Title: The Significance of the Ordinances
Text: Matthew 28:19-20; Acts 2:41-42; Matthew 26:26-30;
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
Date: September 3, 2023

Introduction: Never was there a person who seemed to care less about ritual and ceremony than Jesus. By practice and by teaching He emphasized a simple, direct, personal relationship with God. Born into a world where religion had been reduced to rules and rituals, Jesus emphasized relationship. He reduced the commands of God to two: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind; and love your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10:27). Jesus did, however, leave two rituals/ceremonies for His followers to observe—Baptism and The Lord’s Supper. The significance of these two ordinances cannot be overstated.

What do we need to remember about these two rituals/ceremonies?

I. Baptism is

in our Christian experience. The Lord’s Supper is

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.

II. The Lord’s Supper and Baptism are not

; to call them

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is to vest them with a saving power which they do not have. They are

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, given to symbolize the Gospel and our salvation.

III. The Lord’s Supper symbolizes what happened to

when He went to the

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. Baptism symbolizes what happens to us when we go to the

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.

IV. When Jesus went to the cross, His

was broken and His

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was shed for the sins of the world. When we go to the cross, we who are

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in sin, die to sin, and we are raised to walk in a newness of

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.

V. The Lord’s Supper and Baptism both depict the

. Therefore, we will never outgrow our need to

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them. As long as we observe them in the proper manner, we will never drift from the heart of the __Christian __faith.

Larry Gipson
First Baptist Church Oneonta