Meaning & History of the Lord's Supper (Part 2)

Apologia Studios

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

Inside the Mind of Manson: Part 3

00:00

Hey, everybody. I'm Pastor Jeff Durbin with Apologia Church. I want to thank you all so much for watching the content right here on Apologia Studios channel.

00:07

What you're about to watch is a sermon, a message from Apologia Church's worship service. And again, I want to thank you all so much for watching, for liking, for commenting, for sharing the sermon itself.

00:17

We truly believe that it's important for the Christian church to have an engagement in the public square with the

00:23

Word of God. So we thank you so much for partnering with us to send this out across the world. I just wanted to say something before you actually watch this, and that is that I'm not your pastor, though I'd love to be.

00:34

I am not your pastor. And it's very important as you're watching this, you know that it's

00:40

God's design for individual Christians to be part of a local Christian church under the care of qualified, faithful, biblical elders.

00:49

And so as much as we love all of you watching these sermons, and we're thankful to God that God uses them to bless you, to encourage you,

00:56

I do want to encourage you as a minister of the gospel to get plugged into a local body of believers, particularly,

01:03

I think important, a reformed church would be best. But we want to encourage you to get plugged into a solid biblical church where you can fellowship, where you can worship, where you can serve, where you can be connected.

01:16

That is vitally important and actually a biblical command. And so as much as again, as we love for your participation, your partnership, and we are so thankful to God that He's using these in your lives, we want to encourage you to get plugged into a local church.

01:29

You can, though, actually partner with Apologia Church as we proclaim the gospel and provide a defense of the biblical gospel all around the world.

01:37

You can do that by going to apologiastudios .com. You can partner with us by becoming All Access.

01:42

When you do, you help to make all of this possible, and you get all of our TV shows, our after shows, and Apologia Academy, all of that.

01:51

And you're a part of all that God is doing with us in the world to proclaim, herald the gospel of the kingdom.

01:57

You can partner with us. And I want to say one last word about that. Do make sure that none of your giving and partnership towards Apologia Church interferes with your giving, your worship, your tithes, your offerings to a local body of believers in your area.

02:14

So thank you again so much for watching these and sharing them. God bless you. If you were not with us two weeks ago, let me very briefly mention that what we're doing is,

02:24

I'm doing a series just simply to demonstrate that we don't have to be in the gospel of Matthew for 20 years in a row.

02:32

I'm doing a series on the subject of the Lord's Supper, and the reason we're doing this,

02:38

I think, is understandable. If you're a visitor here, you haven't been with us before. You will note that at the conclusion of the preaching, we will celebrate the

02:50

Lord's Table. You will see the elements are down here right now, and we do that every

02:57

Lord's Day. Now, different churches do it with different levels of frequency. I was raised in a tradition where basically you would do the

03:06

Lord's Supper maybe three to four times per year, and frequently tied together with maybe a holiday or something along those lines, and there was a real strong de -emphasis on the subject of the celebration of the

03:22

Supper. Well, we do that every Sunday, so obviously I think it's extremely important that we understand what we're doing and why we're doing it.

03:32

Having a meaningful doctrine of the Supper, I think, is exceptionally important for balanced

03:37

Christian living and for the worship of the church, but we also need to recognize that how we do this and why we do this and what it means to us did not just simply develop about a decade ago when the

03:53

Lord brought this particular fellowship into existence. All of us stand upon the shoulders of giants, and all of us even use language that has been honed over centuries of debate, and the reality is that we, living in our day, understanding what has happened in the past, are inheritors of traditions that have come down to us.

04:20

Now, just a moment ago, I was asked in the pastoral oath whether I would defend the five solas.

04:28

Now, how many of you would feel super confident right now that you could rip out the five solas?

04:35

Put your hand up. And a lot of you are looking at me going, I'm not raising my hand.

04:41

I don't care what you ask me. I don't care if you say, would you like 500 bucks? I'm not putting my hands up. Nope, not doing it. I understand.

04:48

Those five solas, the solas that the Reformers never said, hey, we believe in five solas.

04:55

You won't find Martin Luther, John Calvin, Ulrich Zwingli, any of these guys going, hey, yay for the five solas.

05:02

Instead, centuries later, as we looked back upon their debates, their writings, the things that they produced for us, when we look at what set them apart and gave them the unique platform and the ability to enunciate the gospel with such clarity, we see these particular principles.

05:23

And especially in the Reformation, we see what's called the material principle of the Reformation and the formal principle of the

05:29

Reformation. The material principle of the Reformation was what gave the substance to the preaching of the

05:37

Reformers. And so what was that? That was sola fide, justification by faith alone, grace alone, faith alone, but faith alone specifically over against the sacramental system of Rome, where you had the mass as a perpetuatory sacrifice, you have the role of the priest, you have purgatorian penances and all the other things that defined orthodox

06:07

Roman Catholicism at that particular point in time. And so the material preaching of the

06:13

Reformation that changed hearts and set Europe free from slavery that it had been in for 1100 years to this system, that was sola fide, faith alone.

06:27

But then, as Luther, who had interesting views on the

06:32

Lord's Supper, and I don't think necessarily consistently made application, hey, he was in the first generation.

06:39

We have had many generations to help push us toward consistency, so always be careful when looking back at those who came before us.

06:48

It's real easy for us to judge them on the basis of what we know when they wouldn't necessarily have had that advantage that we have.

06:56

So we need to be, I think, very charitable in our historical examination of people. But Luther especially was pushed very early on to recognize that if sola fide was true, then he needed to have a solid foundation and source upon which to ground that.

07:14

And that foundation he found in the formal principle that gave form and rise to the

07:22

Reformation, which was sola scriptura, scripture as the sole infallible rule of faith for the church.

07:32

And so when we apply these things and when we bring that kind of a foundation to the question, what is the

07:40

Lord's Supper? Why do we celebrate it? What should it mean to us? We are forced to recognize that there has been a lot of disagreement in the practice and meaning of the subject of the

07:56

Lord's Supper over what is called church history. Now remember, and we're going to be talking about this starting

08:02

Thursday night in Renew, so I hope a lot of you will be able to to be there, but remember you can find all sorts of things in church history that were not necessarily a part of the actual believing church.

08:21

It is very difficult for us to stand from centuries later or sometimes millennia later and be able to look inside the hearts and minds of the individuals who were teaching and preaching back then and make judgments about them, but we can bring anyone's teaching, including someone from the ancient church, into line with the

08:45

Word of God and say this teaching was in error. There were some members of the early church or some people who wrote in the early church, for example, who didn't even have

08:53

Paul's letters. Can you imagine what your theology would look like if you didn't have Romans and Galatians and Ephesians and maybe didn't even have all the

09:02

Gospels? If you only had a a certain portion of that revelation, it's understandable why someone may not have the proper balance that they would need, so we need to be careful looking back on history, be gracious to the individuals, hopeful to the individuals, recognizing they didn't have what you and I have, and so with that in mind, we can we can look historically at what has happened in the celebration of the supper, and it's good to know what people have done in the past, but what is our touchstone?

09:37

What is our final foundation? It has to be sola scriptura, and so what we do two

09:43

Sundays ago is we looked at the establishment of the supper from the

09:48

Gospel of Matthew, and the parallels in in Mark and Luke are are pretty much the same.

09:55

There's all sorts of—if we really wanted to go in depth, I'd want to have a screen and put a cordons up there and look at textual variants and everything else.

10:04

We're not going to do that in this context. There's nothing wrong with that. In fact, I'm geek enough to really enjoy that kind of thing, and some of you are too, but the rest of you aren't, and you're not necessarily happy to be stuck in the same room with those of us that enjoy that kind of thing, so we won't cause a division in the church over that.

10:21

You can look at that on on your own. We looked at the establishment in the Gospels, but now in in 1

10:28

Corinthians chapter 11, we have an incredibly unique perspective provided to us that is extremely important.

10:36

I can't tell you how many times—my assumption would be that in the majority of sermons that are delivered on the subject of the

10:45

Lord's Supper, this is going to be the key text, but rarely is the context brought into play, and I think that's

10:56

I think that's a problem, because one of the things that we can learn when especially we read the

11:03

Corinthian correspondence is that God can use apostles to found churches with divine power and the presence of the

11:15

Holy Spirit that are an absolute mess, because that's what

11:22

Corinth was. You know what's fascinating to me? One of the things you learn from church history—I like having

11:28

Pastor Jeff right down front. I can look him right in the eye, and given that he's only had three hours of sleep, I'm going to look him in the eye as often as I can for his own good.

11:37

Where'd Zach go? Because Zach needs it just as bad as—yeah, see, I think he's gone. I think he's like, no,

11:43

I'm out of here. There's a little—forgive the church historian here, but you know what's fascinating to me?

11:52

We have two letters to the church of Corinth. There may have been a third, and people say, well, shouldn't that be in the

11:58

New Testament? Not if the Holy Spirit didn't want it there. It's amazing how many people are, well, what if we find third

12:04

Corinthians? We put that in the Bible? I'm like, you don't think God could have gotten it in there if he wanted it in there for the whole church, you know, all along?

12:10

It's—never quite understood that type of thinking, but what's fascinating to me is even after possibly three letters, one of the very first letters we have written between churches outside of the

12:24

New Testament is traditionally called the letter of Clement to the

12:30

Corinthians. Now, we don't know who wrote it. It was written from the church at Rome. Clement may have been the secretary for the elders at the church at Rome.

12:40

By the way, just mark this down in the margin of your Bible, the back of your Bible, if you maybe come from a

12:46

Roman Catholic background. Maybe you're going to be having holidays with some of your Roman Catholic friends, but what is painfully obvious is in this very early epistle, which is probably written around 95

12:56

AD, there is no one bishop in Rome. There's a plurality of elders.

13:03

You just heard in the pastoral oath supporting a plurality of elders. We have the same form of church government that the church at Rome had in the first century.

13:15

It's not the form of government they have anymore, in case you haven't noticed. There is that guy named

13:20

Pope Frankie now, but we're the ones that have the primitive form, the biblical form that the apostles established, but what's fascinating is we don't know who wrote it.

13:30

It's attributed to Clement, but we don't know. The point is this. In AD 95, approximately, we don't have a date on it, but in AD 95, the church at Rome has to write a letter to the church at Corinth rebuking them because they had just kicked all their elders out inappropriately.

13:53

The point is, even after receiving letters from apostles, guess what?

14:00

Corinth was still a mess 40 years later. 40 years later.

14:07

If that doesn't tell you that it's God's, that it's part of God's intention to sanctify us through the struggles of dealing with struggling saints,

14:19

I don't know what else will. So many people have the idea the church is supposed to be this perfect place of perfect saints, and we all float in with our feet two inches off the ground because we're so sanctified, and we don't need to have lights because we're all glowing with heavenly glow, and everyone is just so in perfect harmony with one another, except that's never happened.

14:44

And you think about the seven churches to which the Lord Jesus had letters written in the book of Revelation.

14:51

They're all gone. Even the strongest and greatest of them, they're all gone. God has a purpose in working with His church at different times and in different ways, and the

15:04

Corinthian church, I don't know if I would have wanted to have been a member of that church. They had a lot of problems, but I probably just would have added to the problems that they had, to be perfectly honest with you, as you've probably heard the saying before, if you ever find a perfect church, don't join it because you'll ruin it.

15:20

Am I right about that, brother? That's right. Don't sit on the front row right there because that's a dangerous place to be. I can see your eyes.

15:27

I'm not wearing my glasses, so I can only see the eyes of like the first three rows. The rest of you are fine. You can make faces at me.

15:32

I can't see you, but these guys down here, I can see really well. That's exactly what would happen. And so the context of first Corinthians chapter 11, if you read the whole chapter and the chapters beforehand, this is a messy place.

15:48

And yet, in the midst of all that, they are to celebrate the supper.

15:57

They are to participate in the Lord's Supper. Now, if you go back right before verse 23, which is normally where everybody starts, and just do some reading, not only are there some verses in there that, as the newest elder,

16:11

I just refer you to Jeff to ask questions of because I'm not really sure what's going on, but the immediately preceding paragraph is basically

16:23

Paul saying, look, I am not going to compliment you folks.

16:29

I'm not going to commend you folks on how you're celebrating the supper because you are doing it all wrong and you are coming together and it's supposed to be for the

16:42

Lord's Supper, but it's not. Some people aren't waiting for other people. The rich people eat all their fancy food.

16:49

They don't bring anything for the poor people, and it is a mess. There are people showing up drunk to the

16:57

Lord's Supper. What a mess is going on there, but one of the things this reminds us of, no one in the

17:07

New Testament ever met in a room like this, and I'm not just talking about the blessing of having air conditioning, though that is a blessing, and I'm not talking about just the blessing of having amplification and comfortable pews or anything like that.

17:25

There were no church buildings in the first century. They couldn't do what we do now.

17:33

Persecution was just starting to happen on the empire level and was going to really break out under Nero, but there was already resistance to this cult, as they were called, at this point in time.

17:50

These are house churches. They're meeting in the houses of certain individuals, and so when you have a group this large, let's just be honest, there's a level of anonymity.

18:05

I mean, you know, we get in the line and we look at each other and stuff, but you know, you see who's here sort of in that sense, but there's still, there's so many of us.

18:17

That wasn't the case when they would come together for the Lord's Supper there in Corinth, and so you were forced together, and so when people were focused upon themselves, when they're coming, you'd know if somebody in your rather small group was drunk or getting drunk during the supper.

18:38

You would know if the people who had lots of food were ignoring the people who had almost none, and so we have to keep in mind the context of the early church and the context there in Corinth.

18:54

One of the things I will try to do as I have opportunity of preaching is to constantly remind you, don't take this text and first and foremost interpret it in the light of your modern experience.

19:14

First, try to ascertain what did the original author want to communicate to the original audience in their context, and only once you grasp that can you then make the extended application to where we are today.

19:32

So much of the false teaching that we have in our day is due to the fact that people skip that.

19:39

They think, they see rightly that Scripture was intended for each of us personally today, but they take that individuality too far, and as a result, well how many people,

19:55

I remember this, how many people have ever known someone who said, well you know,

20:02

I needed a word from the Lord, and so I prayed and said, Lord speak to me, and I just opened my

20:10

Bible and put my finger down. That is not the best way to do exegesis, and it could get you into a lot of trouble.

20:21

You've heard the old story, and I opened my eyes, and it said, Judas went out and hanged himself.

20:31

Lord, there must be something else, and so I closed it, and I opened it again, I put my finger down, and it said, what you do, do quickly.

20:42

That's not a good method of exegesis, but sadly we often have to deal with people who actually utilize that method of exegesis, and we need to be able to explain why we don't do it that way, and so when we look at 1

20:57

Corinthians chapter 11, there is a context. It's so often the case in the

21:03

Old Testament, where do we see one of the greatest revelations of the attributes of God?

21:12

It's called the trial of the false gods in Isaiah chapters 40 through 48, the trial of the false gods.

21:20

Now you might sit back and go, why would God allow idolatry?

21:26

Why would God allow horrible human religions that drag souls to hell and deceive people?

21:37

Well, what's interesting is, in contrasting Himself to the false gods, we often get the clearest revelation of who

21:49

God Himself is, in contrast with that error, and here in 1

21:55

Corinthians, we get one of most important discussions of the nature of the supper. Why?

22:00

Because they were messing it up, because they were doing it wrong, and because of that, there has to be correction brought, and that correction will often give us the balance that helps us in our modern situation, and so that is what is going on in the preceding paragraph, right before the

22:23

Apostle provides this correction. He says, don't, don't come to the

22:28

Lord's, look, if you've got food, eat at your own house. The supper, one of the things we learn from this, the supper is a church function.

22:39

You know, it's real popular today. It's real popular for people to go, I'm not, you know, I'm not going to worry about this being in the church, and I'm not going to worry about elders being involved, and stuff like that.

22:51

Let's just, let's just go hang out by the pool, and you know, this bread and wine thing, let's not worry about that.

22:58

Let's, let's do chips and Pepsi, and let's call it the

23:04

Lord's Supper, and some of you are looking at me like, there are people that do that? Hate to tell you, yeah, there are, and some people might say, yeah, we're free from the law, we're free to do all these things.

23:17

The problem is, of course, that the New Testament tells us that this is something the church does when the church gathers as the church for the purpose of worship, and it's to be done decently and in order, and one of the reasons that it is important to have church membership, aside from the fact that I've never understood, how in the world you're supposed to shepherd sheep when you don't know who your sheep are?

23:53

I mean, there are entire denominations, I could name them, but I won't. There are entire denominations that do not have church membership, because, ah, it's so limiting, and stuff like that.

24:02

How are you supposed, the shepherd needs to know where the sheep are. I mean, how are you supposed to protect the sheep from the wolves when the sheep get to just wander around from flock to flock all they want?

24:13

It does not make a lick of sense, and, of course, none of those churches even have a ghost of an idea of what discipline means, the idea of disciplines, disciplining someone, and, in fact, disciplining them in such a fashion that they would not be able to partake of the

24:30

Lord's Supper until they deal with those interpersonal issues. All of that requires a church setting, the involvement of the elders, the gathered body, all of these things vitally important.

24:44

We see that from this context. It also tells us that this was not something they were doing, like, three times a year, that the early church is doing this with regularity.

24:58

It is an important thing because it has been established by God. So, finally, with all of that, verse 23,

25:06

I'm not in any hurry, by the way. I don't mean this evening, don't worry, some of you are going, oh no, he's official now, so how long are we going tonight?

25:14

I don't know, but don't worry, I will not attempt to establish any new records.

25:20

I'm going to leave that all for Jeff. Jeff will be able to be the champion of how long it goes.

25:26

My eyesight may not be good, but I can see the clock, so, and I happen to know where it is, so don't worry about that, but what

25:32

I mean is I'm in absolutely no rush in this series at all, just like Jeff is in no rush in the

25:40

Kingdom of God series, so we're both in no rush at all, so we don't have to worry about it at all.

25:46

So, if we don't get done with this today, fine, next time we have the opportunity, we will continue on, because even after this, then we have chapter 30 of the

25:58

London Baptist Confession of Faith to look at, and that means I will, in that context, be going into some of the historical developments that gave rise to our confession at that point, so that's what is in the future on this.

26:13

So, verse 23, for I received from the Lord what

26:19

I also passed on or delivered to you, that the

26:25

Lord Jesus, in the night of his betrayal, took bread. Now, I think it's important to provide, you all know, look, you all know me, well, most of you know me, okay, but in an introductory way of warning you,

26:45

I've been doing apologetics officially since Alpha Omega started in 1983, and my mom tells me

26:57

I started earlier than that, okay, because one of my earliest memories was at the age of nine, my mom took me to her work where she worked at a printing shop, and she looked around all of a sudden and couldn't find me, and so she goes back into where all the presses are, and she finds me standing there, the pressmen aren't getting much done, because I am arguing with them at the age of nine about the existence of God.

27:31

I remember that day, those men looked to me like Luke, big men,

27:41

I felt like a little person, and they were, I don't know how I ran into atheist pressmen, but I did, so I've been doing apologetics for a long time, and so even when

27:52

I simply teach the scriptures, I'm always thinking about, especially because I did my first master's degree at Fuller Theological Seminary, which was not nearly as liberal back then as it is today, but it was way to my left, and so I have as a natural part of my thinking the desire to help, in essence, inoculate you against some of the things that can so often trip people up that I've experienced in my apologetic ministry over my life.

28:25

So in other words, I often warn people that the Christian bookstore is one of the most dangerous places you can go.

28:33

Why? Because you look at those commentaries, and you may not be aware of all the differing viewpoints out there, and so it can cause, it can stumble you, it can cause you to go, wow,

28:44

I never thought about that, I wasn't prepared for that, I wasn't given a foundation for that, and so one of the things

28:50

I like to do is to provide what you might think initially is maybe a little too much background information, but I'll be honest with you,

28:58

I'm doing it because I want to prepare you for this. Over the years, I remember one young man that grew up at the church we were at before, and for a while as a young person, he was in the adult

29:11

Sunday school class that I was teaching, and then he went off to a Christian college, and I had told them the same thing.

29:20

Even when you go to a Christian college, you will very often end up hit with things that simply are not foundationally true.

29:29

You need to be able to take the good and leave off the bad. That's what I learned at Fuller.

29:34

I had some great professors, intelligent professors, I learned a lot from them, but then they'd make application.

29:41

I'm like, okay, that's nice, that's interesting. I listened so I could understand, but I had to learn to be discerning, and you always have to be discerning when listening to anyone speaking and teaching, and so with that in mind,

29:57

I like to provide some of the background, knowing what some of the things are that's going to hit you.

30:03

This young man, he goes off to a Christian college, he comes back like after a year or something, he says, I just want to tell you, you were exactly right.

30:11

Even going to a Christian college, the stuff you were warning about, I was getting hit with all the time, and I was ready for it, but most of the people that were there were not ready for it.

30:24

I want you to be ready, and so what do I mean by some of the background? Well, verse 23, for I received from the

30:32

Lord what I also passed on to you. Now, it's interesting, where did Paul get his information?

30:39

Now, a lot of people, and a lot of the commentaries that you would write, would begin with the assumption that Paul's ministry is very much secondary, that it is not a primary ministry within the apostolic witness.

30:57

There's a lot of anti -Paul material out there, there really is, it's amazing.

31:04

One of the things I want to try to do in November is to find some Muslim apologists in London, when we go there to do a debate, to also schedule a debate on the subject, was

31:15

Paul a faithful apostle of Jesus Christ? Because I'm going to tell you something, the Muslims love anything, they really believe today that Paul invented

31:25

Christianity and Jesus was a Muslim, so that we are actually followers of Paul, not followers of Jesus.

31:33

Most Muslims today who read on what's called dawah, their form of apologetics, it's exactly what they believe, and that's what you're going to get hit with too.

31:43

And so one of the questions is, Paul claims, I received from the

31:51

Lord, does that mean that Paul did not receive any information from any other source?

32:00

I don't think that follows, but does this simply mean that when it comes to this, that there was no intermediation, there was no discussion with, that Paul in all the time that he was around Peter or any of the others, they never told him about the night of the institution of the

32:21

Lord's Supper, and if they started, he went, oh, I don't want to hear it, I don't want to hear it. No, of course not, of course not.

32:29

This is similar to the situation when Paul, also writing to the

32:35

Corinthians, talking about virgins and marriage and things like that. Remember this, this strange thing that Paul says, when he says, the

32:45

Lord has commanded such and so, what's interesting is when he speaks in that fashion, we can find in the gospel tradition that we have in the written gospels where Jesus taught on that subject, but then

33:00

Paul will say, now in regards to this next issue, I say, and not the

33:06

Lord, that this is what you should do, and that causes a lot of folks to stumble, that causes a lot of folks to go, uh,

33:15

Paul's denying inspiration here. My Muslim friends will say that. Here Paul denies inspiration. That's not what

33:21

Paul's doing at all. What's fascinating to me is Paul had an extremely accurate knowledge of the exact same gospel traditions that we have in our four canonical gospels.

33:36

When Paul says, the Lord said this, guess what, we can go over to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. That's where Jesus said it, but then when he addresses another subject, he says,

33:45

I, not the Lord, say to you, we go to the gospels, and Jesus never talked about that.

33:51

You know what's exciting about that to me? Paul did have an accurate knowledge of the gospels, and guess what, he's writing before most of the gospels have been written.

34:03

What that means is we actually have a testimony to the accuracy of our gospels in recording

34:09

Jesus's teaching that goes earlier than the gospels themselves, and it's called Paul's epistles.

34:15

Most people never see that. We never think about the order in which we're written. Now, we don't know. We don't know what the first gospel written was.

34:22

We don't know what the second, third. If you go to a Bible college today, if you go to almost any

34:30

Bible college today, I'm not sure that they would have at the school that you went to for a while, but in most places you go to, they hold what's called

34:39

Mark in priority. Mark was the first written, and then they believe Matthew and Luke used

34:46

Mark, edited Mark, and then they don't have a clue what to do with John.

34:54

John was written way, way, way later, and he was just off doing his own thing, but that's the general, generally, if you go to places like Fuller Theological Seminary, Dallas Theological Seminary, Westminster, places like that, that's what you're going to be taught.

35:11

Now, I personally have no idea what order the gospels were written in.

35:17

You may go, well, isn't it Matthew, Mark, Luke, John? That's just the order that they are in the

35:22

New Testament. Some of the earliest manuscripts we have of the New Testament have them in a different order than that.

35:30

There's what's called a Western order of the gospels. We don't know which one was written first, and we certainly don't know, and I'm going into, this is a minority position that I take here, we certainly do not know that there is literary dependence between them.

35:47

In other words, I think it raises many more questions to say that Matthew and Luke had

35:54

Mark and are going, eh, I'm not sure I like that, I think I'll let it this, da, da, da. I think it raises far more questions than it actually answers.

36:01

I think Matthew, Mark, and Luke are drawing from the exact same gospel tradition, which happens to be the exact thing that Paul is drawing from, and that's what he's doing from here, because when he says,

36:12

I've received from the Lord, this is what the Lord said. This is pretty much a direct, you know, there's some small differences in terminology, but this is pretty much what

36:22

Jesus himself said and did on the night of the institution of the

36:29

Lord's Supper, and he's saying he's gotten this from the Lord. That doesn't mean that he didn't discuss it with Peter and John and others that were there.

36:39

I'm sure Paul had run into lots of eyewitnesses, and he had discussion with the apostles and things like that, but when he says he's received it, he's saying,

36:48

I didn't make this up. This is not coming from me. I've received this from the

36:55

Lord, and I have passed this on to you. Now, why do I translate it that way?

37:01

It's normally translated delivered to you. This is the very language that is, and you'll find this in commentaries, and that's why

37:10

I'm mentioning it to you now, so that you hear it in the context of faith rather than the context of unbelief.

37:17

This is the language of the passing on of tradition, and it is. It is.

37:24

This is the very language that is used of passing on tradition, and so Paul has received this from the

37:31

Lord, and what did he do? He was in Corinth. He established the church, and if he's preaching long enough for people to fall asleep and fall out of windows, he was probably passing on a whole lot of the things that he had learned about Jesus and from Jesus and from the apostles, because he's establishing them in the truth, and so his point is this is divine revelation.

37:55

It comes from the Lord, and guys, I already taught this to you. I already taught this to you.

38:02

I already delivered this to you. You should know this. You need to realize that you have been the recipients of divine revelation.

38:11

Now, automatically, there's some of you out there that are going, but how could they have had divine revelation before they received a written epistle from Paul?

38:23

Well, remember, we're talking here about the apostolic period. There is a period when the apostles are still alive, and before they have even begun writing, there is a period where divine truth about Jesus is being proclaimed by his self -appointed witnesses.

38:45

Yes, they're drawing from Scripture. If you haven't had a chance to see it yet, you need to take the time this week, carve out some time, watch

38:55

Pastor Jeff's discussion with Andy Stanley. Now, Jeff, I only listened.

39:00

I didn't watch, but on the way out, I was told that I need to watch to catch some of your facial expressions, because evidently there was at least once or twice when

39:12

Andy said something where you did probably what I did when I first read his book while I was writing.

39:19

I was out in the desert, so I could go, what? And no one cared because, you know, that might have been a

39:24

Gila monster or something that was startled because I was like, what? But it seems that a couple of times you were like, you know, and that's natural.

39:35

That's fully understandable some of the things that were said to you, but if you haven't had the chance, look up the

39:41

Unbelievable Radio broadcast, well, podcast, webcast, whatever you call it, videocast in that situation, where Andy Stanley and Pastor Jeff were discussing this very issue, really, in the sense that when the apostles are preaching and Paul delivers this message, when you look at how the early church preached, they never would have been able to conceive of the idea of anyone centuries later or a couple millennia later thinking that they were not a people of the book, because everything that they write down and then, of course, when their sermons are written down for us, like in the book of Acts, they are filled with, thus saith the

40:34

Lord's quotation from Joel, quotation Malachi, let's bring Isaiah in here, they are a people of the book.

40:41

Now, are they limited to just quoting scripture? No, because God has done something amazing in Jesus, but the whole meaning of what he's done is seen in the prophetic witness and the consistency of it, and so here

40:57

Paul can say to the Corinthians, yes, this is divine revelation. You have already received from I've delivered to you what

41:06

I received from the Lord. Now, do you believe that? Do we believe that?

41:14

Because if the Corinthians were coming up with the idea that they could come up with a better way of doing things, then they really didn't believe that what

41:25

Paul had delivered to them had been given to him by the Lord. That's the very genesis of heresy and new teachings and innovation and everything else is to distrust where the teaching came from initially, and Paul says you need to understand

41:45

I received this from the Lord and I have faithfully delivered it to you, and thankfully you and I have this incredibly accurate record of the letter that Paul wrote to the

42:02

Corinthians. Now, I've often wondered, don't you think there were some people at Corinth that didn't like this letter, would like to have seen it destroyed?

42:14

God preserved it. God preserved it. Most of you know

42:19

I work in the field of textual criticism. I work in a lot of fields, but one of the fields I love to work in is in textual criticism, and one of the reasons

42:27

I do so is because it constantly speaks to me of God's providential care for his people, that in such an amazing fashion he preserved these words for us, so that when we walk down this aisle and we partake of these elements, we can understand why we're doing it and we can have confidence that in doing it the way we're doing it, we are in harmony in our understanding of what they represent with the early church.

43:00

That's beautiful. I think it's important for us to recognize that we stand in a great tradition.

43:10

God has been building his church, and it means a lot to me to know that Christians for a couple of millennia now have been willing to risk their lives to have the opportunity of doing what we do every single

43:28

Lord's Day. Makes it a little more meaningful. Makes it a little bit more meaningful.

43:34

Wow, I haven't gotten through the first verse. We're not going very fast, are we? Well, it's sort of a

43:41

Reformed Baptist way of doing things, to be honest with you. This is just, it's just the way it is. That the

43:48

Lord Jesus, on the night of his betrayal, I mean that just was a, by this point in time, you could just simply say that.

44:01

You didn't have to give the background and talk about Judas and everything else. Just the very idea of that betrayal was a part of the understanding.

44:11

I would imagine whenever the story of Jesus was told, that must have been one of the most gotcha moments.

44:19

Can you imagine a man who had walked with Jesus for all those years, and he'd seen

44:26

Lazarus come out of the tomb, and he'd seen people healed right, left, and center.

44:32

He had, he had been involved in doing miraculous things himself, and for 30 stinking pieces of silver, he betrayed his

44:43

Lord. The night of his betrayal. Not the night before the cross, but the night of his betrayal.

44:52

When he's given over, he took bread. Now, Paul, interestingly enough, now last two weeks ago, we were in Matthew, and Matthew very firmly roots his discussion in the

45:10

Jewish Passover meal, and what was going on that evening, and so the representation of all the elements, and when it happened, and he's, because he's writing to a primarily

45:22

Jewish audience in that context. Paul's writing to the Corinthians. Were there converted

45:28

Jews in the audience? Well, of course, but more people were not

45:33

Jewish than were in this early Corinthian experience, and so you'll notice there's not as much of the emphasis upon that aspect of things, but the, he took bread.

45:49

Probably had already explained to them, if they had not known what the Passover supper was about, why bread would have been there, why wine would have been there, etc.,

45:57

etc., but he took bread, and having given thanks, again, two weeks ago,

46:03

Eucharist to Ode, the Eucharist, to give thanksgiving, to give thanks. It's a beautiful concept that has been stolen from us because it has been applied to something that is unbiblical.

46:17

I want it back, personally, because it's a beautiful, beautiful word. Having given thanks, he broke it and said, this is my body, and then literally it's in behalf of you.

46:34

This is my body in behalf of you. Do this in remembrance of me, or literally do this unto my remembrance, and so he takes the bread, he gives thanks for it, he breaks it, once again, to represent the fact that his body is going to be broken.

47:03

It is not whole, it is broken just as his body is going to be broken in his self -sacrifice, and he says to them, this is my body, and in Paul's version here, and I'm not going to go into the issue of today anyways, the textual variance in the text, many scribes, because this was a very, very well -known passage, what happens is, when you have the same story told in Scripture in multiple ways by multiple people, scribes who had memorized maybe

47:45

Matthew's account want to harmonize Paul's words with Matthew's.

47:51

Sometimes purposefully, sometimes just because that's how I memorized it, and so you're not even aware that you're making a change, so there is that in, in the history of the manuscripts, you have that happening, and so there are some of those things to look at, but here you have, this is my body in behalf of you, and we have to, in Greek, it's perfectly fine to skip verbs.

48:17

I was, I'm very, very happy today, and I hope all of you saw this. Some of you sit in the back might not know this, but Summer and Eric came down from Las Vegas to be here today, and I'm very, very thankful that they're, they're here.

48:32

Thank you very much. For those of you who have anything you need to say to Summer, you better catch her fast, because they're driving all the way back to Las Vegas tonight, so if you want to give them some cards to stop at Starbucks and caffeine up, that might be exactly what they need to, for the long, long trip back, but we also,

48:51

I also have my grandkids here, and yes, right, you go ahead and say woo.

48:58

I'm very, very pleased to have them here, and I happen to notice at least two of them are actually listening to me right now, or at least they're pretending to, and those are the two oldest,

49:09

Cadence and Waylon, and Clementine and January are here, too.

49:14

Hi, guys, but I got to drive out to the East Valley with Cadence and Clementine in the car yesterday, and so we started talking about grammar.

49:25

Isn't that exciting? Doesn't surprise Summer at all that when I'm driving somewhere with kids in the back seat, what do

49:31

I start doing? I start talking about education, because she'll tell you that's where it all started for her, ruined her life from that, that point onward, but we started talking about grammar, and so I was,

49:46

I was really impressed by the fact that, that Cadence was identifying verbs and nouns and direct objects, which

49:54

I informed her I knew a lot of adults that were not able to identify verbs and nouns and direct objects, so whoever's doing the homeschooling is doing a good job.

50:03

That's all I can say at that point. The point is that in this text, the

50:09

Greeks can sort of bend some of our rules. They came before us, so it's okay. There's no verb here.

50:16

There's no verb here. It simply says, this is my body in behalf of you.

50:24

Now, you could, if you wanted to, just simply provide a basic concept like given for you, but it's interesting that it's, the verb up above is broke, and so is that concept brought along, broken in being given for you, but the term for you is the preposition that is used by Paul in Romans 8 and in numerous other places to talk about substitution, giving in behalf.

51:00

It is the normal term that Paul uses when it says that Jesus died in our behalf, and so here, my body, which is for you, given for you, broken for you.

51:18

There is, even in the language of the institution, even before Jesus gives his body upon the tree, there is in the establishment of the symbols the idea of substitution, giving in behalf of.

51:37

Now, why do I emphasize that? Because we all believe that, right? Don't all Christians believe in that? Sadly, no, and in fact, there is a tremendous amount of opposition and attack against the concept of what we call penal substitutionary atonement.

51:58

The atonement was penal. That is, it involved the breaking of God's law and the healing of that relationship.

52:08

Substitutionary, it was not just some general idea of, oh, look how much God loves us, let's try to do better because of that.

52:18

Penal, substitutionary, and it was atoning. It was a true atonement, a propitiatory sacrifice that removed the wrath of God and the reason for the wrath of God.

52:29

It was a full atonement. My friends, I hate to have to tell you this, but if you truly believe that, as far as the broad spectrum of what is called

52:39

Christianity in the world is concerned, you're in the minority. You're in the minority.

52:46

See, a lot of people coming to the church assume everybody believes that, and then when you run into someone who goes, well, have you heard about the

52:52

Christus Victor model, or have you read the early church? And it's true.

52:58

The first full -length treatise on the subject of the atonement does not come about until the fourth century.

53:05

The fourth century. There's all these different views. The ransom to Satan theory.

53:12

This is why we believe in sola scriptura, and this is why we need to be thankful that we have the entirety of God's revelation, because we can, with consistency, recognize the truth of substitutionary atonement, and it's found in Jesus's own words.

53:33

And so, he takes the bread, he breaks it, and he says to them, this is my body.

53:39

Now, actually, looking at the time, I think this might be a good place to make application and then be prepared to pick up here the next time around.

53:50

I thought I'd get a little bit farther, but there you go. Let's make some application so that we at least have a good foundation as we move into the cup the next time around.

54:02

How could they have understood this? How could the apostles have understood what

54:09

Jesus said? Now, we thought a little bit about this two weeks ago, and I point out to you that in the context of the

54:16

Passover, everything on the table represented something else. The bitter herbs specifically spoke to the

54:25

Jewish people of their suffering in the land of Egypt, and so it wasn't a strange thing for Jesus to say, this is my body.

54:35

But in saying that this is my body given for you, he then says, do this as a remembrance of me.

54:50

As a remembrance of me. Now, obviously, these words are eventually going to have tremendous and rich meaning to the apostles, but at the time of the institution, yeah,

55:01

Jesus had taken them aside. Caesarea Philippi, gotta go to Jerusalem, gotta be betrayed, die, rise again.

55:10

Yeah, but they just, that was just so against the traditions they had imbibed from that period of time before them in what's called the intertestamental period.

55:20

That's not what, that's not supposed to happen to Messiah. That's not what's supposed to happen, and so they have a hard time hearing, they have a hard time understanding.

55:29

So in Luke 24, Jesus has to open their minds to understand what the prophets had been saying, and so there is confusion on their part.

55:40

Thankfully, once the spirit comes, I'm sure as they thought back over what Jesus had said, oh, we were, well, that's what he meant.

55:47

Oh, that's so beautiful, but we, oh, if we had seen that, then that Saturday would not have been so dark.

55:54

But no, given for you this due unto my remembrance.

56:03

The two things I mentioned to you two weeks ago, our Roman Catholic friends believe that in that word, due,

56:11

Jesus ordained the apostles as priests and gave them the power of transubstantiation, even before he died on the cross.

56:23

Rome can build the most magnificent, huge edifices of theology on non -existent foundations, and this is one of the places where it does.

56:37

This is a command, not just to the apostles, this is clearly going to go beyond them.

56:42

They're going to pass this on to the next generation, the next generation, the next generation, as often as you do this. And it's seen right here in Corinth, because he's saying, this is what you're supposed to be doing, not the stuff that you're doing.

56:54

This is given to all of us. There's no ordination to priesthood here or anything else.

57:01

The only way you can come up with that is if you start reading backwards into this text from developments that take place hundreds and hundreds of years later.

57:10

It's reading the text backwards. Unfortunately, a lot of people do it.

57:17

But one thing I want to say today, and I'm going to say it the next time, and I want it to be something that every member of this church knows and believes and glories in, is that term remembrance.

57:39

Remembrance. What does that mean? Well, it's engraved on the front of every every communion table in the

57:49

Western world in English, right? Isn't that what makes it a church? Is a table down front says, do this in remembrance of me.

57:56

That's what makes it a church, right? That's what I thought when I grew up, because every church I walked into right down front, there's a table in remembrance of me.

58:05

Well, okay, but what does that mean? This term, and I'm going to introduce you to it.

58:14

I figure if Jeff can lead you through the Shema, I can introduce you to Greek terms too. It's the term anamnesis.

58:23

Anamnesis. Remembrance. It's not a common word in the New Testament. It's not a common word in the

58:31

New Testament. It's primarily here in Jesus's introduction, establishment of the

58:40

Lord's Supper, but it is one other place, and I want us to look at it before we wrap up, okay?

58:48

Turn with me to the book of Hebrews. Book of Hebrews, and if you know the argument, you know that there is a development of a concept.

59:08

You have Jesus as the high priest, and then as the author moves from there, he starts talking about the supremacy of Jesus on so many different grounds, and here in chapters 9 and 10, the supremacy of Jesus is based upon the fact that his sacrifice is hapax, once.

59:32

It's never repeated, but the old sacrifices, especially on the day of what you've heard called

59:39

Yom Kippur, the day of atonement. It's actually Yom Kippurim, the day of atonements. There were multiple atonements made, but that happened every year.

59:49

You've heard of the Yom Kippur War, where the Arabs attacked

59:54

Israel on that very day, hoping to catch them unprepared. Well, it's been happening.

01:00:01

It was happening, at least while the temple was happening, was still in existence. Year after year after year after year, the high priest goes in and offers that sacrifice.

01:00:12

So there is a repetitiveness, and the argument beginning in chapter 10 is that the one sacrifice of Christ is superior to the many sacrifices of the old covenant, because it is a once -for -all sacrifice that perfects those for whom it is made.

01:00:42

But I want you to see verse 3. He's talked about the repetitive sacrifices.

01:00:51

They are not able in verse 1. They lack the capacity and power to perfect those for whom it is made.

01:01:02

And so you have these sacrifices for sins, doesn't cleanse the conscience from sins, and then what do you have in verse 3?

01:01:12

But in these repetitive sacrifices, you have a what?

01:01:19

An anamnesis. A reminder of what sins yearly, repetitively, over and over again.

01:01:34

An anamnesis. See, they had an anamnesis under the old covenant, but what was that anamnesis of?

01:01:42

Sins. Sins. Every time that high priest comes in and sprinkles the blood, there's still the blood from the last time.

01:01:57

It's dried and crusty. And he sprinkles it again. And he knows if God gives him a long life, that he's going to come back in here again next year.

01:02:09

And there's going to be the blood he's sprinkled now, and it's going to be old and crusty, and he's going to do it again. So what do you have?

01:02:17

You have a reminder of sins every year.

01:02:23

They haven't been dealt with. This is a shadow.

01:02:30

This is pointing to something greater to come. We have an anamnesis too, right?

01:02:40

That's what we just saw in 1 Corinthians 11. But what's an anamnesis of? Not sins, but of the sin bearer.

01:02:52

We are not supposed to be reminded of sin. We are to be reminded of the one who bore our sins in his body upon the tree.

01:03:06

No more crusty blood each year. Every time we gather around the table,

01:03:16

Jesus says, do this in remembrance not of your sin, because you have been redeemed.

01:03:23

Do this in remembrance of me. That's what marks the people of God.

01:03:31

That's our anamnesis, and that is something to absolutely rejoice in.

01:03:39

What a great privilege is ours, as once again, it's only been seven days since all of you who were here last time, we walked down this aisle, and we partook of the elements.

01:03:56

How many times in those seven days have you been dependent upon the grace of God? How many times in those seven days have you taken for granted, as I have, the forgiveness and grace that has continued to give you peace with God?

01:04:19

We ask God's forgiveness for how often we do take that for granted, but we are reminded as we come to the table, there will always only be one foundation of our relationship to God that will give us peace, and if you ever find yourself looking to yourself and your accomplishments, you've missed the boat.

01:04:45

You've lost the foundation. We come here not to remember what we do. We come here to remember

01:04:52

Him, His finished work, His perfect work, and we proclaim to the world, the world may hate us for saying it, there is only one way to peace with the

01:05:04

Father. You're saying that when you partake of this. There is only one way of peace with the

01:05:11

Father, the broken body and the shed blood of Jesus Christ, who rose from the dead, who is

01:05:18

King of kings and Lord of lords. He's building His church. We proclaim that message as we partake of the supper together.

01:05:29

Some words of instruction before we do so.

01:05:36

We do this every week because we need to. We have many people visiting with us, but we need to be reminded ourselves if one thing is clear from what we've just seen, this institution is for the church.

01:05:55

It's for believers. It is not an evangelistic tool. It is not something we do to attract people.

01:06:08

It is for Christians. It is for believers, and so we must examine ourselves and we make a strong plea to you.

01:06:23

Do not simply follow the crowd as you come forward.

01:06:30

If you're not a believer in Jesus Christ, please stay seated. We want to talk to you about what it means to follow

01:06:36

Him. Speak to any of the elders, the deacons. We will love to speak to you about what it means to follow

01:06:43

Jesus Christ, to bow the knee in repentance and faith to Him. We want to do that, but if you're not a follower of Jesus Christ, this is all new to you, please do not come forward.

01:06:57

Parents, make sure that if you bring your children, they have made a profession of faith.

01:07:04

Don't just make it a, hey, let's just all do this because that's what everybody else is doing, and one thing we've saying just over the past number of months, because we desire, we recognize we are one fellowship and there are other godly, wonderful fellowships of the

01:07:21

Lord in this valley, and we can be thankful for that. In fact, we better be thankful for that because if we're the only ones, this valley would not be a place

01:07:27

I'd want to live in, but we want to honor those other fellowships by saying if you are under discipline from a like -minded church, and I don't mean from a church that would say you believe that reform stuff, so you're under discipline.

01:07:46

I'm not talking about that type of context, but if you're under discipline from a like -minded church of like faith and order, do not use our table to get around the discipline of that church.

01:07:57

Deal with the issues with that church first. We want to honor what they have done, just as we would hope they would do the same thing for us, and so we have a few moments where we are able to consider the great price that has been paid for our redemption, and then we come forward and we partake.

01:08:25

May we rejoice in our anamnesis, our remembrance of the one who gave himself for us, our sin -bearer, the

01:08:37

Lord Jesus Christ. Let's pray together. Our gracious heavenly

01:08:45

Father, as we have looked into your word and been reminded once again of the fact that our

01:08:51

Lord established this, the supper, on the very night of his betrayal, he knew what he was about to do.

01:09:02

He knew he was going to be made sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him, and yet in the midst of that, he provided for us his people, and he gave to us in his great wisdom this institution of the supper, that we might be reminded regularly of the great price of our redemption.

01:09:27

May we rejoice. May we never take this for granted. May it be something,

01:09:34

Lord, that encourages us, conforms us to the image of Christ.

01:09:40

May we meet our Savior as we are obedient to him at this time in a very special way.