The Lord’s Supper is a sacrament. The Lord’s Supper is a divine gift meant to declare and seal to us, Christ’s church, His great promise of the gospel of a crucified and risen Christ. Receive the sacraments with gratitude, and rejoice in the gospel given you in and through them.

A slight correction from last time. I read Heidelberg 65, which is important to this series, but I referenced it as Heidelberg 66. I apologize for the confusion.
Heidelberg 65 asks, “where does . . . faith come from?” Great question. Believers want to have faith and a stronger and deeper faith. How do they get that? Heidelberg 65 answers, “From the Holy Spirit who works it in our hearts by the preaching of the gospel and strengthens it by the use of the sacraments.” Aren’t you glad for the gospel of a generous and powerful God? You don’t have to muster up the faith yourself, you simply receive grace from your God, and He builds your faith. You need preaching like you need regular meals if you’re going to have strength on your pilgrim journey to heaven. Additionally, the Holy Spirit strengthens your faith by the use of the sacraments. You need the Lord’s Supper like you need regular meals if you’re going to endure your pilgrim journey to heaven. So then, let’s ask the question: What are the sacraments?
When you hear the word “sacrament” what do you think of? Maybe the word sounds Roman Catholic to you, but it’s not a word reserved for Romanists. The word “sacrament” has been used in the church for a long time. The Protestant Reformers used the word.
According to Webster’s Dictionary 1828, the word “sacrament” comes from the Latin sacramentum meaning an oath, the root being sacer or sacred. Additionally, ancient writers used sacramentum to describe a mystery. But in the history of the church, the word “sacrament” was used to refer to visible signs and seals that communicated the gospel of Christ. Heidelberg 66 defines sacraments as follows:
The sacraments are holy, visible signs and seals. They were instituted by God so that by their use He might the more fully declare and seal to us the promise of the gospel. And this is the promise: that God graciously grants us forgiveness of sins and everlasting life because of the one sacrifice of Christ accomplished on the cross.
So, several things can be said about the sacraments. They are holy, visible, signs, and seals. It’s right to say the sacraments “were instituted by God.” Man didn’t invent the sacraments; God gave the sacraments to man. What does God intend to do through the sacraments? God intends to “more fully declare and seal to [His church] the promise of the gospel.” So the sacraments are declarations and authenticating seals of the gospel of Christ to Christ’s church. The sacraments represent God’s promise to us His church. What’s the promise? The sacraments signify and seal the gospel promise of God to us. Here’s the promise: “that God graciously grants us forgiveness of sins and everlasting life because of the one sacrifice of Christ accomplished on the cross.” It’s really, really important to understand that the sacraments are God’s gift to His church, a gift through which He communicates the gospel and its benefits to them. The sacraments are not gifts that the church gives to God. The sacraments are not a response to the gospel per se, they are the gospel being given by God to His church as they obediently receive them.
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Whoever you are, and whatever the depths and agony of your trials, God is hovering over you: he loves you, he is near to you, and he can rescue you. We see a living picture of his rescue unfold in the subsequent six days of creation.  

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.—Genesis 1:1-2

If we are going to get anything out of Genesis, then we must prepare ourselves.
Basil of Caesarea (330-79) said at the beginning of his Hexaemeron, a series of sermons on Genesis 1,

How earnestly the soul should prepare itself to receive such high lessons! How pure it should be from carnal affections, how unclouded by worldly disquietudes, how active and ardent in its researches, how eager to find in its surroundings an idea of God which may be worthy of Him!

And John Calvin (1509-64) said in his commentary on Genesis, “The world is a mirror in which we ought to behold God.” “If my readers sincerely wish to profit with me in meditating on the works of God, they must bring with them a sober, docile mild, and humble spirit.”
So remember that the author of these words, Moses, saw an appearance of God at the burning bush, and God spoke with him “face to face, as a man speaks with his friend” (Exod. 33:11; cf. Num. 12:6-8). And don’t forget the power of these words, “which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 3:15).
The Hebrew word for “beginning” is ראשׁית (rēshīt), which may also mean “starting point” or “first,” and is closely related to ראשׁ (rōsh), which means “head.” The word God translates אלהים, Elōhīm, which may be the plural for אל (el), the generic word for god. The plural does not in itself teach the doctrine of the Trinity, that there is one God and three persons in the godhead, but is more likely a “plural of majesty.” God is not just god, he is GOD. Elōhīm. GOD! The very sound of this word, naming as it does the Creator of the universe, should fill us with awe, dread, and love.
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Before there was an earth and atoms, life and light, time and tide, there was God. He is eternal, which does not mean that he is very old, but that he had no beginning. He always was, is, and will be. Many have mockingly asked, “What was God doing before he created the world?” In his Commentaries on Genesis, Calvin relates a humorous answer he had read to this question:

When a certain impure dog was in this manner pouring ridicule upon God, a pious man retorted that God had been at that time by no means inactive, because he had been preparing hell for the captious.

We cannot speak reasonably of what God was doing “before creation,” because before creation there was no time as we know it—there was no “before.” Certainly there was nothing that brought God himself into existence.
The Hebrew verb for create is ברא (bārā); it is only ever used with God as the subject. What did God create? The “heavens and the earth.” Heaven, שׁמים (shamayīm), also means sky. Earth, ארץ (erets), also means land and ground. These words do not have a special meaning in Genesis 1:1; but when put together like this, “heaven and earth,” that is, “sky and ground,” “everything that’s up and everything that’s down,” they emphasize that God made everything. Only God himself is not made.
There are no time indications in these first two verses. The earth (erets) was formless and empty. There is some lovely alliteration here in the original, the earth was תהו ובהו, tōhu va bōhu. These words are neither “good” nor “bad” but are exceedingly and perhaps unpleasantly bland. Tōhu can refer to a barren wasteland, “a barren and howling waste” (Deut. 32:10; also Job 6:18). It can refer to futility (1 Sam. 12:21) and meaninglessness (Isa. 29:21). Bōhu appears only three times in the Old Testament. Isaiah 34:11 describes how “God will stretch out over Edom the measuring line of chaos and the plumb line of desolation,” and Jeremiah uses just the same phrase as Genesis 1:2: “I looked at the earth, and it was formless and empty (tōhu va bōhu); and at the heavens, and their light was gone” (Jer. 4:23). We will return to Jeremiah’s hugely significant phrase in a moment.
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When it is Excessive
The basic way in which the vice of superstition is opposite to religion is that superstition goes to excess. The great theologian Zanchi said, “If you add something to what which Christ established, or if you follow something added by others, [e.g.,] if you add other sacraments …, or other sacrifices … or if you add rites to the ceremonies of some sacrament, all those are rightly called by the name ‘superstition’.” Superstition is done “beyond what is established” [by Christ]. It is something used in God’s worship on no basis other than human appointment.
When it is Misdirected
Superstition gives worship either to whom it does not owe it, or not in the way in which it owes it. A ceremony is superstitious, even if it gives worship to God, when it is done inordinately, or when the worship is performed otherwise than it should be. For example, God is worshipped by baptism, but there is a problem with baptisms administered in private, because (as pointed out in the Leiden Synopsis) baptism is a supplement to public ministry, not to private exhortation. Similarly, the Church Fathers of the fourth century regarded the private administration of the Lord’s Supper as something “inordinate” in the same sense.
When it is not Edifying
Some things have no necessary or profitable use in the church, and cannot be used without being superstitious. It was according to this rubric that the Waldenses and Albigenses taught against the exorcisms, breathings, crossings, salt, spittle, unction, chrism, etc., used in baptism. As these were neither necessary nor requisite in the administration of baptism, they occasioned error and superstition, rather than edification to salvation.
When it Displaces Necessary Duties
A ceremony is superstitious when it is not only used in God’s worship unnecessarily and unprofitably, but in fact it hinders other necessary duties.