The Ordinances Sermon for August 23, 2026

Alright, welcome brothers and sisters to Kingdom Bound Church. We’ve been in the Gospel of Luke since December 2025, but today, we’re taking a planned detour for a week so we can focus a bit on the ins and outs of three things: Baptism, The Lord’s Table, and Church Membership.

But, why? Well, because they are extremely important to the church of Jesus, and it’s an opportunity to make sure we’re all on the same page with it all. I want to eliminate any potential confusion and bring clarity to what these three things are.

I’ll start off with this: the church is not a spiritual gym you visit when you feel like it. It is not a buffet where you sample the sermon, skip the ordinances, leave the covenant on the table, or any ordering of these things and more. It is the household of God. And in this house the Lord has given us two standing signs- baptism and the Lord’s Supper- and one living relationship that makes those signs make sense: church membership.

These three are not religious extras for the especially committed. They are the gospel made visible.

What we’ll do is take them in the order that the Bible itself gives them. Baptism first. Then, it’s the Table. Then, it’s the body that receives both. Now, I’ll be honest with you: I’m going to be extremely clear and blunt today. I do so as to not leave anyone confused.

Baptism

In Romans 6:3-4, Paul writes as if every Christian has already been baptized:

3 Or are you unaware that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 Therefore we were buried with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too may walk in newness of life.

Baptism does not create that union. Faith does. The Spirit does. Regeneration does. Baptism is the God-appointed picture of what has ALREADY HAPPENED. You died with Christ. You were buried with Him. You were raised with Him. The old man was crucified so that you would no longer be enslaved to sin (Romans 6:6). Therefore, “so, you too consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.”

This is why we baptize believers, not infants. This is why we immerse. The sign must match the thing signified. A sprinkle cannot preach burial. A baby cannot profess death to sin and newness of life. The New Testament pattern is uniform: they received the word, they were baptized, they were added (Acts 2:41). The Ethiopian eunuch believed, then he went down into the water (Acts 8:36-38). Lydia’s heart was opened, then she and her household were baptized (Acts 16:14-15).

Voddie Baucham has said it plainly: baptism is a symbol of our union with Christ. It does not create that union; it publicly declares it. The 1689 Baptist Confession agrees: baptism is “a sign of [the believer’s] fellowship with him in his death and resurrection…of his giving up unto God, through Jesus Christ, to live and walk in newness of life.”

Mark Dever has called baptism the front door of the house. You do not wander into the living room and sit down to the family meal without coming through the door. You do not claim the privileges of the kingdom without taking the oath-sign of the kingdom.

That is why baptism comes before the Lord’s Supper and before formal membership. The order is not Baptist tradition; it is biblical logic. Salvation, then identification, then celebration. You die and rise before you feast. You are marked as Christ’s before you are counted among His people. You cannot participate in the renewing sign of the covenant until you have undergone the initiating sign.

Some of you have believed for years and have never been baptized. You have been treating the first command of discipleship as optional. Jesus said, “Go therefore and make disciples…baptizing them” (Matthew 28:19). If you have not yet obeyed that, the delay is not humility. It is disobedience. Come through the door.

The Lord’s Table

23 For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: On the night when he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took bread, 24 and when he had given thanks, broke it, and said,  “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”

25 In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, and said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” 26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

This is not a snack. It is not a sentimental interlude. It is a proclamation. Every time the church gathers at this Table we are preaching the gospel with our mouths and our hands: Christ died for sinners. His body was broken. His blood was shed. The new covenant is in His blood. And we will keep doing this until He returns.

But Paul immediately warns:

27 So, then, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sin against the body and blood of the Lord. 28 Let a person examine himself; in this way let him eat the bread and drink from the cup. 29 For whoever eats and drinks without recognizing the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself.

The danger is real. Some at Corinth were weak, some ill, and some had died (v. 30). God takes His Table seriously.

What does it mean to come in an unworthy manner? It means coming without discerning the body- without recognizing what this meal is, who it is for, and what it costs. It means treating the death of the Son of God as common. It means coming as an unbeliever, or as a believer in unrepentant sin, or as someone who despises the very body of Christ gathered around the Table.

Jonathan Edwards, in his Humble Inquiry, insisted that the Lord’s Supper is not a converting ordinance. It is a professing ordinance. Those who partake are making a solemn profession that the righteousness of Jesus has been imputed to them through faith and grace alone. To come without that reality is to lie with your mouth full.

Thomas Watson, that Puritan physician of the soul, said self-examination before the Table is not a suggestion; it is a charge. “Let a man examine himself.” Set up a court of conscience. Bring your heart to the touchstone of Scripture. Search for the leaven as the Jews did before Passover. Examine your knowledge of Christ, your faith that feeds on Him, your repentance, your love for the brethren, your new obedience. If you find no grace, do not come. If you find even the smallest genuine work of God, come- hungry, thankful, and trembling.

Here is the sharpest warning: if you are not saved, do not come to this Table. You are not merely being impolite. You are eating and drinking judgment. You are proclaiming a death that has not yet become yours. You are claiming a covenant you have never entered. The bread and cup will not save you. They will only make your condemnation more just.

The Table is for baptized believers who are walking in repentance and faith, members of the body, discerning that they are one load because they share one Savior (1 Corinthians 10:16-17). It is the family meal. You do not crash a wedding feast. You do not sit at the King’s table as an enemy.

If that description does not fit you, the right response is not to stay away forever in despair. The right response is to repent and believe. Then be baptized. Then come.

Church Membership

Baptism is the front door. The Lord’s Supper is the family meal. Membership is the household itself.

The New Testament does not know of unattached Christians. Sheep belong to a flock. Branches are in the vine. Stones are built into a temple. Members are joined to a body. “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ” (1 Corinthians 12:12). “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it” (v. 27).

The New Testament assumes that conversion produces a people, not a collection of isolated individuals. “Biblically, if one is a Christian he must be a member of a church.” Sheep are in a flock. We must not forsake assembling together (Hebrews 10:25).

Church membership, as 9Marks has taught a generation, is a formal relationship. The church corporately affirms a person’s profession of faith and baptism as credible. It promises to oversee that person’s discipleship. The Christian formally submits his or her discipleship to the love, teaching, and authority of that body and its elders. It is an assurance-of-salvation cooperative. We watch for evidence of grace in one another. We encourage. We correct. We restore.

Voddie Baucham has pressed the same point: we believe in regenerate church membership. The church is made of born-again, baptized believers. That is why we are Baptists. Baptism is the entrance. And because we belong to Christ, we belong to one another. How can elders keep watch over souls they have never formally received (Hebrews 13:17)? How can we love one another as Christ commanded if we refuse to identify who the “one another” actually are?

This is not bureaucracy. This is love. This is the gospel displayed. A church that will not define its members cannot practice meaningful discipline, cannot give meaningful care, cannot display the holiness of God or the unity of the Spirit. A church that treats membership as a formality or a number to inflate has already begun to lose the gospel.

The vision is beautiful. Imagine a people who have died with Christ and risen with Him, who have publicly identified with Him in baptism, who regularly sit at His Table together, who have covenanted to watch over one another’s souls, to bear one another’s burdens, to speak the truth in love, to submit to qualified shepherds, and to pursue holiness until Jesus returns. That is not a club. That is the church. That is the bride being made ready.

Some of you have been baptized but have never joined. You like the preaching. You enjoy the singing. You even come to the Table. But you have never said, “These are my people, and I am theirs.” That is not freedom. That is unfinished obedience. The same Lord who said, “be baptized” also formed a people. The Church is the body of Christ.

Conclusion

The order is not ours to rearrange. Christ died. We die with Him. We rise with Him. We are baptized into that death and resurrection. We are added to the church. We devote ourselves to the Apostles’ teaching, the fellowship, the breaking of bread, and the prayers (Acts 2:41-42). We examine ourselves. We come to the Table. We proclaim His death until He comes.

If you have never trusted Christ, do not come to the water or the Table or the membership roll. Come to Christ first. He is a sufficient Savior for the worst sinners. Repent and believe.

If you have believed but have never been baptized as a believer, the delay has gone on lone enough. Come and be baptized.

If you have been baptized but have never formally joined a gospel-preaching church, stop treating the body of Christ as optional. Join. Submit. Belong.

If you come to this Table Sunday after Sunday while living in unrepentant sin or while remaining a stranger to the new birth, hear the warning: you eat and drink judgment. Examine yourself. The Table will not save you. Christ will.

The Gospel is not merely a message we hear. It is a life we enter, a death we die, a people we join, and a meal we share until the King returns and we sit down at the marriage supper of the Lamb.

May the Lord make us a church that takes His ordinances seriously, His people seriously, and His gospel seriously. For His glory, and for the good of our souls.