This is my body This is my blood

If you have your Bible with you, and I hope you do, turn to Mark, the Gospel of
Mark, chapter 14. If you're not familiar with the Bible or don't have one on your
phone or on your device or didn't bring one with you, we'll put it up here on the
screen so that you can see the words here this morning as well. The Gospel of Mark
is the second book in the New Testament, and it's a biography, one of four
biographies of Jesus that we have in the New Testament. And the passage we're going
to look at this morning has to do with Jesus instruction related to communion,
to the Lord's Supper. When we started our church back 17 years ago, one of the
early decisions that we made was that when we gathered for worship each week, we
were going to take communion every week. And I remember there were some people, as
we talked about it, who weren't sure That was a great idea and I understood. Some
of you grew up in churches where the Lord's Supper was something that was a part
of the service each week and it became for you pretty mechanical. It was something
that you did kind of by rote. You didn't really think about it. You weren't paying
a whole lot of attention to it. You just got in line, came through, got your wafer
and your juice and went back to your seat and you kind of became numb to what is
going on during the Lord's Supper. It became an empty ritual for you. And I think
there were people at the beginning who were concerned that that would be the case
here as well. And others were concerned that there could be misunderstanding that
would develop about what is happening during the Lord's Supper. Because again there's
been confusion about exactly what's going on. Some people kind of think when you get
your cracker or your juice you're getting kind of a spiritual vitamin or an
oculation shot for the week or something, that there's something almost magical going
on that you're protected from evil in a special way because you took communion this
week. But that's not the right understanding, and this morning I want us to see, or
as we look back on it, I want us to see there were really three reasons why I
thought it would be good for us as a church to take communion every week. The
first reason is because when I read the Bible it seems to have been the practice
of the early church that when they got together they shared a meal in common and
they took communion as a part of that meal that they had when they got together.
You see that in Acts chapter 2, it's in Acts chapter 20. In 1 Corinthians we read
about their love feasts that they were having regularly and communion was a regular
part of that. The second reason I thought it would be good for us to do it is
because Jesus, when he was establishing communion in all four of the Gospels that's
mentioned in each of them, he said, "Do this as often as," he said, "as often as
you do this, remember me." So he didn't say as infrequently as you do this. He
didn't say as occasionally you do this. He said, "as often as you do it." I don't
want to read too much into that word, but I think he was signaling, this is
something you should do often. That's a part of his design. And third,
I wanted us to take communion each week because it would give us a tangible,
visible, sensory reminder of what is the central message of Christianity.
It's the death and resurrection of Jesus. On the occasion that I might forget to
talk about the gospel during my sermon, "Heaven Forbid," I wanted to make sure that
we had a proclamation of the gospel by coming and tasting and seeing that the Lord
is good and being reminded of the gospel. So we decided we would incorporate it
into our weekly worship service. And I've heard from many of you that you have
found this to be something that is meaningful for you. I'm guessing there have been
some Sundays when maybe you have been tuned out and maybe it's been mechanical for
you and you just kind of went through the motions, you really weren't thinking about
what was going on. But I think by and large, having communion each week has been a
spiritually beneficial, a spiritually profitable thing for us as a church. And the
reason I bring it up this morning is because we're in the final Sunday of a series
we've been doing on things that Jesus said that are hard for us to get our heads
around sometimes. And this morning, I want us to look at the phrases that Jesus
used when he introduced communion On the night before he was crucified at the last
supper. He said as he passed the bread this is My body and as he passed the wine
he said this is my blood And those two pronouncements as we will see this morning
have led to some confusion and some misunderstanding in the church about exactly
what's going on when we take the Lord's Supper. How should we think about what
Jesus said back then? And I'll show you what I'm talking about as we get into this
passage from the Gospel Mark. Let me again pray and then we'll read God's word.
Father, we need the illumination of your Holy Spirit now as we come to your word.
We need you to be our teacher and to show us from your word exactly what you
would have for us to understand. Be our teacher, we pray. We ask it in your name.
Amen.
Alright, this is Mark chapter 14, beginning at verse 22. This is the word of God
for the people of God. The Bible tells us that as they were eating, he,
Jesus, took bread, and after blessing it, broke it and gave it to them and said,
"Take, This is my body." And he took a cup and when he had given thanks he gave
it to them and they all drank of it and he said to them "This is my blood of
the covenant which is poured out for many. Truly I say to you,
I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it
new in the kingdom of God. Amen. May God bless this reading of his word.
The grass withers and the flower fades. The word of our God will last forever. Now
that was just four verses, but we got a lot to cover this morning. It's our
starting place. We're going to spend the first part of our morning this morning
looking at the Lord's Supper, and we're going to look at first the schism that
happened during the centuries between within the church, the schism about how to
understand the Lord's Supper, the schism has occurred because I believe there are
wrong understandings in churches about what's going on when you take communion.
So I want to look at what the Bible has to say about this Lord's Supper, why it's
so significant, and what we should understand, why Jesus wants us to come and take
communion regularly. And then, since We're looking this morning at one of the two
ordinances for the church. I want to look at the other one. I want to look at
baptism because this morning at the end of our service, we are going to have two
of our members or two of our young people who are coming forward to be baptized
and to make a profession of faith. So while we're talking about the ordinances of
the church, we're going to spend a little time talking about baptism as well. And
there have been schisms in the church related to baptism. And and we're also gonna
see what the significance of that ordinance is for us as we prepare to baptize two
young people this morning. So let's start with Jesus' declaration in Mark 14 that
the Passover bread is his body and that the Passover wine and his blood. Why is
that controversial? Why is that a hard statement for us to look at? Why has it
created a division or a schism in the church? But look back at the passage with me
first. What's happening here is happening on the night before Jesus' crucifixion.
It's the first night of the Passover celebration, which was an annual feast that the
Jews would come to Jerusalem and celebrate together. There were tens of thousands,
actually hundreds of thousands of Jewish people who had converged on Jerusalem for
the Passover celebration. And this was the first of an eight night, or an eight day
festival, they would have the Passover meal to start this. Jesus and his disciples
had gathered together in an upper room, and they were sharing the Passover meal
together, as all faithful Jews would have been doing. And as a part of that
Passover supper, what would have taken place was, they would have taken time, they
would have gone through a ceremony to remember how God had spared the Jewish
children in the land of Egypt. If you know the story from the book of Exodus, you
know that the Jewish people were enslaved in Egypt for 400 years and Moses went to
Pharaoh and said, "This has got to stop, let my people go." And Pharaoh said, "No,
no, no, no, no, no." I mean, 10 times he said, "No." And finally God said, going
to happen, I'm going to send the angel of death over Egypt, and I'm going to kill
all the firstborn children in the land of Egypt." Then he told the Jewish people,
"I will spare your firstborn children, if you will, sacrifice a lamb,
and then wash your doorpost, paint your doorpost with the blood of that lamb." And
that will be my sign to pass over what's going on. So Jesus and his disciples
gathering in the upper room on the night of the Passover feast would have remembered
what the first Passover had been like. They would have remembered the unleavened
bread and why God told them to have unleavened bread as a part of the celebration,
the slaughter of the lands and the painting of the doorpost. They would have
remembered that night as they heard the cries throughout the land of people wailing
at the death of children, while they were huddled in their houses protected from
that because God had passed over them. That's where the name comes from. And in the
middle of celebrating the Passover together, Jesus and his disciples have a moment
where Jesus wants to tie what they have been celebrating with what's about to
happen. He wants to give them the fuller picture of what was really an incomplete
picture in the Passover. The Passover was a sign of something greater and Jesus is
now telling them about the greater thing that is going to happen. Mark and the
other gospel writers pick up that say Jesus picked up the bread in the middle of
the meal and he prayed a traditional Jewish prayer of blessing.
Whenever they prayed for the bread, they had the same prayer that they would pray,
"Blessed are you, Lord, our God, King of the universe, who brings forth bread from
heaven." It actually sounds so much better in the Hebrew, but I'm not going to try
to butcher it with my bad Hebrew, so I found a video on YouTube so you can hear
what it would have sounded like in Hebrew when Jesus prayed the prayer of blessing
for the bread. So watch this and listen to this.
Baruch atah adonai,
Eloheinu melech haolam,
hamochi lechem min haaretz.
I like the Baruch Atah, I can get that far with it, "Blessed are you, O Lord," is
how they would start that prayer. When Jesus had finished that prayer, he took the
bread, he broke it, he passed it to his disciples and told them to eat, and then
he said, "This is my body." Now we are to assume that the disciples,
at the point Jesus says, "This is my body," looked at one another and went, "What
is he talking about? This is my body." It would have registered on them making
little sense until the next day, or maybe when it dawned on them a few days later.
So they heard it, they stored it away, but they had to be kind of confused, but
nobody said, "Can you explain that?" Because After the meal was over Jesus took wine
from the table and he prayed another blessing blessed Are you Adonai our God king
of the universe? Creator of the fruit of the vine the prayer starts the same But
then it ends with a different thing that you're praising God for you want to hear
it in Hebrew again So I got another video here. This is somebody different. I
couldn't find the same lady doing it So here's a rabbi doing it. I think
Baruch Ta Adonai Eloheinu melecha olam.
Blessed are you, Lord, our God, King of the Universe, in the new part, Boray Peri
Hagafin, who creates fruit of the vine, Baruch Ata Adonai Eloheinu melecha olam Boray
Peri Hagafin.
Okay, You can find those on YouTube if you want to go home and learn the Hebrew
and be able to pray those Hebrew blessings. But these are the prayers Jesus would
have prayed as he broke the bread and as he passed the wine. And passing the wine
and saying this is the blood of the covenant, it had been the practice throughout
the Old Testament and in that culture that when you were making a covenant with
somebody else, blood was involved in the making of a covenant. It was called a
Suceranian Covenant Agreement. And the way that you certified that you were making a
covenant with somebody else is you killed animals and had a feast together with the
animals, both for fellowship, but also you were making this statement. When you
slaughtered an animal, you were making the statement, "If I fail to live up to my
terms or my agreement in this covenant, may it be done to me as was done to these
animals." You were making a blood oath when you made a covenant like this.
In Genesis chapter 15, when God comes to Abraham on a starry night,
and Abraham is out and God has said, "I'm going to make you a great nation," and
10 years have passed and Abraham doesn't have a child, God reaffirms his promise to
Abraham and on that night he tells Abraham to gather animals up and he has them
split the animals in half and lay their their carcasses on either side and then God
passes between by his his glory passes between those the bodies of those animals
while Abraham is in a deep sleep. It's God saying I am pledging myself to the
terms of this covenant. The blood oath has been taken. At the first Passover meal
in Egypt, God had required that there be a blood sacrifice in order for the
covenant to be established in order for him to pass over those who would be killed.
So blood is a part of covenant making in this day. And so when Jesus says,
"This is my blood, the blood of a new covenant, he's saying God with my death is
making a new and a better way, a new and a better promise to his people,
a once for all sacrifice that will do away with all the other animal sacrifices
forever. This will be the final complete sacrifice that comes from my death. So by
drinking the cup at the Passover, again, whether the disciples understood it or not,
they were participating in this covenant agreement. They were not only commemorating
what God had done in Egypt centuries before this, they were entering into the new
covenant that Jesus was establishing with his death. So as we take communion each
week, we are declaring, we are reaffirming that we believe in the covenant God has
made with us, that because Jesus has died on the cross, that our sins have been
paid for and we are spared from the wrath of God if we are in Christ. So you
take the bread and you take the cup and you say, "I am linked together with this.
This is true for me. What Jesus has done, we're reaffirming this covenant together."
Jesus, when he finished the Passover meal back in Mark chapter 14, he pointed the
disciples ahead to a day when he said, "We will eat and drink this meal again,"
pointing them to what's called the marriage feast of the lamb that we read about
when we went through the book of Revelation recently. So he says, "I'm not going to
eat this with you again," foreshadowing his death the next day, until such a time
as we eat this meal together in the kingdom of God. So the question of why this
is an important New Testament commemoration where Jesus is ordaining what is an
ongoing activity for his disciples to participate in and to remember his sacrifices,
why this is important, why we've read about it here this morning and why has it
been a source of schism in the church. What's that schism all about? Well, it's all
about how we understand what Jesus was saying when he said, "This is my body and
this is my blood." There are four ways throughout history that different Christians
have understood that statement. We're going to spend most of our time looking at one
of those four ways, and I'll give you the other three pretty quickly. But the one
that we're going to look at is the one that is the teaching held by the Roman
Catholic Church. It's a part of their catechism. And it is a way of understanding
this that I think is not only wrong, but I think it leads us into other error.
And so that's why I want to spend some time with this. The first way that people
have understood communion is what's called transubstantiation,
transubstantiation. This is the official teaching of the Catholic Church. It was
adopted by the Church in 1215 A .D. So the Catholic Church would say this has been
what we have believed throughout the centuries, but it was not officially adopted
into the Catechism until 1215. It was not officially declared to be the teaching of
the church until 1215.
Transubstantiation is the idea that when an ordained priest in the Catholic church
takes the wafer and the communion cup and he prays the prayer of consecration,
in that moment God transforms that wafer and that cup into the actual body and
blood of
Now I want to read it to you the way that they say it quote from the catechism
on this subject They say by the consecration of the bread and wine There takes
place a change of the whole substance of the bread Into the substance of the body
of Christ our Lord and the whole substance of the wine into the substance of his
blood This change the Holy Church has fittingly and properly called transubstantiation.
They're saying that the bread and the wine retain their appearance, their odor,
and the taste of bread and wine, but they have been transformed by God.
They keep those properties, but it's actually Jesus' body and his blood. That's the
first way that some people have seen communion. Again, the dominant way of the Roman
Catholic Church. Here's why it's a problem, and here's why I want to just point
this out to you. The Roman Catholic Church sees the mass as they celebrate it as a
way for Christians to enter into or reconnect with what they see as the ongoing
perpetual suffering of Christ.
So instead of seeing what Jesus did on the cross as a once -for -all act that
forgives sin, they see it as an ongoing suffering that Jesus is still experiencing
in this day, and you are entering into that moment of suffering and you are uniting
with him in his sufferings. They are suggesting that every time we sin,
we inflict a fresh wound on Christ who continues to perpetually suffer for our sin.
That's why in Catholic churches you see a crucifix with Jesus hanging on it rather
than an empty cross that is more traditionally found in Protestant churches because
they are remembering that Christ is still suffering on our behalf and we are saying
are saying, "No, he's not still suffering. He's finished it." In fact, we could
spend a lot of time looking at how they view this and what's wrong with this view
and why we should reject transubstantiation. But I'll just say this, when Jesus was
on the cross,
after he said, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" And before he said,
"Father, into your hands I commit my spirit," he said something else. You know what
it was? It is finished.
It is finished. It's complete. It's done. It's accomplished.
What I came to do is not ongoing. It's done. When we come to the communion table
each morning, each Sunday, you should not be thinking to yourself, "Jesus is still
suffering today for your sins, you come recognizing that he has paid completely and
fully for your sins by his once for all death, that the suffering that he endured
on the cross was sufficient. It's enough. He doesn't need to keep suffering because
you keep sinning. He paid for the sins you have committed,
our committing will commit. If you are in Christ, that's paid for through his death
on the cross when he died back then. We're not entering into his sufferings when we
take the bread and the wine. We are remembering his suffering, and we're giving
thanks. In fact, the word Eucharist, which is sometimes what people will refer to
the bread and the wine as the Eucharist, that's a word that means Thanksgiving. When
we come and take the bread and the wine, we are thanking God for what has already
been accomplished. The problem with the Roman view is
Just a picture of what's wrong with the whole idea of the mass Which again, we
won't take time to dive in today. Let me just say here The reason I'm going here
is because this is a a real and a substantial issue of theology You it may sound
to you as I'm talking about this like it's one of those fine points of theology
that really we can leave That for the theologians to worry about. No, this gets
right to the heart of what we believe about who Jesus is and about what he's
accomplished on our behalf. These are gospel issues. There are some issues,
theological issues, where good Christians can disagree and that's okay. This is one
of them that gets to the heart of the gospel and to get the gospel wrong is a
problem. And you may say to me, so are you telling me all Catholics have got the
gospel wrong and I would say no I'm telling you that the Catholic Church in its
official teaching has got it wrong but I know a lot of Catholics who don't
understand exactly what the church is teaching as some of them who have said yeah I
don't believe that even though it's the official teaching of their church they grew
up in the church they feel comfortable in the in the Catholic Church that's why
they keep going there or they like the ceremony or whatever else I'm not commending
that. I'm just saying, I think there are people in the Catholic Church who know and
love Jesus and understand the Gospel rightly, but the official teaching of the
Church, it's why I put the words of the Catechism up on the screen, the official
teaching of the Church has got it wrong
and not unimportantly wrong because it goes to who Christ is. So that's the
transubstantiation view that is dominant. The reason I spent a lot of time with that
one is because throughout the world, there are millions of Roman Catholics who are
incorrectly being taught and some incorrectly believing what's going on when you come
to the communion table. Again, not all of them understand it. I don't think you
need to go to your Catholic friend at work tomorrow and say, "What we learned
yesterday is just how wrong you are on your understanding of communion, right? But I
think you need to understand that there's a substantive difference here, and it's not
an inconsequential one. The three other views, and I'm gonna cover these quickly, one
of them is what's called consubstantiation. Trans means it changes,
con means with. So Martin Luther, this was his view. He never used the word
"consubstantiation," but what he articulated later became labeled as "consubstantiation."
And Luther's view, he recognized the error of the Catholic Church,
and yet he saw Jesus saying, "This is my body and this is my blood." He said,
"Well, so Jesus' body and blood is, the bread and wine are not changed into it,
but his body and blood are with or are around what's going on here.
This is the view that's still held
Let me just say, 'cause some of you are going, well, didn't Jesus say, this is my
body and this is my blood? Yeah, and Jesus also said, I am the door. And we don't
think that he meant that he was a door.
Jesus was, he said, I am the good shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep.
And we understand he did lay down his life for his human sheep. But again, he's
using metaphors throughout here. When he says, this is my body, this is my blood,
He's saying these symbols are gonna represent something deeper than just bread and
juice, bread and wine. That shouldn't be hard for us to get our heads around. Jesus
does that throughout, he says, I'm the vine. We don't think there are branches
growing off of him, right? Third view of communion, so you have transubstantiation,
consubstantiation, third view is what's called the real presence view. This was
Calvin's view in church history. It was the view that when we take communion
together, there is a real objective, abiding spiritual presence of God.
He is with us when we take communion in a way that He is not with us at other
times. Now, God is always with us. God is everywhere. The psalmist says, "Where can
I go from your spirit?" Nowhere is the answer. God is always there. The Bible says
when two or three are gathered, he's present with you. Well, he's present with you
when it's just you, but when two or three are gathered, he's present with you in a
different way. And when we take communion, his real presence is a part of,
according to this view, it's a real part of what is happening when we come and
take bread and juice. Jesus is present with us in a way there that he's not
present with us at other times. He meets us in the meal in a real way.
That's this real presence view. He draws near and confirms again in your heart the
promises that were made when he instituted the Last Supper to bring peace to your
soul. And this is the view that's held by conservative Anglicans,
by many Presbyterians, a lot of Reformed Baptists hold this view. It's been the
general view of Reformed theology throughout the years. The final view is called the
Memorial View, and the Memorial View teaches that when we come to communion, what's
going on is we're remembering what Jesus did, and we're deriving spiritual benefit
from doing what he told us to do. remember me, remember what this is all about. We
are strengthened and equipped during that time of reflection.
So remembering him when you take communion. Now my own sense of this is that what's
going on when we take communion is kind of a hybrid of the memorial view and the
real presence view. I think we come and we do remember and we reflect on and our
heart is strengthened by that, but I think there's a real presence of God that is
with us when we take communion that's not with us in other ways. This is a special
meeting time where Jesus comes and ministers to us in a special way. So we engage
by remembering and reflecting on what Christ has done, that's how we prepare our
hearts to come to the table. In fact, let's just go ahead, we'll move here from
the schism over communion to talk about what is actually happening. So what is the
significance of what's going on in communion? And I want us to look here at three
aspects of what's taking place when we come to the table to take the Lord's Supper.
Three things that are going on that we ought to consider. There's a past aspect
that we should consider. There's a present aspect and there's a future aspect to it.
So the past aspect that's taking place when we come to the Lord's table Because we
are remembering something that happened in the past. We are reflecting on and
thinking about the willing suffering of Jesus for us. We're remembering what was
accomplished on the cross. We're remembering that in that moment Jesus did what he
came to do. He paid the price that we owed for our sin so that we could be
reconciled to God. People will sometimes ask me the question I've been asked through
the years people say when did you get saved? And if I'm feeling snarky or
sarcastic, I will sometimes say well, it was about 30 AD that I got saved When
Jesus died on the cross because I was there. He saved me in that moment
Now I have to you know, I do that tongue -in -cheek and I don't want to be all
sarcastic with it But in a real sense My salvation was accomplished when Jesus hung
on the cross and said, "It is finished." In that moment, at that time, my salvation
was secured. My salvation was applied in the summer of 1977 when I was a junior in
college. And when I heard and believed the gospel, understood my sin in a way that
I'd never really understood it before, understood God's grace as a result in a way
that I never understood it before, and went, "Oh, I've been thinking wrongly about
this, and it was transformative in my life." In that moment, the salvation that had
been accomplished on the cross was applied to my life, but it was as certain when
Jesus hung on the cross as it was in that moment when I believed it. We sometimes
sing this around Easter thinking about the cross. We think mercy there was great and
grace was free. Pardon there was multiplied to me. There my burden stole found
liberty at Calvary. That's where it happened. That's where our salvation was
accomplished. Accomplished at the cross applied when I believed. And we should be
thinking about that when we come to the Lord's table, that what we're celebrating is
what Jesus did in the past that has present day benefit for me. So we reflect on
what happened in the past when we come to the Lord's table, but then we move to a
present aspect, and this is what we should be considering that's going on in the
present as we come to the Lord's table. It makes a difference in our lives today.
When you come forward and receive and take the Lord's suffer with everyone else
here, here's what's happening in the here and now. First of all, you are affirming
for yourself and for everyone that you are a part of, a partaker in the New
Covenant. This is the New Covenant meal and you're coming forward to saying, "I'm a
part of this New Covenant. I am a beneficiary of the promise that God has made to
his people. I'm declaring that that's true by coming and taking these elements.
Second, You're taking the bread and the wine or the juice and you are tangibly
demonstrating your union with Christ He is in you. You are in him In fact when you
take the elements and you take them into you you are saying it's Christ in me
We're taking and eating and swallowing and I This is not a biological reality,
but it's a picture of a spiritual reality Christ is in you and you are taking him
in and third and connected to that you are also declaring to yourself and others
that Jesus is your source of spiritual sustenance and nourishment and strength.
When you eat and drink the reason we well I was going to say the reason we eat
and drink is for for strength sometimes we eat and drink just because we like the
taste of it right but for the For the most part, God made us to eat and drink
because it's by eating and drinking that we find our strength. If you don't eat and
drink, you will become weak and you will die. So when we come forward and take
bread and juice, we are again signifying that my spiritual life is found in Christ.
My spiritual strength is found in Christ. I am eating these things to tell myself
and everyone around me But the only strength I have is what comes from Christ, that
without this I will die spiritually. Martin Luther said we come to the table because
we recognize we're in a spiritual battle and we know we will not survive that
spiritual battle unless we have the nourishment and refreshment that comes that God
gives us when we come to him for communion. Fourth, By waiting and taking communion
together, we are picturing that we are united together as brothers and sisters, that
it's not just communion us with God on an individual level, but that we commune
with one another as brothers and sisters in Christ. We are a part of the body of
Christ, and by taking it together, we're talking about it being united. There are
some churches where you will come down and you'll take the elements and you take
them right individually. And I don't want to pick apart the way other people do it
because I don't think there's some right and wrong to all of this. But the reason
that we have you take it back to your seat and hold on to it and we take it
together after the words of institution is so we can say to one another, we're
together on this. We're doing this together. This is a common meal for all of us.
This is not just an individual thing that I just did here. We're declaring it
together. And then fifth, we take communion together to proclaim the Lord's death
until he comes. That's what we're told in 1 Corinthians 11 -26. When we do this,
we are making a statement to ourselves, to one another, and to the world,
whoever's watching us, that we believe Christ is coming again.
And by the way, that
moves us into the future aspect of that. But let me, before I get to the future
aspect of it, let me just say that as you take communion, as you participate in
communion together, you're availing yourself of what theologians call a means of
grace. I don't know if you've heard that or understand what that means, but here's
what we mean when we talk about something being a means of grace. Means of grace
are like the cupboard door that when you open it, there's the storehouse of grace
behind it. The only way to get to the grace inside the cupboard is you have to
open the door. And when you do, it's all there for you. It's like the delivery
vehicle, the Amazon driver who, you said I need grace and the driver brings the
grace to you. That's the means of delivery for this. The means of grace are in
effect a delivery system that God has instituted to supply or to bring grace.
That is, he's bringing to you redemptive blessings,
illumination, spiritual power, spiritual change, spiritual strength and fortitude.
He's bringing this to you as you avail yourself of these means of grace. Lord,
I need you when you pray a prayer like that, God says, you know where to find me?
You'll find me in my word. You'll find me in prayer. You'll find me as you gather
for worship. You'll find me as you gather together with other believers and sisters
in Christ. You'll find me as you participate in the ordinances of the church,
baptism and communion. God is with us in those moments to provide and supply the
grace we need for our lives. So if you ever feel like you don't have grace,
you just need to go where it's found and God will supply it to you. It's not like
you ever open the cupboard and it's empty. Now sometimes you open the cupboard and
your soul is so spiritually dry that you just don't even have the energy to lift
up and take something out of the cupboard. I mean there are times you've had this
experience where you're you're in a dry in a desert land and you pray Lord I need
the refreshment and you feel like nothing comes you read the word and it's words on
a blank page. This is because the means of grace have to be appropriated by faith.
We can't simply you can't simply come to the communion table and take an oyster
cracker and some juice and say oh there's grace in here. No the no, the grace is
activated through the faith that you're demonstrating.
I was thinking about Alexa this week. Do you have Alexa at your house? So I was
thinking about Alexa who's the third person who lives in our house. Sometimes Alexa
will come on and say, "I have an order suggestion for you based on your past
history of shopping." And Marianne hears that and goes, "She knows our shopping, turn
her off right now. But she is saying, "It looks like you need something.
Do you want to order it from me?" Well, in the same way these means of grace are
God saying, "You need grace. I can supply that for you. Do you want me to deliver
that?" And then you would take advantage of the means of grace. But we have to
receive these elements by faith. You can't, let me just make sure you and you can't
go to the kitchen after here and grab a handful of oyster crackers and a jug of
grape juice and eat a bunch of crackers and I'd say, I just needed a whole lot
more grace than just the one, no, that's not how it works. And the grace is not
here because I pray a prayer over them or because I hand them to you. The grace
is there because by faith, God is meeting you as you come and "My Lord, I'm
trusting that there's grace here." God says there is, take, eat, participate.
The means of grace are vital, but they're nothing unless they're accessed by grace.
So all of this is going on in the present when we take communion, and then again,
we're reaffirming that you are a beneficiary of the New Covenant, you're demonstrating
your union with Christ, you're feeding on Him, you are declaring that we're united
together as believers. You're proclaiming the Lord's death until he comes and you're
receiving fresh supplies of grace as you come and participate and acknowledge that
God has promised to provide grace to you as you participate in this ordinance. The
final aspect of the Lord's Supper is the future aspect and this is where Jesus
tells his disciples that this meal is a foreshadowing of a greater meal that is to
come. I once heard a pastor who described communion like the rehearsal dinner before
a wedding. He said the rehearsal dinner that's not the big that's not the big
event. I mean it's a nice event but the wedding is the big deal. But the rehearsal
dinner is the meal that the father pays for in our tradition. The father of the
groom pays for in order to prepare everybody for the wedding to celebrate what is
coming, but it's the wedding that's the big deal. Well I think every time we take
communion we're coming to another rehearsal dinner. It's an appetizer. It's like the
free samples at Costco, right? You get a little taste and you go, "Ooh, that's
good. I can't wait until I get more of that." Some of you, that's how you get
your lunch, right? You just go to Costco when they're doing their free samples.
This is a taste of a greater, more glorious meal that is being prepared for us now
and that we will participate in if we know and love Christ. Final thought about
this ordinance of communion before we turn and consider baptism. Let me just say
that there's a warning in the Bible in 1 Corinthians 11 about taking communion in
an unworthy manner. In fact, if you've got your Bible turned to 1 Corinthians 11,
just flip over to 1 Corinthians 11. Again, I'll put it up here on the screen so
we can read it. Paul, just a little context for this. The Corinthian church was a
mess. It was a carnal mess. Everybody was, there was a lot of pride. There was a
lot of ego, a lot of self -centered. They wanted attention drawn to themselves. They
boasted about their gifts, and when they got together and had their communion meals,
it was a mess. The rich people had the good food down at their end of the table.
The poor people were kind of left out and neglected. This love feast became kind of
a social strata event, and Paul corrects them with this. And in verse 27 he says,
"Whoever therefore eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy
manner." Now Now I'm just gonna stop right there. He doesn't say
Whoever is an unworthy person and does this he's not talking about the person being
unworthy He's talking about the way in which you participate in the meal being
unworthy. He's talking to Christians here About how it's possible for us as
Christians to take this meal in an unworthy manner. Just tuck that away.
He says, if you do that, you're guilty concerning the body and the blood of the
Lord. So he says, let a person examine himself then, and so eat of the bread and
drink of the cup for anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats
and drinks judgment on himself. That's why many of you are weak and ill, and some
of you have died. And we don't have time to unpack all of that. Let me just make
these observations. These are believers eating in an unworthy manner. And what you're
guilty of when you do that is you're guilty concerning the body and the blood of
the Lord. I'm suggesting to you, you have trivialized what God wants you to make a
big deal of. That's the unworthy way you do this. You examine yourself,
Not so that you can see, do I have remaining sin that would keep me from the
table? You're examining yourself to say, am I really looking at this? You're
preparing your heart to come. It's why we say each week, prepare your heart before
you come. You just need to say, am I thinking about this rightly before I come to
the table? And to do it casually or trivially, according to this passage,
can bring judgment. It's not eternal judgment that he's talking about. It's temporal
judgment. It's the discipline of the Lord. When he says, "Many of you are weak and
ill and some have died," he's saying, "God has brought these consequences on you
because of how you have participated in the Lord's Supper." These people presumably
died and went to be with Jesus, but God said, "Enough of this. I'm taking you out
because you're just, you're making a mockery of this. We're not gonna leave this
around.
So for a believer, and this was written to believers, to take the Lord's Supper in
an unworthy manner, John Piper says it's to become temporarily cavalier about what it
is you're doing.
Temporarily cavalier. Should you come and take communion if you are battling
indwelling, ongoing sin, and you messed up this week. Yes, that's what it's here
for. Because you need strength, you need grace, you need the infusion of God's grace
in your life, you need the means of grace. You need that means of grace. Should
you come if you are aware of sin in your life, but you're not battling it? Okay,
this gets tricky, maybe.
If you're saying, "Lord, I need grace again this week. I need you to strengthen me
in my weakness. Help me to resist temptation and fight sin. Then come and receive
the grace that God gives." But if you're saying to yourself, "You know,
what I did doesn't really matter. I'm just gonna go through this. I don't want
anybody to see me sitting in the seat, I mean, then the low something's up. If
you're going through it with that kind of a mindset, then you need to beware. If
you're even saying, "I know what I'm doing is wrong and I don't really care, but
Lord, help me to care." If that's your prayer, come and receive grace.
I like how a pastor who I came across this week, a pastor at Linncroft Bible
Church in New Jersey. Chris Pascarella says this. He says, "The sacrament is not
given to the individual who determines whether they are worthy, but the sacrament is
precisely given to strengthen weak faith. Since the sacrament is good news visibly
demonstrated, then the worthy eating is about having a right reverence for what's
taking place." That's what it means to eat in a manner worthy. You may have heard
of a guy named Joe Rigney. He's a college professor and a pastor. He read an
article that he read this week where he said, "For many years I viewed communion as
mainly a time of deep introspection, somberness, heaviness,
self -examination." Somewhere along the way he said, "I picked up the idea that there
is a right and proper approach to the Lord's Supper, a number of unwritten rules
for how to receive the Lord's Supper, and he listed them here. First, you bow your
head. Second, you close your eyes or you look at the floor. Third, you hunch your
shoulders so that you can feel the heaviness of this time better. Fourth, you search
your heart for unconvested sin. Five, you avoid eye contact with others. Six,
You try not to be distracted by the six -year -old behind you who wants to know why
he can't have a snack like everybody else. Or you start feeling guilty because your
own six -year -old wants to know the same thing. Seven, you check your heart again
just to be sure. Eight, you think deeply about your own wickedness. Nine, you try
to think about the cross without forgetting about your own wickedness. And then, ten,
you seriously don't acknowledge, notice, or make eye contact with your neighbor. You
don't want to interrupt what God might be doing to the person next to you. It's
very heavy. Maybe that's how you've thought of this. Rigney ends all of this by
saying, "What was noticeably lacking from my experience of communion was a strong
sense of awe, wonder, joy, godwardness, and gratitude in my zeal for gravity I had
forgotten
gladness." I think that's good. When we come, there should be a reverence, but there
should also be a joy. There should all, your heart should be full of joy for we're
coming with Thanksgiving. We're coming to celebrate what God has done for us in
Christ. And I hope as we've talked about communion this morning and looked at what
Jesus gave us as a means of grace in our lives, that you have a fresh
understanding of what this ordinance is all about and a fresh desire to participate
and to come and to know whether you should or not, whether you ought to come. It's
a family meal for the family of God. Okay, enough about communion, let's talk about
baptism. Okay, relax, you just looked at your watch and said seriously, we're gonna
go baptism now? Seriously? No, I'm gonna wait for another opportunity later this
summer and we'll dig deep into baptism then. But because we're having a baptism this
morning, and We have two young people are going to be baptized. I ought to tell
you just a few things about baptism So this is just a quick look at what we'll
come back and explore in detail Later on here are six quick thoughts for you about
what's going to happen here in just a few minutes First of all, baptism is a
public declaration of something that has already taken place in someone's life It's
back to the wedding analogy. Baptism is like,
if coming to Christ is like getting married to Jesus, baptism is like the
announcement in the paper, but if you don't know what a paper is, it's like
changing your status online, right? Where you say you declare something new is true.
The event where it happened happened here, but now you're telling everybody what just
happened. That's what it is.
That's the normal pattern in the New Testament. It's your first act of obedience Now
this is very important Baptism this is third thing baptism does not save you When
you come and get in the water and go under the water Just like the bread and the
wine don't become Jesus body and blood this water does nothing to save you This
water doesn't have special cleansing power other than the spiritual cleansing power
that it represents. As we'll see when we get to this topic at a later date, we
are in disagreement again with the Roman Catholic Church and with some other churches
like the Church of Christ who teach that baptism is an essential aspect of salvation
and if you're unbaptized your soul is in danger. I would say it's an act of
obedience but it does not save view. With that said, baptism is an initial means of
grace for a new believer. In the same way that communion opens a covered door to
grace, baptism opens a covered door. God meets us in baptism and brings grace to
that when we follow him in obedience. And his own example,
it's obedience to his command, but Jesus was baptized As he began his ministry when
we do that we're opening the door for God to extend grace to us Number five
baptism is meant to happen once in your life Following your profession of faith
It's not something you repeat over and over again now. I know people I was baptized
as an infant I was baptized later as a believer So you could say well you've had
two baptisms And I would say, now the first one I had, as I look back on that, I
don't think that met the biblical understanding of what baptism is. That's why when
I was in my 20s, I chose to be baptized in Keystone Lake in Oklahoma. As we got
our church together, and I was baptized there. It's something that happens following
your profession of faith in your life. And again, there are different views on and
we'll dive into that when we do our deep dive on that. But baptism is a picture,
here's the last thing. Baptism is a picture of our justification. It happens once at
the beginning of our spiritual journey and it pictures that God has washed our sins
clean that he's brought us from death to life. That's what's going on there.
Communion is a picture of our sanctification. Communion,
we repeat over and over again, just like walking by faith is something we do over
and over again. Baptism is a once for all. Communion is an ongoing participation in
the walk of faith, where if you say,
I follow Christ, you want to be strengthened by his grace on an ongoing basis.
So, if somebody comes to me and says, "I'm a Christian, I prayed to trust Christ."
That should be all I need to do in order to come and receive communion. I would
say, "Yes, it's all you need to do is trust in Christ. You should be ready to
come to communion." But let's talk about baptism. And you say, "Well, I haven't been
baptized yet." I would say, "Well, let's do that." And in that moment,
And I would say let's maybe hold off on taking the Lord's Supper until you've made
a public declaration. Now that's a personal opinion and I know parents who have got
a situation where your child has professed faith and they want to participate and
you say, "Okay, we're going to let our child participate. I'm going to leave that
between you and the Lord and how that gets worked out." But I would say if your
child professed faith, let's talk about baptism for your child. Let's not jump the
gun and get to communion before we've, let's not get to sanctification before we've
dealt with justification. That's the way I view it. So we're gonna leave it there
this morning. I'll unpack more of that later on this summer. We're gonna take
communion together. We're gonna sing a hymn, and then we're gonna have two baptisms,
and then we're gonna have lunch together, a potluck, and celebrate what has gone on
here this morning. And I'm gonna ask the worship team to go ahead and get ready
for this, but let me just say is These children are coming forward to be baptized
this morning. I want to say a few words about this. I agree with Charles Spurgeon,
the great English preacher, who said, when a child is old enough to know English
sin, he is old enough to savingly believe. We're going to have a seven -year -old
and a 10 -year -old up here in the water this morning. And I've met with these
children and with their parents, and what you will hear from them as they share
their spiritual story will be a simple childlike expression of their faith.
And I sometimes find myself wishing that it was more fully formed, that they were
not thinking like a seven -year -old or a ten -year -old, but they were thinking like
a mature adult, but they're not. They're seven and ten. But what we're hearing are
the rudiments of that story, and so I'm reminded that we baptized people on the
basis of their profession of faith, not the proof of their faith. Somebody comes to
profess faith. We may ask them questions and see have you got this right. And if
they do, we don't wait and say, "Well, you're gonna have to prove to me that
you're really a follower of Jesus." No, we baptize them based on their profession of
faith. Philip and the Ethiopian unit on the way, on the path,
as soon as he said, "I want to Follow Christ. He said there's water right here.
Can I be baptized and Philip didn't say we need to check you out a little bit?
They baptized him right away, and I'm also reminded that When the children wanted to
come to Jesus in the Gospels and the disciples said no no no no He's very
important. What did Jesus say? Let him come Don't forbid them Such as the kingdom
of heaven so as We hear from a seven -year -old and a 10 -year -old this morning,
you might think to yourself, "Well, I wish they had their theological dots, eyes
dotted, and teeth crossed a little better." It'll happen. It'll happen over time.
We're just acknowledging the desire of their heart to come and be obedient here. So
that's what we're going to do in a few minutes. But first, we'll celebrate the
Lord's Supper, and I don't need to tell you much more about the Lord's Supper and
what we're doing here, because that's what we've talked about all morning. I'll just
say this, the way we do this here at Redeemer is we ask you to go to the back
of the worship center and come down the outer aisles, receive the elements, and take
them back to your seats with you, hold on to them, and we will take them together.
If you're here as a guest, you're welcome to come to the table and take communion.
As long as you know and love Jesus and you've surrendered your life to Him, you
are welcome to come and participate in this meal. If you're here this morning and
you say, "Well, that's not me." I would say, "Well, don't take communion. "This is
a family meal for the family of God. "You would be doing this casually to come as
an unbeliever." So I would just warn you against that. We'll have a prayer up on
the screen that you can read or you can think about what you've heard this morning
and again, nobody's gonna be looking around and saying, "Why didn't he come?" Or,
"What's going on?" And so that's how we will do it this morning, you take a few
minutes to prepare your hearts while we prepare the table.