Adult Sunday School Going Public Summary

The Meaning of Baptism and the Need for Objective Definitions

Us and purchase for God an eternal salvation unto his elect. We praise you, Father, for your goodness. We ask, Lord, that you would now, in this time, help us to set aside all the earthly cares, the woes, the stresses, and anxieties that may so easily entangle us and that would rob us of the joy that is set before us.

We pray, God, that you would, in this moment and in this time, consecrate this as holy and separate unto yourself and that our time together and our prayers, our study, and our worship, and the proclamation of the word, that these things would be pleasing to you.

And we pray these things in the name of Jesus Christ for the edification of your church. Amen. So, over the last several months, we've been going through a teaching on baptism, which is one of the Lord's ordinances.

We've concluded that teaching in our book last week on baptism, and we want to now take the last couple of occasions that I have with you as your pastor to focus on another important element of the Lord's ordinance, and that is the ordinance of the Lord's Supper.

So, in the arguments that we've been making over the last year, really, if you've been paying attention to our Sunday School series, we've been trying to make an apologetic argument to the church on what baptism is.

We started that last summer when we started to teach to you what baptism is and is not. And so, the position that we've come to is that baptism has a particular meaning, and anything outside that particular meaning is not baptism, right?

Similarly, we have to come to that conclusion in a lot of aspects of life. So, for instance, take, you know, the world likes to redefine terms. The world is confused in many aspects. What is a woman? What is a man?

What is a marriage? All of these very fundamental questions that have been settled for thousands of years in human civilization and history have now, all of a sudden, come into question, have been, you know, been turned upside down, and now we have to ask ourselves these really basic questions.

And so, what makes a woman? Well, it's more than just a feeling. What makes a man? It's more than just a feeling. There is an objective reality, a biological reality that we have to contend with. And so, what I'm saying is every word has a particular objective meaning, and anything outside of that objective meaning is not what that word is.

Same is true for baptism, as we examined it over the last year. Baptism means full immersion. That's what the word baptizo means. It means to be dunked, immersed in water. So, anything that is not that is not baptism.

It's something other than because it does not fit the etymological meaning of the word, and it comes outside the historic use and context of that term as well, especially as you examine the Scriptures.

So, our argument is clear. Baptism is full immersion in the name of the one true and triune God, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Why? Because that's what Jesus gave us. Jesus was not sprinkled. He was immersed.

The early Christians were not sprinkled. They were immersed. This is the only model that we have in Scripture. And again, just the meaning of the word itself, baptism, means to be immersed, dunked in water.

So, anything outside of that is not baptism. Pretty clear? Similarly, when God says what marriage is, marriage is between one man, one woman, anything outside of that is not marriage. The world can call it whatever it wants, right?

When you look at the world in terms of the politics of homosexuality and other things, the world may want to redefine these terms, redefine what a man is, redefine what a woman is. But where do we get our definitions from?

From God's Word. God's Word speaks to us in a better way. And so, we hold on to the confession of faith that has been handed down to us in Holy Scripture. Now, we turn our attention to the Lord's table.

Passover, Exodus, and the Institution of the Lord's Supper

What is the Lord's Supper? What is Holy Communion? There's a lot of theories surrounding or theological frameworks surrounding communion, but I want to just get to the basics. What is and is not communion?

Let's turn to our Bibles in Luke chapter 22, and let's start with verse 7. It says in Luke chapter 22, verse 7, "...then came the day of unleavened bread, on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed.".

Okay, just a quick note, look at verse 1 as well. It says, "...now the Feast of Unleavened Bread drew near, which is called the Passover.". So if you have any questions of what that feast is, the Feast of Unleavened Bread is the Feast of Passover.

Passover being what? What is that feast? What was that a memorial of? That's right. And so if you remember the story of Exodus, I don't think we'll have to go back to Exodus to read the text, but just to recap what Exodus teaches and what it says, Jehovah had gave his people directions as to how they would exit after the 10 plagues the land of Egypt.

And so the Lord had commanded Moses to instruct the people of Israel to prepare for Passover. So essentially it was their last meal before they get out of town, right? I don't know about you, but I'm a manic, I travel a lot and I'm a manic planner in how I travel.

And so when we do road trips with the family, I have, I literally print out like two, three pages of where we're stopping, because I do not want to, like, I want to beat time. You know, when you put the GPS, it gives you a time when you're going to arrive.

I'm like, uh-uh, I'm going to, I'm going to get there like 20 minutes sooner at least. And so we make very intentional stops. And so I know where I'm going to stop, where I'm going to stop. I know where we're going to eat, where we're going to do bathroom breaks.

Yes, with small kids, it's a little hard, but we've managed to do it because we have this little device that if they have to go, they can go and we don't have to stop for it. So we're very intentional in that.

And God was very intentional in how he wanted his people to exit Egypt. So he gave them a roadmap. He says, this is how I want you to go. And he says, this is what you're going to do. This is how you're going to prepare.

This is what you're going to. So in some verses, this is also called the Feast of Preparations, because it's a time in which they're going, they're preparing to leave the land of Egypt. And so God had to give them instruction on what they're to eat.

And the food is very interesting because the food items that are described in the Passover, obviously there's the Passover what? Lamb. Okay. One of the instructions that God gave to the people of Israel was that when the Passover lamb was to be sacrificed, it had to be sacrificed on that particular day.

And then it had to be roasted over fire. So the quickest way to cook the meat. And sometimes, I'm not sure if you've ever had lamb. Lamb is a kind of a tough meat. It's a little gamey compared to other meats.

And the best way to cook it is in a slow methodical way. If you cook it too fast, it's kind of almost gummy. But he says, this is how you're going to cook it. You're going to cook it fast over fire. And then you're going to eat it and you can't leave anything behind.

You got to eat it all. God preparing his people to consume this. It's going to be quick. It may not be the best tasting, but it's going to give you the energy you need to leave Egypt. And then he says as well with the bread, there's bread that's associated with this meal too.

And this is a certain kind of bread. What kind of bread was this? Unleavened. Okay. So I don't know too much about, I'm not a baker, but what is missing from unleavened bread? Yeast. What does yeast do typically in bread?

It takes time, right? So you got to let it proof sometimes and you got to let it rise and then you bake it. But God said to his people, Israel, we don't have time for that. So don't put any leaven in it.

Don't put any yeast in it. It's going to be unleavened bread so that you can even consume it and maybe even take some with you because there's no time. And one of the things that the Exodus says is essentially you're going to be in a rush.

Okay. So you begin to see some of the reasoning behind the Exodus or the Feast of Unleavened Bread. The reasoning behind some of those elements and how they're prepared and why they're prepared in certain ways.

Back in Luke 22, verse 8, so Jesus sent Peter and John saying, go and prepare the Passover for us that we may eat it. And they said to him, where will you have us prepare it? He said to them, behold, when you've entered the city, a man carrying a jar of water will meet you.

Follow him into the house that he enters and tell the master of the house. The teacher says to you, where is the guest room where I may eat the Passover with my disciples? And he will show you a large upper room furnish.

Prepare it there. And they went and found it just as he had told them, and they prepared the Passover. So kind of a similar setup here. If you see the overarching metanarrative of scripture, Jesus sends them the day of.

So they're kind of in a rush, aren't they? And he says, go and prepare. This idea of preparation is very much in line with what we see in the Exodus. He goes on to find a place for the disciples to eat that Jesus had already prepared beforehand, but they had to go and seek it.

In the Exodus story, we also see that God sends his messengers, namely Moses, and also his son. Oh, not his son, his brother. Who was Moses's brother? Aaron, who became the priest. And they had to go and essentially do what the disciples are doing.

They had to go before the Lord and tell the disciples, tell the people of Israel of what it is that they have to do. In verse 14, it says, and when the hour came, he reclined at table and the apostles with him.

He said to them, I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. This is really important. Jesus is telling us what he is observing. What is he observing? The Passover. So it's not, we're not, we're talking about the Passover.

A lot of theologians have said that what Jesus is doing here is the first communion service. And I agree with that in a sense, but what he's also doing is the last true Passover. Okay? This is the last true Passover celebration.

Because now in this institution, it is now different from the Passover because do we celebrate Passover as Christians today? No. I am of the opinion that it is not necessarily wrong for us to celebrate some of these ancient feasts.

If you do so with the understanding of, as this pointing to Christ, but, but it is, so to me, I don't necessarily see wrong in it. Some people would say this is, you shouldn't, and because it is, right, because it's an old covenant arrangement and we're in the new covenant.

And to look at the old covenant and to do the regulations of the old covenant would be to, to undo what we are doing in the new covenant. I don't necessarily take that perspective, but it's a valid perspective.

And so what Jesus is celebrating here is the last Passover of the old dispensation. Okay? That word dispensation just means epoch, era, age, as we understand it in the scriptures. And so not, not to, again, don't, don't lump that word in with dispensationalism.

Simply put, this means an epoch of time. And so Christ is establishing a new thing and here's how he establishes it. It says, and he, in verse 17, he took a cup and we had given thanks. He said, take this and divide it among yourselves.

For I tell you that from now on, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes. And he took bread and we had given thanks. He broke it and gave it to them saying, this is my body, which is given for you.

Do this in remembrance of me. This is very important. What Jesus is doing, he's also setting the model for the new covenant arrangement of Holy Communion. Okay. Just like we have the mindset now of baptism, what baptism is and what it is not based upon the biblical criteria.

We want to approach communion in a similar fashion. What is and is not communion? Where are the elements involved in the communion service? And then we have to ask the self-examination question, are we as a church following this model to the biblical standard?

The Breaking of Bread, the Cup, and the New Covenant Pattern

In the next couple of weeks, every week we administer communion. Over the next several weeks, we will be administering communion differently than what we have done in the past. And some of the things that we will be doing differently are the things that we believe align us more closer to scripture.

Among the changes to communion, when we have communion, just like most typical churches, you have the elements already kind of broken. And you have the cups kind of already filled and stuff. And then we kind of just, you know, disperse it through the deacons or others who are helping serve.

One of the things that we're going to be doing differently is, again, to align ourselves more closely to scripture, is we will be taking one loaf of bread or a bun-loving bread, and we will be breaking it there at the table.

What does Jesus do here? Again, notice the intentionality behind what Jesus is doing here. It says, and he took bread. And when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them. You might just think this is just, you know, kind of nonchalant details in a narrative that, you know, maybe we're reading too much into it.

I don't think that's the case. Everything in scripture is very intentional and very purposeful. Again, let's break this down just a little bit more in that same text. And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, what is to give thanks?

That is to pray, right? Currently, how we do it is we, when we have communion, we pray once over all the elements, and then we disperse them, and we do take that corporately. We will now be praying for the elements individually.

So he prayed for each element, the bread first. And so we, too, will now start praying for the bread first, and then we will break it, and then it will be dispersed. Now, we've thought of some of the objections that people might have, and that sounds unsanitary.

You know, pastors, you know, we're shaking hands with everybody, and then we're going up there, and then we're going to break bread, and then we're going to use hand sanitizer before we eat. We're going to actually have hand sanitizer there, and we're going to wash our hands because we want to be clean.

We don't want to spread germs. Another objection might be that, well, this sounds kind of Roman Catholic-y, right? Where in the Roman Catholic system, you know, you come forward to receive the Eucharist, and the priest will, like, put it in your mouth.

I promise you I will not be putting the bread in your mouth, okay? We will not be following that model, and particularly, they don't do what we're doing. They usually have a little wafer. It's not unleavened bread, and then they will hand it to you.

There's no breaking aspect, and I think that there's something that is very intentional about what Jesus is doing. Then we're going to examine elsewhere in Scripture how this is practiced and see whether this lines up, but Jesus breaks the bread.

What significance is there behind the breaking of the bread? It signifies really two or three things. His body that's broken. That's exactly right. What else do you think that the breaking represents or signifies?

Say it again. Yes, that's beautiful. I love that. What else can come to your mind? Yes, sir? She says the one becoming many, so the one bread being broken, dispersed, becomes much, yeah. You had something else, or you just wanted to hear that?

Another thing that it represents is fellowship, right? Another thing that it represents as well is authority, who is breaking and who is dispensing. That aspect is very intentional. It's not something that should be overlooked easily.

What Jesus, again, does is that he takes the element. He prays for them. He breaks it, and it flows from him. It represents his broken body. It represents the fellowship that we all enjoy in Christ because what is these emblems a representation of spiritually?

His body, right? So we believe we take the spiritual presence view of the communion. This is truly Christ's body, spiritually speaking. We don't take a transubstantiation or post-substantiation view of the elements where they become, mystically, the literal body of Christ.

Rather, we understand that Christ is nourishing us spiritually by means of the elements, and so something is actually happening. We don't take a memorialist view, which just says this is just totally a memorial and that there's no significance outside of the memorial aspect.

No, we believe that there is a true transfer of spiritual life and power as we do these things, as we partake of the spiritual elements of Christ, and we are feasting on Christ in a very tangible way.

A memorialist view is actually more akin to a Gnostic view, right? And so the two extremes would be the Catholic view, where the substance actually changes mystically. That's mysticism. And then there's Gnosticism, where everything is just kind of ethereal, and everything is very detached from the world and the physical elements of life, right?

And so those two views are extreme opposites. We believe in the true spiritual presence of Christ in the communion elements.

Any questions so far on that?

I have a question about it from a Lutheran perspective.

Conscious transubstantiation.

Does this have anything to do with forgiveness?

The elements?

Yeah.

It kind of brought them back into fellowship with God in a forgiveness way, and it didn't make sense to me.

Yeah, so their view would be that, again, there are graces that are extended in the communion, and I wouldn't disagree with that use of language. I would maybe disagree on the application of how we get to certain aspects.

Are you forgiven of your sins by taking communion? Yes and no. What is the avenue by which our sins are forgiven? It's atoning work, particularly in our confession, repentance, and faith toward Christ.

So if we partake of the communion table and we have not done those things, are we forgiven automatically? Not necessarily, right? And so, again, if we turn communion into a work rather than an act of grace, then you begin to have some errors, like in Lutheranism, where this is a means of grace outside of Christ, because it now becomes a work.

So I don't have to confess. I can just take communion, and I'm good, right? So it becomes a false covering. But there is a sense as well in which communion does put you in right fellowship with Christ, but it needs to be preceded by true faith and repentance, right?

So if you have true faith and true repentance, you're welcomed in that table, and you're partaking. There's a tangibility to the graces or the effect of God's grace as you receive the communion table.

And so I think that would be a more healthy and biblical view of communion.

Correct.

This is the renewing of.

That's right.

Amen. Any other thoughts or questions? This is making sense, right? Okay, so I haven't lost anybody. So again, one of the practical things that we'll be doing differently is that we'll be praying for the elements individually.

And when it comes to the bread, we will be breaking the bread so that the one becomes many. Scripture says, do we not eat of one bread? Do we not partake of one cup? And so that is significant. And so let's continue to see what the Lord Jesus does and how he administers communion.

He then again says in verse 19, he took bread and we had given thanks. He broke it and gave it to them saying, this is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me. I had a conversation with Jehovah's Witnesses recently.

I love talking to Jehovah's Witnesses, of course. And they ramp up a lot of efforts in this time of year because they have a celebration coming up. If you know anything about Jehovah's Witnesses, they do not celebrate anything.

They don't celebrate birthdays, Christmas, holidays, secular holidays, none of those things. But there's only one thing on their calendar. And it's what they call the memorial. The memorial is their yearly Passover slash communion service.

So our church, we practice communion every week. Most churches in evangelicalism will practice it maybe once a month or once a quarter or whenever the spirit moves. And then other churches will maybe do it yearly.

Jehovah's Witnesses are among the groups that will do a yearly memorial service because they link it correctly so to the Passover. And the Passover was celebrated yearly. But then they don't recognize that not only is the Passover, not only is communion connected to Passover, but it's also a new thing.

It's a new covenant arrangement. And it was done weekly by the early church as is referenced numerous times in the Book of Acts. And the Jehovah's Witnesses believe that, has anyone ever been to a memorial service of Jehovah's Witnesses by any chance?

All right, good. You don't want to go. What happens there is it's the strangest ritual you'll probably see. They have about a 30-minute sermon. And it falls on the Jewish calendar day of what's called Nisan 14.

Nisan 14 is the biblical Passover day. And so it changes every year. So for us, we follow the Gregorian calendar, solar calendar. So Easter always falls on Sunday. Good Friday always falls on Friday because we follow a Gregorian calendar, a solar calendar.

The biblical calendar is a lunar calendar. It's not a solar calendar, which means it goes based upon new moons. And so they go by the Jewish calendar of Nisan 14. And so it's different every year. Some years it's in March.

Some are in April, depending on the lunar cycles that are associated in the Jewish calendar. And when you go to this memorial service of Jehovah's Witnesses, again, the only thing they celebrate on their calendar, they'll have an elder give a talk.

And this is like their big deal. There's a lot of people at the Kingdom Hall. Sometimes they rent out huge venues because there's going to be a lot of people that are going to show up to this. About 18 million people worldwide attend this event on that given day.

And so they'll have a sermon. They'll have songs. And then they'll give you a sermon on basically what the elements mean and what they're about to partake in. And then they have the wine. And they have the unleavened bread.

Good. I like that. Those are what the elements are. And we're going to go more into the wine aspect of it in a second. You have these elements. And then the elements are passed. And so kind of like what we do, we bring the elements and people take.

And everyone grabs the cup and everyone grabs the plate. But no one eats of it.

No one eats.

And so every single person is grabbing the plate and passing it to the next person. Every single person is grabbing the cup and passing it to the next person. Do you know why they do that? Erroneously and very sadly and truthfully as well, they do not believe that the great majority of Jehovah's Witnesses are part of the New Covenant.

The majority of Jehovah's Witnesses believe and teach that there are two classes of Christians. There is a heavenly class and an earthly class. Other terms that they use is there's the great crowd from Revelation 7 and 9.

And these are the ones who are going to inherit the paradise earth. And then there's 144 ,000 from Revelation 14. And these are the other sheep or rather the little flock. And the great crowd is the other sheep.

And the 144 ,000 are the ones who are going to go to heaven. And these Christians are elect. They are part of the New Covenant. They are brothers of Christ. But all the other ones, all the other Jehovah's Witnesses, the vast majority of Jehovah's Witnesses, are part of what is called, again, the other sheep or the great crowd class.

And they are not members of the New Covenant. They are not spiritual brothers of Christ. They are subjects to God's government, God's kingdom, which is namely Jesus Christ and his cohorts of 144 ,000 elect from the earth.

And so unless you're part of the 144 ,000 at this memorial service, you cannot partake. Because you have to be amongst part of the New Covenant arrangement. So the truth in that is that Jehovah's Witnesses correctly understand, for the vast majority, that they're not members of the New Covenant and that is true.

They're not New Covenant members. They also believe that they don't have to be born again because only the 144 ,000 have to be born again. All these very strange beliefs and doctrines. In fact, official Watchtower teaching teaches that the vast majority of the New Testament doesn't apply to them directly because it was written to the 144 ,000.

So for instance, when it says that we are sons of God, no, that's the 144 ,000. We're not sons of God, we're subjects. Because their view is that God has a kingdom and so the kingdom has subjects. The vast majority of Jehovah's Witnesses will be subjects of God's kingdom but they won't be in God's kingdom.

Does that make sense?

So it doesn't make sense but it makes sense as I'm explaining it that this is what they believe. The question I ask, is that communion? They've got the elements, right? They've got the bread, they've got the wine, they pass it around, but is that communion?

No, it's not communion. Because communion is not only the involvement of the right elements but it is also the right doctrine, teaching, associated with those elements. Because if not, it's just bread and it's just wine.

Right?

Emmanuel, you had your hand up?

Lost. Rightfully so. And that's why I always bring that up to Jehovah's Witnesses because they have a false paradigm. Again, they believe that there's two classes of Christians. That within the faith, that there are the great crowd, which is the vast majority of Jehovah's Witnesses, and then the little flock, the 144 ,000, and they believe that to be a literal number of 144 ,000.

And so those are the ones who go to heaven. Very erroneous. And so I always, when I talk to Jehovah's Witnesses, I try to make the New Testament distinction clear that if you're not in Christ, if you're not born again, then you're lost.

There is no other subcategory of Christian. Paul says in Ephesians 4, verse 5, there is but one faith, one baptism, one Lord and one God and Father of all.

Right?

So there's one faith. Actually, it says. Even, interestingly, in that same text, there's one hope to which you were called.

Okay?

So there's not two hopes. They usually use that term. Well, we have an earthly hope, or you can have a heavenly hope. Well, the Bible says there's only one hope, and that's the hope of seeing Jesus. That's the hope of the upward call in Christ Jesus.

It's the hope of glory.

Okay?

The blessed hope that we have in Titus 2 .13 is to see our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. There's no other hope. So communion is, in a sense, it's where we get a taste of that hope. It's where we taste and see that the Lord is good.

Because we don't see him face-to-face, but we will see him face-to-face. But before we get there, before we have that final Lord's Supper in heaven, we enjoy the earthly benefits of that supper here as we gather on the Lord's Day.

Does that make sense?

And so, again, Jehovah's Witnesses have an erroneous doctrinal view and practice. Because what is being practiced here? Notice, again, the text of Luke 22, verse 19 in the latter part of that text. This is my body, which is given for you.

Do this in remembrance of me. What is the this part? Was it passing a plate?

It was partaking.

It was being a partaker. And so the Jehovah's Witnesses use that term a lot, partakers. Like, well, we're not partakers. And they call themselves observers. We are observers of the Lord's Supper. We're not partakers.

We're not partakers of the Lord's Supper. There are no observers. It's not in the text. We're in the text of Scripture. So the conversation I had this week.

With Jehovah's Witness,.

That's what I brought up. I said, we're in the text. Is there an observer? Because you're not going to find it. It's just not there. What is the this that we're doing in remembrance of him? And if we're doing something other than this, are we actually doing this in remembrance of him?

No. No.

If we do something other than what the Lord has prescribed, we are doing something other than. That's the point. So if we don't do it as the Lord says, because this is, in the Scripture, it's called the Lord's Ordinance.

It's the Lord's Supper. It's the Lord's Sacrament. It's not ours. It's his. So he's the Lord who determines what it is and how it is that we do this, right? This is, again, very much in line with what's called the Regulative Principle of Worship.

Who regulates it?

Us? Or him?

It's the Lord.

The Lord has spoken. He has given us what is good. He has given us what is right. So we do what he says, and he blesses it. And that's where the blessing, spiritual blessing, of the communion comes forward, is in our obedience in doing what he has commanded.

Right?

The Mormon Church also does weekly communion,.

Similarly to us.

Now, I've brought this up before. The Mormons do communion very interestingly as well.

If you ever go to a Mormon service,.

Of which I have, they will provide communion every week, but it's in a different form. They do not use unleavened bread. They literally have, like, loads of bread, like from, like, you know,.

Walmart,.

From, like, Wonder Bread, and they just break it into pieces and they put it. So it's not unleavened.

And then they put,.

They don't put grape juice. They don't even put wine. They put water as an element. Now the question is, is that communion? Apart from the doctrinal issues that we have of Mormons, why is that not communion?

It's not the same elements. It is different from what he has given us. It is different from what he has instructed. So it is something other than what he said when he said, do this in remembrance of me.

Okay?

So we're talking.

About something.

Totally different.

Yes?

...make a wine net here. What would we do?

Can you say.

That scenario again?

Oh, let's say.

There was a drought and they were not able to produce a wine net here.

What would we do.

In that scenario?

So there's a lot of scenarios.

That we can point to.

That might make communion difficult. And none of them would be cause good enough to change what the Lord has ordained.

Right?

And so when we look at.

There are times.

In church history.

Where.

Or maybe even circumstantial reasons in a person's life where they may be sovereignly inhibited from practicing.

The Lord's table.

And so I would say that that might be a scenario in which you are sovereignly prohibited.

From observing.

The Lord's table.

As prescribed by the Lord Jesus.

Right?

Yeah.

Go for it.

You can bring it up in the next members' meeting. We're in California. We're in like.

Napa Valley.

It's like an hour away.

I think we'll be okay.

With our wine industry.

But.

Yes.

Again,.

And those are areas in which a people for a time may be sovereignly you know prohibited from.

Partaking of the elements.