James White on the Lord's Supper (Pt. 3)

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Cultish - William Branham's End Times Visions & The Serpent Seed, Pt. 4

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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.

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So thank you again so much for watching these and sharing them. God bless you. Turn with me, please, in your

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Bibles to 1 Corinthians 11. We need to pick up where we were last.

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The last time that we, well, it wasn't the last time we were together. We did sort of interrupt the series briefly when

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I unexpectedly had the opportunity of speaking. I don't know when we're going to get to pick it up again, because quite honestly, between now and the end of the year,

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I will be gone much more than I'm here. I'm gone the next two weeks. I'll be speaking up in Colorado, and I've only got a few days home before I'm going to South Africa.

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Some of you may have seen, I think I posted at least three major debates there in South Africa, two on Islam and one with a nationally known speaker on the subject of marriage.

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He is a Baptist, but has become very, I guess the term today is progressive.

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I'm not sure what's progressive about it. I guess it's progressive if you jump off a cliff, you're progressing toward the bottom of the cliff, but that's where he has gone.

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He and I debated the subject of homosexuality in Johannesburg a few years ago. You can find that on YouTube.

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We will be debating the specific subject of marriage in South Africa.

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I have a tremendous amount of stuff going on over the next number of months, including Sydney, Australia, and London, and a debate with Shabir Ali in Atlanta.

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So I don't know when we're going to be doing part four, but Lord willing, we will have the opportunity of doing that.

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As you know, we began this series because I think it's extremely important that we have a solid understanding as members of this church of the subject of the supper.

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We partake of the each Lord's day, and that sets us apart from some and makes us similar to others.

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But since it is a part of our liturgy, everyone has a liturgy.

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Every single independent fundamentalist Baptist out there that thinks liturgy is of the devil has his own liturgy.

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In fact, that's a part of his liturgy. Liturgy is simply the way in which you engage in the worship of God.

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And everyone has a liturgy, and we need to have an understanding of why we do what we do.

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There is freedom in how different local assemblies decide where to place emphasis upon preaching and teaching.

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We are in a unique situation. We do not have an opportunity to have a morning service and evening service.

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We do not own a building of our own. And to be perfectly honest with you, as I look at the future and what we're going to be facing in our culture,

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I don't think that's a bad thing, to be perfectly honest with you right now. But be that as it may, we have a particular situation that we face, which obviously has something to do with how we choose to engage in worship and what our liturgy, therefore, is going to be.

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And so, since the Lord's Supper is a part of that, it is an integral part of that, it is something that we do together, then we need to understand why we do what we do.

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And hopefully, each and every time we partake, we will have a biblical foundation. So, we've already looked at Jesus' establishment of this supper from the

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Gospel of Matthew, and now we're looking at Paul's recording of this. And it is,

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I hope, something that is a blessing to you to recognize the very close alignment of what

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Paul writes to the Corinthians and what Matthew records for us in his Gospel.

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Now, Matthew and Paul's writings would be within a decade of one another.

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These are very early documents, but the point is that the tradition that Paul had received, and he was now delivering to the

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Corinthians, is the same tradition that Matthew's drawing from, and Luke's drawing from, and Mark's drawing from in the writing of their materials as well.

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Why is this important? Because if you go to any university, any Bible college, you're going to be told that the norm in the early church was diversity and contradiction, not unity.

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That's what you're going to be taught, and sadly, that's what you're going to be taught in many Bible colleges and seminaries as well.

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And so we want to emphasize all of those opportunities that we can when we see that in reality the

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Scriptures are not only the inspired Word of God, but that God was active in the protection of that tradition, the teachings of Jesus, even before the

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New Testament began to be written down. There was that time period before the New Testament began to be written down.

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And so here in 1 Corinthians chapter 11, we've already looked at the background. I don't have time to go back over all of that, but I just want to remind you that we have problems in Corinth, and one of those problems is laid out here.

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There is an inappropriate understanding of what the Lord's Supper is, an inappropriate behavior in the

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Lord's Supper that's going on in Corinth. And in fact, what we're told in this section is there is even drunkenness.

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What should be something that brings us all together was dividing the people in Corinth.

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Those who had little means weren't able to partake. Those who had great means were getting drunk and having a massive feast, and this was resulting in division in the church.

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So what should bring us all together, and we certainly see that when we partake of the supper together.

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We do not have a special line for these super Christians on one side, and then for other people over here.

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There is no ethnic division. There is no division of any kind whatsoever. We all together come forward and partake of the same elements, and by doing so, we're saying we all have the same

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Savior. We all have the same access to God. This is vitally important to recognize.

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This was not happening in Corinth, and as we know, there were a lot of problems in Corinth. They had the super apostles there that were questioning

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Paul's authority. We actually discovered that there was sin of an incredible level.

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That is, even on the level of incest within the congregation, there was not sufficient mourning over these things.

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Corinth was a mess, and as I mentioned to you last time, when we look at a letter that was written to the church at Corinth later in the century, we don't know exactly when it was written.

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Some would say even before A .D. 70. Some would say around A .D. 95. Whenever it was, when the church at Rome wrote to the church at Corinth, the church at Corinth had kicked out all of its elders and was sort of going on its own.

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So it seems that you can receive two apostolic letters from a living apostle of Jesus Christ and still be a mess.

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And if you're going, well, that means those Corinthians are really bad. We have 27 of them, and we can still be a mess.

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So let's keep that in mind. So what we have then in these instructions is the apostle repeating what had been delivered to him.

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And so you'll notice the language we mentioned last time, beginning in verse 23, for I received from the

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Lord that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus in the night in which he was betrayed, took bread.

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And I mentioned to you last time, this is the language of the deliverance of tradition. This is what you, this is the very language that is used as saying, this is what was passed on to me.

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This is what I have learned. And now I am faithfully passing it on to you.

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And so that's the language that is used. And we already looked at what was said in verse 24, specifically, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, this is my body, which is for you.

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Do this in remembrance of me. And that's pretty much as far as we got, because we, we opened up the idea of the

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Greek term, anamnesis, remembrance, how we have in the supper, which we've mentioned each one of these times, a remembrance of a sin bearer, not a remembrance of our sin.

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This is one of the major differences between the old and new covenants. The old covenant had reminded you of your sins year by year by having repetitive sacrifices.

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The whole idea of Yom Kippurim, you've heard it called Yom Kippur, but it's actually Kippurim. There were multiple atonements that were made on that specific day.

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Look back at Leviticus 16 and following for the information about what was to take place that day, but that was to happen every single year.

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And the point is if those sacrifices perfected, if they resulted in a removal of sin, you wouldn't have to have a specific day upon which to do them every single year, because you would experience true forgiveness.

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But the fact that they are done over and over again is a reminder of sins, according to Hebrews 10, verses 1 and following.

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And so in the new covenant, rather than a reminder of sin, we have a reminder of our sin bearer, the

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Lord Jesus Christ. And so the commandment is that we are to do this. We are active in the supper.

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That's why I like the way that we do it. We get up, we come forward, we take of the elements, we are proclaiming our faith, we are doing something, and we're doing it in remembrance of Jesus.

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Not of our sins, but of Jesus. And so verse 25, we now dig in, and I know what time it is, and I know how warm it is.

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In the same way, he took the cup also after supper, saying, this cup is the new covenant in my blood.

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Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

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And so as we pointed out before, there was on the table from the Passover meal, all sorts of things, bread and a cup.

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There were other things, bitter roots and things like that. In the Passover meal, everything symbolized something.

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And so the apostles would not be sitting there going, oh, this is amazing.

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Jesus is saying that this is his body. And Jesus is saying that this is his blood, but he hasn't even died.

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And they weren't even expecting him to do so and anything else. They were not confused by that.

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What would have been amazing to them would have been the fact of what Jesus says specifically in verse 25, when he talks about the new covenant, the new covenant, this cup is the new covenant in my blood.

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Because they would know Jeremiah chapter 31, they would know the sections in Ezekiel that specifically and repeatedly make reference to the fact that it is

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Yahweh God who was, had promised to bring about this new covenant, that he was the one that was going to change the hearts and minds.

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He was going to be the one who accomplished these things. And here's Jesus saying, this cup is the new covenant in my blood.

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We must recognize the amazing reality of what Jesus was claiming and doing in this context.

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See, it's so easy for you and I, we know we sing hymns to Jesus. We recognize we were talking about the hypostatic union.

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He's the God man. And, and yes, we're, it's proper for us to think in that fashion. But when we do so very often, we then end up overlooking some of the most astonishing and amazing evidence of the fact that Jesus is the

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God man. And here would be an example. Cause see, once you know who Jesus is, you read these words and it's like, yeah, he's establishing the supper.

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And yeah, what's so important about that? But if you, if you sit there and put yourself in the sandals of the apostles into the context that they were in, and then sit back and realize who is this man who is claiming by his taking this cup to establish what only

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Yahweh God has said he was going to do for all of God's people.

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I think that's why Jesus walked on water and fed 5 ,000 and all the other things that he did, because that helped to provide the foundation so that when this teaching, this reality of who

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Jesus really is, is going to be presented to them. They've got some basis for beginning to believe this, because if he just walked into a room and said,

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I'm establishing the new covenant, you'd go, well, who are you? And why should we believe you? But we read in John, his teaching, the witness of the father, the resurrection of the dead, the works that he was doing.

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This had all been established before this point in time so that when this ultimate salvific act takes place, the apostles have some type of a foundation upon which to understand what it is that is taking place.

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Now when we think about the new covenant, I would imagine your mind, other than going to the Old Testament texts that predicted this, think about the repetition of Jeremiah chapter 31 in Hebrews chapter 8, and the central argument that that is of the writer to the

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Hebrews, that we have a great fulfillment. There's no reason to go back to Judaism because the new covenant has been established in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

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There's nothing to go back to. Those sacrifices in the temple don't mean anything any longer. They're about to be wiped out as it is.

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That's what we're learning when Jeff is preaching. That judgment is coming, but even before that judgment came, those sacrifices were now empty.

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As soon as that veil in the temple was rent from top to bottom, those sacrifices were done.

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They no longer pointed forward to anything. That which they did point forward to had now become the reality.

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And so that is the situation we face. I'll have to admit, and I will be very brief on this, but it concerns me when

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I engage in dialogue with some of my reformed brethren on the subject of baptism that to avoid the reality of what

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Hebrews chapter 8 actually says. Remember, Hebrews chapter 8 says, from the least of the greatest of them, if you're in the new covenant, you're a saved person.

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You're an individual who has received forgiveness of sins. And so when we press

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Hebrews chapter 8 and what it means, we have reformed brethren who will actually say, well,

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I think you're over realizing your eschatology. That is, you know, the new covenant has been established, but it's not really, hasn't really come into full fruition yet.

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Or some will even put it off into a future fulfillment. To which

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I go, then why in the world are we coming down here and partaking in this supper? The new covenant is the very central aspect of the argument.

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We have a better mediator and a better covenant. And that's why right now, even before the temple's destroyed, there's nothing for you to go back to.

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That's why you can stand firm. And so it concerns me when I encounter some of my own reformed brethren, and I love them, and yet I think out of defense of a tradition, they are willing to, in some ways, miss the importance of what is said even here.

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This cup is the new covenant in my blood, not in the blood of goats and bulls, the ashes of a heifer, my blood, which means he is the one who has the right to set out the parameters of what this new covenant is.

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And it's based upon one thing. It can never be based upon anything you and I do.

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All the work salvation systems in the world collapse when you really consider the fact that Jesus Christ is the one who saves.

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There is such a difference between a Jesus who makes salvation possible and a

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Jesus who actually saves. Amen? All of the work salvation systems of the world will allow

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Jesus to make salvation a possibility if you and I will do, and then some people have a short list, and some people have a long list, but it doesn't matter.

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As long as you have any list, Jesus is not actually your Savior. He's just one part, one cog in the process.

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But Jesus won't allow for that. This is the new covenant in my blood.

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I'm giving my body. I'm giving my blood. And what I do is going to be sufficient.

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It is going to be enough in and of itself. So the question we have to ask anyone is, do you really believe that?

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When you and I doubt our salvation, not when we properly, according to Scripture, examine our lives, but when we doubt, who are we really doubting?

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And if you struggle with the issue of assurance, let me tell you something.

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Looking to yourself is never going to solve that issue. You first and foremost look to the one who gave his body and his blood, which is your only salvation.

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And you have to be absolutely convinced that the Father accepted that sacrifice.

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And that's what the empty tomb is about. If that sacrifice had not been accepted, that tomb would not be empty.

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But since the Father raised the Son, that is the ultimate demonstration. He was who he claimed to be, and he did what he claimed to do.

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And when the Spirit then comes and indwells the church, you see how the gospel is absolutely triune.

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Father, Son, and Spirit, it is accomplished. It will be accomplished.

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It is being accomplished, but it is all of God. It is not of man. We are the object of that grace, but this is not a cooperative effort.

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The only thing we contribute to our salvation is our sin. Nothing more.

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And all the false religions of man falter at that very point because none of them have an empty tomb.

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And we do. So Jesus says, this cup, this cup is the new covenant in my blood.

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Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

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You cannot separate Jesus from this covenant. He is the new covenant.

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To be in him is to be in the new covenant. You cannot separate the two from one another.

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That is why in Hebrews chapter 8, it is emphasized to us that all those who are in this new covenant know me.

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No one's saying to his brother, know the Lord. Because if you're in the new covenant, you already know him because he is the one who brought you into it.

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Your sins have been forgiven. You're a child of God. And when you partake of the supper, you're remembering the one who has accomplished all of these things.

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I wish I had more time, but I need to get through this so we can get into the confession the next time that we begin to look at this.

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For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the

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Lord's death until he comes. We are engaged in proclamation when we partake of the supper.

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We are actively involved in proclaiming our faith and saying, yes, on Calvary's tree,

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Jesus purposely gave himself. His life was not taken from him.

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It was voluntarily given. It was purposefully given. Now I'll be brief, but you all probably heard over the past week or so that there was a statement made by a person who's not as well known now as he was only a few years ago, who had been known as a

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Calvinist, but just said, Calvinism's garbage. And then explained that in a way that I have no idea how the two are connected.

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But anyways, the point is that I've known for a long, long time, this particular individual, along with many other people want to talk about being reformed and Calvinistic.

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But when it comes to the issue of the atonement, he and many others have always had a problem with that terrible, horrible

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L. The idea that Jesus Christ specifically gave himself in perfect harmony with the father's decree of election in perfect harmony with the spirit's work of regeneration for the specific elect people of God who are going to be united to him and not for anyone else.

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Now you notice the way that I presented that makes perfect sense, but it's not normally the way that people present it.

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When you think about this work of Christ and the perfect harmony that exists between father, son, and spirit, you recognize that it makes no sense for the father to have decreed to save a specific people.

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The spirit's going to save a specific people, but the son's work is for a different group. That doesn't make any sense.

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There is perfect harmony in the biblical revelation to show us that the father, son, the spirit are working together.

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I think that is the strongest biblical argument on this particular subject and it truly shuts down almost all the objections that are placed against the divine truth of the perfection of the work of Christ.

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We are proclaiming the Lord's death until he comes.

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Therefore, since this is a proclamation of his death, these elements represent his self -sacrifice.

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Whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the

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Lord. So now we get into why this is important because in the context of 1

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Corinthians chapter 11, this has to do with judging, with the issues within the church, the problems that the church is facing.

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This is the last section right before he transitions into discussion of the spiritual gifts and some of the abuses that are going on in that area.

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Problems in the church. And so he wants to emphasize the fact that there needs to be an appropriate attitude on the part of the person who is partaking of the supper.

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That's why it is amazing to me that there are so many churches today that do not in any way, shape, or form seek to admonish or warn unbelievers from partaking of the supper.

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When I was in seminary, I ended up in an argument with one of my professors once because he was saying that the

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Lord's Supper is a great evangelistic tool. Let's try to get all the unbelievers we can because they like grape juice and bread, so why not?

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And I was like, but every man is to examine himself and you are to eat in a worthy manner.

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There is to be examination that is to take place. Do you want to make people to be guilty of the body and blood of the

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Lord? Instead we are told, but let a man, verse 28, examine himself and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup.

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This is not something that is to be engaged in lightly because of what it represents.

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Jesus has established this. He says, this is my body, this is my blood.

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They recognize what that meant in the context of that night. This is what it represents. This is what

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I'm giving. This is the new covenant. So you're to examine yourself and then eat of the bread and drink of the cup.

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It is a commandment. We don't need to, you've got on the one side, people who never give it a second thought.

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And then on the other side, you've got the folks that I ran into in the

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Netherlands a few weeks ago. Well, actually, I guess it's a couple of months now, but when you get old, it just all, it doesn't really matter.

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You know, you're just thankful for any weeks and months you get. You just don't really keep track of them all that much anymore.

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But, but when I was in the Netherlands, if you go there, you will encounter the fact that in many reformed churches, you'll have a room this full of people.

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And in a room this full of people, there might be a dozen people grand total that will partake of the supper.

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Everyone else will just sit there. They will not partake because they have developed a theology, an imbalanced theology, a false theology that requires a perfection of repentance before you partake of the supper.

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And they all recognize I have not perfectly repented. And so I won't partake of the supper, even the elders of the church.

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And if you do partake and they don't know who you are, they will rebuke you publicly for doing so.

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And so though you have the direct commandment of Jesus to all of his disciples, partake of the supper, do this in remembrance of me in reformed

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Calvinistic churches, the Lord's supper becomes a time that unfortunately looks more like the

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Jehovah's witnesses when they do their memorial supper and nobody partakes. Talk about an imbalance.

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Hyper -Calvinism is an ugly thing, folks. We may get accused of it all the time by people who don't know what in the world it is.

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But there is such a thing as hyper -Calvinism. There are Calvinists who lose their balance and lose their zeal and in the process lose the gospel itself.

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For he who eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgment to himself if he does not judge the body rightly.

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Now there's arguments amongst people about judging the body here. Is this the body of Christ? Is it the body of the

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Lord? I think the fact that he had just talked about body and blood is he's talking about the self -sacrifice of Christ.

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And so if you partake of the supper without a recognition of and a proper relationship to Jesus Christ and the means by which your forgiveness of sins has been obtained by his self -sacrifice, then you are bringing judgment upon yourself.

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And I wish that the word was a nice quiet little word, something like that, but it's not.

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It's crema, judgment, condemnation. You're bringing judgment upon yourself when you partake of the supper in an unworthy manner.

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And that's what they were doing. If you're getting drunk, if you come up here and grab the communion wine and go go behind the piano over there and just start chugging it down for yourself, you are not partaking appropriately.

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You don't recognize what you're doing and why you're doing it. And that's what was going on.

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If you stumble out of the Lord's supper, you probably weren't there for the proper reasons.

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And that's what was happening. But notice, difficult verse here.

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For this reason, many among you are weak and sick, and some sleep. Now, I imagine there's some folks who would actually want to say, well, that means that some get drunk and so they have to sleep it off.

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No. It's obvious what it means. Died.

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There was judgment coming upon the congregation at Corinth for their debauchery and their profaning of the

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Lord's supper. Now, this is within a very short number of years of another event that we are aware of, and that is

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Ananias and Sapphira. In the early church, they were struck dead.

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Now, that was not a common occurrence, but it did happen during the apostolic period.

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And it happened to establish the reality of the fact that God, by His Spirit, was actively involved in the founding of this church and the direction that it was going.

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And the same thing is seen here. Here in Corinth, you have people within the congregation who are profaning the

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Lord's supper. They're profaning proper relationships. They're following after super apostles.

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There's a lot of problems. The apostle is saying some of the sickness.

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Now, he's not saying every single sickness taking place among you is because of this, but he is saying that judgment was coming upon them at that time.

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Now, the fact that this is recorded for us in Scripture should be enough for most of us to realize, yes, this is important stuff.

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At the same time, you might say, well, this isn't an apostolic age anymore, and so do we really, you know, it's been a long time since anyone dropped their gift in the basket while it was passing by, and then

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God struck them dead because they lied about how much they had given. That doesn't happen anymore either.

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So has something changed? Well, God hasn't changed. His truth hasn't changed, but if his word records for us how important he thinks it is that he did bring sickness and death upon people in the church at Corinth for this, shouldn't that be enough, or does he have to do it in every single generation?

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That's the question you have to ask. And when people are constantly saying, oh, if we could just go back to the New Testament times, do you really want to do that?

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Do you really want to go back to where you don't have Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, Romans, etc., etc.?

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I don't want to go back there. I'm thankful that I have all of that, but that does mean

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I need to bring myself into line of obedience to all of that revelation, not just the parts that I like.

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And so we have recorded for us the fact that God brought specific judgment upon those who profaned the

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Lord's body in the supper. But if we judged ourselves rightly, we should not be judged.

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So if you don't judge yourself, the terms dachamazo, we get to document something, dachamazo, to examine.

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That's one way to remember they sound very similar to one another. To examine yourself. You either do that or God's going to do that.

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God gives you the opportunity, examine yourself, partake properly, or God can do that.

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But God will not be profaned. God will not be profaned. But if we judged ourselves rightly, we should not be judged.

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But when we are judged, we are disciplined by the Lord in order that we may not be condemned along with the world.

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So then, my brethren, when you come together to eat, wait for one another. This is a community action.

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Be the body in partaking of the supper. Do not put yourself forward.

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Do not boast about what you can bring. Wait for one another. Do this soberly and do it in remembrance of Christ.

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And so here in one of the early apostolic letters in the Gospels, we have laid out for us the basis of why we do what we do.

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There are few things that we do in church that are more clearly laid out for us in Scripture than when we partake of the supper together.

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And yet, let's be honest with one another. In the church in the

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United States today, this is one of the most neglected, rarely thought of, rarely focused upon realities of our corporate worship.

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There is a whole lot more discussion about the music ministry than there is about the Lord's Supper. Don't worry, not firing anything in your direction.

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I was involved in the music ministry in a megachurch, and I saw the money, and I saw the problems.

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Hey, I had a great time in it. I am thankful for it. Don't get me wrong. But I also know that the single greatest source of divisions in most evangelical churches in the

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United States is the music ministry. And there's a lot of reasons for that, especially when people start getting themselves puffed up and thinks everybody needs to be hearing them singing.

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Be that as it may, much more attention given to that than to the

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Lord's Supper. Part of the reason is because we have rejected the other side, where Rome turns what isn't the

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Lord's Supper anymore, but what has become a superstitious ceremony, into the central aspect of the worship of the church.

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So that the preaching of the Word is a little homily over on the side that rarely has anything to do with anything, and the central act of worship is the

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Eucharistic sacrifice. And we don't want that. We recognize the error of that.

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The problem is, pendulums tend to swing all the way the other direction. So that in many churches, the

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Lord's Supper is just simply an add -on once a quarter, rarely thought of, normally simply stumbled into.

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Oh, is that tonight? Oh, okay. Not prepared for, not thought of, not understood.

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Now, I really love this, and I didn't ask for this, but I want to thank, if it was

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Nikki that put it in there or whoever, but there is a, under, above today's passage, to visit the entire chapter in the

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Baptist Catechism, scan the code to the left. Are we cool or what? I mean, you got to realize, what would

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Calvin have thought of this? This is something I often think of. What would Spurgeon think of scanning the code to the left?

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But that'll take you to the founders .org library. Now, by the way, I have a, there is an app that you can,

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I've got an iPhone, you can get the 1689 app. You can just put it there and pop up the chapters quite easily.

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But you have a portion of it provided for you there in the bulletin. If, if we had the

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Trinity Hymnal Baptist edition, it would be in the hymnal in front of you as well, but this red one, that one's all messed up.

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It's a different one, so don't worry about that one. But we'll talk about that at another point in time.

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What we're going to do in the future, but I want to lay out some of the reasons, is we are going to be looking at what the confession says.

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We've provided the biblical foundation, and now we need to consider what the confession says.

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So I want to read through this section. It's fairly short, but I want you to listen with discernment in light of what we've read from 1

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Corinthians and from Matthew, and we could have gone to Luke, Mark, there's not much of a difference between them.

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What we've read from Scripture, and then thinking about the reality that every confession of faith is written at a point in time in history, and there are forces, events, movements, and beliefs that shape the language of every confession.

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1689 is 150 some odd years, 160 some odd years after the

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Reformation, but the Counter -Reformation has taken place, the Jesuits have arisen, there have been 30 years wars, and the conflict with Rome continues.

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We must recognize that the language of our confession is forged within the midst of that, and if you listen carefully, you'll be able to see why certain things are said, okay?

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So if you want to use the scan thing, if you want to just read from, there's the first, well, sections 2, 3, and 4 in there, but I'm going to read the whole section.

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Listen as I read through it, and then we're going to be looking at it starting next time. Don't worry, not tonight.

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Of the Lord's Supper, 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.

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A pretty good summary of what we just read, isn't it? Confirmation of the faith of believers in all the benefits thereof, their spiritual nourishment and growth in him, their further engagement in and to all duties which they owe unto him, and to be a bond and pledge of their communion with him and with each other.

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In this ordinance, Christ is not offered up to his Father. What's the background of that?

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The Mass. Nor any real sacrifice made at all for remission of sin of the living or dead, but only a memorial of that one offering up of himself by himself upon the cross.

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Please notice the phrase by himself means he is the priest as well as the sacrifice. He is the one offering himself on the cross.

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Once for all. Book of Hebrews. And friends, that is a temporal phrase.

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What do I mean by that? See, once for all in English can be used two different ways. Once for all as in never to be repeated or once for all as in once for everybody distributed.

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In Greek, there's no way of confusing them. It's temporal. One time. One time.

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And a spiritual oblation of all possible praise unto

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God for the same that is his self -offering so that the popish sacrifice of the

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Mass, as they call it, is most abominable, injurious to Christ's only sacrifice, the alone propitiation for all the sins of the elect.

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Let's just be honest with one another for just a moment. In our politically correct day, every one of us, even those of us who well know exactly how true this is and how deeply deceptive and wrong the

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Roman Catholic doctrine of the Mass is, because of the context in which you and I live, we cringed a little bit at how straightforward that language is.

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Some of us were thinking, I wonder if there's going to be any Roman Catholics here today. I'm not sure if we should be reading this.

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Some of us did. But I can say without any fear of contradiction that the

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Roman Catholic doctrine of the Mass, whatever the current Pope believes, I have no earthly idea and nor does anybody else, but the historic dogma of Rome is an absolute abominable defamation of the singular perfect sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

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And I don't say that because I read a bunch of jack -chick tracks. I say that because I have spent so much time reading

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Rome's own material and debating her representatives on this very issue.

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It is injurious to Christ's one and only sacrifice, which is alone, the alone propitiation for all the sins of the elect.

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But notice, particular redemption was just mentioned there, for all the sins of the elect, because that's what propitiation means.

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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 to give bow to the communicants.

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Now please notice something. The reason it says they communicating also themselves is because Rome had at some point, for example, removed the cup because people were spilling it, and once they developed the concept of transubstantiation, they didn't want to have to lick

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God up off the floor, quite literally. But the idea is that it is the whole body that is partaking, communicating is the term that is used in the old language here.

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The denial of the cup to the people, worshiping the elements, the lifting them up or carrying them about for adoration, and reserving them for any pretendence to religious use, all of which takes place within Roman Catholicism, are all contrary to the nature of this ordinance and to the institution of Christ.

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The outward elements in this ordinance duly set apart to the uses ordained by Christ have such relationship, 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, which we just saw in 1

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Corinthians chapter 11. Albeit in substance and nature, they still remain truly and only bread and wine as they were before.

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That is an entire section denying the doctrine of transubstantiation, which developed a thousand years after the birth of Christ.

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That doctrine, which maintains a change of the substance of bread and wine to 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, overthrows the nature of the ordinance and has been and is the cause of manifold superstitions, yea, of gross idolatries.

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If you don't believe that, I would suggest visiting Mexico. Visit the shrine to the

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Lady of Guadalupe. There's lots of places I could take you, especially in South America, where you would see exactly what it's referring to.

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Now, this next section, I'm just going to read it, is where a lot of our fellow

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Baptists are going to look at us and go, hmm, because if any section of the confession on the

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Lord's Supper is deeply influenced by Calvin and Calvin's theology and Calvin's struggling to bring

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Zwingli and the ancient church and everybody else into a common understanding, it's paragraph 7 of our confession.

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And here's what it says. 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.

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So we're going to have to discuss what really and indeed, but not carnally and corporally means, 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 the faith of believers in that ordinance as the elements themselves are to their outward senses.

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That is an assertion that this is not merely an external action on our part, that spiritually, when you obey

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Christ's command, there is a spiritual reality to his statement that we are doing this in remembrance of him and that by our union with him, there is a spiritual feeding upon the benefits that he provides to us.

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We're going to have to spend some time talking about that. Finally, all ignorant and ungodly persons, as they are unfit to enjoy communion with Christ, so are they unworthy of the

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Lord's table and cannot without great sin against him, while they remain such, partake of these holy mysteries or be admitted thereunto.

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Yea, whosoever shall receive unworthily are guilty of the body and blood of the Lord, eating and drinking judgment to themselves.

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Almost direct quotations of the verses that we just looked at in Paul's letter to the

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Corinthians. So there are a lot of things to look at. I don't know how long that's going to take, but there's some important church history and I've never been one to shy away from dragging a little bit of that in once in a while.

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As you may well know, but there's also fascinating discussion to be had concerning especially what happened with Zwingli and Luther at a place called the

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Marburg Colloquy. And that gives a background. And I want us to understand we do the catechism.

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We talk about being a confessional church. Well, then we need to understand what the background of some of these things are.

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And I personally am really looking forward to digging into some of that material.

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I'm not sure when that's going to be. And right now I can tell that Jeff is super excited about where he's going in Matthew chapter 24, but there's only so much in Matthew chapter 24.

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He's going to leave there eventually. I'm not sure when, but it's going to happen. So we're going to have to thumb wrestle or something as to when

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I'm going to get an opportunity to continue on with the confession, but that's where we will pick up.