What We Believe About The Lord's Supper (part 1)

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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March 18, 2012

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Insights into the Doctrine of Scripture from the Old Testament - part 2

00:11: I would like to begin this morning by quoting from what is technically known as the 1693
00:21: Baptist Catechism. We know it a little bit better as Keech's Catechism.
00:29: Question number 104. What is the Lord's Supper? The Lord's Supper is a sacrament of the
00:36: New Covenant wherein by giving and receiving bread and fruit of the vine, according to Christ's appointment,
00:42: His death is shown forth, and the worthy receivers are, not for a corporal and carnal manner, but by faith made partakers of His body and blood, with all
00:52: His benefits, to their spiritual nourishment and growth in grace. Now, if you're familiar with this catechism, you know that it provides scriptural references.
01:04: And two references are provided. One is a reference that we all know very, very well, 1
01:10: Corinthians chapter 11, verses 23 through 26, which reads, For I received from the
01:17: Lord that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the same night in which He was betrayed, took bread. And when
01:22: He had given thanks, He broke it and said, Take, eat, this is my body which is broken for you.
01:28: Do this in remembrance of me. In the same manner, He also took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the
01:34: New Covenant to my blood. This do as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the
01:42: Lord's death till He comes. But there's also a second reference, which will be where we will begin looking this morning.
01:49: 1 Corinthians chapter 10, verse 16. 1 Corinthians chapter 10, verse 16.
01:56: The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?
02:09: Now, hopefully for more reasons than you read the bulletin this morning.
02:15: Hopefully for those who are members of the church, and we welcome all visitors this morning. It's very good to have you with us.
02:23: But if you were here last week, you also looked in the bulletin, and the bulletin would have informed you that this evening we will be partaking of the
02:34: Lord's Supper. And hopefully, more than just maybe remembering that this afternoon, as you are getting ready for the evening service, and maybe adjusting your time frame as to when you're going to get home, as a result of the longer service.
02:52: Hopefully, if you were here last week, and you're a member of this church, you were making preparation over the course of this week.
03:00: That it was in your mind that the Lord's Supper was coming. And I would like to think that we look forward.
03:09: We look forward to the Lord's Supper. Today, I want to, in both services, focus upon this subject.
03:17: Now, as some of you who are visiting probably picked up from Brother Jim's prayer, this wasn't exactly how we were expecting to do things this morning.
03:28: This is not my normal Sunday to preach. Normally, I preach the last Sunday of each month. But Pastor Fry is not here because his aged father passed away, and he is back in Oklahoma doing all the things that need to be done, and also dealing with the situation of his mother, and how she's going to be cared for, etc.,
03:50: etc. It is good to know that our pastor comes from long -lived stock. When you look at him, you don't go, that's a 70 -year -old man?
04:00: No, it doesn't look that way, does he? But it is good to know that.
04:07: And so, I had a much shorter period of time, during which
04:13: I had a debate with a Shiite imam to do as well, and have a debate in Toronto on Thursday with another
04:20: Muslim, a Sunni Muslim. Obviously, it required me to, in a rather hurried fashion, go, what can
04:28: I bring to the people of God this Lord's Day? That's why we're not in Hebrews, because that's what we've been studying when
04:36: I've been preaching. It has often been on my mind that it has been many years since I last spoke on the subject of the
04:46: Lord's Supper. And since we are going to be partaking of the Lord's Supper this evening, I felt it would be appropriate to look at these texts, and to once again give consideration to what it is we believe about the
05:02: Lord's Supper. For many evangelicals, the Lord's Supper is barely an addendum.
05:10: It is barely an addition tacked on at the end someplace.
05:16: There are many churches that only participate in the Lord's Supper once a quarter, and it is very frequently, we must admit, something that is stumbled into.
05:29: You go through the formalities, and it is quickly forgotten after that.
05:36: I do not believe that that is an accurate reflection of what the New Testament itself teaches concerning this subject of the
05:45: Lord's Supper. It is a divinely instituted ordinance. And when you consider that the
05:51: Lord Jesus established it on the night of His betrayal, He established it on the same night in which
05:58: He is in agonizing prayer to His Father. Let this cup pass from me, because here the very sinless
06:05: Son of God is going to be made sin in our place. Given the solemnity of that night, the fact that it is established then, should communicate to us some of the reverence and seriousness with which we should approach this divine subject.
06:26: At the very least, our Lord commanded us to do this. There are only certain times in life when you can say,
06:33: I did exactly what the Lord commanded me to do. I mean, when you live a righteous life, you are doing what the
06:38: Lord has commanded you to do, because you are following principles and precepts, and you are making application. But when you are baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, making profession of faith, and when you partake of the
06:50: Lord's Supper, proclaiming His death until He comes, in both those situations, you are doing exactly what
06:57: Jesus Christ commanded you to do. And it should be our joy to do what
07:04: Christ commands us to do. And so, I want to look at this text in 1
07:09: Corinthians chapter 10, and then use that to begin looking at exactly what we believe about this very important subject.
07:16: And we will continue this, this evening. It seems appropriate to do so prior to the
07:21: Lord's Supper itself. Begin in verse 14 of 1 Corinthians chapter 10. You'll notice the context.
07:28: Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry. Flee from idolatry.
07:38: That's going to be the context. The context is the apostle is saying to the church in Corinth, and the church in Corinth was surrounded by idolatry.
07:47: There was a temple on every corner. You could not buy food in Corinth that had not been sacrificed to idols someplace.
07:54: That's what raised the whole issue of eating meat sacrificed to idols, was that Corinth was so filled with idolatrous worship, that there was no way that the believers there could possibly live their lives, go out into the marketplace without being faced with the reality of idolatry.
08:16: And yet, he does not say, leave Corinth. He says, flee idolatry.
08:22: Do not play footsie with it. Do not get comfortable with it. Do not have ecumenical feelings about idolatrous religions.
08:31: Flee from idolatry. I speak as to wise men.
08:38: You judge what I say. Is not, and here's the text that was quoted in the
08:44: Catechism, Is not the cup of blessing which we bless a koinonia, a sharing, a fellowship in the blood of Christ?
08:58: Is not the bread which we break a sharing in the body of Christ? Since there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of one bread.
09:12: Look at the nation of Israel. Let's literally look at Israel according to the flesh.
09:19: Are not those who eat the sacrifices sharers in the altar?
09:25: Now, he goes on to explain why he's making these statements.
09:30: He says, what do I mean then? That a thing sacrificed to idols is anything? Or that an idol is anything?
09:36: No. But I say the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God.
09:43: And I do not want you to become sharers in demons. Wow. Whatever else we do with Paul's illustration in the preceding verses, what he's contrasting with is saying,
09:59: I don't want you to be involved in idolatrous worship. And I'm not saying that those idols actually represent true gods.
10:08: Those gods don't exist. But all idolatry involves rebellion against God.
10:17: And therefore, all of those sacrifices, the things which Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons.
10:23: Now, those demons may take different forms and they may produce different kinds of religious devotion and so on and so forth.
10:30: But the point is that since it's idolatry, it is sacrifice to that which is opposed to God.
10:39: With that in mind then, we think back to what he said. Is not the cup of blessing which we bless a sharing, a koinonia in the blood of Christ?
10:49: Is not the bread which we break a koinonia, a sharing in the body of Christ?
10:56: Since there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of that one bread.
11:05: Now, what does that mean? We need to take seriously what Paul is saying because he's using this as the positive example over against which he is placing the negative example.
11:18: I don't want you to be involved in idolatry because there is no such thing as neutral idolatry.
11:26: You can say, oh, there's no God, Apollo, so offering sacrifices to Apollo isn't any big deal because there is no
11:33: Apollo. But it's still giving something that belongs to God, which is religious worship, to something which is not a
11:41: God. Therefore, it is, in essence, demonic. And Paul does not focus upon the horizontal fellowship that a person has with fellow idolaters as the problem.
11:58: He's saying, if you engage in idolatry, there's a vertical thing. It's offering something unto demons.
12:06: And so, we look back at the positive and we see that term koinonia. We've all probably heard the
12:11: Greek term koinonia before. It's very commonly used. You know, it's one of those neat words you can use for college fellowships and stuff like that on the university campus.
12:21: We're going to have koinonia and it sounds just great. And koinonia can mean the fellowship we have with one another, but it doesn't always mean that.
12:30: We don't want to get stuck in the strong, exhaustive concordance form of exegesis where you look up a word and it goes, oh, it means that and you take that meaning and you cram it into every possible place that's found in the
12:42: Bible, rather than looking at context, which is the main mechanism whereby you know what a word means.
12:50: It seems that here in 1 Corinthians 10, what Paul is saying is that there is a fellowship and his emphasis isn't upon we as people are having some kind of fellowship.
13:07: It's vertical. Just as it's vertical in sacrifice demons, here it's vertical in the sense that we share, we have a koinonia in the blood of Christ in the cup of blessing.
13:23: And in the bread, we have a sharing in the body of Christ. There is something spiritual involved when you obey what
13:35: Christ Himself has commanded us to do in the supper. But what is it?
13:45: Well, we've never done this before, but first time for everything. I'd like you to take your hymnal.
13:52: Have you noticed we have a blue hymnal? Remember the red hymnals? Roxy hated the red hymnals because they didn't go with the blue carpet.
14:01: And they also didn't have the amens, which made it really weird when we would add the amens.
14:06: But you'll notice it says on the front, Baptist edition. That does not mean this is more waterproof than the
14:12: Presbyterian edition. It means we have something different in the back.
14:19: And if you look at the regular Trinity hymnal, it will have the Westminster Confession of Faith in the back.
14:26: But I don't know if you've noticed this, but we have the London Baptist Confession of Faith in the back of the hymnal.
14:34: And if you'll turn to page 686, not hymn 686, that will confuse you greatly.
14:41: But to page 686, you will find chapter 33.
14:48: No, chapter 30, I'm sorry. Well, there's only 32, so you can't find chapter 33. Chapter 30 of the
14:54: Lord's Supper. And unfortunately, it is the eye strain edition, so I'm going to have to put reading glasses on to see this.
15:03: But I would like to read what our own confession in our own hymnal, in our own pews, says of the
15:11: Lord's Supper. And I think it's something we should know and we should consider.
15:19: So I'm going to read all the way through it and then we're going to look at each section. And that's how we're going to prepare for the Lord's Supper this evening.
15:25: And hopefully, gain a better understanding of 1 Corinthians 10 as well. Section 1.
15:32: The Supper of the Lord Jesus was instituted by Him the same night wherein He was betrayed to be observed in His churches unto the end of the world for the perpetual remembrance and showing forth the sacrifice of Himself in His death, confirmation of the faith of believers and all the benefits thereof, their spiritual nourishment and growth in Him, their further engagement in and to all duties which they owe unto
15:58: Him, and to be a bond and pledge of their communion with Him and with each other.
16:04: There's a lot right there. But there's more to read. In this ordinance,
16:11: Christ is not offered up to His Father, nor any real sacrifice made at all for remission of sin, of the living or the dead, but only a memorial of that one offering up of Himself by Himself upon the cross once for all.
16:30: And I hope I don't have to emphasize that once for all here, just as it is in Hebrews, would be a temporal adverb, one time.
16:38: Once for all. And a spiritual oblation of all possible praise unto
16:45: God for the same. The same being that act of Christ's self -sacrifice.
16:51: So that the Popish sacrifice to the mass, as they call it, is most abominable, injurious to Christ's own only sacrifice, the alone propitiation for all the sins of the elect.
17:04: Number three. The Lord Jesus hath in this ordinance appointed His ministers to pray and bless the elements of bread and wine, and thereby to set them apart from a common to a holy use, and to take and break the bread, to take the cup, and they communicating also themselves, please notice communicating would be partaking, to give both to the communicants, that is those who are participating.
17:27: Number four. The denial of the cup to the people, worshipping the elements, the lifting them up or carrying them about for adoration, and reserving them for any pretended religious use, are all contrary to the nature of this ordinance and to the institution of Christ.
17:44: Number five. The outward elements in this ordinance duly set apart for the uses ordained by Christ, have such relation to Him crucified, as that truly, although in terms used figuratively, they are sometimes called by the name of the things they represent, to wit, the body and blood of Christ, albeit in substance and nature, they still remain truly and only bread and wine as they were before.
18:11: That doctrine, number six, which maintains a change of the substance of bread and wine in the substance of Christ's body and blood, commonly called transubstantiation, by consecration of a priest, or by any other way, is repugnant not to scripture alone, but even to common sense and reason, overthroweth the nature of the ordinance, and hath been and is the cause of manifold superstitions, yea, of gross idolatries.
18:37: Number seven. Worthy receivers, outwardly partaking of the visible elements in this ordinance, do then also inwardly by faith, really and indeed, yet not carnally and corporally, but spiritually receive and feed upon Christ crucified, and all the benefits of his death, the body and blood of Christ, being then not corporally or carnally, but spiritually present to the faith of believers in that ordinance, as the elements themselves are to their outward senses.
19:07: And number eight. All ignorant and ungodly persons, as they are unfit to enjoy communion with Christ, so are they unworthy of the
19:15: Lord's table, and cannot without great sin against him, while they remain such, that is, ignorant and ungodly, partake of these holy mysteries, or be admitted thereunto, yea, whosoever shall receive unworthily, are guilty of the body and blood of the
19:33: Lord, eating and drinking judgment, to themselves.
19:39: There are eight sections, then, in our confession, relating to the subject of the
19:48: Lord's Supper. I would like us to consider this day, in such a fashion that hopefully, when we partake of the
19:57: Lord's Supper this evening, we will do so with a new appreciation and a fuller understanding of what it is we are partaking in.
20:07: And I hope, honestly, likewise, a much deeper desire to partake of the
20:16: Lord's Supper. Think with me for just a moment before we start looking at them. One of the...
20:24: In church history, we can look back, and we can see some incidents.
20:31: There is one incident, for example, a famous incident in Geneva, when
20:36: Calvin excluded certain people who were in rebellion against the church from partaking of the
20:45: Lord's Supper. And he did so at the risk of his life. The men were armed, as I recall.
20:52: And we look at things like that, and we go, I just don't, you know, what's the big deal? I mean, today, if a local fellowship disciplines someone so that they are not allowed to partake of the
21:09: Lord's Supper in the church, does anyone really find that to be a...
21:15: Oh, that's just terrible. How can that be? There's always another church down the road, right?
21:23: That should not be how we view the issue of the Lord's Supper. There clearly should be something so desirous of this supper, this ordinance provided by Christ, that to be excluded from it would be something the
21:41: Lord could use to bring about repentance in a person's life, not just a change in their geographical location.
21:52: If we do not desire to engage in the
21:58: Lord's Supper, and I think one of the main problems is, and we're going to get to this a little bit later on, but I'll just mention it right now, most of us view the
22:04: Lord's Supper passively. It's just something... I sit there,
22:10: I don't do anything else. The fact of the matter is, remember what we read from 1
22:17: Corinthians 11, we are active in the Supper. We are proclaiming the
22:24: Lord's death until He comes. We are doing something. It in fact is a means, a divine means of the presentation of your faith in the sacrifice of Christ and His coming.
22:40: It is a way of stating that that Jesus ordained for us to engage in, and therefore it is divine in its nature.
22:51: There are few other ways that we can proclaim our faith in Christ that are more special, and therefore should be more precious to us than participation.
23:06: In the body, as a corporate body, we are proclaiming the Lord's death, but you as an individual are likewise proclaiming the
23:14: Lord's death until He comes when you partake of the Lord's Supper. And so, it seems that for many, there has been a massive overreaction since the time of the
23:29: Reformation. Let's face it, even reading our own confession here, how many of the sections were corrective?
23:39: Negative? Saying, we're not saying this. And it was necessary.
23:45: It was necessary then. Maybe if we wrote the confession again today, we'd have to add a few sections.
23:55: Maybe we'd have to address the people who have clowns at the Lord's Supper now, just to get people to come.
24:03: Or maybe we'd have to address the fact that in many, many churches, when I was in seminary, I got into a debate with one of my professors because he was saying one of the worst things that Protestants have ever done is that they have in any way closed or guarded the table.
24:27: Everyone needs to come to the Lord's Supper. Invite the pagan in off the street. Bring the
24:32: Buddhist in. And let him see the love of Christ in the Lord's Supper. He and I didn't really agree on that particular subject.
24:44: Even back then, I was known for maybe putting my hand up and saying, really? And so we had a little discussion about it.
24:51: But let's face it. I've been to many a church. Let's say around Easter time, which is coming up.
25:00: Let's say around Christmas time. And they will have a candlelight service, right?
25:07: And oh, that's very pretty. But there's absolutely no instruction given.
25:15: No care given as to who participates in the Lord's Supper at all.
25:22: And so you've got folks in there who have no knowledge of Christ, and yet they are partaking of a supper that Christians are warned not to partake of unworthily.
25:38: And they are... What's the words of 1 Corinthians? Eating and drinking damnation unto themselves? That's pretty strong language.
25:44: But it's right there in the text. And so maybe we'd have to include a section about the lack of concern or the lack of discipline that is frequently engaged in in the offering of the elements.
26:01: You will notice in the bulletin that you will see under Lord's Supper, it says, non -members should speak to an elder regarding partaking of this ordinance of the church.
26:16: And so it's not that we only say that members of this church can partake of the
26:21: Lord's Supper. There are some churches that do that. There are some people that say, look, we cannot know unless someone is under our oversight.
26:29: We see them on a regular basis. And so they say no. Only members of this church.
26:36: Now we do not do that. We do ask, if you're not a member of this church, to speak to either Pastor Fry or myself.
26:43: And if you're wondering, well, what's the secret conversation about? It's no secret.
26:50: We ask if you have made a profession of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. If you have been baptized into a church of like faith and order.
27:00: And are you currently under discipline from another church? That's what we ask you.
27:08: Now why would we ask those questions? We're trying to be consistent with what the Bible teaches about this subject.
27:15: And especially the last question, to me, I think is extremely important. Because, hey, if you're a member of a church across town, and you are put out of fellowship because of sin, if you just come over here and we just go, ah, hey, no problem.
27:30: We are undercutting the authority of that church across town to bring about discipline in your situation.
27:37: So I think it's vitally important. And I remember when we first came here, I mentioned this to someone very close to me.
27:44: And they were surprised. Why do you do that with the Lord's Supper? And I said, well, I'll ask you a simple question.
27:50: If you don't like a protected table, do you have a protected baptistry? Do you just baptize anybody without asking them any questions?
27:58: No, of course not. You ask if they have made a profession of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ before you baptize them. You don't just want to be running people through just for numbers.
28:06: No one would ever do that. You know, like the churches with the kids' baptistry that's made in the form of a pirate ship.
28:17: Oh yeah, you didn't know about that? Yeah, yeah. Wouldn't want to have just numbers. Most churches practice a protected baptistry.
28:25: One of the ordinances we protect. The other one, ah, doesn't make any sense to me. And so we try to be consistent.
28:33: So let's look at what is said and see if it does not fulfill what we've seen here in 1 Corinthians 10 and 1
28:39: Corinthians 11. The supper of the Lord Jesus was instituted by Him the same night wherein
28:44: He was betrayed. And if we were going to do a full study of this, what we'd do is we'd look at the night of the betrayal.
28:50: We'd look at the institution. We'd look at everything. That would be well worth doing at some point. Maybe in Sunday school or something like that.
28:57: Or maybe even for the pulpit. I don't know. To be observed in His churches unto the end of the world.
29:08: Remember He Himself said, until I come again. There is no place for stopping this.
29:16: There is no place for saying, well, that's been long enough. Because part and parcel of what you're doing is proclaiming your faith that He will come again.
29:26: Unto the end of the world for the perpetual remembrance and showing forth the sacrifice of Himself in His death.
29:36: We cannot partake in the Lord's Supper without our minds being drawn to the cross of Calvary.
29:45: We cannot partake of the Lord's Supper without thinking about the great sacrifice that has been offered for us.
29:54: So it is a perpetual remembrance. Remember that term, anamnesis in the Greek. Remember, I've emphasized it to you many times before.
30:04: Perpetual sacrifices provide a reminder of sins. That's the
30:10: Old Covenant. If you have a sacrifice that is repeated over and over again, that's the Old Way.
30:16: In the New Covenant, we have an anamnesis, a remembrance of the
30:21: One who bore our sins. That's the difference. Massive, huge difference.
30:28: If you have to keep going and going and going and get a little bit of grace, a little bit of grace, that's old.
30:34: Fulfillment in the New, one sacrifice. Showing forth the sacrifice of Himself in His death.
30:43: Confirmation of the faith of believers in all the benefits thereof. In other words, why would you partake of bread and wine if you don't think that there is some benefit which continues to be just as relevant today as it was almost 2 ,000 years ago?
31:03: I mean, when Jesus is with the disciples and He says, this is my body, this is my blood. This was, of course, before the sacrifice, which is one of the problems with the idea of this somehow has been changed or something like that.
31:16: This was a part of the Passover meal. And that meal had been filled with symbolism.
31:22: The bitter herbs, the suffering of the children of Israel and Egypt and so on and so forth. And so it made perfect sense.
31:27: This is my body broken for you. This is my blood shed for you. It makes perfect sense.
31:35: And so, it would be one thing for the apostles, but why do we do it 2 ,000 years later?
31:41: Because we believe that that same death avails just as much for us today as it did for them then.
31:51: And that speaks to us of the continuation of the church. Our faith in believing that God continues to build
31:58: His church to this very day. Showing forth confirmation of faith of believers.
32:07: I'm not putting my reading glasses on, so how far away can we get? Okay. In all the benefits thereof, their spiritual nourishment.
32:18: Now, here's where the London Baptist Confession of Faith, especially this line and then section 7, shows the deep influence of John Calvin.
32:34: If you know anything about Reformation church history, then you know that there was a deep rift that developed between two wings of the
32:47: Reformed church. At the Marburg Colloquy, if I recall correctly, 15 items were drawn up where the
33:01: Lutherans and the Zwinglians attempted to come together and have a common confession.
33:12: And they could agree on 14 out of 15. This is the one they couldn't agree on.
33:19: Zwingli absolutely insisted that the supper is a memorial only.
33:31: Now, look at part 2. But only a memorial of that one offering.
33:37: That terminology very Zwinglian. Luther, who was known for his passion, shall we say.
33:53: And for somewhat of a less than guarded tongue at times. Who was not a systematic theologian.
34:02: He was, we might say, a theologian of the heart. A theologian of passion. Insisted that that was not enough.
34:15: And he wrote on the desk, Hoc es corpus meum.
34:20: This is my body. And he pounded away on it and the discussion broke down.
34:27: If you've ever met someone who pounds away on the desk while talking to you, you can understand why the conversation broke down.
34:36: But, so you have the Zwinglian view. Mere memorial.
34:44: Nothing else. And we have the phrase, only a memorial. But what's the next line say?
34:51: But only a memorial of that one offering up of himself by himself upon the cross once for all. Then there's a semicolon.
35:00: There's a semicolon. And it says, and a spiritual oblation of all possible praise unto
35:05: God for the same. That's Calvin. What do
35:10: I mean by that? I'm speaking historically here. Calvin tried to get between the two and say, guys, let's talk.
35:18: Let's see if we can come up with a mediating position here that we both can live with.
35:26: And he tried as best he could to come up with that perspective.
35:34: And the vast majority of Baptists I know of are pure Zwinglians. But the
35:43: London Baptist Confession of Faith is not pure Zwinglian. It's got the important element of it, but it's not pure Zwinglian.
35:54: And so we have in the line spiritual nourishment in section one.
36:00: In section two, we have spiritual oblation of all possible praise. And then section seven expands upon all of that, which goes beyond what
36:09: Zwingli was comfortable with, but not nearly where Luther wanted to go. And that's something that we need to deal with and try to see.
36:19: Is that what 1 Corinthians 10, 16 is talking about?
36:25: Is there something there? Is that what the foundation of this is? Keep that in mind for now, because the clock, unfortunately, is moving very, very quickly.
36:36: There is spiritual nourishment, growth in him. There's to be some, normally in my prayers, normally
36:46: I'm the one who closes the prayer after the Lord's Supper. And what's the common element of that prayer?
36:55: And that is that we would not leave this place unchanged. That it would not be something we just simply, well, we did it again.
37:04: It must be the third Sunday of the month. But that we would be changed.
37:09: There would be growth. We would be more closely conformed to Him. And how does that happen? Well, I would say that that happens,
37:15: A, in the fact that we are obeying His command. We continue to do what
37:21: He has commanded us to do. And secondly, that we have, by our reflection, very serious reflection upon His work on our behalf, once again been humbled in the consideration of the very means by which we have peace with God and have spiritual life.
37:40: So, growth in Him. Their further engagement in and to all duties which they owe unto
37:47: Him. So, that's good old English. Doesn't flow as well as we might want it to today.
37:53: But we are to be encouraged in good works. To be encouraged in living a life that is honoring to Christ.
38:01: And to be a bond and pledge, and notice the order here, of their communion with Him, vertical, and with each other, horizontal.
38:16: So, there's the term communion, koinonia, 1 Corinthians 10. There is fellowship in this.
38:23: There is the corporate aspect, wherein all of us who have been, who have made profession of faith in Christ, are partaking in this ordinance.
38:35: So, there is the community that is involved. We all move over to this side.
38:41: If you've not been here, we all move over to this side. So, there's a little bit more close fellowship than we would normally have, except in the
38:47: Callahan pew, which is always close fellowship. But that's because there's so many. So, and growing there.
38:54: And so, that fellowship exists. But there's also the vertical.
39:02: Communion with Him. Our focus is not so much to be upon each other, though we are to gain encouragement from that, from one another.
39:12: But our focus is upon Christ. It is His broken body. It is
39:17: His shed blood. And maybe by giving us something physical, something that we look at, something that for a period of time we must hold, it helps us to make real in our thinking that which we so often ponder.
39:40: Certainly, the Night of the Supper. The disciples have, in the participation in the
39:48: Passover, again, have seen these symbols and they've thought back to what had happened long before them in the days of Moses.
39:55: And now Jesus comes along and He says, this bread, broken for you.
40:04: My body. This cup. My blood.
40:10: Shed. This is the new covenant. This is something new. And they would have had that immediacy and how they must have thought.
40:22: I often wonder, what were the disciples thinking about between Friday and Sunday morning? Well, they must have been thinking about that supper.
40:31: What did He mean? My body. My blood. Pondering these things.
40:38: And so, there is this communion, there is this relationship, this partaking, both on the vertical and the horizontal.
40:47: Number two, is a corrective. In this ordinance,
40:53: Christ is not offered up to the Father. Now, you need to understand, this isn't all that long after the
40:59: Reformation. And one of the key elements of the Reformation had to do with the development, the fairly recent development, dogmatically speaking, within the
41:11: Roman Catholic Church, the concept of transubstantiation in the mass. When I say fairly recent, you won't find that terminology being used before about the 11th century.
41:21: And you do not find the physicality of the concept of transubstantiation, when the priest has the elements, and he says, in Latin anyways, hoc est corpus meum, this is my body, this is my blood.
41:36: Transubstantiation means that that bread and that wine is changed into the body, soul, blood, and divinity of the
41:42: Lord Jesus Christ, so that the offering upon the altar is a perpetuatory sacrifice. And this was one of the central aspects of debate at the time of the
41:52: Reformation. Because what this meant was the sacrifice of Christ was re -presented over and over again.
42:00: And the faithful Roman Catholic could come to that mass 10 ,000 times in their life and still die impure.
42:07: The Reformers said, wait, the Bible says that those who are united with Christ in His death are perfected by that.
42:14: How can you come to the same sacrifice 10 ,000 times and only get a little bit of grace each time and still die impure?
42:24: That's why section 6 says that it overthrows the nature of the ordinance.
42:35: Because the nature of the ordinance is to cause us to remember a finished and perfect sacrifice, not replace that with an unfinished, never -perfecting sacrifice.
42:49: That is the great difference. It's sad that very often today when
42:56: Protestants talk with Roman Catholics about the subject of the mass, all they talk about is transubstantiation and that can't happen and stuff like that.
43:04: Rather than, look, the Bible says the one sacrifice of Christ is once for all.
43:11: The contrast is made between sacrifices that are repeated over and over again. Don't you see you've got a sacrifice that's being repeated?
43:19: I mean, Rome says the only difference between the sacrifice of the mass and that of Calvary is that one was bloody and the other is unbloody.
43:27: That's the only difference. Other than that, it's the exact same representation of that one sacrifice.
43:33: And I say the strongest argument against that is to go to what the book of Hebrews says, which we have been looking at very, very closely and pointing out once for all perfects those for whom it's made.
43:48: And any good Roman Catholic knows yes, I can go to mass all I want, but if I die having committed mortal sin it destroys the grace of justification.
43:58: You're lost. That's where the debate really needs to be joined.
44:04: And that's where it needs to be joined even to this day. And so there is a correction offered here.
44:11: In this ordinance, Christ is not offered up to His Father nor any real sacrifice made at all for the remission of sin of the living or the dead because masses are often said for the dead.
44:20: But only a memorial of that one offering up of Himself by Himself upon the cross once for all.
44:25: Once for all. And a spiritual offering of all possible praise.
44:32: Not redemption. This is praise for what God has done. It's not something to cause
44:37: God to do something. And a spiritual oblation of all possible praise unto
44:42: God for the same, that is, for the finished work of Christ. So the
44:48: Popish sacrifice, the mass as they call it is most abominable injurious to Christ's own only sacrifice the alone propitiation for all the sins of the elect.
44:57: So you'll notice even they recognize what the real focus is. It wasn't so much the concept of transubstantiation though that certainly is not biblical either.
45:06: But the reason that it must be rejected is because it fundamentally undercuts the finished work of Christ which is the message of the book of Hebrews, Romans and really the very foundation of the
45:18: Gospel itself. So there's the corrective. I'll try to get number three in very quickly and then we'll pick up with number four this evening and I hope that we'll get to see you all then.
45:30: The Lord Jesus has in this ordinance anointed His ministries to pray and bless the elements of bread and wine and thereby to set them apart from a common to a holy use and to take and break the bread to take the cup and they communicating also themselves to give both to the communicants.
45:45: Now why would this be here? Is this just simply housekeeping? No. You need to understand that because of the rise of the doctrine of transubstantiation in church history there have been problems that have arisen and interestingly enough nobody for a thousand years of the church ever thought of these problems because quite honestly nobody for a thousand years had the concept of transubstantiation in mind the way that Rome has defined it now.
46:14: So what would happen if someone spilled the cup? What would happen if you dropped some of the consecrated bread?
46:22: I mean they literally were asking questions like what if some of the bread is dropped and a rat runs up and eats it?
46:29: Do you have to burn the rat? Because the rat has now eaten God. I'm serious. I'm not making this up.
46:34: These were the questions. And it had actually been decided that if you spilled the cup the priest had to get down on the ground and lick it up.
46:43: Now these were all things, again first thousand years no one thought of this because that wasn't what they believed but now that that had come into existence what eventually happened was bread's one thing you can sort of control that.
46:55: Cup, easily spilled. And so what happened was they had withdrawn the cup from the fellowship of the people in the pews.
47:03: So when you partook all you got was the bread. You didn't get to drink. Only the priest representing you drank the cup.
47:11: And so there had been this division between clergy and laity and the people in the pew and then they developed theology to where God is actually fully present in both the bread and the wines therefore you're still getting all of God even if you don't get to drink the cup.
47:23: So they sort of had to break some of the symbolism just to come up with that. But this is the background.
47:29: This is why it's here. And what they're saying is no. The ministers, the people all together as one body partake of the entirety of the supper.
47:40: The bread and the wine. There is not to be any type of division between them at that time.
47:47: And then I'll just mention number four briefly is the corrective attached to that the denial of the cup of the people worshipping the elements which happens to this day.
47:56: Why do you think when people walk into a Roman Catholic church they stop and they bow and they cross themselves? Because there's something up front either a tabernacle, a monstrance a cerebrum, a pyx wherein there is consecrated bread.
48:07: God is present there according to that teaching. And so there is worshipping of the elements.
48:13: In many Roman Catholic countries you'll see the priest walking down the street and he'll be carrying the cerebrum, the pyx something like that and inside it is the consecrated bread and people are to bow because that's
48:24: God in those processions. Worshipping the elements lifting them up or carrying them about for adoration reserving them for any pretended religious use are all contrary to the nature of this ordinance and the institution of Christ.
48:37: There is nothing in the institution of the Lord's Supper that even begins to hint at something as you have seen develop over 2 ,000 years now in Roman Catholicism and the reformers are saying it's not in the institution of Christ there is no positive establishment of it and what's more is it is contrary to the nature of the ordinance which is meant to be a memorial of the one time sacrifice of Christ not a representation of the sacrifice of Christ and not a making present of Jesus upon an altar so that he can be a propitiatory sacrifice that does not actually propitiate.
49:15: That is the corrective that is offered then in number four. And so what have we seen?
49:22: Let's wrap up at this point and then continue on this evening. This is an ordinance of divine institution.
49:30: Christ commanded us. And it is something in 1 Corinthians 10 that the apostle can say to Christians we all know that the cup of blessing which we bless is a koinonia, it's a sharing in the blood of Christ.
49:48: And we all know that the bread which we break is a sharing in the body of Christ. And since there's only one bread, we who are many are one body for we all partake of the one bread.
50:01: What does that mean? That has to mean that in the giving of this command of the church we have another one of the elements that binds us together with our brothers and sisters all over the world.
50:18: That we're not alone. That when we partake in this supper, when we do so in the way
50:23: Christ has commanded us to do so, I know, this is one of my joys, I know that I have brothers and sisters who are doing the same thing in London and in Dublin and Inverness and Glasgow and Lima, Peru Hilo, Hawaii I was just there with some brethren there.
50:46: Honolulu and Sydney, Australia and Brisbane. I've been there with them.
50:53: And I'm reminded of the fact that we have one bread. Why? Because there's only one sacrifice of Christ.
51:00: There is only one way of salvation. There are not many ways. And we have fellowship with Him and with one another when we partake of the
51:12: Lord's Supper. And that is a privilege that we will have this evening as we will continue to look at this text and what it is we believe about the
51:23: Lord's Supper. Let's pray together. Oh indeed, our
51:29: Heavenly Father, we thank you for your wisdom and the establishment of your church that you have not left us as orphans.
51:35: You have not left us alone. You have sent your Spirit and by your Spirit you have formed your church and you give us clear commands.
51:43: And Lord, as we consider the supper that you have given to us, may we truly be thankful for your wisdom. Thankful for this opportunity to remember that finished work.
51:54: To remember the great price that was paid. The great love and condescension of our
51:59: Savior. Oh Lord, as we look forward to this evening, may we come this evening with expectant hearts and with hopefully a greater understanding of the privilege that is ours to actually proclaim our
52:14: Lord's death until He comes. We do thank you for this time you've given to us.