s kind of like driving at night with your lights off. I don’t think you want to do it. Yeah you can do it, but those headlights are there for a reason.”
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At Abide Church, we believe that
(1) the Bible is our final authority in all matters,
(2) the nature of the church is a theological issue, and
(3) that both the Universal Church and the Local Church are divinely instituted.
Universal Church: All true Christians everywhere throughout all time.
Local Church: Local gatherings of Christians at a specific time and place.
We are going to continue to use Retro-Christianity’s essential “marks” and “works” framework.
These essential “marks” and “works” are both
Biblical (supported by scripture)
Historical (largely recognized throughout church history)
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Framework:
Marks
Ordinances
Order
Orthodoxy
Works
Exaltation
Edification
Evangelism
Definition of “Ordinance”
“God-ordained ceremony.”
gotquestions.org
There are only 2 ordinances,
Baptism and communion
I would like to open today with a text from Jeremiah.
Jeremiah is a book of the Bible found in the Old Testament, during the administration of the Old Covenant.
In this passage, Jeremiah prophesied of the New Covenant, of which the church lives under today.
“Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord.
For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”
There is no relationship with God apart from covenant.
Covenants God makes with man have promises, blessings, and curses associated with them.
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Covenants outline how man is to relate to God.
I think even saying this could get me in trouble in our modern culture, because we live in a world where the customer is always right.
We view ourselves as the customer and God as the big man in the sky who exists to serve us.
One of the most common objections to belief in God is saying, because x happened, God must not exist.
What a person is really saying is that,
“If I were God, I would do things differently. I can’t possibly imagine a being greater than myself have a plan or perspective greater than my own, therefore I reject God.”
God tells us, to some degree, about his holiness, his character, and his nature.
The Old Testament (Testament is another word for Covenant) outlines how people are to relate to God through the law.
The New Testament (Covenant) reveals the purpose of the Old Testament,
that is to show us our sinfulness and point us to God through Jesus who is the mediator of the New and better Covenant.
The Old Covenant that God makes with Abraham in Genesis 12, 15, and 17 has a mark. A sign of entrance. And it was circumcision.
You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you.
This sign had great symbolic meaning. It was to separate out Israel from all the surrounding nations. It was literally a cutting away of the flesh.
God referred to a bigger problem though.
The outward sign of physical circumcision was supposed to connect to a changed heart.
And the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live.
Paul talks about his in Romans:
For no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical. But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter. His praise is not from man but from God.
Circumcision didn’t “save” people in the Old Covenant. It was merely an outward sign of an inward reality.
This does NOT mean that God did not take circumcision extremely seriously.
In Exodus 4, there is a short story of Moses nearly being killed by God because he did not circumcise his son.
This “sign” was a big deal to God. Even thought it was just a sign.
Why am I talking about circumcision.
Because, just as circumcision was the entrance sign to the Old Covenant, and it was a big deal to God because God is the one who marks out how we are to relate to him,
The entrance sign of the new covenant is baptism.
And even though baptism is a sign, it’s a big deal to God.
Now you might be saying, “wait a minute, if baptism replaces circumcision, and the Bible says you circumcise babies on the eighth day, shouldn’t we baptize our babies?”
This is the basic argument that presbyterians make.
I want to very briefly show you why we practice “believers’ baptism” here and not “paedo baptism.”
Look again at Jer 31.33-34
For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”
This passage is talking about saved, regenerate people.
The law is within them, this is through the Holy Spirit
They shall all know me, we are a people of priests
I will forgive their iniquity, this comes only by grace through faith
God has given us baptism as a mark of his covenant. This is a precious gift to us.
We are in the new covenant with God when we are united with Christ.
Through baptism, we are acting out and associating with Jesus
death, burial, and resurrection.
Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 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.
But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.
The old covenant had many ethnic qualities as well as spiritual qualities.
What I mean is that in the old covenant, you entered by birth.
John the Baptist references the Pharisees confidence in their birth when he says,
And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham.
The new covenant on the other hand is a covenant of believers.
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You don’t enter the new covenant through birth, rather you enter the new covenant through rebirth.
The Bible gives a clear order of operation when it comes to baptism.
Repent AND be baptized
In Acts 2, the Holy Spirit fills Peter and preaches at Pentecost.
Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?” And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Repent… and be baptized!
So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.
Those who received his word...
So what is happening in baptism?
We are publically identifying ourselves with Christ.
This was given as a covenant sign of the reality of spiritual washing.
God is marking you out as his own.
Just as Jerimiah 31 states:
“I will be their God, and they will be my people.”
Baptism does not save you, but it points to the saving reality of Christ.
Just like wearing a wedding ring doesn’t make you married, it does point to a real relationship that is different than any other relationship.
Some might say, “Well, if baptism doesn’t save me, why is it significant?”
First, I would say that it is the covenant sign given by God to mark a spiritual reality. He fulfilled all the terms of the covenant (that we broke) by dying on a cross. He defines terms and marks of the covenant.
But I would follow that up with an analogy. Going back to the wedding ring.
Can you imagine a husband and wife getting dressed up for a party and the wife slips off her ring and puts it in a drawer. To which the husband responds, will you please wear your wedding ring? I want the people at the party to know you’re married.
To which the wife responds,
We’re married whether I wear this ring or not, why should I wear it?
To which the husband responds,
It’s important to me that you wear it. That ring represents our covenantal union and our relationship with each other. Will you please wear it?
To which the wife responds,
Nah.
And they leave for the party.
We are literally called the “Bride of Christ” in scripture.
You need to know church, that your baptism is beautiful and precious to Jesus.
and it ought to be beautiful and precious to you also.
If it’s not, I’d encourage you to investigate the significant of baptism further and how it is a picture of the gospel in your life.
Next week I’m going to preach on communion, and the relationship communion has to baptism and the new covenant.
But I want to close with this:
Why are the ordinances a mark of the church?
Why are the ordinances a mark of the church?
Why do we put the ordinances on this list?
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Because the church is the body of Christ.
Jesus said that we unite to him by grace through faith.
Jesus also gave us the mark of baptism as a sign of the covenant that he made with us.
What is that covenant?
For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.
For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.