1. "How can a great oak tree with all its branches and leaves, with its great trunk and extensive root system, come from a small acorn that I hold almost effortlessly in my hand?"

2. "Whatever the approach taken, whether ethical or religious or intellectual, is it pursuing that path without any errors, without any missteps? How many good works that you are able to do can you omit? Or how many sins can you commit and still be okay with God? How many commanded religious rites can you forget, or revealed truths ignore, and still be okay with God?"

3. "Faith first saves. Faith then is sealed. Our first point is simply that faith first saves apart from religious works."

4. "Not the goodness you've brought in here with you today, but God's goodness available to you. That's the great news of this letter."

5. "Friend, that's what our God is like. If you are not normally at church, you've hit a very good verse just to drop in on Christianity. There is hope for idolaters beyond the river. There's hope for people called ungodly. There's hope for people who have nothing to commend themselves, because that's really what all of us are like."

6. "See what it would mean for you to trade in your trinkets of goodness or right things that you've done, not everything, but some things for real. And see what it would be like to trade that away for the perfect righteousness of Christ. See what that would mean with your relationship with God, with your standing with Him."

7. "We are luggage waiting to be claimed at the baggage claim of life. We are goods bought and about to be collected. God has marked his own with his seal, which may be invisible to others, but with his own searching eyes, if to no one else's, his ownership of us clearly appears."

8. "Baptism is the kind of door into the house. The Lord's Supper is the continuing family meal. The gospel is the invitation to come on in."

9. "Friends, please don't misunderstand the sign as being as important as the substance. The faith that Abraham had is what God used to give him his righteousness. Circumcision is from the Lord; in Abraham's time, it was a sign of that, a seal."

10. "Friend, if your life is taken up with smaller matters and shallower loves today, why would that be? Why give yourself for smaller things? Come to Jesus."

Observation Questions

1. Read Romans 4:1–3. According to Paul, what does Scripture say Abraham did, and what was “counted to him as righteousness”?
2. In Romans 4:4–5, how does Paul contrast “the one who works” with “the one who does not work but believes,” and what is said about how their “wages” or “faith” are counted?
3. In Romans 4:6–8, how does David describe the blessed person, and what three things does God do (or not do) in regard to that person’s sins?
4. According to Romans 4:9, what question does Paul raise about whether this blessing is only for the circumcised or also for the uncircumcised, and what statement about Abraham does he repeat?
5. In Romans 4:10, what two options does Paul give about when Abraham’s faith was counted as righteousness, and which one does he say is correct?
6. In Romans 4:11a, how does Paul describe circumcision (using two key words), and what did Abraham already have “by faith” when he received this sign?

Interpretation Questions

1. Why is the timing of Abraham’s circumcision (Romans 4:10–11) so important for Paul’s argument that justification is by faith apart from religious works or rituals?
2. What does it reveal about God’s character and about the nature of grace that He is described in Romans 4:5 as the one “who justifies the ungodly,” and how did the sermon press this home?
3. The sermon distinguished between “signs” and “seals,” using circumcision and a wedding ring as examples. How does that distinction help you understand what Paul means in Romans 4:11?
4. According to the sermon, how does Old Testament circumcision relate to New Testament baptism and the Lord’s Supper—what is similar about their role as signs/seals, and what is different about their saving power?
5. The preacher insisted that God’s spoken promises and the preaching of the gospel are more fundamental than the outward signs. How does Romans 4 support that claim, and why does it matter for how we view baptism and the Lord’s Supper?

Application Questions

1. Where are you personally most tempted to rest your confidence before God—in your moral record, religious practices, or theological knowledge—rather than in Christ alone, and what would concrete repentance and renewed faith look like this week?
2. If you are baptized, how might remembering what your baptism signifies (union with Christ in His death and resurrection) help you respond when you feel condemned, ashamed, or unsure that you are really “okay with God”?
3. Thinking about the Lord’s Supper as a sign and seal of Christ’s dying love, how could you prepare differently before the next time your church celebrates it (for example, in self‑examination, reconciliation, or simply prioritizing being present)?
4. The sermon said that certain obediences “are the kind of things saved people do,” even though they don’t save us. What is one specific area of obedience (e.g., conflict, hidden sin, generosity, evangelism) where you need to act this week as someone already justified, not as someone trying to earn justification?
5. As a group and as a church, what practical steps could you take to help children, new Christians, and visitors see baptism and the Lord’s Supper not as empty rituals or saving acts, but as living pictures of the gospel that strengthen faith?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Genesis 15:1–6 — Shows the original moment when Abraham believed God’s promise and it was counted to him as righteousness, which Paul cites in Romans 4.
2. Genesis 17:1–14 — Describes God giving circumcision to Abraham as a covenant sign, years after Genesis 15, clarifying Paul’s point about faith preceding the sign.
3. Joshua 24:1–3, 14–15 — Reveals that Abraham came from an idolatrous background, illustrating God’s grace in justifying the “ungodly” as the sermon emphasized.
4. Deuteronomy 30:1–6 — Promises that God will “circumcise your heart,” pointing beyond outward ritual to the inner transformation that circumcision, baptism, and the Supper signify.
5. Colossians 2:11–15 — Connects “circumcision made without hands” with baptism and being made alive with Christ, reinforcing how the New Testament reorients these signs around Jesus’ death and resurrection.

Sermon Main Topics

I. The Local Church Contains the Seeds of a Remade World

II. Faith First Saves Apart from Religious Works (Romans 4:10-11a)

III. Faith Is Sealed by a God-Given Sign

IV. Baptism and the Lord's Supper as Signs and Seals for Christians Today

V. Warning: Do Not Confuse the Sign with the Substance

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Detailed Sermon Outline

One friend has observed the startling truth that the ordinary local Christian church contains within itself the seeds or the DNA of a remade world.

That may strike you as something of a kind of overstatement. As you sit here in this assembly of hundreds of people, aware as you are of the ravages of time and disease, of war and selfishness, of pride and greed, that's quite a statement. It sounds like a claim to be rejected out of hand on the very face of it. How can a great oak tree with all its branches and leaves with its great trunk and extensive root system come from a small acorn that I hold almost effortlessly in my hand? Oh, sometimes we may think we can catch a glimpse of the possibility as we envision the future promised, or capture truth held in the words of a hymn that we sing, or a prayer we pray, or even in a sermon we listen to.

Or it might be hearing of an orphan cared for, or a widow supported, or an abuser imprisoned, or some other act of justice or mercy done in we get an uncommon sense of hope.

Or in the testimony of someone to be baptized, or our own reflections at the Lord's table, in the visible reminder of God's provision for us in Christ, we can see it all come together in a glimpse, tantalizingly small, familiar, that reminds us from what we've seen God do already, we should think of what God can do ahead.

How can you know this morning that you're okay with God, that you'll be a part of this new world that He creates? Well, that was the question that dominated a discussion I had recently with an old friend of mine.

Is it some ethical measure like our own caring for widows or prisoners or generally trying to do what's right or merciful? Or more strictly and negatively stated, is it the absence of sin in our life?

Or is it some religious measure like some physical mark placed on the body or participating in some symbolic ritual like we did last Sunday at the Lord's Supper? Or is it entirely different? Is it a matter of something we think? Is it a matter of something we know or we understand about matters that are correct as we know the truth?

Whatever the approach taken, whether ethical or religious or intellectual, is it pursuing that path without any errors, without any missteps? How many good works that you are able to do can you omit?

Or how many sins can you commit and still be okay with God? How many commanded religious rites forget or revealed truths ignore and still be okay with God?

I think Christ's word to us this morning is the same as it was to that ancient church in Sardis we read of in Revelation chapter 3 when He commands, Remember then what you received and heard, keep it and repent.

I think as we review the next four sentences in Romans chapter 4, we'll find ourselves instructed and encouraged and equipped to endure, to keep on keeping on in whatever pathway God has laid out for you on your way home to Him. And I think along the way we'll think again about the saving nature of faith alone and Christ alone and see it illustrated and informed by a very simple chronology of events in Abraham's life. And then finally by considering two similar signs that Christ has left for his people in these days to recall our initial spiritual resurrection and our continual feasting on him by faith until we find ourselves finally in the current of Christ's love led onward, led homeward to our glorious rest above.

Our text is Romans chapter 4 Verses 10 and 11a, that is the first sentence in verse 11. You'll find it on page 941 in the Bibles provided. Let me encourage you to open your Bibles there now. Romans chapter 4. Paul continues to instruct in the truth that justification comes, that is being made right with God, comes by faith alone in what Christ has done, as His righteousness is counted to us by faith alone.

In chapter 4 he has shown that this teaching does not overthrow or tear down what was taught in the Old Testament, but is really what had actually already been taught there in those very Scriptures. And Paul had particularly pointed to two examples. Maybe you can remember what they are. The example of Abraham and the example of David. In our verses he returns to the example of Abraham.

He's just said in verse 9 Faith was counted to Abraham as righteousness. You see that in verse 9? So then look there in verse 10. And what you see here in 10 and 11 are four statements. The first two are questions and the second two are statements.

And all four make this same point. They're kind of clicking on a little further each time, a little clearer, a little more explicit. Chapter 4, verse 10: How then was it counted to him?

Was it before or after he had been circumcised?

It was not after, but before he was circumcised.

He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. Friends, there are two simple points to this message. Paul first notes again that it is faith that is the instrument that conveys to the believer the saving righteousness of God, as Paul had called it up in chapter 3. And then second, and this will take up most of our time this morning, Paul notes that this saving faith is sealed by a God-given sign. So faith saves and then faith is sealed.

I pray that as we consider this, we'll understand more of how we come to be acceptable to the Lord and we show this salvation and commemorate it until the Lord brings us home to Him or the Lord Himself returns to us. Faith first saves, faith then is sealed. Our first point is simply that faith first saves apart from religious works. We've already seen this. In Romans chapter 4 as we've been studying.

By faith saving, I don't mean that we save ourselves by believing. I mean that God reaches us, holding out His promises of His righteousness available to us simply by trusting only in Christ. Paul's point here in Romans has been to argue carefully and fully. It strikes me as a pastor how Paul here is writing so respectfully of those who's disagreeing with him or need to be persuaded. He's not cutting corners.

He's not just going to a conclusion and insisting on it, but he is carefully thinking through each step of their argument and is providing an answer and a suggestion to them. You go back to chapter 1 verse 16, this is what Paul's been talking about. For I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith, for faith as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith. And then from that point in this letter, chapter 1, verse 19, through the rest of chapter 1, through all of chapter 2, through the first half of chapter 3, Paul has argued to the conclusion that by the works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.

Paul then turns to an entirely different righteousness. Not the goodness you've brought in here with you today, but God's goodness available to you. That's what he says here in chapter 3. That's the great news of this letter. He argues then that by the works of the law, no human being will be justified.

And so he turns to the righteousness of God available through faith in Jesus Christ. He argues there in the second half of chapter 3 that that's the way we'll be included in this new world. He argues in verse 30 that God will justify the circumcised, that is the Jews, by faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith. And he deals with the objection then, if you look at the end of chapter 3, is this throwing out the Old Testament? And he says, Not at all.

No, this is completely consistent with what the Scriptures have taught us. He encounters that objection and he answers it in chapter 4. And that's what we've been seeing in this series of sermons. Look in Romans chapter 4. Let me start reading with verse 1.

What then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness. Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift, but as his due.

And to the one who does not work but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness, just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts. Righteousness, apart from works. And then he quotes Psalm 32 by David. Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.

Is this blessing then only for the circumcised or also for the uncircumcised? For we say that faith was counted to Abraham as righteousness. And so with Paul's first leading question, you see what he's doing socratically. How then was it counted to him? He's drawing the reader's attention to a particular detail.

He doesn't want them merely generally recalling Abraham to mind, and that Genesis 15:6 was said to him. He doesn't want them only to know that Abraham is an example of someone whose faith was once somewhere, sometime dehistorically counted to him as righteousness, like that's a general moral principle. No, he wants one particular circumstance in that event to be noticed. And then in order to stress it, Paul asks a second question, leading the witness as it were. Verse 10, was it before or after he had been circumcised?

Paul cleverly exploits the reader's interest in the Old Testament and their knowledge of it, and he points out a detail in the story of Abraham interesting, he's assuming the historicity of Genesis. Whole thing falls apart if you don't think it's true. If you don't think it's history, if you don't think it's reliable, he's assuming it. Paul is convinced that this detail of the history in Abraham's story can be the fulcrum, the unmoved point on which Paul can leverage his whole argument about Abraham's credited righteousness. Then in the third statement Paul gives the answer.

Perhaps they had already arrived at it, but he wants to make sure, so he says, It was not after, but before he was circumcised. You understand what Paul means. Abraham's faith was not credited to him as righteousness while he was circumcised, like we read about in Genesis 17.

But while he was uncircumcised. He's talking about two different periods in Abraham's life, only one of which was the period in which faith was first credited to him as righteousness. And that is when he was uncircumcised. As Tyndale puts this sentence, Not in the time of circumcision, but when he was yet uncircumcised. And then just in case any reader is still not getting it, verse 11, he lays it out just very fully and clearly.

Same idea. He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. Now how does Paul know this historical detail? Because friends, if you turn back to Genesis 17, like we did earlier in this service, you see when circumcision was given as a sign. But when was his faith credited to him as righteousness?

Well, that was in Genesis 15, years before Genesis 17. So Paul knows his Bible well enough. He knows the story of Abraham well enough. To know that that kind of detail could in itself be part of explaining the central truth of salvation that the letter to the Romans is about and showing that the Old Testament is not at odds with this gospel of Jesus Christ. The Old Testament actually had all this stuff already there waiting.

So it was not through circumcision and religious ritual that Abraham was saved. It was credited to him as righteousness. What? His faith, his belief in the promise of God.

The first time in the Bible that circumcision is mentioned is in chapter 17 of Genesis when Abraham was 99 years old. It's earlier in his story, years earlier, if you look over at chapter 15, that you find God's promise to make that the time childless couple fruitful. It's in Genesis 15:5, he says, he brought him outside and said, Look toward heaven, number the stars, if you're able to number them. Then he said to him, so shall your offspring be. He says to the 99-year-old childless couple.

And do you know how they responded? It says there in Genesis 15:6, he, that's Abraham, he believed God.

All your senses, everything in the world, God.

Abraham believed God. And God counted that. He reckoned that as righteousness. It's this last statement here that Paul then has taken and that he's been exploring and expounding in this letter to the churches at Rome, Genesis 15:6. And Paul's challenge to any who would trust in their religious obediences for righteousness is to point out that the father of the circumcised, the father of the Jewish nation, Abraham, that he himself, his own being declared righteous by faith, was predating his own circumcision by years.

It had nothing to do with those distinguishing marks and religious rites. One more thing to really appreciate this, you need to realize who Abraham was at the time. He was one of those ungodly people that he had mentioned up in verse, in Romans 4 verse 5. You see, Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteous. Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift, but as his due.

And to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly. His faith is counted as righteousness. Who are the ungodly? Well, among others, it's everybody here, but among others, it was Abraham. He was one of the ungodly because he was an idolater.

We know that from Joshua 24. Joshua said to all the people, this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: Long ago your forefathers, including Terah, the father of Abraham and Nahor, lived beyond the River and worshiped other gods.

But I took your father Abraham from the land beyond the river and led them throughout Canaan and gave him many descendants. I gave him Isaac. Friend, that's what our God is like. If you are not normally at church, you've hit a very good verse just to drop in on Christianity. There is hope for idolaters beyond the river.

There's hope for people called ungodly. There's hope for people who have nothing to commend themselves because that's really what all of us are lying We in ourselves have nothing to commend ourselves to God. All of our obediences are imperfect and less than they should be, and they're accompanied by all of our disobediences. Friends, our only hope is another righteousness. It is the righteousness of Christ, and it's our believing in Him, our trusting in Him.

That God then gives us Christ's perfect righteousness for our soul's sake. That's your hope today. And the good news for you, if you feel you're here as a moral wreck, a religious failure, a kind of no-show in what matters in life, you are drawing breath and your ears are hearing the truth about God in Christ. You have hope today. You may not have realized when you came, but you have hope.

Look into that hope. See what that would mean in your own life. See what it would mean for you to trade in your trinkets of goodness or right things that you've done. Yeah, not everything, but some things for real. And see what it would be like to trade that away for the perfect righteousness of Christ.

See what that would mean with your relationship with God, with your standing with Him. Friends, explore the good news of Jesus Christ. Talk to the people around you. Talk to the pastors on the doors as you head out in just a little bit. Faith saves.

Faith in Christ saves in His grace. But the other thing that Paul talks about in this verse For those of us who are saved, that we need to notice is that faith is sealed, that saving faith is sealed. For Abraham, there was a sign, the sign of circumcision. Look there in our passage in chapter 4 verse 11.

If this distinguishing sign of God's people didn't save them, What was it doing? Well, Paul communicates the answer in verse 11. The sign of circumcision was received by Abraham as a seal of God's saving righteousness he had received by faith. So, for instance, the sign of marriage right here, this ring.

Hope it goes back on. This ring, it's been on there since 1982. This ring is a sign of marriage. On my finger it becomes a seal of my participation in marriage.

So a sign and a seal are very closely related. They're not exactly the same thing. Jesus fairly frequently spoke of signs in His own ministry, indicating His identity. Paul and Barnabas picked up that language. You look at their preaching through Acts.

Signs and wonders happen. To show the truth of the gospel among the Gentiles. In fact, Paul used that word later in Romans 15 as he's expressing God's spirit working through him powerfully to bring the Gentiles to obedience. God has been displaying signs of the truth of the gospel of Christ. Seal on the other hand, seal is what Paul calls, say, the Corinthians who came to believe through his preaching.

In 1 Corinthians 9:2, we read Paul writing, you, are the seal of my apostleship. So their conversion acted as the confirmation of Paul's call as the apostle to the Gentiles, to the nations. I think this distinction we see in Scripture here in Romans 4:11 is pretty well captured by our English words. Signs present a promise. Seals assure us of our participation in the promise, confirming the individuals participation, like the notarization that a public notary provides.

Here, circumcision documented and ratified Abraham's faith and therefore his righteous status. It's a memorial, it's a remembrance. Like the rainbow we thought of earlier this year when we were studying Genesis, or the Passover meal in Exodus 13, the Lord's Supper that we observed last Sunday, these are signs, signs in general become a seal in particular when personally appropriated. So is circumcision here with Abraham. The sign of circumcision here was the seal of the righteousness Abraham already had and had had for years by faith alone.

Circumcision neither created nor contributed to Abraham's saving faith. Rather it confirmed it, it evidenced it.

So for anyone here feeling desperate to be baptized today, you don't need to be baptized to be a Christian. There are not these outside signs that create saving faith. They can encourage it, they can instruct it, but no, the faith that we have is not based on signs. How exactly was circumcision a seal of Abraham's earlier believing the Lord? By his acting upon the belief in this specific way.

Obeying the command to be circumcised in Genesis 17, a command that the same Lord who had made the promise, He had believed back in chapter 15. So He believed in chapter 15, the same one that He obeyed in chapter 17. His obedience brings about the sign of the righteousness He had by faith that saved Him in chapter 15. The faith in the promise-maker of chapter Chapter 15 showed itself in Abraham's obedience to the promise makers command in chapter 17. I love the way Paul preaches the one and only gospel there is from the Old Testament.

He doesn't have to have the New Testament to preach the gospel. He's got the Old Testament. Like Abraham in Genesis 17, God's people today are called to do things that don't save us but that do reflect our salvation. No amount of trying to live at peace with your difficult spouse will save you. But it is the kind of thing saved people do.

You know that you're working to mortify sin and bring righteousness to all parts of your life is not the way you can save yourself. But it's the kind of thing saved people do. You know that sharing the good news of Jesus will never save you. But it's the kind of thing saved people do. Submitting to authorities, loving others, not passing judgment on one another, not causing each other to stumble, following Christ's example.

None of these things will save us. But these are all the kinds of things that saved people do.

This idea of sealing is taken up by Paul again in Ephesians 4:30. When he talks about what the Holy Spirit does in the life of the believer, the Holy Spirit of God seals the life of the believer, the heart of the believer, the sealing and ownership and security that we were, that were owned by God, that were kept by him. So when we live in ways that hurt and wound needlessly, when we divide and rend the body of Christ maliciously, We grieve the Spirit of God who dwells in us individually and as a church. Sin is always a personal thing with God. He takes it personally.

It is personal. We're made in His image. If we are Christians, we're even renewed in His image. So when we sin, we need to make no mistake here. We sin against Him.

You may have suffered some terrible sin yourself. People sitting against you. You may be truly and really a victim. Understand that in your being sinned against, you have been sinned against less than God has been sinned against. Your sin, the sin rather that you've experienced is real, and your having endured it is real and matters to God.

It is not His chief objection to the sin that you suffered. His chief objection is that someone made in His own image did that against someone made in His own image. His chief objection is the lie about Himself that goes on in multiple ways in such actions. The Bible makes it clear that God has drawn Christians into an intimate, loving relationship with Himself. And He's saying that by the Holy Spirit, when we're saved, He labels us.

We are luggage waiting to be claimed at the baggage claim of life.

We are goods bought and about to be collected. God has marked His own with His seal, which may be invisible to others, but with His own searching eyes if to no one else's his ownership of us clearly appears. So we wait only for the day of redemption. That is the glorification that we will know when we are finally brought into the full presence of God. The Holy Spirit's presence in us now is the down payment which tells us that that day is coming when God takes full possession.

So the Holy Spirit seals the believer in our lives. So now we, like Abraham, have signed and sealed, but ours are no longer circumcision and the Sabbath, no longer sacrifices and ceremonies. All right, then what are the signs and seals of God's righteousness counted to us by faith that God has given to Christians today? How is our faith in Christ signified? How is it sealed?

Well, that brings us to what it looks like for us today. For Christians, Christ has given us the signs of baptism, and the Lord's Supper. They are to be seals of our faith. I wonder how many would explain the relationship between these two Christian signs that Jesus commanded us to observe, baptism and the Lord's Supper, to the faith and salvation that Paul is talking about here in Romans 4. Would you say that we have to be baptized?

Or to take the Lord's Supper in order to be saved? Would you say that being baptized or taking the Lord's Supper saves us?

Kids, if you're here as teenagers, you really want to understand this. Make sure you talk to your parents about this.

Our church's statement of faith expresses it well, Article 14 of Baptism and the Lord's Supper: We believe that Christian baptism is the immersion in water of a believer. That's what we do right back there. That's why we have a whole pool that gets filled up. Into the name of the Father and Son and Holy Ghost. It's not some generic baptism into the name of God or even the name of Jesus, but it's into the name of the Trinity, the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, to show forth in a solemn and beautiful emblem.

That's the word our statement of faith uses for sign. It's emblem. In a solemn and beautiful emblem, our faith in the crucified, buried and risen Savior. You see how even in the immersion, the crucified, the buried, and the risen is depicted. With its, our faith's effect, in our death to sin and resurrection to a new life.

I love how both are depicted. When you were baptized, you leaned back, picturing a kind of death, and you're raised up, picturing a new life that you have in Christ. That it, baptism, is a prerequisite to the privileges of a church relation. That's 19th century speak, meaning you can't be a member of a church unless you're baptized. You've got to be baptized.

It's a prerequisite to the privileges of a church relation than a church membership. And to the Lord's Supper, which means you should not take the Lord's Supper if you're not baptized. In which the members of the church, interesting, that's who they envision will be taking the Lord's Supper, the members of the church, by the sacred use of bread and wine, Wine, you know, fruit of the vine.

Are to commemorate, that is to remember, 'cause Jesus, or Paul, Jesus said, Do this in remembrance of me. Together. We specifically say together. It's not something you do in your small group. Not something you do on a retreat.

Not something the ladies do, the women's retreat. No, together, when we are gathered as a church body, together, the dying love of Christ. He said, Do this in remembrance of Me. Preceded always by solemn self-examination. That's why we take the church covenant, read over it quietly.

That's what we as a church do. It's entering Romans 4:11. Our verse is the first verse cited in the Westminster Confession of Faith in chapter 27 on the sacraments. This is where they go first. Now, I say sacraments, some Christians I know don't like that word.

It's the English form of the Latin word for mysteries. Christians recognize two sacraments, baptism and the Lord's Supper. These acts, baptism and the Lord's Supper, help to confirm our faith and assure us of the promises of God. This is how John Calvin expressed it in his 1545 catechism, quote, It's not sufficient for faith once to be generated in us, it must be nourished and sustained that it may grow day by day and be increased within us. To nourish, strengthen and increase it, God gives us the sacraments.

That is what Paul indicates when he says that they are used to seal the promises of God in our hearts. And then he cites Romans 4:11. Sometimes Baptists have preferred to use the word ordinances, which is a fine word. It simply means something commanded by Christ. If sacrament is taken to mean that God's grace automatically comes to us regardless of faith, then it's not a good word to use and that's not true.

But sacrament has been a word that Protestants have used without meaning that. Baptism is the kind of door into the house. The Lord's Supper is the continuing family meal. The gospel is the invitation to come on in. So you hear the gospel, you come in, you're baptized, you go through that door once and then you're regularly seated at the family table for the meal.

There's nothing in Scripture about how frequently the meal is taken, it's simply repeated. Let me just spend a few minutes with you thinking about each of these signs, since we're here at this text where the sign of faith is laid out. Most of you have seen baptisms here. I or one of the other pastors will interview some people, especially understanding how they've come to follow Christ. Then we go in the back where we prepare to come into the baptistry.

You pause, you're singing, and I are another pastor here baptize the Christian. On the question of who baptizes, the Bible doesn't teach that there's a particular administrator that's essential for a true, valid baptism. Neither Jesus nor Paul used baptism as a very central part of their own ministry. And yet we think it's prudent to normally have someone perform the baptism who well represents the congregation as a whole. And that means a pastor, an elder.

So here I or some other elder recognized by the congregation seems most appropriately to act on behalf of the congregation as a whole and then ultimately on behalf of our Lord in baptizing. Another common question is, well, then how is baptism to be done? Because different Christians have done baptism different ways. Some have done it by pouring or sprinkling, but we think that complete immersion is the most appropriate form. Whether you do it backwards or forwards, once or three times, Immersion is widely acknowledged as the apostolic practice and the practice that most fully conveys what baptism is to display, our participating by faith in the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ.

All right, who then should be baptized? Well, we think the popular practice of spontaneous baptism today is unwise because it gives no time for the faith professed to be shown. People like Abraham who already have evidenced faith in God and his gospel promises are those who should be baptized. We under-shepherds, pastors, instruct those who are to be baptized. There are going to be people normally who are regularly here, already participating in the life of the church as best they can.

They will have been through membership classes, they will have been interviewed, recommended to the congregation. The congregation then has to vote at a members meeting to admit them to membership in the church following their baptism. When should people be baptized? Well, the Bible doesn't explicitly instruct us, but we've found that the conclusion of our morning services, usually we're doing it the fourth Sunday of each month, is a good way to do it. Such times of celebrating baptism become highlights in the congregation's life, common memories that are treasured.

We have folks to be baptized briefly share their testimonies of becoming Christians. They give quiet, consistent, sometimes other times it's dramatic emotional talks about monumental changes. It excites interest and encourages faith. By those kind of testimonies the children in the church are instructed, young believers are encouraged. We old believers are shown who's going to keep this place going after we're gone.

It's just a good thing for all of us. So the whole body is joined and held together by every supporting ligament as it grows and builds itself up in love as each part does its work. That's what Paul writes in Ephesians 4:16. The church's growth becomes visible. Through such public baptismal testimonies, non-Christians who attend to hear the gospel, the church is built up.

Christians are encouraged and unified. And in all of this, God is glorified. Just because some of you are going to ask me, let me just give you a few more practices that you can follow up with, questions about me or some other pastor at the door. The unbaptized may attend the Lord's Supper just like last Sunday morning, but they just simply shouldn't partake in it. We only bring into church membership those who've been baptized.

We wouldn't normally baptize somebody who wasn't coming into membership here. We would encourage them to wait and be baptized at the church where they're going to live and attend. Be baptized there. We happily accept the baptism of believers from other Christian churches when done in the name of the Trinity and in connection with the same gospel preached that you hear preached here. We regularly encourage disciples to delay baptism until they are ready to stand on their own apart from their Christian family, to follow Christ under the direct discipline of the church.

We've never set an age, but we try to encourage believers to wait until they've reached the kind of maturity we would normally expect happens in our culture in late teenage years. The great 19th century English Baptist pastor Andrew Fuller said that the sign when rightly used, leads to the thing signified. That's the desire of all Christians with baptism, that it would lead us to Christ, who for us and for our salvation came, and was crucified, buried, raised again for our justification. That's what signified in baptism. And this is the point.

So it's our job to hold up the picture that Christ left in order to draw our minds to this reality. We do this in obedience to His personal command in the Great Commission and so bring Jesus the honor that He's due. The Lord's Supper is the other sign that's been left and it's been less controversial among the children of the Reformation. While I know the Lutherans and the Quakers on either side of us have some distinct views on the Lord's Supper, the great body of the Anglicans, the Presbyterians, the Congregationalists, the Baptists, non-denominational Protestants, have understood the Lord's Supper in the same way. As Christians, we know that Christ's body was broken and His blood was shed for us to deliver us from the penalty and power of our old master sin.

So Sunday by Sunday, even in churches that misunderstand, even deny the significance of the sacrifice of Christ, some variation on the Lord's Supper is reenacted. At the very heart of the weekly gatherings of other churches right here on the hill, this Sunday, even ones that don't comprehend the gospel very well. In the irony of history, Christ has set it up so that his death is set forth visually, waiting for somebody to be able to read the gospel and explain it in words. One fear I have as a pastor is that in churches that do understand the gospel, we have neglected the regular observance that Christ himself enjoined on us. Do this, Jesus said, as he instructed his followers in a kind of simplified Passover meal, summarizing and setting forth the deliverance that Jesus brought on the cross.

The early disciples understood this. They understood this supper was to be observed regularly, and it seems that they did so. Other commands given to us by Jesus are different. Baptism, we've just been considering, happens once. Foot washing in John 13 is something they did once.

We don't see that happening again. There was no promise attached to it. Love is continual. But in the Lord's Supper we have a right, a particular religious action, a sign that Jesus commanded us to observe repeatedly. Why?

Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 11:26, it was to proclaim Christ's death and its meaning. To give witness to participating in the gospel and to preach it to our own souls. The Bible tells us that Christ's death is for us and for our sin. We believe that it is only by His death that we've been justified and delivered from sin's lordship over us. So we should take delight in participating in the Lord's Supper.

It's at His table that we are especially showing our unity in Christ. We're all together remembering his sacrifice for us even as we proclaim his death. We make ourselves visible. We appear as the body of his followers being made holy. We gather in thanks for Christ's cross, in commitment to follow him as his disciples and in hopes of his soon return.

So those are three different focuses that I have in my own mind as I come to the Lord's table. The past, we remember his death, proclaim it. The current, in present, I'm participating in following the Lord and the future. This is in hopes of that final supper that we will have one day with Christ himself. How can we fully and seriously honor Christ's command here at CHBC?

Well, we mean to do this by taking the Lord's supper regularly and encouraging each other to be present and to prepare well. Just a few questions about this. How often should we celebrate it? Well, it seems like in the New Testament that the pattern was for Christians to observe the Lord's Supper frequently, though we don't know exactly how frequently. There is no biblical answer about how often Christians are to do this.

Historically, Christians have done this everywhere from annually at Easter to every week to anything in between. Our church, long before I got here, settled on the sort of typical Protestant answer of the first Sunday of each month. The frequency of our obedience to this command may say something to our understanding of its significance. We should not base our obedience merely on avoiding others' abuses. Our practice should not deny regular communing simply because some sacramentalists have wrongly taken the Lord's Supper to be saving.

Faith alone in Christ alone is saving, and it is that same Lord Jesus Christ who calls us into regular fellowship at His table. Around the sign of his crucifixion. So that's why we do it and that's why you as a member of this church should be there when we take the Lord's Supper. How should we prepare for it? Well, even as we prepare people for other areas of obedience by instructing them and coming to the Lord's table, we pastors should be regularly teaching our congregation what it means to follow Jesus.

That's why we teach new members our statement of faith. Each Lord's Day we preach God's word expositionally like I'm doing now. So we often have occasion to teach on Christ's cross, to proclaim His death, sometimes even to speak on the Lord's Supper itself, like I'm doing right now. Though those of you who are members will know that's very rare. We prepare by examining ourselves, like 1 Corinthians 11:28 tells us to, particularly looking at anything which would be standing between us and God or us and some other member of the body with whom we should be taking the supper.

I think Bobby gave a good address Elders address on when you should abstain from taking the Lord's Supper. You can find that on the members section of the website. This can be a great time for working out divisions in the church. How often have I seen brothers and sisters reconciled as they know the supper's coming. They kind of feel it almost like breathing down their neck.

Like they need to get together and say something to somebody. In fact, our church used to have covenant meetings on the Thursday night before the Lord's Supper was going to happen on Sunday. Specifically so that brothers and sisters could reconcile. That's why we announce at the beginning of the service or even before the celebration that the table is for members of our church. We let them know it's coming.

If you can in good conscience obey the scriptural concerns in 1 Corinthians chapter 11, you're welcome to take. Non-Christians, you are very welcome to watch us, as I said earlier, but you should not partake of the elements when they are distributed. In fact, no one who is unbaptized, kids, that includes you too. If you're intending to follow Jesus, but you've not been baptized, you're not a member of the church, you should not take the Lord's Supper. You're not losing anything by that.

You're not losing anything by that. You don't need to worry that there's grace that's going by and you're not getting it. The Lord has a time for all the obedience as he calls us to in life. We spend time in silent confession of sins, using the words of the covenant to examine our own souls. We remind ourselves why we so desperately need the cross.

We again remember why it is that it would kill Christ to love us. All of that you can do if you're a believer sitting there unbaptized. Last question, what should our response be to the Lord's Supper? I remember one Roman Catholic friend who attended our communion service once and said that it was a lovely service, very serious, but But where was the joy? I appreciated the honesty of the question.

He was British, tended to be a bit direct, which I liked. As I reflected on that, I think there may have been a great deal of joy that he simply didn't pick up on. While the cup was being distributed, we sang a hymn focused on the cross. And friend, those hymns are sometimes the highlight of the month. When that cup is being distributed and we're singing those songs, I remember times singing it as well with my soul at the table, that some people in the congregation are visibly dissolving in tears of joyful gratitude.

When we come to that third stanza, My sin, oh the bliss of this glorious thought, my sin, not in part, but the whole, is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more. Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, oh my soul. And then to sing the fourth stanza, you can go look that up yourself.

We always conclude by praying a prayer of thanks full of hope and joy for what Christ has done for us. Friends, our response should be marked by a serious joy and a prayerful thanks. So, brothers and sisters, we obey this command of Christ. We do this in remembrance of Him regularly and carefully and with thanksgiving. And by so doing it, we will, as Paul says, proclaim Christ's death until he comes.

Brothers and sisters, I don't know about you, but I find the Christian life is often hard. The Christian life can be hard at the beginning. The Christian life has hard passages in it. The Christian life has hard passages all the way through it. Disappointment and suffering.

Look at the life of Christ. What do you think the lives of those of us who follow the crucified One will be like? So we need strength. We need fellowship with Him as we remember and proclaim His own suffering and death through the cross. We adore Him as we commune with Him.

We consider His own pity and love and suffering for us, not a love that we deserve, but a love that He has given to us so fully. Even though we haven't deserved it. That is what we meditate on as we listen to the testimony, as we watch the baptism, as we eat the bread, as we drink the cup. So you see how baptism and the Lord's Supper can act as confirming seals in your own discipleship. God the Holy Spirit takes them up and uses them and seals us in our faith by them.

That doesn't mean that we have to be baptized or we have to take the Lord's Supper. In order to be saved, again, consider the very point of Romans 4. It happens by faith, by believing the promises of God. Abraham knew the reality of righteousness credited to him by faith, and so was saved before God gave him a sign and seal of this saving faith in circumcision. That means for us, we know that saving faith is more dependent on hearing God's promises, like Abram did in Genesis 15, than on the signs of having believed.

So what that means, just to put it in a nice argumentative way, is that this is more important than that. It is more fundamental. It is more basic. I'm not trying to throw that away. We're called a Baptist church, not trying to get rid of it in our name.

But friends, please don't misunderstand the sign as being as important as the substance. The faith that Abraham had is what God used to give him righteousness. Circumcision is from the Lord in Abraham's time. It was a sign of that, a seal. Sometimes Christians get confused on this point.

This is why my voice is going up a little bit. This is why I pounded that pulpit and pointed to that baptistry. They think that the signs or seals are more important than the promises they are meant to point to or confirm. Those of you who are tempted to Anglicanism because of the beautiful symbols, let me in the name of Cranmer beg you to care about the gospel he died for, literally, more than the way he looks in the service he came up with. Friends, the substance of the gospel that you hear proclaimed from the Word is more important than any Baptist or Anglican or Presbyterian or Bible church you ever go to than anything else in that church.

That is the most important thing. That's why preaching the truth of God's word, holding out his promises verbally is more fundamental than merely the visible signs of our obedience in believing those promises. But we don't wanna pit the two against each other. There's no reason we can't have both. So we try to have both.

They help each other, they encourage each other. As we are nourished, as we continue the journey. So in baptism and the Lord's Supper, we see Christ's identification with sinners, his justifying resurrection from death. We hear the promise of his return and see a preview of that final feasting with him forever. So these simple signs were come up with by Christ.

They're his ideas. The fact that we keep doing these things is a testimony to the historicity of Jesus and to his lordship in our lives and in the lives of all Christians for 2000 years now. We should conclude and warning, do not be deceived. When I say we should conclude, I don't mean we're in the last five minutes. I mean we are literally just about to conclude.

Do you know about types and antitypes? Types are foreshadowings of something. The antitype is the thing foreshadowed. So the Passover Lamb is a type of Christ in His role as Savior, dying for us. The cross is the antitype.

So circumcision is a sign and seal in many ways, foreshadows baptism in the Lord's Supper, signs for Christians. But you know the Bible never says that. And you really only get there by two steps. Now what circumcision that we see here in verse 11 is really said to be an antitype of, or rather a type of in Scripture, is not for baptism or for the Lord's Supper. It's for what baptism and the Lord's Supper themselves are signs of.

It's the death of Christ for his people and our new life in him. So if you go to Colossians chapter 2, well, no, don't. Go to Deuteronomy chapter 30. Go to Deuteronomy chapter 30. This will show you what the Lord was doing with circumcision.

Deuteronomy chapter 30:6, chapter 30:6, Deuteronomy, and the Lord your God will circumcise your heart. He didn't mean physically cut off a part of it. It's using it as a symbol. He 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. This is what is picked up by Paul in Colossians chapter 2.

Go over to Colossians chapter 2. Here is the one place in the New Testament where circumcision and baptism occur together. And what's very interesting is it is not the physical circumcision of infants. My dear pedobaptist friends, it is not that. Colossians chapter 2, verse 13, you who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God has made alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our trespasses.

See, verse 11, In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead. You see, what we experience as Christians is this circumcision of the heart that Deuteronomy 30 talked about.

No, the picture of circumcision, kind of like baptism, is a picture of judgment, of the sinful one being judged. In Jeremiah 9, there is this amazing passage right at the end of Jeremiah 9, in which the Lord says in verses 25 and 26, Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will punish all those who are circumcised, merely in the flesh. Egypt, Judah, Edom, Moab, and all who dwell in the desert, who cut the corners of their hair. For all those nations are uncircumcised, and all the house of Israel are uncircumcised in heart. That's what God cares about.

God cares about the heart. All these signs are meant to be signs of reality. God taught us that if our hearts weren't circumcised, they weren't cut off from the world, that He would cut us off in judgment. But then we also find a prophecy of the coming Messiah in Isaiah 53:8. That's the verse you want to just write down the reference to, Isaiah 53:8.

That He was cut off out of the land of the living. Why? Stricken for the transgressions of my people. So in both baptism and the Lord's Supper, we are given reminders that Christ died, He was cut off for us. He was buried for us.

He rose again for our justification. His body was broken, His blood shed for us in order to establish a new covenant for our salvation. Our meals are previews of a meal in which He would come again and feast with us forever. Friend, if your life is taken up with smaller matters and shallower loves today, Why would that be? Why give yourself for smaller things?

Come to Jesus. Let's pray.

Lord God, we thank youk for these signs and symbols. We pray, Lord, you, would make them seals, not to blanks, to nothing.

Envelopes sealed up with nothing in them. But Lord, we pray in the case of each one here baptized and who takes the Lord's Supper, that our communing with each other would in fact be a picture of the truth that we do commune with you through faith in Christ. Lord, for those who do not yet know what it means to be justified and brought to you, we pray, Lord, that you would give them that saving faith even now. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.