James White: The Lord's Supper (P 5)

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So thank you again so much for watching these and sharing them. God bless you. All right. In your bulletin, you have the relevant portions of chapter 30 from the

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London Baptist Confession. If you are visiting with us today, we have been in a series.

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Initially, my thought was to focus primarily upon just the

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Lord's Supper, but it looks like in the Lord's Providence, what we're going to be doing is doing both of the ordinances of the church.

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And so after we finish with the Lord's Supper, then we'll be looking at the subject of baptism.

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And obviously, that is a big subject.

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And so that's going to take some time and some effort. And so that will be the next thing up.

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I wanted to do this series on the Lord's Supper because I think it is a greatly diminished subject amongst most evangelicals.

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It is, obviously, if you look at the just the size of the chapter in the

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London Baptist Confession, it is not diminished there. And if we know our church history, we know that it was a central and important subject in the history of the church as well.

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And so we wanted to focus upon that. We celebrate the Lord's Supper each

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Lord's Day. You may notice in the soul food section, that was something that was likewise the perspective of the church in Geneva.

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The Lord's Supper was celebrated on a weekly basis there as well. And so it seems somewhat fitting that as we began looking at our confession of faith, now if you're visiting, we looked at Matthew, the gospel account of the establishment of the supper.

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And then we looked at the Pauline repetition of that material in 1 Corinthians chapter 11 in previous studies.

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And so it's not like we're just ignoring scripture and just doing a study of the confession.

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We obviously do not believe that the confession is inspired, but we've already looked at biblical evidence.

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And now we are looking at what the confession has to say. We covered the first two sections last week, and believe it or not, we'll go through all the rest of it in our time together today.

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But for those of you who are members or regular attendees, you could not possibly have missed the fact that there's something different this week, looking down front.

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And it seemed very appropriate in the providence of God that given that the third section of the

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London Baptist Confession addresses the issue of the elements, that this would be the week that something that the elders have been talking about for quite some time, this would be the week to bring this to your attention and to change the practice that has been our tradition.

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The third section of the confession says the Lord Jesus has 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 both to the communicants.

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Now here you have the discussion of what is a part of the

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Lord's Supper, the specific reality that in the establishment, remember we were talking about the

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Passover meal, in the establishment of the supper, two of the elements that were present upon the table were specifically utilized by the

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Lord Jesus as signs and symbols of his body and his blood.

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So the bread and the wine. Now obviously there have been differences of opinion down through the history of the church as to exactly how to focus upon these elements.

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For example, we use what would be called technically unleavened bread.

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Now I've been in churches that use these little teeny tiny wafer type things that basically were hardly bigger than a mint.

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I mean you couldn't really chew it. I mean it was just teeny tiny little thing. And then we've had, you know, the larger broken up what would historically be matzah bread.

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If you ever had matzah bread, the matzah bread that's found in the

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Jewish Passover is an unleavened bread. It's basically what we would call a cracker, but it's about yay big.

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It's a larger piece and it's unleavened bread. Now the church that I was just in before coming to Apologia used a full loaf.

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And so there would be a breaking of the bread. But then there are other people who say, oh no, no, no, it must be unleavened because it would have been unleavened in the

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Passover meal and you have to parallel everything exactly. Well, would it have been unleavened bread in Ephesus or Rome or Corinth where you didn't have the same

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Jewish context? Well, people will argue about that and people will try to insist, well it has to be this way, it has to be that way.

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I was at a church last December and there was some controversy going on over that very issue because they used leavened bread rather than unleavened bread.

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And sometimes it's broken up and sometimes you have to take a piece off yourself. And there are different traditions and I don't think that you can absolutely say, well it has to be right down to this.

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You have to have this kind of bread. And I could see some people literally saying, and it can't be broken into squares smaller than such and such or larger than such and such, and especially

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Baptists would probably do something like that. But I think local churches have the freedom, as long as what is being presented remains clear, to have freedom in this matter.

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Now what that does bring up is the fashion that we have utilized in the past for the

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Lord's Supper, which we are changing today. It has a technical term called intinction.

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And what we would do is there would be a bowl of wine and the broken bread and you would dip the bread in the wine and take both at the same time.

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Now this is a methodology that has been used in various denominations and churches in the past.

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It certainly would not be one that would trace back to, for example, anything after about a thousand

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AD in any type of Roman communion because of development of the doctrine of transubstantiation, things like that.

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But there is a history to that perspective. Now why did we do it that way?

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Well it was not because, and this was obviously the tradition before I became one of the pastors here, so I'm coming into this, as Pastor Jeff mentioned just a number of moments ago, this developed because of the history of our fellowship.

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And the history of this fellowship was one that grew out of work in a hospital and working with people in extremely difficult situations, especially drug rehabilitation contexts.

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And therefore some of the places where the church was meeting and where the fellowship was taking place had specific strictures in regards to the presence of alcohol and how alcohol could be consumed, how alcohol could not be consumed, etc.,

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etc. Now there was from the beginning a conviction that the very common practice that's found in many, especially

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Baptist churches, and certainly the way that I was raised, was that you don't worry about the wine thing, you only do grape juice.

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And of course there are churches today that only do grape juice. There are churches that have in the trays that are here, for example, there would be an inner circle that would be wine and the outer circle would be grape juice, or vice versa, depending on how many people you had partaking, so on and so forth.

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There are churches that still do things along that way as well. But there was a conviction that there was a biblical, there needed to be biblical freedom to have wine because that's what would have been at the

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Lord's supper, not some type of unfermented thing. And so intinction was utilized as the methodology.

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Now I want to set everyone's mind at ease. You can ask Brother Jeff, he's in the back. I did not come blowing through the door as soon as I was ordained as an elder here and say, we need to make changes around here.

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In fact, and I can sort of see him from this distance, don't stand right with something bright behind you because now

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I can't see what your face is doing. But I think you raised this question first.

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I think you, he did, he confirms. It was Jeff that raised the question, you know, let's think about changing our way of doing things and using the cup, because you have in the biblical text a distinction that is made between the two.

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You are taking a cup, you are making a proclamation when you partake of the cup.

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And so I do think that that's a good thing. I don't think that that was lost in the other way of doing it.

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I just don't think it is as clearly seen as when you have the cup right there and you have the distinction between the body and the blood.

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Not a distinction as to a separation, but the distinction as to the witness of partaking in each one.

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And so that conversation started. I was not the origin and source of it, but obviously

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I was like, well, yeah, I would think that that would be an appropriate type of consideration to have.

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And so what we have today is I will be standing over here. I believe

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Luke or Zach is going to be standing over on this side. I think it's going to be Luke. And when we exhaust the cups in the top tray, allow us to remove that tray.

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We don't want to have other people having to be moving stuff around and things like that. We don't want to have a tray disaster the first time we do this.

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We will have a place to put the cup over toward the side. We're not going to leave them right there.

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We're going to move them off to the side so you have a moment to do that. Most of you are accustomed to the fact that I forgot to even look at the pews, but I would assume the pews probably have little cup holders.

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Do they? Yes. Okay. Obviously, if you wish to take the cup with you and sit down and meditate for a period of time before partaking or something like that, that's fine.

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Just please do us the favor of taking care of your own cup if you do that.

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We don't want to leave stuff behind. We're guests here, and so we want to honor those who are making it possible for us to have this beautiful place to meet.

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And so some of you had actually talked to us only just recently about this very issue, about the issue of intinction.

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Why do we do it this way? That's the background. That's the history. From our perspective, the body and blood was being proclaimed in either way.

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We're not the type of people that are looking at some other church and saying they're using leavened bread or they're just using grape juice.

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The importance is when the body comes together and partakes of the supper, is there a clear understanding that this is focusing upon the self -giving of Jesus Christ in his sacrifice upon the cross?

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Are we being reminded clearly of the great price that was paid for our redemption?

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That is the issue. Now we could talk about distribution of the elements.

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A lot of churches, you've got deacons, and they're going to take these and they're going to pass them up and down the aisle and then partake together.

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We come forward and partake of the elements. I don't think you can make an argument, either direction, as to superiority.

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I just personally really, really do find the getting up and moving to be important in I am partaking.

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I'm not just hiding in a pew. I am saying to anyone who sees me standing in that line,

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I am dependent completely and totally upon the broken body and the shed blood of Jesus Christ for my salvation.

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I am proclaiming the Lord's death until he comes. That to me is a beautiful thing.

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I've already mentioned, I think it's a beautiful thing to see others doing that. My faith is encouraged in that.

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I pray that yours is as well. So there is the change that we will be having today.

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Let's just be patient with one another as we work out all of the details with that.

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Moving again, number four, the denial of cup to the people, worshiping the elements, the lifting of them up, or carrying them about for adoration, reserving them for any pretended religious use, are all contrary to the nature of this ordinance and to the institution of Christ.

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And once again, we recognize the historical background to this, that these are things that take place within the

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Roman communion. If you're a former Roman Catholic, you know that in the Roman Catholic Church, there's something called a tabernacle.

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A consecrated host is kept in that, a light is kept on before it. This is why when you come in the back, you genuflect because God is physically present in the room.

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And then if you have been in places like Mexico, Central America, Italy, Spain, then you've seen public processions where the priest would be carrying a pyx, a ciborium, a monstrance, and there is in, there's almost a, it's always a sun -shaped type thing, and there is a consecrated host within that.

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And so it is carried in procession through the streets of the city, and everyone is to bow because God is physically present in that way.

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Now obviously, this is a belief that developed long after the days of Christ. This is one of the primary reasons, by the way, that you can read the early church fathers, and they talk about Christ's presence with us in the supper.

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And yet they never did any of that. They had no tabernacles, they had no reservations of places where they would put things.

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Why? Because they didn't have the physical transubstantiation idea that the physical elements had been changed.

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Christ was spiritually present with his people in the celebration of the supper, but there is no changing of the elements, no concept of transubstantiation.

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Once that became popular and then became dogma at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, then you have this explosion of what they would call piety, we would call superstition.

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And I could give you many, many, many examples, but I'll give you just one story that I've used in my debates in the past.

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And that is the story of a farmer who came to the priest and he said,

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Father, I must confess, I need your help. He said, what have you done? This is a story from around the 11 or 1200s.

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And he said, I stole one of the consecrated hosts.

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Sometimes what they would do is they would put on their tongue and then they wouldn't swallow it and they'd take it out and they'd wrap it in a napkin or something like that.

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He said, I wanted my bees, he was a beekeeper, I wanted my bees to produce more honey.

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And so I placed the consecrated host in the hive. And the superstitious idea was, well, if God's present in that context, then all of a sudden the bees are going to produce a whole lot more honey and I'm going to make more money.

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He said, but the problem is the bees have stopped making honey. And so the priest comes to the hive and the beekeeper opens the hive up and there is the consecrated host and there are all the bees and they have built an altar and they are worshiping the host in the beehive.

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And so they have stopped making honey. This was told seriously.

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This was the kind of pietistic story that would be circulated around at that time period.

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And if you're wondering, then the priest took the consecrated host and took it away and the bees were very happy about this and went away singing.

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Yes, the bees were singing. I didn't make up the story. You can literally read that story in Philip Schaaf's History of the

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Church. Look it up. It's there. So this is the kind of superstitious activity.

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Anybody who has, most of you are too young for this, but sometime within the past 40 years,

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I think it was right around about 35 years ago, there was a yucca plant on 16th

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Street down in South Phoenix. And it put out a shoot that sort of did a weird thing and formed the image of the

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Virgin Mary. A yucca plant next to 16th Street. Anybody here old enough to remember this story?

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Okay. And so the street started getting clogged because people were stopping and taking pictures with Mary.

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This was with cameras. Okay. This is before cell phones, folks.

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So there were no selfies with Mary, but you could take pictures with film.

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And of course, a lot of people would hope that something would come out on the film that they wouldn't see, because that happened a lot, because film would do things like that.

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But finally one night, someone de -marionized the yucca with a machete.

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And that was the end of that. I went to Clearwater, Florida back in 1998, and there was a similar thing going on at the

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Ugly Duckling car building. It was a former bank that Ugly Duckling had bought to sell cars at.

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And when they did that at the former bank, there had been these palm trees.

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And they cut the palm trees down. And when they cut the palm trees down, all of a sudden, somebody was walking by one day, and they looked up the building and they went,

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Mary. And what happened is on these, these were fully filmed windows, because it's

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Florida, it's sunny, just like here. And they had used reconstituted water to water the palm trees.

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And so as a result, there had been water spray onto these windows. When they cut the palm tree down, there was this, you know, you know, you can make an image of Mary out of tortillas and pieces of toast and all sorts of stuff.

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But there's Mary's up on this thing. I kid you not, I kid you not, we went through, we visited, they had a place where you could go in.

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And they had visionaries that were getting messages from Mary. And you could buy postcards.

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And a Marian group had bought the building for $1 .1 million.

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Now, this was late 90s. So that was, that was $1 .1

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billion in 1990s money. As normal, what happened was in the middle of the night, somebody with a very powerful slingshot from the local gas station, demarionized the building.

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And so now the Mary group is left with a $1 .1 million building without Mary in the window anymore.

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This kind of thing happens all the time. This is the kind of superstition that is warned against in this section.

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Whether it's about stories, about bleeding statues, pieces of the consecrated host that are bleeding, whatever else it might be, this kind of stuff is what happens when you have unbiblical imbalance in your worship.

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Number five, the outward elements in this ordinance duly set apart to the uses ordained by Christ have such relation to him crucified as that truly, although in terms used figuratively, they are sometimes called by the name of the things they represent.

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For example, the body and blood of Christ, albeit in substance and nature, they still remain truly and only bread and wine as they were before.

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Now, why the emphasis upon this? Well, remember, many of these, and this is over 100 years down the road, but still the context is the constant battle, literally a battle in many instances in Europe, but the constant battle with Rome.

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And so what you have here are the framers desiring to equip their people to be able to give an answer.

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The Roman Catholic is going to say to you, you join a reformed Baptist church, and the Roman Catholic is going to say to you, you people dishonor

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God, you dishonor Christ, you dishonor the supper because you turned into a mere memorial and nothing else.

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And even in the Bible, it's called the body and blood of Christ.

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So why don't you believe your own Bible? That's the type of argument that was happening then.

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How do I know that? Because it's still happening today. It's still the same type of argumentation you're going to hear from groups like Catholic Answers, St.

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Joseph's Communications, and other groups like that today. And so our own confession addresses this and says, yes, the

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Bible so closely associates the signs and symbols with the reality that the name is transferred to the signs and symbols because of the closeness.

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That doesn't change the fact that it remains bread and wine. That doesn't change the fact that the whole concept of representing the sacrifice of Christ or turning this into a propitiatory sacrifice is fundamentally contrary to everything the

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New Testament teaches on the subject of the atonement of Christ. It's once for all -ness, and the fact that the supper is something we do as a remembrance of Christ, not a representation of his sacrifice.

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And so it is appropriate to recognize that there is such a close relationship between the elements and what they symbolize that there are times when the bread and the wine is referred to as the body and blood.

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That does not assume a concept that developed a thousand years later of transubstantiation.

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Hence the emphasis in substances of nature, they still remain truly and only bread and wine as they were before.

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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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While we were just discussing that, I have debated this subject of the mass and transubstantiation against a number of Roman Catholic apologists.

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If you want to hear both sides and the best that the other side has to offer, I would especially direct you to the debates with Mitchell Pacwa, a

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Jesuit priest who speaks 12 languages. I've talked to you about him before, he's a real nice guy.

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We have debated justification by faith, the mass, but I've also debated this subject with less pleasant interlocutors from the other side as well.

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And so if you have an interest in delving into that, and of course our forefathers, the reformers, wrote tomes on this particular subject that are still available and go in depth on this particular subject.

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So we will not be looking at transubstantiation today. I'm going to reverse the last two because I want to finish up with number seven.

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Let me just use number eight as sort of our normal instructions before the supper because we repeat these things.

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All ignorant and ungodly persons, remember back then you could actually say, you could use words like ignorant without being brought up on PC charges in our culture, just simply mean people without knowledge.

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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

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Lord, eating and drinking judgment to themselves. Now we addressed this of course when we went through first Corinthians.

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We talked about the strong words that the apostle uses there. These are the same words that we use before partaking, that it needs to be done soberly, soberly mentally, soberly physically as well obviously, but in a proper attitude, and that those who do not know

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Christ are not to be invited to partake in a table that represents only that which he has done to bring about the salvation of his people.

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If you have not partaken by faith and repentance in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, you do not then represent that by partaking in the supper.

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I was a member of a church that had a beautiful Lord's Supper service, beautiful Lord's Supper service on Christmas Eve.

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Candles and, not candles up front, but everybody got their little candle thing which always dripped on you and stuff like that, but it was beautiful, beautiful music and everything, but I just can't get out of my mind one of the last times that I was there years and years, and this is many decades ago now, sitting there and it was used as an outreach event, and that means you're inviting everybody from the community to come because it's beautiful and it's

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Christmas time, but I was listening to the people who were sitting in front of me in the service before the service started, and it was plain as could be, these were not believers in any way, shape, or form.

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They were there for the spectacle, they were there for the holiday, and nothing was ever said in that context about not partaking of the supper if you were not a believer.

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This is an important element of our instruction from our confession to warn unbelievers, do not partake of the supper.

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We likewise warn those who are under discipline from another church not to do so.

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We, in doing so, are seeking to honor the discipline of like -minded churches.

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Do not try to do an end around the discipline of your elders by going to another fellowship and pretending to be in right relationship when you're actually under the discipline of the eldership of another church.

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Now, obviously, if you're in a situation where, for example, you've recently come to understand the doctrines of grace, and I've seen this situation before, and the elders of your church are putting you under discipline for being a heretic, for believing

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John chapter 6 or Ephesians chapter 1, that's why we say a like -minded church.

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That's a different type of a context, but you understand what it means to be put under discipline for sin in your life, things like that.

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Don't use someone else's table as a means of getting around that discipline.

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So, finally, section 7. Section 7.

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Ever preached on section 7, Jeff? The way that you shook your head was sort of like, and I'm glad you're the one doing it, not me.

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Because let's be perfectly honest, if you come from a background, and Jeff has described his background in Bible college, they didn't have an inkling of what section 7's about, right?

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Not my background either. I remember the first time I read the London Bapst Confession, and I hit section 7,

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I was like, uh -huh, uh -huh. Now, I read it having already taken a really good church history class in seminary, and I went, ah,

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I see where this is coming from. But we need to have an idea where it's coming from as well.

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Section 7. Worthy receivers, outwardly partaking of the visible elements in this ordinance, do then also inwardly by faith, really and indeed, yet not carnally and corporally, but spiritually receive and feed upon Christ crucified and all the benefits of his death, the body and blood of Christ being then not corporally or carnally, but spiritually present to the faith of believers in that ordinance as the elements themselves are to their outward senses.

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Now, the first thing you see immediately, again, is the deep concern on the part of the framers to make sure that no one misunderstands what's being said in the context of the conflict with Rome.

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So, let me take out, because we've, hopefully we've nailed that down.

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When we pray before the supper begins, nothing is changing down here.

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Nothing is changing, nothing is altering, the bread is still the bread, the cup is still the cup, etc.,

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etc., etc. There is no superstitious change taking place.

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So, let me take that part out, and let me read it without the, not this, not this, not this, so you can hear the positive without the negative.

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So, worthy receivers, outwardly partaking of the visible elements in this ordinance, do then also inwardly by faith, really and indeed, spiritually receive and feed upon Christ crucified and all the benefits of his death, the body and blood of Christ being then spiritually present to the faith of believers in that ordinance as the elements themselves are to their outward senses.

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See, I like the clarity of that without all the, not that, not that, not that.

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I get it, I understand why it's there, it's important. But let's leave the not that aside for a moment and think about what is positively being asserted.

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We've already had earlier the assertion that this is a memorial, look at paragraph two, but only a memorial of that one offering up of himself by himself upon the cross.

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So, whose viewpoint was that historically? That was Zwingli. Zwingli emphasized the memorial aspect, and the vast majority of our

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Baptist brothers and sisters, that's all they've ever been taught. That's all

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I was ever taught. It is only a memorial. But then you start reading the

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Reformers and you read the New Testament. And one thing that strikes you immediately when you read the

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New Testament is there is something here going on in the body.

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This isn't just me alone out in the woods. This is something the church is supposed to be doing.

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And it's supposed to be a remembrance of Christ. And it's somehow associated with the new covenant.

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And so it's only with those who are indwelt by the spirit of God, and it brings us together in the presence of that spirit, there's something special going on here.

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And it is meant to make real to us something that happened long before you and I took our first breath.

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Now, those early believers who are disciples, John sees the cross.

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He knows what has taken place. But we live long after this.

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And so is Christ just somewhere out there? Or is there something more to John chapter 14 when in promising the spirit,

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Jesus says that he and the Father will make their abode with us, how?

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By the indwelling presence of the spirit of God. We will see when we study baptism, that it is an assumption on the part of the

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New Testament writers that every believer they're writing to has been baptized and is indwelt by the spirit of God.

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This is what gives us our unity in the church.

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And so what we're hearing in these words is the assertion that when

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Jesus says, I will be with you, I will be with you through the spirit,

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I will be amongst you, that what is being said is that when we remember his atoning sacrifice in the supper, there is a spiritual benefit.

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We talk about the means of grace, right? The means of grace being the ministry of the word of God, the gathering of the believers, the singing of hymns, the prayers, the instructions, and the ordinances of the church.

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When we see people entering into the waters of testimony and being and representing their death, burial, and resurrection in Christ, our faith is expanded and strengthened.

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And the same thing is true in the supper. Here we are told that Christ is spiritually present.

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He is spiritually received and all the benefits of his death, we are reminded, we must be reminded, unless we are just simply not even partaking in a proper fashion, we must be reminded of the great price.

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You have something physical in your hand. He didn't just beam down. He truly was the

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God -man. The incarnation was real and we have the benefit of being reminded of that by the spirit of God, by feeling something that is real today.

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It's not his flesh. He is enthroned at the right hand of the father. Even Augustine taught the church has been deprived of the physical presence of Jesus until the second coming.

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But that doesn't mean that we have been deprived of his spiritual presence. And so the whole emphasis is upon the fact that we are not simply doing this only to think back upon something, but that when we do it in obedience to Christ, not only is he pleased to be with his people, but by his spirit, he truly is present with us.

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And this was the emphasis, my friends of the early church. This is what the early believers were talking about when they use such strong language, especially during those first centuries of persecution.

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And you must understand that today, one of the things that our Chinese brothers, our brothers and sisters who live in Muslim lands and are imprisoned in North Korea and are imprisoned, you know, one of the greatest things they long for is to do what we are about to do in the presence of fellow believers.

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They would give almost anything to have that privilege, to have that privilege.

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Now, historically, this was Calvin's view. Historically, this is where Calvin was attempting to to say to the

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Zwinglians, yes, you're right. It's not, it's not transubstantiation. It's not this superstitious thing.

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It is a memorial. But then on the other side, you had Luther going way too far out that direction.

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And Calvin's saying, no, no, it is more than just that, but it certainly isn't that.

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We need to allow the scriptures to provide a balance. And that is truly what is represented in our own confession.

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And a lot of Reformed Baptists don't know it. Don't know why.

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I don't know why anyone would call themselves a Reformed Baptist that actually hasn't read what it says.

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And I've met Reformed Baptists that go, I can't go that far. They take an exception to at least an element of section seven.

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But I don't know about you. But when I consider the bread, when

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I consider the cup and what it represents, yes,

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I am remembering a historical reality. But I also have to recognize, unless it were not for the current presence of the spirit of God in my life,

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I could never make meaningful application of what happened in the past. There is a true sense in which when we are obeying

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Christ's command as a body in this place, he is present with us by his spirit.

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You say, he's always present with us by his spirit. That is true. But how often do you get to do exactly what he commanded you to do together with all your brothers and sisters, specifically in remembrance of his central, salvific act of self -giving, where he is both that which is offered and the one making the offering?

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It's special because he established it. The night before he is going to become sin in our behalf, he says, do this.

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You think that makes it important? It does. It does. By his spirit, he joins with his people when they are obedient to his command.

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It means we really need to take it seriously, doesn't it? Yeah, it most certainly does.

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So here is our confession. We are a confessional church. That doesn't mean that we elevate this confession to some type of place above scripture.

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One of the things I love about our fellowship is that we are so focused upon bringing, proclaiming the lordship of Jesus Christ is that we recognize the dead end that many people get into when they start arguing about all the minutia, rather than staying focused upon the central things.

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As long as we stay focused upon those central things and we're out there, as Jeff likes to say, making godly trouble, we're not going to have time to be arguing with folks about all the little things.

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Too much energy to be expended in doing the important things. So today, we need to have special patience with one another.

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We need to go slowly. And especially with children, parents, please.

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I've more than once had semi -heart attacks as someone did a quick run by the table, but we would have even more of a problem now than we would have in the past as we partake of the supper.

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So I'm going to pray for us. Are we good on all the explanations?

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We're good on all that? Okay. I'm going to pray for us, and then

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I and one of the other elders are going to be down here. And you don't have to say anything to us.

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We're not going to be crossing you or blessing or anything else like that. We're just here to serve.

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And when we observe that the the top layer has been exhausted, then we'll be removing it for the second layer.

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That puts pressure on us. We better get it right the first time. But that's really the only major change is that you will actually be able to partake of the bread and then drink the cup.

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And then we will have a place off to the side where you can dispose that cup. Or if you want to take it back and wait for a few moments, that's fine.

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Just make sure that you take care of that yourself as well. All right.

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So let's pray together and let us partake of the Lord's Supper together.

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Indeed, our gracious Heavenly Father, we are so thankful for the freedom that you have given to us in Christ.

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We thank you for the opportunity of being here this day. We have many brothers and sisters who would give anything to be with us today.

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May we not forget them. May we truly, in the depths of our souls, pray for them and feel our close connection to them.

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Lord, we have considered your word concerning this, your supper.

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We are thankful for this. We are thankful for your wisdom. We are thankful for this clear reminder of the great price that was paid for our redemption.

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Lord, may we never ever walk down this aisle without deeply reflecting upon your great love and your great holiness that required the sacrifice of the cross.

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Father, as we partake, change us. May we ponder the benefits that are ours in Christ, our adoption as sons, the imputed righteousness of Christ that is ours.

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May you cause us to hate our sin as we consider the cost of the forgiveness of that sin.

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And may we, as we leave this place, reflect upon that. May it change us.

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May we not rise with the morning sun without remembrance of what we have done this day.

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By your spirit, join us together. Cause us to grow in our love for you, for your truth, your gospel, and for one another.

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this time, this is our prayer. We pray in Christ's name. Amen.