The Criteria of Communion Part 3

Let's pray. Lord Jesus, again, as we open up your word and we consider what you have revealed there, we recognize that it is only through the Holy Spirit that we can understand these things. And so we ask humbly that you would grant us to rightly understand your word, so that we may correctly believe regarding who you are and what you've done for us, and that we may walk according to what you have revealed there, forsaking our sin and walking in godliness and the call that you have called us to in Christ.

We ask in Jesus' name, amen. Okay, now I'm gonna open it up for questions first. So a little bit of a longer sermon. That was intentional. And the idea was I really wanted to drill in into really what the flood is all about.

And also, you'll note, I took a swipe at some of the bad preaching that is out there regarding the flood. I assure you, God's not gonna ask you to build an ark. That's not what he's going to do. Instead, this is a story about salvation by grace through faith for all of us.

So again, you're always welcome to ask questions, but seeing none, we're gonna then continue on the study that we began. Oh, there's a question.

Mark, I didn't see you, sorry. When someone's hearts were hardened. Yes. That means they're condemned. Yes. Now, passage. Mm-hmm. You said that's a side part.

Right, so in scripture, when God hardens somebody's heart, then that is a form of condemnation. In the gospel text today, at the end of our gospel reading, it said that their hearts were hard. And so you'll note, if you think back to the Exodus account, Pharaoh hardened his heart, and his heart was hardened against what God was saying, and then eventually God hardened his heart.

So with the case of the disciples, this is where Christ finds us. He finds us all with hardened hearts, hearts of stone, and he replaces it with the heart of flesh. And so, as Jesus is working with his disciples, they're clearly still in need of their hearts being broken by Christ properly.

They were hardened, they needed to be softened. And so Christ is chipping away at that. And because they saw the miracle, and they still couldn't connect these things. And that's the idea. And the reality, that's all of us, too.

And I'm not talking about us seeing miracles, but we reading through the scriptures, we should be able to connect these things, and we don't. And so God has to soften our heart, God has to give us repentance, the Holy Spirit has to grant us to rightly understand his word.

So that's the idea. But good question, by the way. All right, Jen says, so off the subject, uh-oh, is Jen going to become the new Bruce Burns? That's our question today. Pastor, can you tell, where in the Bible it plainly states that believers are not to worship with non-believers, or is that stated in the Bible?

Worshiping with Unbelievers and the Lord’s Supper

Okay, now, so let's define our terms here. So, for instance, if an unbeliever came to Congsvinger Lutheran Church in Oslo, Minnesota, would we say, no, you gotta stay out in the foyer, you cannot come into our property, we're gonna be worshiping God, you're not allowed to worship with us.

Would we say that? No! Okay, no, we don't say it. All are welcome, all are welcome to come and hear the gospel. We'll note that not all are invited to Lord's Supper, you know, baptized is a vital thing, examine themselves rightly, believing what you're receiving.

But as far as worshiping with them in the sense of they wanna come onto our turf and hear the gospel, oh, they are welcome. Now, and what's really funny is that early on, as a pastor, I had to kind of wrestle through this, because as a Lutheran pastor, we believe what Christ said, that the sins we forgive are forgiven, the sins we retain are retained.

And always at the beginning of the service, I give a blanket pronouncement of the forgiveness of sins for everybody who's here and everyone who's listening. And I realize that's not an issue, because if you don't have faith, you don't believe that your sins are forgiven, you think I'm acting like an idiot, you know?

So, you know, and you might think that I'm acting like an idiot, and you may be right, but not regarding the forgiving of sins. I act idiotically in other ways. But the point is, is that I don't have a problem pronouncing a general absolution due to the fact that ultimately the way the verbs work, the sins you forgive, will have already been forgiven as the way it says it in John, which means that Christ is the one doing the forgiving, not me.

And because Christ has bled and died for the sins of the whole world, that doesn't mean that everybody's saved. So the question is, do you believe these words? And so somebody who's coming to hear the gospel or explore what Christianity is all about, and we have people like that show up from time to time, that they are welcome to do so, and I don't have a problem pronouncing an absolution because if they don't believe in Christ, they don't believe that they're receiving the forgiveness of sins, and they might think I'm behaving in a weird way.

But on the other end, then, the question then comes up, what do we do about people who are apostates or fallen? And this is where, let me find a verse along these lines because you asked regarding what the Bible says, and so we gotta talk about this.

I'm gonna look for idols. Hang on a second here. Not the American kind, hold on a second. Helm, I might need this. In the epistles, all right. All right, and I think, maybe in the passage, one of the passages, all right, that we know that an idol is nothing, concerning food sacrificed to idols.

Food Offered to Idols and the Demonic Nature of False Religion

All right, so let's take a look at like 1 Corinthians 8, and there may be another text that we wanna pull into this in this regard. 1 Cor 8, and this is a vital text, by the way. This is super importante as it relates to, you know, what God has revealed regarding other religions.

Now, concerning food offered to idols, all right, now, a little bit of a note. We have this wonderful meat store here in town in Grand Forks. It's called L &M Meats. If any of you, while you're visiting, wanna have some, you know, barbecued bison or something like that, we can make this happen.

We can go to L &M, all right? And then, oh man, they're like, they're beef jerky sticks and just. Anyway, this place fell from heaven, I'm telling you. It's the first meat store from the New Jerusalem that has landed on earth, okay.

Cleven's looking at me like, yeah. Yeah, there's an emergency. Rose has lost his mind. Anyway, I digress, but my point is this, is that meat stores like this did not exist in the ancient world. At the time of the Apostle Paul, if you wanted to have a good steak, where did you go to buy it?

Answer, the Temple of Apollos, of Apollo. You go to the Temple of Apollo, or you go to the Temple of, no, I don't think Pluto would count. He's the god of the underworld. But yeah, Apollo would be one of the places that you would go to.

And so, the idea then is that people purchased their meats because what they did with them, they sacrificed them to a false deity. And then the priests in those false temples took the meat and put it out in the agora and made it for sale.

And so, this became an issue of conscience for Christians. Can I eat steak that the cow that died for this steak was offered as a sacrifice to Apollo? That's a legitimate question because the question is, am I, by default, worshiping Apollo by eating this steak?

And so, this is the question that Paul is bringing up. Okay, so now concerning food offered to idols. And so, you know, some Christians, they don't have any problem with this. Other Christians do. We know that all of us possess knowledge.

This knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. So, if anyone imagines that he knows something, he yet does not know what it is he ought. But if anyone loves God, he's known by God. Therefore, as to eating of the food offered to idols, we know that an idol has no real existence, none, and that there is no God but one, although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many gods.

Note the scare quotes the ESV uses. That's the idea. There are many gods and many lords. Yet, for us, there is one God, the Father from whom all things, whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord Jesus Christ through whom are all things and through whom we exist.

However, not all possess this knowledge, all right? Some, through former association with idols, they eat food, as really offered to an idol. So, they're having a hard time jettisoning this whole thing of, oh, wait, Apollo doesn't really exist.

Zeus is really, you know, a false god. And what's behind all of this? The demonic. And I want you to consider like an ancillary concept here. I've been kind of vocal about the fact I've been doing a lot of research lately on conspiracy theories, the Templars, the Illuminati, and the Masons.

And as I've been studying Freemasonry, I'm not a Mason, will never become a Mason, but as I've been studying Freemasonry, one of the things that has really struck me is that Freemasonry is its own religion.

And this is a religion built on the concept that all religions are true except for one, and that is Orthodox Biblical Christianity. And let me explain what I mean by this, is that in Freemasonry, they will allow Christians in the lower levels, and they'll even allow them into the higher levels, but the issue is that everything that they do in their rites, in their practices, in the things that they hold secret, which really aren't secrets, you can actually buy, purchase books, and learn what their secrets are.

I know their secret handshakes now, I know their symbols, and I know what their rites are that they do it, at least in the Scottish rite. And I also have a book on the Royal Archmasons as well, that they have seven degrees, whereas the Scottish rites have 33.

But the point is, is that if you were to go to Washington, D .C., the Masonic Temple in Washington, D .C. allows tours. You are allowed to go on a tour there. And you can Google this. Just type in Washington, D .C., Masonic Temple, and look at the altar in the center of their lodge.

It has a Bible, it has the Old Testament, it has the Quran, it has the Kabbalah. And they consider them all to be valid. And Masonry teaches you that you cannot, when you're among Masons, you don't end prayers with, in Jesus' name.

They won't allow that. That's offensive. And then, in the Scottish rite, I believe it's for those who are above the 14th degree. On Maundy Thursday, they have a rite that they do. It used to be required, it's not required.

But on the Maundy Thursday rite, they enact their own version of the Lord's Supper. And as part of the rite itself, all the men are wearing black capes with hoods, which is really weird. And then, as part of it, as part of their liturgy and the ritual itself, they claim that it is not for them to say whether Jesus rose from the dead or not.

That's not for them to decide. And so, they basically, as part of their communion, they say, take some bread, have some, and share it with some others. Take some wine, have some, and share it with some others.

And the whole thing itself is geared to really undermine biblical Christianity. And so, this is a religion that takes all of the religions defeated by Christ, puts them under one roof, and Christians are welcome, but they are forbidden and shunned if they are dogmatically holding to Christianity being the only true religion.

So, everything in Masonry is designed to basically say, let's go back to the pagan religions. And in the Scottish rite, several pagan religious stories are reenacted and taught as part of their different levels, including the story of Osiris and Isis, the death and resurrection of Osiris, and Isis' role in gathering up the pieces of his body and all this kind of stuff, which is an old pagan fertility religion.

And then, funny enough, the mysteries of Demeter. If you've ever heard of Dionysus and Demeter, and also Demeter and her daughter, Persephone, these are all big things in Masonry. And so, they've basically created a religion that includes religious rituals, prayers, secret handshakes and blood oaths and things like this that embraces all of these religions.

And as a Christian, we know that these idols have no existence, and what was behind them are demonic. And so, they are, if you would, a place where these old mystery religions of the ancient world have found a home, are embraced and confessed as having elements of truth in them, which is kind of frightening when you consider all this.

So, all of that being said, as a Christian, Christ says, let your yes be yes and your no be no. We're not to take oaths. And then, the Masonic oaths require somebody to basically agree to be murdered if they reveal the secrets.

The commandment, thou shalt not murder, is still in play. All right? So, there's all kinds of stuff here. So, if you really wanted to dig a little deeper on where can we find examples of the mystery religions still living on today, they're embedded in Freemasonry.

And I know that there are Christians who are Freemasons, and I would ask you to humbly reconsider that because when you really look at what Masonry teaches, it's incompatible with Christianity. It's a different religion altogether.

And Freemasonry considers those who are not initiated into their ranks as perverse, as those who are in darkness. Christ is the light, not Freemasonry. So, keep that in mind. You just have to be invited to join.

I think they've changed the rules lately. You appear in higher level. No, no, so you have to be invited to the 33rd degree, but in Freemasonry, they are so firm right now on free will that the rule is that if somebody asks, what do I have to do to be a Freemason?

You have to ask, all right? Now, you have to meet certain qualifications, but the first qualification is you have to ask. You can be recommended, but at the end of the day, you have to ask. But it's really interesting.

But I might end up doing a series of videos on the stuff that I'm learning because there's some really interesting narratives as it relates to that. And I'm off on a tangent, but that's how I go. All right, so.

Yeah, Bruce Burns is not even here. What's happening here? Who's responsible for this? Anyway, I have to blame somebody. Maybe I should blame myself. All right, anyway, so we continue then. So, however, not all possess this knowledge.

Some, through former association with idols, they eat food as really offered to an idol, and their conscience being weak then is defiled. So, food will not commend us to God. We are no worse off if we do not eat and no better off if we do.

But take care that this right of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak. For if anyone sees you who have knowledge eating in an idol's temple, will he not be encouraged if his conscience is weak to eat food offers to an idol?

So, by your knowledge, this weak person is destroyed, and the brother for whom Christ died, thus sinning against your brother. And wounding their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if food makes my brother stumble, I will never eat meat lest I make my brother stumble.

So, this is one of those things where, you remember the question that Cain asked, am I my brother's keeper? The answer is yeah, you betcha. You are your brother's keeper. So, when it comes to things that we have liberty, so Paul is saying, in the ancient world, you have liberty to go ahead and eat food that's offered to an idol because an idol has no existence, with an asterisk.

And the asterisk is only if doing so is done in a way where it's not gonna offend the conscience of somebody who hasn't yet put that all together, kind of an uninitiated, still baby Christian who hasn't properly been catechized and who cannot firmly go, oh yeah, Zeus doesn't exist, Demeter is a lie, you know, all this kind of stuff.

So, there's part one of the issue. And I think in 1 Corinthians 10, I'm gonna do this from memory, we have another part of this. Let's see here. Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do. All right, yeah, here it is.

Okay, so, and this was brought up last week. Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry. I speak as to sensible people. Judge for yourselves what I say. The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ?

Yes, it is. The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Yes, it is. So, because there's one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread. So, consider the people of Israel.

Are not those who eat the sacrifices participants in the altar? You betcha. So, what do I imply then? That food offered to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything? No. I imply that what pagan sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God, and I don't want you to be participants with demons.

You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons. Shall we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than him? So, here's kind of the general principle then.

People are, unbelievers are welcome to come and hear the word as we worship God. We're not gonna bar them, and we do not have freedom then to worship people, worship with those who have strayed into idolatry or things like this.

So, and I would just say, practice this carefully with something. So, my wife and I, when we were doing research on Mormonism in the early years of our marriage, we actually went to a Mormon steakhouse and wanted to see what their worship was all about, and you can do things like this, or if you were invited to the funeral of a friend or a family member and it's in an odd, weird place, go, go, you know?

There's no sin in that, and even if a friend invites you to church to come see what it's all about, come and see, and if you're not comfortable with worship, don't raise your hands, don't sing. Take notes and have an interesting conversation over lunch, you know, and bring up the things that made you uncomfortable that you felt were contrary to scripture.

We have freedom in that sense, but scripture tells us very clearly when it comes to false religion that we are to come out of those. We are to flee idolatry, we are to flee apostasy, and when a pastor refuses to preach the truth, get rid of him and get one that does.

You know, that's, you see what I'm saying? Because scripture wills that those who are teaching falsely are to be silenced. That's Titus chapter one. All right, let's take a look here at other questions here.

All right, hi, everyone. Can you please explain about the wine and the bread, what it becomes? My internet reception is horrible today. Okay, we'll talk about that in just a minute, and it remains bread and wine, all right?

In the Lord's Supper, it remains bread and wine, and it also has, connected to it, the body and blood of Christ. It is what Christ says it is, but Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11, the bread that we eat, is it not a participation?

Yes, it is. Actually, the bread that we bless, we just saw that. Is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Yes, it is. Is the cup that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ?

Yes, it is. So the idea is that when we have the Lord's Supper, and it's according to what Christ has instituted, do this, that we are confident then that we are consuming bread, we are consuming wine, they are present, and that Christ's body and blood are truly present there.

And this is, I explained this last week, that the Lutherans, they throw on a bunch of prepositions to just basically make it clear, this is what you're receiving in your mouth. So we say Christ's body and blood is in, with, under, you know, 220, 221, whatever it takes.

It's there, that's the idea. And so we receive four things in the Lord's Supper. And the second part, Christ is the one who adds that extra, those extra elements, not me. I do not have any magic formulas, incantations, or rituals that I am capable of doing to conjure those things up.

It is Christ who puts them there. And he always does that when it is observed according to his command to do this. And so that's the short answer to your question. All right, Stephen Adelaide says he's in.

Barbecued bison, yeah, that's right. I remember a story, this is totally off topic. I remember a story that the Queen Mary, you remember that ship, it was a very famous ship, you know, transported troops during World War II, but it was a very luxury liner, transatlantic work.

And it was famous for, the cooks there kind of bragged about the fact that, you know, anybody can ask them for anything that isn't even on the menu, and they'll find a way to get it to them. And, you know, and somebody tried to stump them and challenge them, and they ordered ostrich.

And they received an ostrich burger. They were able to conjure that one up. Somebody ordered alligator, got that as well. The only menu item that they were ever stumped on was some guy from Texas was on the Queen Mary, and he asked for rattlesnake, and they couldn't find it.

They couldn't actually get it. So he's the one who won, but what they ended up doing was cooking a really nice steak for him, and they put a baby rattle on it. So, it's a great story. It has nothing to do with the Bible, but it's a good story.

Okay. Never tried bison, neither have I. I'm actually really excited to do that someday. Definitely channeled Bruce today, got it. Okay, it was something my brother last night made me ask pastor so we can, all right, all right, got it.

Okay, so we're gonna blame it on your brother. That's hilarious. Okay, all right. So, all of that being said, let's come back and just do a little bit of review. We've been working through a document that I put together a while ago, and these are theses that are drawn from Scripture as well as the Lutheran Confessions, basically explaining how consecration works, what makes a valid sacrament, and then the implication is this.

This has to do, and the bigger question then, of can Christians who are gathered in their homes and then gathered into a bigger assembly via the medium of the internet, do they meet the qualifications for Jesus's do this?

So you know that this is heading somewhere. And so we noted that in thesis two of my document, I pointed out that there is only one verba, and the verba are the words of institution. There is only one verba that, according to the Lutheran Confessions, and I think they're right here, that affects consecration in the narrow sense.

So in the wide sense, my words do bless the elements, all right, and I'll talk about what that means in a minute. But in the narrow sense where now Christ's body and blood are truly present and we are hanging on those words, this is the body of Christ given into death for the forgiveness of our sins, this is the true blood of Christ shed for you for the forgiveness of your sins, that there is only one verba that actually makes that change and as I said last week, there's one verba to rule them all.

Kind of a funny way to put it, but you get the idea. And the formula of Concord puts it this way. The true and almighty words of Jesus Christ, which he spoke in the first institution of the supper, were not only effective in the first supper, they remain so.

And this is so helpful because now it's not up to a pastor, it's never been up to a pastor to make it the Lord's Supper, all right? I do not have magic powers. I do not have some indelible change that happened to me because somebody laid hands on me and put a stole over my neck at my ordination service.

No, I do not make it the Lord's Supper. Your faith doesn't make it the Lord's Supper. Christ does. That means his intellect, his present active presence and intellect are involved in this. This isn't some, we're not invoking a far off Jesus and saying, Jesus, come send us your body and blood.

No, wherever two or more are gathered, Christ is present and where he is present, he is present in will. He's present in mind. He's present to save. He's truly present. And so you'll note then that we really truly believe that in every church service that we have, they begin in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

That is not a throwaway phrase. In fact, I remember years ago, I was attending Faith Lutheran Church in Capistrano Beach and we had a guest speaker, a fellow who had left the ELCA because of their liberalism and was helping to form a church body that didn't have the apostasies of the ELCA and he was invited to speak to our Missouri Synod Church and his entire Sunday school lesson was walking through the scriptures as it relates to one part of the liturgy, the invocation.

And his point was, this is everything. If Christ isn't present with us, then we're lost, was kind of his point. And I thought that was actually a compelling argument that he put together. And so you'll note, every divine service begins with these words, in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we now have confidence.

Who's present? Christ. Can you see him? No. If he were to visibly appear, I'm gonna sit down. Does that make sense? Okay. Because my job as pastor, in some senses, and you're gonna note this, during the liturgy here at Kongsvinger, there are times when I am facing the altar and there are times when I am facing the congregation.

And so the phrase we use, and the phrase we use is that when a pastor is speaking on behalf of or by the authority of Christ, he's facing the congregation. And in those instances, then, I'm a stand-in for Jesus.

And so the phrase we use, persona Christi, I'm standing in the place, the person of Christ. Which, when you think about it, makes sense then, part of the reason why, one of the implications why we don't have female pastors, all right?

If you have a female pastor standing in the place of Christ, that creates gender issues regarding Jesus, okay? And that's a little weird to put it that way, but I think that's correct. No gender issues.

Yeah, there's enough of those already, yeah. And I'll tell you, I recently upset a very notable feminist theologian, I'm putting that in scare quotes, because I reprimanded her because she was on this down-with-the-patriarchy thing, and I basically said, so what do you do with the fact that, that, you know, with Psalms that says, why do the nations rage and the peoples plod and bane?

The Lord has anointed, has installed his holy one, his king on his holy hill, right? Jesus is a king. The universe is run by patriarchy. And then I pointed out that not only is Jesus a king, he's circumcised.

And she held my tweet up for derision for the people in her, you know, who follow her. And it was hilarious watching some of these people going, what's the information on the status of the circumcision thing, is it true?

Who knows this, how'd they find this out? You know, and it's like, it's in the Bible, okay? You know, you're gonna have to get over this. It's like, these women are gonna have a tough time dealing with the fact that they're gonna be judged by a man who's circumcised.

This is gonna be a very ugly day for them. Things are not gonna go well. But all that being said then, the invocation, we know that Christ never lies, he is truly present. And then you'll note that it's his word, his original verba that makes all observances of the Lord's Supper to be the Lord's Supper.

And we are all separated by, from that first verba, by a huge amount of time and a bazillion miles of space. All right, all of us are, and I mean a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot, okay? So coming back then, the true and almighty words of Jesus, which he spoke in the first institution were not only effective in the first supper, they remain so, and they retain their validity and power and are still effective so that in all places, is it some places or all places?

It's all, in all places in which the supper is observed, a note then, according to Christ's institution. And we'll talk about, what does that mean? Then his, and his words are used, the body and blood of Christ then are truly present.

They are distributed, they are received on the basis of the power and the might of the very same words that Christ spoke in the first supper, okay? Now that's by way of review. Let's go on to the next thesis then, okay?

And then you'll note then, I'm really highlighting, for wherever what Christ instituted is observed, wherever, okay, and his words, they are spoken over the bread and the cup and wherever the consecrated bread and cup are distributed, Christ himself exercises his power.

Note those words, Christ himself, he exercises his power through the spoken words, which are still his words by virtue of the power of the first institution. In other words, like I said, the present active Christ, he is here, he is now acting, he is the one who makes it what it is, full stop.

This is not magic, this is the present Jesus at work, okay? Now the form of the concord then goes on to say in Solid Declaration 776, Christ, as Christosom says in his sermon on the passion, Christ prepares this table himself, he blesses it.

No human being makes the bread and the wine which are set before us the body and blood of Christ. Rather, Christ himself who was crucified for us does that. Who does it? Jesus does it, he's present. The words are spoken by the mouth of the priest, in this particular case, we'll just say pastor because priest is always one of those words that makes everyone go, yeah, and I really hate that word being used for Christian pastors, I really do.

That's not even a biblical phrase, it's not a biblical word at all. Priests are Levites of the Old Testament and in the New Testament you have your episkopos and your presbyteroid, those are not priests, right?

So when the words are spoken by the mouth of the priest but when he says this is my body, the elements have been presented in the supper, they are consecrated by God's power and grace through the word just as the saying be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth was said only once and humanity has no problem obeying that one.

Yet he is continually effective in nature causing it to grow and multiply so these words were said once but they are powerful and they do their work in our day and until his return so that in the supper as celebrated in the church, his true body and blood are present.

God blessed them, God said to them, be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves on the earth.

Again, so the idea then here is that we blame it all on Jesus, okay? And just like the words in Genesis were spoken, be fruitful and multiply were said once, God isn't coming to each generation going, could you guys be fruitful and multiply?

No, it's still happening now. In the same way, Christ's first verba is still effective and you'll note that the formula of Concord absolutely explicitly teaches that it's the present Christ who actively is the one who makes it the body and blood of Christ or adds those elements to the Lord's Supper, okay?

Which then only begs one question, what is necessary to do this? That's the only question and that's the idea because it doesn't matter if you do it. How did that go? Green eggs and ham. Sam, Sam I am.

Would you eat them in a box? Would you eat them with a fox? Would you eat them on a train? Would you eat them in the rain, right? I will not eat them here or there. I will not eat them anywhere. I will not eat green eggs and ham.

I do not like them, Sam I am, right? Okay, so the thing is is that when it comes to the Lord's Supper, it doesn't matter if you're in a box with a fox, in a train or in the rain, in a catacomb, in a nice church building, in a closet, in an upper room, hiding in a cave or in a tomb.

It doesn't matter. Christ is with us wherever we gather. So Thesis 2C, it is not our work. It is not our speaking. It is the command and ordinance of Christ that make the bread and the wine, the wine, the blood and beginning with the first Lord's Supper.

Okay, the bread, the body and the blood beginning with the first Lord's Supper and continuing to the end of the world. Okay, so it is not our speaking but the command and ordinance of Christ that make the bread and body, the wine beginning with the first Lord's Supper.

We got that. And then here's Thesis 3. So the verb that the pastor speaks, and here's an important word. It's not performative. It's an important bit, okay? So when we talk about a performative word, let me give you an example that we all recognize.

All right, have you ever asked yourself the question why is it that when there is a movie depiction of a wedding, all right? So for instance, like the Princess Bride, right? Marriage, marriage is what brings us together today.

Marriage, that blessed institution, right? Yeah, you get the idea, right? Okay, and then the guy says, get onto it, get onto it. Get on with it. Same man and wife, same man and wife. Man and wife, right, okay.

Why is it that when there's a movie depiction of a marriage that that doesn't count? Because in some movies, they actually, do you take this person to be your lawful wedded wife? Na-da-da-da-da-da-da.

I now declare you man and wife. How come that doesn't work? Because it's actually not a performative word when it is done in the context of a reenactment or a theatrical performance, and the law recognizes that distinction.

But when somebody is a rightly called or has the proper authority given by the state, because the state gives us authority, when they perform a marriage ceremony, when they say, I pronounce you man and wife, that has bonafide legal ramifications, and it can only be undone in a divorce court, those words spoken by a pastor or an officiant are performative, right?

Well, I'm not licensed by the state. In my particular case, we always tell, you deal with the state on your own terms. We're dealing before God and before the church, right? So the idea, and I'm talking in a broad category here, not necessarily about myself.

So when a pastor presides over a wedding ceremony and he has all those authorities, when he says, I pronounce you man and wife, that's a done deal. It's performative. But when a pastor says the words of institution, it is not performative.

It is not a magic formula. They are spoken in obedience to Christ's command to do this. The performative word was spoken by Jesus 2 ,000 years ago in an upper room. So the verba that the pastors speak is not performative in and of itself.