The Ordinances

Romans · 2024-06-17 · Jason Wolin · Theology Matters

Romans · Baptism, Communion. The Ordinances — sermon from Cypress Bible Church on BibleSlides.

The Ordinances Slideshow for this message PDF Message Download Introduction We continue in our series where week by week we reveal our new doctrinal statement. And we only have two weeks left. This week and next week. And really what we have done is a crash course on systematic theology over the past 10 weeks. We are trying to distill into very short, dense sentences everything the Bible says about various subjects. And today we come to the ordinances. What are ordinances? I lived in Israel for a year and celebrated Purim which is the Jewish Holiday that celebrates the deliverance of the Jews during the days of Esther. And as part of that celebration everyone dresses up in crazy and wild constumes and they run through the streets and just go bizzurk. One of the guys came up to me with an inflatable bat and hit me on the head. And I said, “Okay, what’s that for?” And he said, “It’s part of our tradition of blotting out the name of Haaman.” I thought, Okay, that’s weird. Every culture has traditions that become attached to it. And the tradition really doesn’t have an obvious explanation. Why does the bride toss the bouquet at a wedding? That’s weird. Where did that come from? Why do we say trick or treat and then get handed candy? That’s weird. Why do we have this thing about a groundhog that sees it’s shadow? Now when it comes to the church we have these Christian traditions, baptism and communion. If you didn’t grow up in the church, and you saw this happen for the first time, it’s a very strange experience. Why are they dunking people underwater. Why are we eating little bits of bread and tiny little cups of juice. The symbol itself comes with no explanation. Is baptism just a religious version of groundhogs day, something that crept into our traditions long ago and we just kind of do it? What’s the value? Why don’t we just do away with it? Why do we keep encouraging this? We have to go to the Bible to answer the question, what in the world does it mean? Because without that, it just lands in the same pile as all the other quirky things that make their way into culture without a lick of explanation. So our doctrinal statement begins with some help: The two church practices instituted by Jesus include water baptism by immersion and the Lord’s Supper, neither of which impart merit or saving grace. So this sentence begins by establishing that there are two ordinances. Just establishing THAT THERE ARE TWO is not as simple as you might think because historically there has been disagreement on this. The word ordinance basically means law. You might think of a city ordinances that forbids grafiti or something like that. So ordinances describe the laws of the church, what the church should be doing. And if you look at it that way, there are lots of ordinanc…

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