Sunday Night, September 2, 2018 PM

Means of Grace and the Danger of Mechanical Sacramentalism

That God uses means to accomplish what He wants. He doesn't have to use means. He's free to do what He wants without means, but He uses means to accomplish things. In that sense, in a very general way, the term means is what God uses to give us grace in our life.

What kind of grace? We would not say that it is regenerating grace. We are not being born again by means of baptism or the Lord's Supper. That's not what it's saying. It's not even saying we're being forgiven or justified by means of the Lord's Supper or baptism.

So in the best way, I don't think that this language is out of bounds by any means, just so long as we're clear on what it means. And sorry for all the puns, but I don't particularly use it because I think it's confusing.

Okay, I think it's confusing. I think it was great at some point, and it's handed down in tradition, and that's good. Tradition is helpful. It's not normative. Tradition is helpful, but it's always suspect and ready to be conformed to the Scriptures.

The Scripture is what is normative. The Scripture tells us what's what. So when we think about what Jesus said concerning the Lord's Supper, concerning communion, and these ordinances that He established, what were some of the things that He said about them?

You know, that's what we should be concerned about. And how are they helpful for us? Well, He talked about that where two or three are gathered together in His name, there He is in our midst. And that should apply to all of our times together in fellowship and worship, praying together, reading the Scriptures together.

It could happen in a hospital room, read the Scriptures to someone at our church services and so on. Okay, so it's not restricted, that's not restricted to communion or the Lord's Supper, but certainly what Jesus did say is that we were to do this in remembrance of Him, that as often, Paul said, as often as we eat the bread and drink the cup, we proclaim the Lord's death until He comes.

There is a very severe warning in 1 Corinthians 11 as well about those who eat the bread and take the cup in an unworthy manner, flippant, casual, in contradiction to, you know, how are you going to take communion with your brothers and sisters in Christ, in fellowship with Christ, when you are at odds with one another and, you know, there's infighting and there's no forgiveness with one another and so on.

It's a great warning there in 1 Corinthians. So there's definitely a seriousness about it, okay, but your question is about means of grace and your question is, it seems a little bit like mysticism. So what we want to avoid, what we want to avoid is saying, by doing this act, I have just ingested my grace vitamin for the day.

Very mechanical kind of thing, right? This is where sacerdotalism comes from in terms of, you know, I grow in Christ, I become more spiritual, and I am infused with more grace as I partake in this distribution from the church.

This is Roman Catholicism. Now if the means of grace were, I guess, maybe more, I think, plainly explained, I think that it would be best to kind of talk about the ways in which we are renewed into the image of God, okay?

Whatever God uses to renew us into his image and whatever he uses to grow us in Christ, these are the kinds of terms that we use that I think are very much biblical. This is the language that we have all through the Pauline epistles.

Whatever helps us follow Jesus and to love him more and to be about his word, these are all going to be means of grace. So the reading of the scriptures, the preaching, teaching of the scriptures, Christian fellowship, some people call these spiritual disciplines, right?

From 1 Timothy 4, 7, is that? Discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness, but it's not this kind of one-to-one causality, okay? So for instance, this morning, as we take communion, we try to spend a lot of time focusing our attention on what the scriptures say, what is the meaning of this, focusing on the gospel of Jesus Christ that his body was broken for us and his blood was shed for us.

And we spend all that time trying to remind ourselves and put our attention upon Christ because you can go through the motions of coming to church and singing the songs and so on or participating in communion and not be helped at all because you're just doing the stuff instead of worshiping Christ.

And that's what we're trying to avoid is this one-to-one ratio. Now I think that whoever would use this language and use it very reverently would foam at the mouth if I equated means of grace with spiritual disciplines, probably.

I don't know, they may not. They may have a lot of grace and not foam at the mouth. But what we want to avoid is some sort of mechanical superstitious approach in this. Jesus says no one can control the Holy Spirit.

No one can control the Holy Spirit. You can't make him do what you want him to do. There's no formula. There's no program. There's no activity. You can basically punch in what you want on the vending machine.

He is sovereign. He is God, God of very God. So you're not going to control the Holy Spirit. You're not going to control Jesus Christ. He's on the throne. We're not on the throne. So we shouldn't be thinking of means of grace and spiritual disciplines as like vitamins that if I do this, then here's the result.

I think the best way to understand it is it's more like sailing, not that I've ever sailed, but everyone's seen a sailing ship, right? Okay, there's a vessel on the water and sticks sticking up off the deck of the ship.

How do you get the sailing ship to move? Capture the wind. Rig the sails. Put all the sails up. That's your responsibility. Put the sails up. Now what button do you push to make the wind blow? You don't, because you're not in charge of the wind, but you are responsible to put up the sails.

I think that's what means of grace and spiritual disciplines means in the best way. You are responsible to put up the sails and it's up to God. It's up to the Holy Spirit to blow, right? So that's what I'm, so we are responsible to partake of the means of grace or to engage in spiritual disciplines.

What's our goal? What's our hope? It's to grow. It's to grow in Christ, to be ever more renewed into the image of God, but we're certainly not controlling that process because sanctification ultimately is the grace of God.

Common Grace and Saving Grace

Do only Christians receive the grace of the just and the unjust? So there's common grace and there's special saving grace. Yeah, it's a good question. So the common grace is that God's reign does fall on just and the unjust, and that as he's concerned about the sparrows, so he's concerned about all his creatures.

How much more is he concerned about those made in his image than the sparrows? And what a good and providential God that we have. But if someone is not a believer, they're not born again. They can't walk into a church and eat a wafer and drink a little sip of juice and then all of a sudden go out charged to face the world because they've encountered some sort of mystical stream of spiritual energy, and obviously not.

Now, of course, I think that anyone who is a non-believer, if they do spend time around Christians, they're going to be blessed by the overflow of the ministry of the Holy Spirit in the lives of those Christians.

I think that's what Hebrews 6 is about. You can spend a long time in the wonderful blessings of those who are born again and who are alive in Christ, and it's a blessing to be around Christians if you're not one.

But that doesn't mean that those people in particular are receiving this sanctifying grace or that they're growing in Christ in any way. Does that make sense? Yes, yeah. The terms themselves, in some sense, they can be used synonymously, but in actual practice, I think they're used differently.

Ordinances, Church Membership, and Church Discipline

So an ordinance sounds like something you're going to get fined for. You broke the ordinance. Your car got towed. There's a parking ordinance. But that tells you something about something is binding, something has been commanded, something has been ordered.

And when as Baptists, as Protestants, we say ordinance, what did Jesus tell us to do in our worship? And we say there are two ordinances in particular that are special, that's the Lord's Supper and that's baptism.

Why are these two very special? Because they are the defining boundaries of a church. They define the church. Baptism is the front door and the Lord's Supper is the back door. So the only way into a church is by your public profession of Christ.

You may be part of the universal body of Christ because you're born again and regenerated, but have you publicly professed Christ before men? Well, until you do, you can't be a part of his visible body on earth, the local church.

Have you publicly professed that you're under the authority of the triune God and that you invite the accountability of those who witness your baptism? Well, until you do that, you can't be a part of the local church because you're joining a community that is accountable to one another in Christ.

That's the front door. So unless you've been baptized professing your faith, then no, you can't join. And then the Lord's Supper is showing our communion, showing our continual fellowship, which is in Christ.

Our union is in Christ. Our community is in Christ. And that's the only reason why we're together is because of who Christ is and what he has done, which we remember at the Lord's table. For those who would go so far as to profess Christ and be baptized and be a part of the church and yet engage in unrepentant sin, and it comes to point that although we believe their profession and we rejoice at their baptism, but the fact is that they are in unrepentant sin and continually turn away from the truth of the Scriptures.

Though the many efforts are made to win them back, ultimately, excommunication or being put outside the church is a severe mercy that Jesus Christ himself instructed us to use in Matthew 18. And then they're put outside the fellowship.

And 1 Corinthians 5 confirms that, that we don't even eat with such a one. Meaning we're not going to give them any kind of signal that although they are living in unrepentant sin, we think they're okay.

I'm an approval of your life, even though some of the other guys aren't. Right? And if we're not even supposed to eat with such a one, in a normal context, will we let them, will we dine with them at the most important meal that we share?

The table of communion. That's the back door. And the back door is you're supposed to be, supposed to be closed. Right? Supposed to be closed. And the front door is to be opened only to those who are supposed to be apart.

And if we find that there's someone who's inside the church that's not supposed to be there, and to leave them there would only to give them false assurance that they are saved. When they are not, for their good, we have to put them out the back door, which is the Lord's Supper.

And we deny the Lord's Supper to those who are in unrepentant sin, under church discipline. That's why those two ordinances are so important. And that, because they're defining for the local church. Very important.

The Roman Catholic View of Sacraments

Now what's the difference between ordinances and sacrament? Sacrament has more of the idea of the transfer, a transaction, the transfer of grace from those who hold it to those who want it. So any ex-Roman Catholics here today?

One? I'm sorry to single you out. But Brian's not the only one in our church who has that background. But you've heard the term sacrament. For the Roman Catholic view, there are seven sacraments that are very important for their understanding of salvation.

That grace has been deposited into a treasury, and the Pope, the Vicar of Christ, the successor of Peter, holds the keys to that treasury. If you need grace, where do you go but to the church? And the way in which you receive grace is defined and is funneled through the church, because the Pope has the keys.

So how do you get grace? Well, there's seven sacraments for the Roman Catholics. The first one is baptism. Now this is not an immersion of professing Christians, okay? Baptism is of infants. It's not just dedication of an infant.

It's to be born into the Catholic Church and to be baptized, to be sprinkled, is to be infused with grace. Yes, that you are justified by this baptism, that you are indeed a child of God. To be born inside the Catholic Church is to be a child of God.

And in this sprinkling, this is a transfer of grace from the treasury to the child, which has a warranty of 12 years. Then the warranty will expire, right? But you have to go through confirmation. You have to go through the whole process of learning the catechism and learning what you're supposed to know.

And look, when you read the Roman Catholic catechism, there's a lot of things in there that we also believe. Things about the Trinity, things about the humanity and divinity of Jesus Christ, and so on.

And so for some people, they'll see those things, say, well, aren't we all just the same? But in fact, very different. And so, but baptism covers that child till they're 12 years old, at which time they are under, they're in this situation where now their sins really matter.

Two different types of sin. There's venial sins and there's mortal sins. Venial sins are of lesser impact than the mortal sins. The seven deadly sins, mortal sins. Venial sins can be dealt with, but if you ever commit a mortal sin, you lose this original grace from the baptism, and you're going to have to recover.

And of course, for the most part, everybody has a mortal sin. Someone's going to, you're going to overeat at some point. So, I mean, it's just going to happen. So there's baptism. And then another sacrament would be, the main one is going to be mass, which is taking the mass.

We say the Eucharist, the text, and they interpret it. When Jesus said, this is my body, this is my blood, speaking of the bread and the wine in the cup, and trying to understand what that means, where we understand Christ to be making, to be speaking a metaphor with deep theological truths about the Passover.

They have interpreted and still interpret. This is still the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church, that although the outside form, the incidentals of these substances, bread and wine, are unchanged, yet their true nature does change into the actual flesh of Jesus Christ and the actual blood of Jesus Christ.

And the Eucharist, in that sense, breaks the body of Christ all over again and sheds his blood all over again, which is why the crucifix always has Jesus on the cross, because he's being crucified again and again and again, in direct contradiction to what Hebrew says.

And what he said, it is finished. And so, and they, how does that work, where the outside, all the physical properties of the substance stays the same, but then the nature of it changes? That's a trick of Aristotelian metaphysics, where if you read Aristotle, you'd understand it, but I haven't read it, so I don't get it.

So, that's the second sacrament. Now, another one is going to be, you need more than this, okay? So, you need more than coming to Mass, and of course you should, but you need more than that, because when you sin, you're going to have to go confess, confession.

And you cannot confess your sins directly to God. You're not holy enough, you're not close enough, you need some, and you need several intermediaries, many mediators along the way. So, of course, you must go to your local priest and confess your sins.

And he'll put a good word in for you, okay? So, he's going to pass along your confession and seek for what must happen for you to get things right with God. So, after you confess your sins, he's going to tell you how to make things right, which is the sacrament of penance, which is an unfortunate result of Jerome's Latin translation of the Vulgate.

The Vulgar Vulgate translated the passages that speak of repentance as penance, which is the focus on doing things in a contrite way to make things better. Like, I did wrong, I'm so sorry, so I will do these things to show how sorry I am and make it up to God in some way.

Just to prove my penitent heart, I've got to prove it by doing these things. And under this heading is where we're going to find the sale of indulgences. We're coming back up around October, we're going to have our Reformation Celebration again.

Martin Luther's concerned about the sale of indulgences, and those are still on sale today. Now, this may be good works, it may be asceticism, it may be giving money, but it has to be with contrition, that you really are sorry.

So, baptism, mass, confession, penance. Now, I don't remember all seven, but for one, it's going to be either getting married in the Catholic Church, can't be both, not both ends, or taking your monastic or monkery or nunnery, one of the two.

What did you say? Celibacy, yes. But this is seen as another way to receive grace from the church. Now, this would be one sacrament, getting married within the Roman Catholic Church, and having a Catholic wedding.

It's very important, very important to people. Yes, it is. What year was that? They just waited a few years, Vatican II would have helped them out. Yeah, they were under Vatican I, and very harsh. Vatican II would have helped them out.

So, then the monastic order's on the other side. Okay, one, two, three, four, five, six. I'm missing one. So, what now? Last rites, thank you. I'm so glad I left those for last. Really? Well, there's all sorts of variations that will come through a legalistic and mystical order of things.

Why Clear Confessional Language Matters

Now, so when we say sacrament, now, let's be honest, especially with our neighborhood of a lot of Hispanics, and having this very cultural connection to Roman Catholicism, that if we use the term sacrament, they're going to have in their mind something very different than the way we understand baptism by immersion of professing believers and partaking in the Lord's Supper.

So, that's why using the term ordinance would be a little bit more clear. Even if they don't know what that word means, we'll have the opportunity to explain it, and that it's different than this. That we don't believe we are withdrawing grace from the treasury.

There are many things that, and you know, you'd think that if you were baptized, sprinkled as an infant, that you went to Mass all your life, and when you sinned, you confessed it to a priest, and he gave you penance to do, give money, go help the poor, go visit these sacred relics, or whatever, make a pilgrimage.

If you got married in the Catholic, or you were a monk or a nun, and that you received your last rites when you died, that you would be assured that if you did all these things, you're going to heaven.

But, it is vitally important for Roman Catholic theology that nobody ever have certainty of their own salvation. You can never, ever be sure. Yes ma 'am, and this is number five, and that's number six.

Yes, and then that's seven. Yeah, that's why I think it's important that we, again and again, clarify, but what the words, the terms that we're using, and what we do by the scriptures, getting caught up, getting caught up into a tradition, and being left with this.

This is, you know, the very popular thing today is, honestly, we don't have to evangelize Roman Catholics. They're our brothers and sisters in Christ. It's extremely popular to say right now, extremely.

But, when we consider the differences that are, they're in the public record. Council of Trent is still defining about the absolute, irreconcilable differences. We ought to have compassion on those who believe that they must go through all of this, and even then they're not, and have compassion on people who have never prayed directly to God in their life, but must petition the dead, the dead saints, and ask for favors to be done.

And I was, by the way, book recommendation as we close, Christ Alone. This is the second volume from the Master's Academy International. The first one is Scripture Alone, and this one, both of these volumes are dedicated to talking about missions.

If you want to know the challenges for missionaries in various fields all across the world, and one of those, I've read a chapter in here on missions in Mexico, and the challenge that they have with the idolatry that is so common in worshiping the dead, and the story, the mysticism, the experiential stories behind the Lady of Guadalupe, which seems distant, and yet, now that I realize, about three or some years ago, the house right across from us had a worship service as they worshiped the Lady of Guadalupe.

In their garage, had her picture up, candles, incense. They were bowing down in front of the picture, giving her offerings. They had a band and there was dancing in the streets honoring this Central American version of the Virgin Mary.

They speak of Mary as a co-mediator, co-redeemer, and just, I mean, we've only spent a very little time talking about it tonight, but I hope that you can tell there's a difference, a very wide divergence between the two.

It does no one any good for us to say that they are not in need of the gospel, but they very much are. I think that they were going to say something very similar to to what we mean by ordinance, but say that this is something that is a very special way to bless those who participate in it.

I think that for Presbyterians, and there's a good thing, it's good to have your roots in a confession. The churches that did not, consider the churches in the United States of America who were not bound in a confessional way.

The Congregationalists, Jonathan Edwards, hey Congregationalists, where are they today? They're called Unitarians because they had no confession that grounded them. So the Westminster is good in that sense.

I don't agree with everything in there. The Westminster formula, the 1689 Baptist confession, but because that language is there, the language is then retained because of the confession that you hold to.

But if you look very carefully, you're going to find that it's very much opposed to the idea of, you know, if you do this, then you receive. Well, in our day, it's always very important to use, I think, clear language and what's going to help people understand the truth.

And there's also the need for, at some level, for precision in defending the faith. At some level, there's that need. Okay, so I'm grateful for the very hard labor that has been done over the last 2 ,000 years on a lot of these issues.

We're at the benefits to understand so clearly who Christ is, fully God and fully a man. A lot of precision used in the Chalcedonian definition. I'm thankful that all that was done. That's helpful, and we're blessed by that.

But we ought to be using language that is, I think, that communicates clearly what we're trying to say. Well, let's close by singing the doxology together.