Well, we've been discussing worship for a lot of weeks now. I keep saying that at the beginning of every one of these. And we don't have much left. We're really on the last aspect of the elements of the worship service. And we've come to the point in time where we need to talk about the sacraments of the church. Protestants, unlike Catholics, have said, ever since we broke off from the Roman Catholic Church, that we believe that Scripture only teaches two New Testament sacraments, and that these are baptism and the Lord's Supper. This week we're going to talk about baptism, and next week, with God's blessing, we'll talk about the Lord's Supper. But the first thing that I think that we need to do when we're talking about these, is to look at what we mean by a sacrament in the first place. Because I know that some of you are kind of uneasy using the term sacrament. Some of you might not like the term because of things that you might associate with other places and other churches that also hold to a sacramental view of things, but they do so improperly. And I used to be like this myself. I did not grow up in a church that believed that these ordinances were sacraments. And so we need to talk about that. I've come to believe that I think that they are and that it's a great blessing that God has given to us that they are. Protestants of all stripes, whether they be Lutheran or Anglican or Methodist or Presbyterian or Reformed or Baptist, have historically held to the view of the sacraments, and that's just a matter of fact. There's a lot of people today that don't, and there was a movement during the Reformation, they were called the Anabaptists, and they didn't believe in the sacraments, they didn't believe that there was anything special in them. But I think that we come from, historically, the line of Protestants, and not from the Anabaptist movement, and certainly, theologically, that's where I'm at. So I hope that you'll bear with me, and that you'll be patient, and that hopefully we'll learn together what we're talking about here. The Association of Reformed Baptist Churches in America, and that's one of the two groups that we're looking at joining, itself actually calls baptism in the Lord's Supper sacraments in their official position paper on the regulative principle of worship, actually, which I thought was pretty interesting. The London Baptist Confession of Faith that we have in our Trinity Hymnals, but I won't have you open to, says this, It says, the grace of faith is ordinarily brought by the ministry of the word, by which also and by administration of baptism in the Lord's Supper, prayer and other means appointed of God, this grace of faith is increased and strengthened. That's the language of sacraments. In their commentary on this passage, this ARCBA, Association of Reformed Baptist Churches, says this, the paragraph that we've just read mentions several of the elements of worship and states that the grace of faith is brought by these elements, that which the scripture sets forth as those regulated elements of worship. And we've talked about, again, the elements of worship that they're talking about. are those which are commanded in scripture. And that's why we're trying to do all of the things that we're doing in our worship service and in our liturgy. That they will perform the function of working faith in the elect. And I want you to hear that. That these work faith in the elect. Those practices for which there is no scriptural warrant will not work faith in the elect. All of the language used here is exactly what Protestants have referred to as sacraments. As many of you are probably aware, sacrament is not a biblical term. But then again, neither is trinity, or total depravity, or membership. Yet while the words themselves are not used in scripture, the concepts that they represent are very clearly set forth in scripture. I think there's one of us here that while we know that Trinity, the word Trinity is not used in scripture, none of us would say it's not a biblical concept. And yet I bet you a lot of you have run into people who you've come into that say, well, Trinity's not in the Bible because the word itself isn't in the Bible. So we can't use that argument because the same thing of Trinity is also true of sacrament. I'm going to give you three definitions and they're kind of repetitive. But I want to do it for the sake of the fact that I think we need the repetition of these definitions in order to understand what a sacrament is, because I think that the idea contained in what a sacrament is, is not very familiar to us. And I know it's not very familiar to myself. So according to Burkhoff in his systematic theology, he says that a sacrament is a holy ordinance instituted by Christ, in which, by sensible signs, the grace of God in Christ and the benefits of the covenant of grace are represented, sealed, and applied to believers, and these in turn give expression to their faith and allegiance to God." The Heidelberg Catechism defines the sacrament this way. They are visible, holy signs and seals instituted by God, In order that by their use, he may more fully disclose and seal to us the promise of the gospel, namely that because of the one sacrifice of Christ accomplished on the cross, he graciously grants us the forgiveness of sins and eternal life. So you see, in that definition, you've got the visible sign, the sacrament displaying the invisible reality, which is what Christ did on the cross. And we'll talk about that more in a minute. Robert Raymond in his systematic theology defines a sacrament as a holy sign and seal of the covenant of grace instituted by God to represent Christ and his benefits and to confirm our interest in him as also to put a visible difference between those that belong to the church and the rest of the world. So he adds this part that it's for believers. Sacraments are for believers, not unbelievers. and solemnly to engage them in the service of God in Christ according to his word." Now, this isn't a definition. This is kind of a commentary on a sacrament. It's sort of a definition, too. This is the Dictionary of Theological Terms. It says, The Reformers emphasize the priority of the word of God. Notice each one of these is instituted by the command and word of God. And one of the reasons why the Reformed Protestant movement said to the Catholic Church, there aren't seven sacraments, which the Catholics hold to. And in fact, I know some Catholic circles hold to at least 30 different sacraments that they have to do, depending on which little group you get involved in. But we'll take the seven number. They said that these seven are not instituted by Christ at all. So the sacrament, there's no command in scripture that's sacramental given by God to be married, for example, or to give last rites. Instead, there's only two that are commanded by God, baptism in the Lord's Supper, by Christ, I should say, in the New Covenant. God created man that he might obtain knowledge through the senses and the ear and the eye. And it's very important. The ear is the channel by which the word is communicated, and the eye is the way in which the sacraments are manifested. Sacraments are never complete without the word. The word engenders faith and strengthens faith, while sacraments serve to strengthen faith. So the word creates faith and strengthens faith, but sacraments strengthen faith. They don't create faith. From these definitions, then, it's clear that the sacrament must contain the following five things. And you can feel free to write these down. They must be ordinances. That is, they must be rites or ceremonies of some kind. They must be instituted by the direct command of God. So you must have an ordinance or a rite or a ceremony. It must be instituted by the direct command of God. They must be signs pointing to the covenant of grace. They must be applied to believers. And they must be visible. And this last one is important because if it's invisible, it's not a sacrament by definition. which strengthens faith, we don't call it a sacrament. Why? Because it's invisible. See? Sacraments are visible. The word is invisible. Now here is what a sacrament does not mean. Sacraments do not create faith, as the Roman Catholic Church teaches. They strengthen faith that already exists. For this reason, sacraments are to be given to believers only, because only believers have faith that can be strengthened. We'll talk about this next week with the Lord's Supper. It's something that Keith pointed out to me when I was struggling with, well, should infants take communion or should they not take communion? And he said, I forget what passage you pointed to, and it was in 1 Corinthians, and Paul says, I think it was, you do this out of remembrance for Christ. And only believers can remember what Christ did. Unbelievers can't do that. They can't proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. That's what the wordage was. Because they don't believe in Christ's death. So they're for believers. Sacraments are special means of grace, not means of special grace. In other words, there is not special grace that accompanies the sacraments that is not to be found anywhere else. And because of this, grace is not infused into a believer merely by taking the element itself. Some people think that the sacraments are magical elements that in and of themselves make a person holy. This is really the view of the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox. They're not special in and of themselves. In fact, they're ordinary and common things. They remain this way during the entire ceremony. They never change in any respect. They remain ordinary and common. This means that the elements do not contain special grace. You see what I mean when I say that they're not special? They're not means of special grace. There's no special grace in the sacraments. Instead, they're special means of grace. And this language, means of grace, is usually the most used terminology that I hear associated with sacraments. It's a means of grace. We heard this language, in fact, at the beginning tonight. In other words, where faith is present in a believer and where the sacrament is accompanied by the preached word, there God promises to strengthen faith in the believer through the sacrament. It's a means of grace. It's a way that God gives grace to us. But again, not necessarily only as it's accompanied by the word and by faith. Now, the Belgic Confession says, sacraments are visible signs and seals of something internal and invisible by means of which God works in us through the power of the Holy Spirit. So they are not empty and hollow signs to fool and deceive us. That's why I put that in there. I thought that was a great way of putting it. They're not empty and hollow signs to fool and deceive us, for their truth is Jesus Christ, without whom they would be nothing. And the London Baptist Confession of Faith again says, Christ is spiritually present to the faith of believers as the elements themselves are to the outward senses. There's truly a mystical union that happens between Christ and the believer in the sacraments. Now, the word sacrament itself comes from the Greek word mysterion, which means mystery. And so people will say that sacrament's not in Scripture, but actually, you know, the Bible wasn't written in Latin in the first place. So technically speaking, the word sacrament is in Scripture as it is in the Greek word mystery. And that's really what we mean by a sacrament. It's a mystery. What happens? How does God give this special grace to us? Or how does he give us grace through these means? I don't know. It's a mystery. I don't know. But the Bible teaches that it happens. Finally then, sacraments are for believers and not to be withheld from them. which some people do, they withhold the cup. And the reason why the cup is withheld in Rome is because this idea that the element itself has been transformed into the body and blood of Christ, into the blood of Christ. And so the element itself is magical. And so if you drop the element on the ground, that's blasphemy. That's why they don't give the people the cup. At least that's originally why they didn't do it. And, but we need to understand that when you withhold the sacrament from people, you're really withholding the spiritual blessings that are accompanied in them through the promise of Christ. So you can't do that. Now, again, if they were just empty signs, you wouldn't be withholding anything from anybody because there's nothing there to withhold. It's just, you know, somebody may not be hungry that day. So they're, you know, they're not going to be withheld from anything. Now, I've shown you that the Reformed churches all believe in this idea of sacrament. But the question we need to ask is, where do they get this from biblically? Let us be reminded of what happens in preaching and prayer, first of all, because this gives us the backdrop for the idea of the sacrament. What happens in preaching itself? Remember, we talked about this. The Valley of Dry Bones is the perfect example of what happens in preaching. As Ezekiel preached the Word to the dry bones, what happened to the dry bones? They came alive. The Word itself created the faith. What happened when Ezekiel prayed for the Spirit to do his work? The Spirit did his work. In other words, the bones didn't do anything. It was the Word and the prayer that did everything. Romans 10 17 tells us faith comes from hearing the message and the message is heard through the word of Christ. Faith comes from hearing the message. Okay, it's not created in ourselves. It comes from the means of the message through the word of Christ. And Paul right before that in Romans 10, eight says that Christ is as near as the preached word. This is exactly what happens in the sacraments as well. We read Romans chapter 4 tonight, and I want to specifically look at Romans 4.11. Abraham received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith. A sacrament is a sign and a seal of the righteousness already obtained by faith. So, we need to understand the purpose of signs. There's two equally wrong errors regarding the nature of a sign. When you're driving, I don't know how many of you have driven in Utah, going to California, and you drive that long stretch of I-70, I think it's 120 miles, and there's not a gas station, for 120 miles on a freeway. Now, let's say that you didn't realize that, like a lot of people, because they're not reading the signs in the first place. and they don't fill up the gas tank. And they get halfway through and they're, where's all the gas stations? I'm getting low on gas. Well, if that happens to you, you're going to be looking for signs on the road to tell you when the next gas station's coming. You better be looking for signs to tell you when the next gas station's coming because you might want to turn around. Okay? When you see the sign, you do not think that the sign is the gas station. That's one mistake. This is the error that Rome makes. They think that the sign is the thing signified. This is why it becomes a magical act all by itself. But you also don't think that the sign is meaningless and is not pointing you to any reality outside itself. You don't drive by the sign that says gas 5 miles and say to yourself, well that was a really nice memorial to some ancient gas station that someone put here in the middle of nowhere. I sure hope that there's a gas station somewhere in the next 50 miles. Right? You don't do that. This is the error of those who deny the spiritual reality to the thing that's signified in the sign. So there's two errors in the sign. Confuse the sign for the reality, or don't even think there is a reality. That's the nature of the sign. And that's what Paul called circumcision a sign. Instead, you realize that the sign points you to the gas station, and that in five miles you'll have your gas if you don't run out before then. In the same way, the sign of circumcision, properly understood, points the Israelite to the promise of Christ given to Abraham. The signifier, the thing that is signified through circumcision, is Christ and all his benefits. And they should have known that, and Jesus chastised them for not knowing that. It is Christ who does the circumcision of the heart, which is the new covenant fulfillment of circumcision. That's a good Baptist thing to say, by the way, and I really believe that that's true. This strengthens faith because the Holy Spirit applies our hearts to the promise contained in the sacrament. Now seals, it also calls them seals. Seals are likewise a part of the idea of a sacrament. Think of a wax seal that closed the letter that a king gave to somebody. The person knew the authenticity of the letter because it was sealed with the emblem of the king's ring. In the same way, a spiritual seal marks a person to God because he has been sealed by the Holy Spirit. Ephesians 4.30 says, Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. The Holy Spirit seals us and the sacrament points us to that reality. Sacraments are, in these ways, signs and seals of the righteousness that we already have by faith. We'll look more closely at communion next week, so I want us to look specifically at baptism this week, since we've gone through, I think, the major parts of what sacrament is. The New Testament is a new covenant. Okay? Very important. In fact, that's what New Testament means. It means new covenant. This new covenant is for the elect, as Jeremiah tells us, as they are brought from death to life. The New Covenant sees the coming of the Holy Spirit to all believers, not just some. Happened at Pentecost. We went through that a few weeks ago as well in Acts chapter 2. The Holy Spirit cleanses us by fire and water and sanctification. He gives us a good conscience before God. And because God brought a new covenant, we should not be surprised to see that there are signs associated with this new covenant. With every new revelation of the one covenant of grace, God always provides signs and sometimes even sacraments. With Adam, He didn't just tell Adam, give him a law and then give him a promise. He also put a sign there. Do you realize that? It was the tree of life. You know, the Bible begins with the Tree of Life and it ends with the Tree of Life, and the Tree of Life signifies Christ. He is the Tree of Life. But God gave Adam and Eve a physical sign. He didn't just leave them in some sort of a gnostic, word, anti-physical universe. He gave them a physical sign. And He does this throughout redemption as He continually reveals more and more and more of this one covenant. Think about Noah. God gave him the sign of the flood, which Peter tells us is baptism. He also gave him the sign of a rainbow, and his promise that he wouldn't destroy the world again. You can think of Abraham, and we've talked about this already, he gave him a physical sign of circumcision. With Jacob, and circumcision was a sacrament as well, with Jacob there was a ladder, with Moses there was a lot of them, But specifically, we could think of the signs of the Red Sea and its crossing, which Paul tells us is baptism in 1 Corinthians 10, 1 through 3. With Joshua, there was not the crossing of the Red Sea, but there was into the desert, there was the crossing of the Jordan into the promised land. And it's interesting that Jesus, when he was baptized, wasn't baptized Back in the Red Sea, he was baptized in the Jordan River. Why? Because he was entering into the Promised Land. That was what his life fulfilled. There's lots of other signs in the Old Covenant. With Jonah, there was a whale, which to him, for him, should have been the resurrection. Remember, Jesus says that, I'll give you a sign. You want a sign? An evil generation asks for a sign. I'll give you a sign. It's the sign of Jonah. What's that sign? That he would be in the belly of the earth for three days and then he would rise again. So all of these signs point to Christ and all his benefits. It's the purpose of a sign. God's not a Gnostic who detests the physical for the spiritual only. Because there's a new covenant and knowing the past history of God and giving signs and sacraments, it should not surprise us that communion and baptism are to us today signs, not just reminders of the Covenant. But being deeply associated with it, it's not just a reminder, it's deeply associated with the Covenant so that the sign of baptism and the sign of the Lord's Supper are indistinguishable from the New Covenant. They represent the New Covenant. They're not identical with the New Covenant, but you can't separate the sign from what it symbolizes. And what it symbolizes is the New Covenant. Baptism is an identification that we belong to God. It is a seal of God's promise to us. The New Testament always teaches that people believed and then they were baptized. It's not the other way around. Never in the New Testament. But we might ask, If they're already marked by the Holy Spirit through faith, then what's the purpose of baptism? You would ask this. Well, I won't go there. Let's not make the mistake of thinking that baptism saves us, as some people do. There are some churches out there that teach that baptism saves you. This would, again, be to confuse the sign with the thing that signifies. They might point us to 1 Peter 3.21. which says, this water symbolizes baptism and now saves you. That's what Peter says. Not the removal of dirt from the body, but the pledge of a good conscience towards God. It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. So what are we to make of this statement if we're not to understand that baptism itself saves us? This is going to be a little bit tricky because we're going to get into a little bit of English language here, but follow me. I hope I explained it well enough. It's so important to understand that baptism is a sacrament because only this idea of baptism being a sacrament can really explain this verse, in my opinion, without saying that baptism itself saves you. Remember, in a sacrament, there's both the sign and the thing signified. In baptism, the sign is the water, and the thing signified is salvation that we have already obtained. The language that Peter is using is not literal, but it's figurative instead. It's a part of speech, just like a metaphor or a simile, and this particular part of speech is called a synecdoche. Any of you ever heard of that? We have one person, yay! The dictionary defines this term as a figure of speech in which a part is made to represent the whole or vice versa. If I say we have all old faces here at our worship service, if I use that, that's a synecdoche. We do not literally have all old faces for there's truly no old people here in my view. So I'm not saying that literally. Well, maybe one. What do I mean when I say old faces? What I mean when I say old faces is not that you're a bunch of faces walking around with no bodies. Rather, old represents the fact that you're not new visitors, and faces represents the fact that you're attenders. Old faces is the sign and seal of the reality of regular attenders. This is what Peter's talking about when he says, baptism saves you. What does he say? He says, not the removal of dirt by water. He's making it clear that he's not being literal. Because again, there's nothing magical in water. We don't believe in holy water in baptism. Instead, he says, it's the pledge of a good conscience as you participate in the sign itself. When you are baptized, you're pledging yourself to obey Christ in the command of baptism. It gives you a good conscience. You see how that works? The sign points you back to the reality that it is the resurrection of Jesus that saves you. And that's what Peter ends with. So Peter can truthfully say, at the same time, baptism now saves you, And through this, the resurrection of Jesus Christ now saves you. He's not an idiot. He's not contradicting himself. He's using a figure of speech. So why else is baptism for today? Baptism continues, though many people today do not think it does, or do not understand why it does, for several reasons. Matthew 28, 19 through 20 is where Jesus commands us to be baptized, right? It's the Great Commission. He says this, "...to therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always to the very end of the age." Jesus clearly commands us to baptize, and the early church agreed that this was to continue beyond the disciples' ministry, because Jesus was talking to the disciples here, That's why they continued to baptize. And that's why the early church, after the New Testament closed, continued to baptize. Because they saw that this is what Jesus meant. It didn't just stop at some point in time in baptism and not for today. It continues for today because it's the command of Christ. But I want you to notice something that I think that when we read the Great Commission, we leave out almost every time that I hear it read. It's the very end of the Great Commission. There's a promise associated with those things that we're to do. Jesus tells us that you do these things, that when you do these things, He is with you until the very end of the age. This promise cannot be wrenched out of context as if no matter what you do, Jesus is with you. That's not what it's saying. It's not just some generic, general promise at the very end of the book. It's attached to the context. What are the things that it's attached to? Well, it's attached to the command. How does a person disciple and teach another believer? Only through the proclamation and study of the word of God. And so we see that the word is half of what he's talking about. We see that Jesus has here in mind the ministry of the word, which we already have seen creates faith. The only other thing mentioned here is baptism. Thus, the promise of Christ that He will continue to be with you is associated as you obey God in the ministry of the Word and the sacrament. You see, the promise is there that as the sacrament is given, He will be with you. This is exactly what we would expect a promise for the Word and sacrament to contain, a promise to be with you as you do it. Of course, Jesus isn't physically present anymore, and this is why we understand him to be spiritually present in the sacrament and the word. He doesn't come down physically. He's still in heaven. Jesus also teaches that this promise will continue till the end of the age. Why do we continue to do it? Because of the promise. We are to baptize until he comes back. Somebody may ask, why? It is because while baptism looks backwards at the finished work of Christ, and this is something that the old covenant sacraments could never do, I was reading Calvin today, trying to support a paper I'm writing on baptism for myself. Because this is a hard topic, I don't want to kid you. And I was looking at this idea of sacraments in the Old Testament. And I had never read anybody say this before, because I think people have departed from Calvin on this. because they're trying to support their view of infant baptism and circumcision being the connection. And I don't think it's true. Even though Calvin himself believed that. Calvin says that there's many Old Testament sacraments. And all you have to do is you look at the definition of a sacrament and then you go to the Old Testament and say, what fits the definition? It's pretty simple. Circumcision does. But according to Calvin, so does the water rituals that we read about tonight and the sacrificial rituals. They all fit the definition of sacraments. But the problem with those sacraments is that none of them can look backwards to the finished work of Christ. That's why they stop. Baptism looks backwards to the finished work of Christ. But baptism also looks forward as it realizes that our full salvation, while really truly here, is not yet fully realized. We've mentioned this in many places before. Our baptism, as Paul calls it, is our Red Sea experience, but it leads us not into our final country yet, through the crossing of the Jordan. I mentioned that a minute ago. It leads us into our wilderness experience, where God tests us and brings suffering upon us, and He feeds us with Christ, who is our manna, until the end of the age, which is when we'll finally enter into our promised land in our heavenly country. So baptism continues because it anticipates Christ's final return and the redemption of our bodies while we no longer have sin, where we will no longer have sin to make us dirty people. In this way, it is a sign and a seal of that which is guaranteed and promised, but which has not fully arrived yet. And yet it is also a remembrance of the fact that Christ himself has entered the promised land through his baptism in the Jordan. his obedience in the wilderness, and his death and resurrection, which are symbolized in baptism, to heaven, where he's even now preparing a place for us. I want you to be thinking eschatologically about these things. And I want us to start thinking as a group together this way, because I think it's the most amazing thing in all of Scripture, to start thinking about the end of things. That's what eschatology is. It's the study of the last things. And I'm reading a book right now on this. And he starts off, his very first chapter is called, The Future is Here. It's this idea of the future is here now, but it's not yet fully realized. And we can't make the mistake of thinking that the future is not here in any way. The kingdom of God is here, Jesus says. And this is what I want us to start thinking about baptism. With the coming of Christ, we know that the future, the end is already here as we're living in the last days. That's what the New Testament tells us. We're in the last days. And yet it's not fully here. It's breaking into this present dark world as God's church goes forth in the promise of Matthew 28. This is the good news of the sacrament of baptism. You see, it's right in between. It's the perfect sign for being in between. It's between leaving Egypt and entering into the promised land as you go through the baptisms of the Red Sea. It's the perfect sign. It's amazing how God does these things. I want to make one final point that I'll make again next week when we talk about communion. Many in our day are looking for signs and wonders ministries. I found this to be true. I found this to be true with a lot of people I know. They're looking for spiritual magic under every rock as they attempt to meet God personally. They're seeking some way that they can discipline their sinful bodies in such a way that they'll feel closer to Jesus, because they know that they should feel closer to Him. There's no end in sight of this new sort of Christian mysticism, which is exactly what it is. In fact, I believe we've only seen the tip of the iceberg with this. And I think it's extremely dangerous. We've seen the coming of all sorts of sentimental things like cute angels in our bookstores, and all sorts of self-help books that make us better Christians. But ironically, and I think not coincidentally, at the same time that this Christian mysticism is cropping up, and as we're seeking a deeper spiritual intimacy with God, the evangelical church is abandoning her belief that the Word of God all by itself, when properly preached, creates life. And we're also abandoning our practice of communion and baptism more and more because we think that they're nothing but empty seashells and outdated ceremonies that do nothing. They do not realize that God has given the church a signs and wonders ministry in scripture. They do not realize it is because God's signs and wonders look like foolishness to our enlightened senses. God has promised to work through ordinary, not extraordinary means. He uses simple words, common water and ordinary bread and wine to do extraordinary things in his people. He uses these means not because there's anything special in them, but rather ironically, because there's nothing special in them. Because these means are the biblical props and help mates of God's miraculous working of salvation and sanctification in his people. The sacraments and the word complement each other in their foolishness to our senses. If we truly want to grow closer to Jesus Christ, we would do well to reflect deeply on these things and trust God that he will be with us in a special way through them solely because of his promise to us. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the wonderful reality that you have not left us in a kind of an ethereal, spiritual netherworld, but that you have set us firmly upon physical realities that point to the spiritual realities. We thank you that both the physical and the spiritual are equally true, and we don't want to make the mistake of becoming Gnostics in our thinking, because it's very dangerous, because when we do that, we end up denying the very physical reality of Jesus Christ himself, who came as a man on our behalf. It's kind of a slippery slope. Lord, I thank you that you give us physical signs to prop up our faith and to strengthen it and to encourage us and to show us how much you love us through them. And I thank you that they themselves point to the spiritual realities and that they themselves, by the faith that you give us, and as they're accompanied by the Word, strengthen our faith. Lord, I pray that you would help us really to think deeply about these things, because as the word itself means, this is a great mystery. And it's wonderful that you give us mysteries to contemplate and to wonder how you do these things, and even to wonder why you do these things. Lord, I'm convinced that you do them because you love us. And I thank you, Lord, for the truth contained in Christian baptism. And I would pray that through this truth, we might see the true reality that it signifies, which is Christ and all his benefits. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.