Todd's Road Grace Church would
like to invite you to listen to a sermon by our pastor, Todd
Nyberg. We are located at 4137 Todd's
Road, two miles outside of Manowar Boulevard. Sunday services are
at 10.30 a.m. and 6 p.m. Bible study is at
9.45 a.m. Wednesday services are at 7 p.m. Nursery is provided for all services.
For more information, visit our website at toddsroadgracechurch.com.
Now here's our pastor, Todd Nyvert. I've entitled this morning's
message, What is the Requirement for Baptism and the Lord's Table? I'm going to read a passage of
Scripture from Hebrews 11, verse 13, and we're going to come back
to that at the end of the message. But we read in Hebrews 11, verse
13, these all died in faith, not having received the promises,
but having seen them afar off and were persuaded of them, and
embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and
pilgrims in the earth. What is the requirement for baptism
and the Lord's table? Now, let me say this first. You can be right on baptism,
baptism by immersion, baptism for believers only. You can be right with regard
to your scriptural definition of baptism. You can be right
about the Lord's table and understand what it means, and you can still
split hell wide open. This is not about being right.
about baptism and the Lord's Table. I'm asking, what is the
requirement for baptism and the Lord's Table? I'm not trying
to just get somebody straightened out in their views. You can get
straightened out in your views and do you no good. But what
is the requirement for baptism and the Lord's Table? Now, in
the gospel of Jesus Christ, there are two ordinances. that believers are called on
to observe and to do. Baptism and the Lord's Table. Those are the two ordinances. Now, a lot of other denominations
call them sacraments, and the Catholic Church actually has
seven sacraments. But in the New Testament, there
are only two ordinances, baptism and the Lord's Table. And I want
you to notice carefully that I call them ordinances and not
sacraments. Let me tell you why. To call
them sacraments is to say that divine grace is imparted through
these things. Through baptism, God's grace
is imparted to you, and in taking the Lord's table, eating the
bread and eating the wine, grace is imparted to you. Now, that's
just not so. There's only one means of grace.
By grace are you saved through faith. not by grace are you saved
through baptism, not by grace are you saved through eating
the Lord's Table, by grace are you saved through faith. Faith
is the one means of grace. And if I make baptism or the
Lord's Table means of grace, means through which grace is
conveyed, I'm saying salvation is by works. If you Get baptized. If you're baptized, grace will
be given to you. Life comes through those waters.
Or if you take the Lord's Table, grace is imparted to you. No,
that's teaching salvation by works. That's the reason we don't
call baptism in the Lord's Table sacraments. We call them ordinances. They do not convey grace. They're ceremonies. They represent
something. They do not convey grace. Can you be saved without observing
them? Can you be saved and go to heaven even if you're never
baptized? Can you be saved and go to heaven
even if you never partake of the Lord's table? Absolutely. The thief on the cross was never
baptized. The thief on the cross never
took the Lord's table. And yet the Lord gave him complete assurance
of his salvation. He said, today thou shalt be
with me in paradise. And he never was baptized, and
he never ate of the Lord's table. Now, he was saved. No question about that. So that
lets you know that these are ceremonies. There is no saving
power in them. But if you do not observe baptism,
if you don't take the Lord's table, you better have as good
an excuse as He did. He was nailed to a cross. He
couldn't do these things. And I guarantee you this, if
he could have, he would have. Baptism and the Lord's Table,
these two ordinances. Now, baptism is very important
because of what it represents. It's a ceremony. No doubt, but
what does it represent? It represents the way a sinner
is saved. Baptism is by immersion. It's
not sprinkling. It's by immersion because it
pictures the life, the death, the burial, and the resurrection
of Christ. And here's my hope that when
he lived, I lived. When he kept the law, I kept
the law. When He suffered and died for
my sins, I suffered and died. I died with Him. When He was
raised from the dead, that's what happened in baptism. You're
completely under the water, and then you come back up. That's
Christ's resurrection. Here's my hope. When He was resurrected,
I was resurrected. And the Lord says, Whosoever
believeth and is baptized, the same shall be saved. Baptism
is very important. You say, It was just a ceremony.
I know, but what does that ceremony represent? Somebody says, well, marriage
is just a ceremony. Somebody says, well, two people
cohabit together, and they don't go through the marriage ceremony.
And they say, well, what does it matter? We love one another.
Why do we just need to go through a ceremony? We love one another,
and we can live together without being married. Now, for one thing,
God forbids it. That's one reason why you shouldn't
do it. You're to be married. And for
another reason, if you really love one another, why won't you
make the commitment of marriage? where there's true love, there's
a lifetime commitment for good. And when somebody refuses that
commitment, they're calling into question their commitment to
one another. Sure, marriage is a ceremony,
but what all does it represent? Baptism is a ceremony, but what
does it represent? And people who would refuse to
be baptized, look what they're refusing. There's a commitment
problem there. But to be baptized as a sacrament,
as a means of grace is debasing what the ordinance is and in
denial of what it means. All I say in baptism is all my
salvation is because of union with the Lord Jesus Christ. I
was in Him. When He lived, I lived. When
He died, I died. When He was raised, I was raised. As He's
seated at the right hand of the Father, I'm there in Him, already
glorified, already in Heaven. This is the great mystery of
the gospel. Now, I think of that scripture
in Mark 16, verse 16, where the Lord said, Whosoever believeth and is baptized,
the same shall be saved." Now, there are people who use that
verse and say, see, you need to be baptized to be saved. No,
what our Lord is teaching is you need to believe to be baptized. That is the one requirement for
Christian baptism, believing the gospel. BELIEVING THE GOSPEL. NOW, LET ME TELL YOU ONE THING
I KNOW ABOUT INFANT BAPTISM, BAPTIZING INFANTS. THOSE INFANTS
DO NOT BELIEVE. THAT LETS YOU KNOW THAT INFANT
BAPTISM IS WRONG. IT'S JUST WRONG. THERE'S NO EXAMPLE
OF IT IN SCRIPTURE. IT'S A COMPLETELY MAN-MADE THING. YOU WON'T FIND IT IN THE BIBLE.
AND WHEN SOMEONE BAPTIZES AN INFANT, they're saying that this
helps them in some way. They don't know what they're
doing. They're unaware of it. But somehow this helps their
salvation in some way, some mystical way that you can't really explain,
but you believe somehow this infant is going to be better
off by being baptized. Now, infant baptism makes a mockery
of scriptural baptism. Baptism is the believer's public
confession of faith. That's what it is more than anything
else. It's the believer's public confession of faith. Mark 1 5
says, they were baptized of him confessing their sins. Now notice
that word confessing. They were baptized of him confessing
their sins. Now, does that mean before they
could be baptized, they had to publicly confess all the sinful
things they'd done? No. No, not at all. You're not to confess to men
what you've done. You confess your sin to God,
but don't confess your sin to men. And to make some kind of
public display of it is unclean in the first place. know what
they were doing. They were confessing how sinful-in
being baptized, they were confessing how sinful they were. And the
only hope they had was being united to Christ. When He lived,
they lived. When He died, they died. When
He was raised, they were raised. Now, people can become confused
about this thing of baptism. I've seen people say, well, When
I was baptized, I didn't believe the same that I do now. I believe
the gospel now, but when I was first baptized, I didn't believe
this way. You weren't really baptized. You might have gone
under the water and come back up, but you only are truly baptized
when you believe the gospel. Whoso believeth and is baptized
shall be saved. So, what is the one requirement
for baptism? Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, what about the Lord's Table?
This is the second ordinance. In our church, Todd's Road Grace
Church, we observe the Lord's Table first Sunday night of every
month. We do it at night because Paul
said, and Jesus, the same night he was betrayed, took bread.
So they did it at night. I want to do it the way they
do. They used unleavened bread and they drank wine. Somebody
says, do you drink grape juice or wine? Wine. wine, because
that's what they did. And when you drink grape juice,
you're making-it's watering down the gospel. I just can't see
that. They were drinking wine We drink
wine. And we do this in remembrance
of the Lord Jesus Christ. This do, as often as you do it,
in remembrance of me. Now let me read the passage from
1 Corinthians 11, where Paul says, beginning in verse 23,
For I have received of the Lord that which I delivered unto you,
that the Lord Jesus, the same night in which he was betrayed,
took bread, and it was unleavened bread because they were eating
the Passover at that time. And when he'd given thanks, he'd
break it and said, take, eat. This is my body, which is broken
for you. This do in remembrance of me.
Now I realize that some people have taken this and made what's
called the doctrine of transubstantiation, that the body and blood of Christ-when
you eat the wafer and drink the wine, it turns into the literal
body and blood of Christ. Now, that's foolishness. That's
foolishness. That's not what happens. That
means Christ is crucified over and over and over again, and
He suffers over and over and over again every time you take
the bread and drink the wine. Christ said, I am the door, but
He wasn't a little old door. This is not teaching that the
body of the bread becomes the literal body of Christ and the
wine becomes the literal blood of Christ when you partake it.
This is symbolic. This do in remembrance of me. You are remembering His broken
body and His shed blood as your only salvation. And after the
same manner also, He took the cup which He had supped and said,
This cup is the New Testament in my blood. This do ye as oft
as ye drink it in remembrance of me. Now what's going on when
the Lord's table is observed? We are remembering our salvation. is Him, His broken body, His
shed blood. It's Christ that died. Oh, we're
remembering that again. Here's all my salvation. Here's
all my hope. Here's my necessary food and
my necessary drink. Christ crucified. This is what
has given me life. This is what I live off of. This
is my only plea. the blood, the broken body of
the Lord Jesus Christ. That's all my salvation. Here's
what I'm remembering. Him saying, it is finished. I
remember that and I rejoice. I think it is amazing that people
use the Lord's table, churches use the Lord's table in different
ways. They'll have closed communion.
You can't take the Lord's table unless you're a member of that
church. And like what one person said, I didn't know it was your
church's table. I thought it was the Lord's table. It's the Lord's
Table. I've heard preachers want to
use it as a means of discipline. If somebody's not living right
or acting right, they're going to withhold the Lord's Table
from them. And I think, who are you to do something like that?
The Bible doesn't tell you to do that and to take, we're warned
not to eat and drink unworthily and to discern his body. And
if you don't, you're in trouble. But is one man going to make
a judgment about another man and say, well, he's not worthy
to eat at the Lord's table. And then you can figure out when you are worthy.
I tell you when you're in trouble is when you think you are worthy.
When I take the Lord's table, I'm saying I am unworthy and
the only hope I have is found in the broken body and the shed
blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, that we do this in remembrance
of the Lord Jesus Christ. That is our purpose. Now, what is the requirement
for taking the Lord's table? The same requirement for being
baptized, faith in Christ. That's it. Examine yourselves
whether you be in the faith. Faith in Christ is the requirement
for partaking of the Lord's table. Now, if I don't have faith, if
I don't discern His body and I take it, I do so to my own
condemnation. It's such a-I'm once again trampling
on what the symbol means. I mean, if you trample on the
flag of the United States, you say, well, it's just a piece
of cloth. Yeah, but what does it represent? What does baptism
represent? What does the Lord's Table represent?
And what is the one requirement for these things, the baptism
and observing the Lord's Table? There's only one answer, faith
in Christ. So it's very important that I
understand what faith in Christ is. And the verse of scripture
that I read at the first of this message gives us a beautiful
and simple definition of what faith in Christ is. So I'm gonna
read this again. Hebrews chapter 11, verse 13. These all died in faith, not
having received the promises, but having seen them afar off,
and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed
that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. These
all died in faith, speaking of Abel, Noah, Abraham, Enoch, every
other believer. These all died. You're going
to die, too. But these all died in faith. That means they persevered
in faith. They continued in the faith,
grounded and settled. They didn't quit believing. They persevered all the way to
the end. He that endureth to the end,
the same shall be saved. And that perseverance was persevering
in faith. They died looking to Christ only
as everything in their salvation. And they never graduated past
faith. They never went on to something else. These all died
in faith. Now, look what it says next,
though, not having received the promises. Now, salvation is by
the promise of God. It's all by the promise of God. Now, let me give you an illustration
of just how much salvation is by the promise of God. Now, God
has promised to His Son a people. Christ took responsibility for
those people. All that the Father giveth me
shall come to me. And God has promised that everybody
that Christ died for will be saved. God has promised that
all who look to Christ only will be saved. He's promised. Salvation is utterly in the promise
of God. Now, here's how much. The forgiveness
of sins is in the beginning of salvation. It's not the end of
a process. If you repent, and if you turn
from your sins, and if you start living a better life, you'll
have the forgiveness of sins. If you believe, you'll have the
forgiveness. If you're making forgiveness
the end of a process, if you do this, you'll have forgiveness.
No, forgiveness was accomplished before you was ever born. If
you're forgiven, you might not have experienced it yet, but
if you're forgiven, you've already been forgiven. You know, there's
people I'm speaking to right now that don't know anything
about the forgiveness of sins, but you're going to find out.
You see, everybody who has been forgiven finds out they've been
forgiven, all because of the promise of God in Christ Jesus. Salvation is by the promise of
God. And that's so important for me
to understand that. Now, Justification. Remember, it says, these all
died in the faith, not having received the promises. Justification.
Now, what does that mean? If I'm justified, that means
I'm without sin before God. It means I've never broken any
of the Ten Commandments, but I've kept them perfectly. It
means I stand before God having never sinned. That's what justification
means. I stand before God having never
sinned. Perfect in God's sight. Now, I've not really experienced that.
I feel sinful. I sin. I've never experienced
that, but I believe it. I stand before God without guilt. I haven't experienced having
no sin, but I believe through the gospel that I literally have
no sin. Now, these all died in faith
not having received the promises, not having experienced the promises,
but having seen them afar off. Now, here is the gospel, seeing
the promises afar off, hearing the gospel. Now, I hear that
everybody that Christ died for is justified. I hear that Christ
died for sinners. Well, I'm a sinner. I'm one of
those. He died for me. I'm justified. I see that afar
off in the preaching of the gospel, and I believe. I believe. I might not have experienced
sinlessness in my personal subjective experience, but I know I am sinless. I've heard the gospel, and I've
seen it afar off. These all died in faith, not
having received the promises, but having seen them afar off,
and were persuaded of them. Now, faith is seeing. And I think
it's very important to remember that the seeing of faith comes
through the ear. It's hearing the gospel. Seeing
afar off, not necessarily, I've not experienced sinlessness,
but I know I'm sinless in Christ Jesus. I hear that in the gospel,
and I've been persuaded. I've been persuaded." Now, when
God persuades you, you're persuaded. That's how it works. When God
persuades you, you are indeed persuaded. I know whom I have
believed and am persuaded. that He is able to keep that
which I've committed to Him against that day. Not only do you see
this afar off, you believe it because you've been persuaded.
You've been persuaded by God if you've been persuaded. If
you really believe the Bible is God's inerrant Word, not just
because you've been indoctrinated in it, but you believe it, it's
because God's persuaded you, it's so. And you're persuaded
that God is as the Bible describes Him to be. You believe all of
His glorious attributes. And you believe man is, as the
Bible describes him to be, dead in sin, unable to save himself.
You believe salvation. You've been persuaded that salvation
is as the Bible declares it, election by the Father, redemption
by the Son, regeneration by the Holy Spirit. You look to Christ
only. That's what faith is. You're
persuaded. But not only Were they persuaded? It says they embraced them. They welcomed these promises
of salvation by Christ. They embraced them as good news. It's good news that Christ accomplished
salvation, and it doesn't have anything to do with my works.
It's good news that Christ is all in salvation. It's good news
that I'm complete in Him. It's good news salvation comes
by God's promise. I embrace that. You know, if
somebody hears the gospel, becomes old and dry to them, they think,
oh, that old dry doctrine, dead doctrine, and so on. Well, it's
because they're not hearing as a sinner. If you really believe
yourself to be a sinner, you're going to hear the gospel as good
news, and you're going to embrace the gospel. That's what faith
is. It's seeing afar off. It's not
necessarily experiencing sin, but it's seeing afar off the
salvation that's in Christ in the hearing of the gospel. You
hear, you're persuaded. You really believe that message.
And the reason you believe is because God's persuaded you.
Not only do you believe you embrace this as good news, the best news
you've ever heard, and it's not a one-time thing. You're always
hearing the same way when God gives you ears to hear. And they
confessed. What you believe, you will confess. Let me repeat that. What you
believe, you will publicly confess. You will identify with this message. you're going to publicly identify
with this message, and that's done through baptism. But here
is the original statement. What is required for me to be
baptized? What is required for me to take
the Lord's table? To look to Christ only. If you do, you're called on to
be baptized, and you're called upon to observe the Lord's table.
Now we have this message on DVD and CD. If you call the church
right or email, we'll send you a copy. This is Todd Kniper,
praying God will be pleased to make himself known to you. That's
our prayer. To request a copy of the sermon
you have just heard, send your request to messages at toddsroadgracechurch.com. Or you may write or call the
church at the information provided on the screen.