Well, dear brothers and sisters, we're going to be looking at the Word and sacraments today, as I mentioned to you. Like you all, I'm sure, I continue to have problems at my house, and that's just what happens to our houses. And several months ago, I had to call a termite guy to come out because termites had swarmed in a fence post near the house, and you know what that means. So a guy came out with a nice bug hat on and a bug shirt and a bug truck. But something felt entirely off. He was evasive, a bit pushy, very patient with my questions. I could tell he just sort of wanted me to sign on the dotted line. So I didn't go with that guy, and I called another bug guy, and he ended up being the owner of his company. He had a bug hat, he had a bug shirt, he had a bug truck. And he had a totally different experience, full of light. He was patient. He answered my questions. He didn't push me to anything. When I shared the advice or the things the other guy told me, he sort of scoffed that he actually told you that. How do you know a true bug guy from a false bug guy? How do you know a true church from a false church? What we're talking about today, and we'll be looking at for really the next seven weeks, are what we call the true marks of the church. And you can tell the true marks of a church by does it preach the gospel purely? Does it administer the sacraments purely as Christ instituted them? And does it practice church discipline for correcting the faults of its members? Those are the marks by which we can identify a true church from those who call themselves a true church but aren't. Now we have been looking at the Word for about 16 weeks now. We talked about faith and we had a definition of it as it's not just the knowledge that we have of divine things that God gives us and being assured of them, but it's also actually trusting and taking Jesus Christ and believing not only does God forgive your sins, but it's that personally He forgives my sins, right? There has to be that personal element that God has forgiven me. Christ has died for me, entrusting Him in Him for salvation. And then we spent all those 16 weeks looking at the Apostles' Creed as a summary of what the Gospel promises us. So we've looked at the Word for a lot of weeks now, and now we're transitioning for the next six weeks to the sacraments. We're getting introduced to them this morning on what they are. We'll spend two weeks on baptism. We'll spend three weeks on the Lord's Supper. And we'll spend one week on church discipline. Now, my goal today for this morning's sermon is this, that we would all know what sacraments are, and that we would know what they're for. To know what they are, to know what they're for, so that we will use them rightly as God intended us to use them, and therefore using them rightly receive the blessing that God intends for us to have them if we use them rightly. So we want to know what they are, and we want to know what they're for. You might know who Kevin DeYoung is. He's a Reformed pastor. He wrote a book called The Good News We Almost Forgot, Finding the Gospel in a Sixteenth-Century Catechism. He's talking about the Heidelberg, and he wrote that book on this. Maybe this resonates with you. He writes, but for non-denominational evangelical Joe, the sacraments are terra nova. That's just a fancy Latin phrase that means new earth, meaning unexplored territory. It's new ground. Many evangelicals see movie clips in church or more movie clips in church during the year than they see sacraments. But next to the doctrine of justification by faith alone, the Reformers wrote about the sacraments more than any other issue." That definitely resonates with me. I grew up in a non-denominational church, and it was definitely unexplored territory. We partook in them, but there was never any teaching, never any instruction on what they are, how God intends us to use them, what He intends by them. I definitely did see more movie clips than sacraments in the church. And it wasn't until I joined a Reformed church I realized God said a lot about them in His Word. There's a lot to learn about them. And indeed, the Reformers did write a lot about it. And so, if I'm very honest with you, I kind of approached this topic with a bit of trepidation. It wasn't, as you know, what distinguishes between, if you know the history of Reformation, why aren't Lutherans and Reformed churches together? Well, they differed on the sacrament. And they still differ today on the sacrament. I swore an oath to teach to you the Reformed faith because I believe it to be God's Word and so I'm going to teach that here this morning as it's from God's Word in our catechisms. But I also encourage you to read the writings. I found the writings of the Reformers on the sacraments very salutary, meaning helpful and healthy and edifying. And they really stress God's goodness, not just in what He gives us in the Gospels and proclaims to us, but the goodness in helping our weakness. Because I think we could all say, you know, sometimes I have a hard time trusting God. And it's God speaking to us, if you will, in that visual way, giving us helps to our faith in the sacrament. I really stress that part of God coming down and helping us through these sacraments, because he really wants us to believe. He really wants us to trust in Christ for salvation. He really wants us to receive all that he's given to us. And he really wants us to be assured that we have those things. So I'm going to break these down. I've kind of given three heads to them. The first one, question 65, deals with the origin of faith. Question 66 deals with the helps of faith. And question 67 deals with the focus of faith. So this morning we're going to start here looking at the origin of faith. Where does faith come from? We've already established, right? God has freely given to us a Messiah. That's his gift. freely given to us, His divine, consubstantial Son, clothed in our flesh, obedient unto death, full of righteousness to redeem us by, risen immortal from the grave, never to return to corruption, empowered with that Holy Spirit to pour out upon His people. That's God's gift to us, His crucified, risen, exalted Son, reigning in the heavens. Well, how do you and I come to ever have anything from Christ, right? Faith. Confessing Jesus is my Lord and my Savior. and taking Him as He offers Himself to us in the gospel. That's how we come to have a share in Christ. That's how we come to have communion with Him. And having communion with Him, that's how we come to have communion with all His benefits, as He brings us justification through His righteousness. He brings us adoption as God's Son, as the Son. He brings us the spirit of freedom and liberation and holiness, freeing us from the bondage of our lustful desires of our heart. and all the benefits that come with that is being assured of God's love for us, being joyful in the Holy Spirit, having a conscience at peace because we've been forgiven, having the preservation and perseverance of God's grace to see us to the end and continual increasing. We get all that by faith, but where does that faith come from? Well, as we heard in God's Word this morning, faith comes by the Holy Spirit working it in our hearts. You'll hear again what Paul says there in 1 Corinthians 2, verse 10. He says, God has revealed them to us. And what are those things? Well, it's those things that no human eye ever saw. Those things that no human ear ever heard. Those things that no thought ever came into a human mind. The gospel of Christ, the mystery that laid hidden until Christ came. Foretold in the prophets, but completely hidden until God accomplished it in sending the Messiah and redeemed us and raised him from the dead. Paul is saying that That is what has been revealed to us by the Holy Spirit. Because who better to reveal to us the things of God than God himself? That's Paul's point. For the Spirit searches all things and deep things, right? You've probably all listened to somebody. Maybe you're having a debate, right? You're trying to be reconciled, and you've got to listen to their side of the argument. And we all try to say, is this what you said? I think you understand. And naturally, we're always a little bit more prejudiced towards our position. Because who better, right, to speak for us than ourselves? Same with God. Who better to reveal Himself to us than God Himself? And that's the role of the Holy Spirit in this age, and the Messiah has come to reveal to us the things of God. Paul says that we've received that Holy Spirit from God, that we might know the things freely given to us. These are the things that we speak. We don't use the words of wisdom. Preaching the gospel is not served very well with a bunch of academic, philosophical, technical, scientific language. If you read the scriptures, it's clothed in the most earthly illustrations possible, and it's said in the plainest and simplest of terms. And though we like to have precision, we don't always serve the gospel best when we kind of mix it with all of our human wisdom and jargon, because it's the spirit that teaches us. And then Paul says, in fact, apart from it, a natural person, a person without the spirit of God, these things are foolishness to him and folly. And they're utterly unable for him to know them because you have to have the spirit to discern these things, to be persuaded of them as true and to confess them. And if you ever want to see an experience of that, you know, just do evangelism. and you'll find out. We had a pastor come when I was in seminary, and he'd been doing decades of ministry in Brooklyn, and he says it's really sad because you will preach the gospel to so many people, and more often than not, it's an apathetic response. We know if you've been there too yourself, and you get that, but it takes the Spirit of God at work to bring us to faith in Jesus. But what is the Spirit used to do that, right? The Spirit's the one working that faith to bring us to be persuaded of these, to discern these, to accept these not really as folly. Because think about it. We're fairly used to it 2,000 years later, and that's great. But still, I'm still amazed when I contemplate, God's Son wears my flesh. That's a true reality. And he lived on this earth amongst us and actually loves us and likes us and wanted to teach us and save us and gather us. That's astonishing. Who ever thought of that? That's glorious stuff. And God himself would suffer the own punishment for his own broken law in my place? And bear all that? That's great. Well, what does the Holy Spirit use? He uses the Word, right? Paul says, Romans 10, 17, then faith comes by hearing, hearing by the Word of God. He's already said, who's ever going to do any hearing unless somebody goes and preaches, right? And of course, that doesn't just take place in churches, that takes place on sidewalks, that takes place in homes. Wherever the Bible is opened up, the Bible's faithfully read, the Bible's faithfully expounded, there the Holy Spirit, if He so chooses, will use that Word and work faith in Him. 1 Peter 1, verses 22-23, kind of playing off of Jesus' illustration about the seed. He says, you have been born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible. And how did that take place? How did that being born again take place? through the word of God which lives and abides forever." And then he quotes Isaiah 46-8, flashes grass, fades, the word of the Lord endures forever. But then notice what Peter identifies. What word of the Lord? Now this is the word which by the gospel was preached to you. What has brought you to saving faith? The gospel. Jesus is Christ. Jesus did die for our sins. Jesus was raised from the dead, all as God said he would do in the Holy Scriptures. He is Lord and Savior, and he will save all who call to that gospel. That very gospel as it's proclaimed, the Holy Spirit takes, and he brings us to faith in Christ, regenerating us. But secondly, the Holy Spirit then uses sacraments to confirm. To confirm something means to make it firm. to strengthen it, that we might have a strong and established faith. So he uses the Word of God to create the faith, to work that faith in us, and he uses the sacraments to confirm that faith in us. We saw that there in Matthew 28, the words of institution. What begins, Jesus says, is that gospel message, all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me, me who gave myself a ransom and accomplished it. Now the risen Lord, as we go out and preach that gospel, that Jesus is Lord, who died for our sins, all those who receive that, together with their children, are to be baptized. into the name of the Father, the Son, and Holy Spirit, as a confirmation that all that God promises to us through faith in Jesus, He surely has worked in us and gives to us, and the sacraments confirm that. And we'll talk more about that in the next part, on exactly how they do that. We read in 1 Corinthians, this is why I had us read 1 Corinthians 10, You know, the gospel message, as Paul had to remind the church, centers on Christ and Him crucified, preaching that to sinners. And then Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 10, verse 16, the cup of blessing which we bless is not the communion of the blood of Christ. The bread which we break is not the communion of the body of Christ. Now when we actually talk about the Lord's Supper, we'll talk exactly about that relationship between the sign and the thing signified, and we'll get there. But Paul's point is this, Christ crucified is preached to you as the Savior, through whom forgiveness of sins is freely given to us by God's grace promised to us. And when we take the Lord's Supper, we're confirmed in that. But as I receive Christ, as much as I hold these elements, I am participating, I have a real share in His sacrifice. And God is confirming, He has truly given to me the forgiveness of my sins by Jesus Christ, as surely as I hold these sacraments in my hands and receive them in faith. So God uses, He preaches Christ crucified to us, and He confirms us in that faith of Christ crucified for us in the sacraments. So then, word, and here's maybe a kind of takeaway from this first question, is the word, the gospel, and the sacraments, they work together by the Holy Spirit's use of them to create faith in us and to make that faith firm. You know, this is something that we also do too, right? We tell our spouses, we tell our siblings, we tell friends, whatever, I love you, right? That's our word of faith. We want them to trust that we love them. We say to them, I love you. How many of us just leave it at that naked word, though? Don't we bring a box of chocolates? Don't we cook them a meal and bring it to them in bed? Don't we do stuff for them, right? We give those tangible signs of our love. to confirm them. It's not to make our word more sure, it's to get them to trust our word more firmly. We're saying I love you with our word, we're saying I love you in our deeds. And that deeds, that visible sign added to it, is to help confirm them to believe He really, she really loves me, to trust that word. So the word of faith is the gospel that's preached. The sacraments confirm us in that gospel, confirm our faith. It's not making God's word more sure. God's word is sure. It's to help your faith. I'll talk about the next word then. Sacraments are to help your faith and trust in God's word. How about this word of faith? Have any of us ever said to our spouses, honey, I know where I'm at. And I know where we're going, trust me, right? Isn't it nice when you can look at the sign and it says, 10 miles to destination to confirm he actually knows what he's talking about? Or you can see that familiar landmark and say, okay, we're not lost. You've got that visible token. You're saying, trust me, dear, I know where we're at. It's really confirming when you can point to the sign and say, 10 miles till we get there. Trust me, right? So word and sacraments work together. to create the faith, to confirm us in that faith. Now why does this matter? There could be several. I'll give us four reasons why this matters. An assured faith is really, really a blessed thing. Being assured that you have faith means that you can be assured that you are saved. We have a whole chapter on that in the Confession of Faith. It's chapter 18. I'm just going to read to you the third article. It's very edifying. It says this. This infallible assurance does not so belong to the essence of faith, so you can truly believe but not be infallibly assured yet, but that a true believer may wait long, he may conflict with many difficulties before he be a partaker of it, yet being enabled by the Spirit, we already saw that, to know the things which are freely given of him, he may without extraordinary revelation. Some churches teach you can only be assured if you have an extraordinary revelation. No, without extraordinary revelation and the right use of the ordinary means, the preaching of God's Word and the sacraments. By the way, our faith is also continually strengthened through the preaching of God's Word and through prayer. We're just emphasizing Word and sacraments. in the right use of ordinary means, he may attain to that assurance of salvation. And therefore it is the duty of everyone to give all diligence to make his calling and election sure of that thereby." Because here's the prudent benefit of being assured of your calling and election. His heart may be enlarged in peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, in love and thankfulness to God, and in strength, in cheerfulness, in the duties of obedience. These are the proper fruits of assurance. So far is it from inclining us to looseness. Some people think if we become assured we're saved, we'll just live loose on holy lives. But the fruits of this assurance is a heart enlarged with peace and joy, because you know that you belong to God. You know that you will always belong to God. Cheerfulness and duties of obedience, because it's done out of thankfulness and gratitude to God. And that's where we're going in the third part of the Catechism. So it matters because using these means of grace are to help grow, bring us to that assurance of faith. That assurance of faith is just a sweet place to be in as a believer. That's where God would want us to live our Christian lives. So if you're here conflicting with that and doubting and worrying, continue to sit under the means of grace and continue to use them. It also matters for choosing what church to go to. There could be many reasons to select churches, some of them good, some of them bad, some of them don't matter. Wherever you end up going to church, go to a place where the word of God is purely preached. Go to a place where the sacraments are being purely administered as Christ instituted them, and go to a church where they do church discipline, weeping, humbled, broken about it, but still do it to correct the faults of sinners, because that's a church. That's a true church. That's a church in which the Spirit is there and operative. And I'll just leave it at that, as you think about where you want to Finally end up in a church if you're looking for one. Go to a church that uses these means of grace. The matter's about evangelism too, right? I really appreciate someone called to evangelize. We're all called to evangelize, but I suppose in a more official capacity, I guess. But we're all called to evangelize. I really appreciate Paul's self-testimony in 1 Corinthians 2. You know, part of pure preaching of the gospel is faithfulness to the message. And Paul is very clear. I'm going to preach the gospel to you, whether you want to hear it or not. Paul was faithful message. But part of pure preaching the gospel is also your motive in preaching it and your manner in preaching it. Paul didn't preach the gospel to create a following. Paul preached the gospel to get people to put their faith in God and be saved. And Paul did that not using, he didn't want to sound smart before the people, he didn't want to sound learned before the people. In fact, I really appreciate it, he says, I went to Corinth, fear, trembling, weakness, that was my attitude in which I opened my mouth and told you Jesus Christ. We can do that, right? Don't we generally feel weak most of the time? Don't we generally have a little bit of fear and trepidation as we're trying to find some way to angle the conversation to share Christ with that person? Well, trust, right? The Spirit. Hopefully we've been bathing our day when we got up that the Spirit would be alive and active anyways. And asking that the Spirit would be blessing us whenever we go out and share the good news. But just be faithful to share the good news. Faithfully say what it is. and say it with good, pure motives, and faithfully share it as someone who wants to see that person become a fellow believer, wants to see that person be saved and come and know the Lord Jesus. So this matters in how we do evangelism. It also matters as we see that the Holy Spirit uses the Word to create the faith, it uses the sacraments to confirm the faith, that we might understand the Word is primary. You can be baptized, you can partake of the Lord's Supper, and you cannot be saved. You have to have faith in the gospel message. That lets us know that just because you're here, you know, you can be here this morning and not partaking yet in some of the sacraments. Doesn't mean you're not a Christian though, because do you believe the word? And do you trust in it? It's receiving the gospel as it's preached, and it's faith in that gospel, which God creates that faith and saves us. It's the sacraments that are given to confirm it. I didn't think I was going to go this long on one of these. Honestly, if I do this whole sermon congregation, it's going to be another half an hour, so I think I'm going to have to stop here and break this up a little more. Maybe I can do one more of these. It's going to be a bit long. I think they're helpful. And I think this is very important for us. So I think I'm just going to pause, keep you in more anticipation until next time. Because again, I didn't grow up knowing these things. And just studying these again this week, I've been blessed again in seeing the goodwill of our God in sacraments. And let me just share this anecdote to close with. This young man's no longer in the county. He went to a church in the county, doesn't matter what church. I got to know him a little bit. And after talking to him, here's some things I learned about him. He's not been baptized. He sometimes thinks he's a Christian, and yet he partakes of the Lord's Supper. I thought, wow, there's a lot of confusion there, right? There's a lot of confusion on his part. I don't know what the church says that's teaching either. I don't know how much of a responsibility there is on the leadership, right? The leadership should be teaching people. One of the things about teaching sacraments is teaching who should partake of sacraments. And so, there's been confusion in the history of the church about this. There's confusion in the county, right? There could be confusion amongst us. I don't really want to rush on teaching on the sacrament, but make sure that we all will take it in, because there's a real blessing. God intends a real blessing, we heard it, to strengthen our faith, but we have to use these rightly, as God intends us to use these rightly. So I'll leave it there, and let us just pause then and give thanks that God, by His Holy Spirit, takes His Word, His Gospel, works faith in our hearts and as we come soon and celebrate the sacrament takes that that sacrament and proclaims to us his promises visibly to us to forgive us and give us eternal life focusing us on the very ground of which all that grace flows to us and that's Jesus's sacrifice on the cross so may the Holy Spirit always create faith in us and always confirm that faith in us congregation