General View of Lord's Supper

Please turn with me this morning in your Bibles to Paul's letter to the Corinthians, chapter 11, and we will read from verse 17 to verse 34. And if you are able to stand, please stand in honor of the reading of God's word. 1 Corinthians 11, verse 17. Now in giving these instructions I do not praise you, since you come together not for the better but for the worse. For first of all when you come together as a church I hear that there are divisions among you, and in part I believe it. For there must also be factions among you that those who are approved may be recognized among you. Therefore, when you come together in one place, it is not to eat the Lord's supper. For in eating, each one takes his own supper ahead of others, and one is hungry and another is drunk. What? Do you not have houses to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God and shame those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you in this? I do not praise you, for I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the same night in which he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, Take, eat. This is my body which is broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me. In the same manner also he took the cup off to supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood. This do, as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death till he comes. Therefore, whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord's body. For this reason, many are weak and sick among you, and many sleep. For if we would judge ourselves, we would not be judged. But when we are judged, we are chastened by the Lord, that we may not be condemned with the world. Therefore, my brethren, when you come together to eat, wait for one another. But if anyone is hungry, let him eat at home, lest you come together for judgment. And the rest I will set in order when I come. So reads God's Word. The Lord bless it to our understanding. Please be seated. Let us pray. Our gracious God and Heavenly Father, we remind ourselves again as we come to the ministry of your Word that it is not by might nor by power but by your Spirit. And with that in mind, we seek with the Apostle Paul that the preaching this day, not only here, but all over the world, will be not just with words, but with power, with the Holy Spirit, and with much conviction. for the glory of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, we pray this. Amen. As we prepare ourselves for the observance of the Lord's Supper today, I want us to take a general look at the ordinance which means so much to us if we are Christians. And by way of introduction, let me remind you of the rationale behind calling the Lord's Supper and Baptism both ordinances and sacraments. We call them ordinances because Christ himself ordained that they should be gospel signs to viscerally perpetuate to the end of time the vital link between his death on the cross, his atoning death, and our salvation. But they are also gospel seals designed to pledge the blessings of salvation that come to us by faith from Christ's death. And so they are sacraments. The term comes from the Latin word sacramentum, which simply referred to the oath of allegiance that a Roman soldier took when he entered the army to his emperor and to his country. In Christian usage it refers simply to a sacred symbol through which God pledges his loyalty to us, his redeemed people, and they, we, pledge our loyalty to him. It is true that some churches have imposed a meaning on this word that does not belong to it. And so they say that a sacrament is a unique ritual which actually imparts salvation to the people who partake of it without any exercise of faith on their part. That is why they believe that infants can be saved by baptism and that the dying can be absolved of all of their sins by receiving Holy Communion. But friends, the word sacrament has no such meaning, and we should no more abandon it to these heretics than we should abandon the word gay to homosexuals. With that clarification, I want us to look first at the origin of the Lord's Supper. All four Gospels tell us that Jesus instituted it on the night before he was crucified when he ate his last meal with his disciples in the upper room. And the strange thing is that during that meal Jesus did not celebrate the Passover as every other Jewish home in Jerusalem was doing at that very moment. Our Lord did not arrange for a Passover lamb to be sacrificed in the temple for himself and for his disciples, nor did he refer to the Passover itself and the story of the Jewish exodus from Egypt. Instead, Jesus made himself and the impending shedding of his blood as an atonement for the sins of his people the focus of the supper. And in this way he indicated to his disciples that the Passover supper of 1600 years was now coming to an end because what the Passover typified he was about to fulfill by his death on the cross. It was a staggering claim. How could he end something that God had instituted so long ago through Moses, and which seemed so permanent? After all, there was no hint in the Old Testament that one day it would no longer be offered in the temple, and that the Passover meal would no longer be eaten. So the disciples, to say the least, must have been perplexed. And events unfolded so quickly, in the next 72 hours, that they could hardly take it in. But, from Easter Sunday to Pentecost Sunday, both the risen Christ and the outpoured Spirit of God made it clear to them what happened on Good Friday. And so, in 1 Corinthians 5, 7, Paul can say categorically, Christ, our Passover, has been sacrificed for us. Only the blood of God can atone for the sins of the people of God. Only the death of God the Son can redeem us from that greater slavery of sin and death and hell. I say, the disciples must have been shocked to see Jesus bless the bread and break it and then say, take, eat, this is my body which is broken for you, do this in remembrance of me. They must have been absolutely astounded to see him take the cup and give thanks and say, drink from it, all of you, for this is my blood of the new covenant. which is shed for many for the remission of sins. This do, as oft as you drink it, in remembrance of me." But whether they understood it at the time or not, the next day at 3 p.m., when Jesus cried out with great breath, it is finished. Our salvation was accomplished. Our Passover lamb had been offered. He was sacrificed once and for all, fulfilling everything that the Passover meal ever signified. So much for the origin of the Lord's Supper. Think now with me of the of the Lord's Supper. They are few and very simple, considering their profound meaning. It's surprising, therefore, that they have become the subject of great controversy in the Church over many centuries. There are two basic parts to the Lord's Supper. The first part is the blessing of the elements. That's the word that Matthew and Mark used. Jesus blessed the bread. Luke and Paul, on the other hand, say He gave thanks for the bread. Is there a difference between the meaning of these two words? Evangelicals say no, there isn't any difference. To bless and to give thanks are synonyms. They mean the same thing. So Jesus was simply thanking God for the bread which symbolized the sacrifice, the breaking of his body in an atoning death on the cross. But other professing Christians say, yes, there is a difference. The bread and the wine have to be blessed by God in order to change them into the body and blood of Christ. Although the bread and the wine retain their natural appearance, these people argue that when the priest blesses them, they become Christ's literal body and blood in some way. The Lord's Supper, they say, is not simply a sacrament, a sacred sign which pledges God's blessings to us. It is a sacrifice. For Christ's literal body and blood in the bread and wine are again being offered as a sacrifice to Christ, to God, for the forgiveness of our sins. Now, this has been the teaching of the Church of Rome for hundreds of years, and it was the great issue upon which the Reformation of the 16th century was fought. The Reformers argued from the Word of God that Christ's sacrifice on the cross was once for all and cannot be repeated in any shape or any form. And so true Protestants do not celebrate the Mass, though some do. True Protestants do not worship the Host, as it is called. the unseen real presence of Christ in the bread and wine as is claimed. We say to give reverence to the bread and the wine in such a way is nothing less than idolatry which God forbids. However impressive, however beautiful the ritual may be, it's idolatry. It is Christ alone who is to be worshipped. The bread and the wine are simply outward signs of the inward grace of salvation, forgiveness, new life that is ours by faith through His single sacrifice. The second part of the Lord's Supper is the distribution of the elements, and this too is simple but important. The Lord's Supper is not a feast. where we all eat the bread, but the priest alone drinks the cup, lest the precious blood of Christ should be spilt when it is given to the people. No, the Lord's Supper is a simple meal in which every true baptized believer partakes of the bread and the wine, the symbols of his body and his blood. And that is why evangelicals do not speak of an altar at the front of the church, whereon a sacrifice is offered to God, but we always speak of it as a table from which God's children are fed physically and spiritually by faith. Moreover, we insist on calling it a table because it is a table of fellowship, where every member of God's family is able to enjoy sweet communion above all with our blessed Redeemer. That brings me thirdly and mainly to the purpose of the Lord's Supper. And the first purpose is that the Lord's Supper is the means in which Christ seeks to speak to us through these visible signs. Friends, what is proclaimed to us audibly in the gospel so that we hear it with our ears is presented to us visibly in the Lord's Supper so that we see it with our eyes, we feel it with our hands, we eat it with our mouth, We see that there is bread to be broken and eaten and wine to be poured out and drunk. So we see, we handle, we taste, we physically digest. And these signs are of God's own appointment to speak to us of the spiritual reality of what we are commemorating when we eat the bread and we drink from the cup. that we have life through his death. It was for good reason then that Horatio Bonar, a great preacher and a great hymn writer, wrote that wonderful communion hymn. I wish all of us knew it and all of us sung it. regularly before the Lord's Supper or during the Lord's Supper. Here, O my Lord, I see Thee face to face. Here would I touch and handle things unseen. The spoken word speaks to our mind. The visible word speaks to our senses. But both are God's means of speaking the gospel to our hearts. Just as we literally take the bread and wine in our hands and inwardly consume them, so we take by faith Christ crucified and risen, and spiritually we receive his life, his blessing afresh into our souls. We cast ourselves during this meal, once again on Him who died for our sins and who bore the penalty of physical and spiritual death due to our sins. The bread broken and the poured out wine symbolize death, because Jesus Christ did not want to be perpetuated in history for His healing or for His teaching. or for His good example, but for His death on the cross. It was His purpose that these symbols should bring home to us our absolute dependence upon His sufferings and death if we are to live and go to heaven. The second great purpose for which Christ instituted the Lord's Supper was to seal the promises of the gospel to his people. Before Jesus gave the cup to his disciples, he said these important words, This cup is the new covenant in my blood which is shed for you. And they are important because in Jeremiah 31, God promised to make a new covenant with his people of salvation by grace rather than by works of keeping the law. Behold, he says in Jeremiah, the days are coming when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. I will put my law in their minds and write it in their hearts. A promise of regeneration, spiritual regeneration. And then in Ezekiel 36, God amplifies this wonderful promise of the new covenant by saying, I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes. But that's not all. In addition, God says again, going back to Jeremiah, I will forgive their iniquities and their sin I will remember no more." The blessing of forgiveness. And in Ezekiel, God repeats it with a different analogy, I will cleanse you from all your iniquities. Now friends, these two incredible promises of regeneration on the one hand and forgiveness of sin on the other are pledged to every believer every time he or she receives the sacrament or pledge of communion. The bread and the wine are a visible seal of the life of the Spirit of God and the cleansing of the blood of Christ promised in the New Covenant. And we know how important seals can be in a contract. As a wedding ring visibly seals the promises of the bridegroom to the bride, so the bread broken and the wine poured out pledges the promise of life and forgiveness from Christ to us. Now true, a seal is often a very small and unimpressive thing. But unless we have a seal, a document, which is a seal to authenticate what we possess, it's worthless. Well, it's like that with a Christian. God comes to us in baptism and in the Lord's Supper, and he gives us these tangible signs as a seal of the blessings of salvation that are truly ours. That newness of life, symbolized in the bread that gives life, and forgiveness of sins, symbolized in the blood that cleanses us from every sin, that they do belong to us. and that nothing in heaven or on earth can possibly annul the promise of God in Christ to us. That's the purpose of a sacrament. It is a pledge, a visible, tangible seal to authenticate the promises of Christ to his people. Then thirdly, Because it is a pledge, communion also is a means of God's grace to us. It is very important for your spiritual growth and for mine that we understand that God desires to convey spiritual nourishment to us in the observance of the Lord's Supper. That is why He chose a supper as the symbol of this truth. He could have chosen any other activity, but he chose a supper. Now, Baptists, of course, generally speaking, have regarded it just as a commemorative service to ensure that we never forget that our salvation is due solely to Christ's atoning death upon the cross. And that's important, and that is a good thing, but that is not all that the Lord's Supper is. God's purpose for the Lord's Supper goes much deeper than that. It is not just we who are commemorating Christ's death and remembering His great sacrifice for us. Christ is also active in drawing near to you and me with renewing grace by the Holy Spirit. And that is why Paul can speak of the cup of blessing, not the cup of remembrance, mind you. and why he can speak of the communion of the body of Christ, and the communion of the blood of Christ. By communion, Christ strengthens our faith, our love for Him, through receiving these symbols spiritually in the right way by faith. The reason why so many Baptists today receive so little from their observance of the Lord's Supper is that they expect so little. They do not expect to receive more of Christ's spiritual presence and power through this ordinance of the Gospel. And I say they have lost this blessing by their extreme reaction to sacramentalism. Ah, but to the credit of our 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith, Article 30 says, The supper of the Lord Jesus was instituted by Him for the spiritual nourishment and growth of believers in Him. Sacramentalism teaches that the Lord's Supper conveys justification in a mechanical way which is not true. We believe that the Bible requires justification and regeneration as necessary qualifications before you can come to the table. If we are not saved, friends, we must not partake of the bread and the wine. We sit and observe as spectators, but we pass the elements on. We cannot derive any spiritual nourishment from the Lord's Supper if we are spiritually dead. We are like those wooden stakes that we put in the ground to hold up our tomato bushes. They may be firmly planted in the ground, but they're dead. They have no roots to derive nourishment from the soil, like the tomato bushes. Well, that's the difference between a believer and an unbeliever. An unbeliever can receive no good from receiving the bread and wine of communion because he or she has no spiritual roots or life in Christ. The believer, however, is spiritually alive, and because Christ is present at every communion service, you and I, by faith, can receive of the fullness of his grace that he wants to give us. Andrew Bonar. The brother, and also a preacher, the brother of Horatius Bono was an old man when he wrote in his diary, on October the 3rd, 1881, it was our communion service. Never had I a sure review of this truth, namely, that while we are keeping the ordinance of the Lord's Supper, the Lord Jesus quietly pours more of His life into us. The Lord's Supper, I say, is a time of communion with Christ in which His grace is freshly imparted in a deeper experience and awareness of His love and peace and joy and power. Do you remember that when our Lord said, whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day? Do you remember how the Jews took his words literally? How can this man give us his flesh to eat? They grumbled. And Jesus replied, it is the Spirit that gives life. The flesh, eating with your mouth, profits nothing. That is why the Lord's Supper cannot be a means of grace to unbelievers, but only to believers who, when they eat and drink by faith, are strengthened by the Spirit of Christ who lives in them. Which brings me to the fourth purpose of the Lord's Supper. It was designed to maintain the unity of God's people. We do not celebrate the Lord's Supper as individuals. Listen. Not even on our deathbed. We do not celebrate the Lord's Supper as a newly wedded couple at our wedding ceremony. Nor do we celebrate the Lord's Supper as a youth group, or a woman's group, or a man's group. The Lord's Supper is for the whole family of God, not just for some. It is a communion service. that is to be shared with every member of the body of Christ of which he is the head. You cannot have holy communion with Christ himself, or alone, because you cannot separate the head from the rest of the body, can you? To press this home, Jesus rose from supper took a towel and washed the feet of his disciples in great humility and love. And when he sat down again, he said, A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, as I have loved you, that you love one another. By this will all men know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. And the Apostle Paul saw this truth clearly in the symbol of the bread. And so in 1 Corinthians 10, 17 he says, For we, though many, are one bread and one body, for we all partake of that one bread. So at the Lord's table, friends, we are acknowledging that we are brethren. And the meaning of the word brethren is not brothers. It's brothers and sisters. And we acknowledge that we are family of God, members of the household of faith. And I wonder if we sufficiently grasp the greatness of this truth, that the deepest relationship in this world is the relationship that exists between believers. True, we have family relationships of blood that are very dear to us, but our parents can disown us, our wife can divorce us, our children can neglect us. But no Christian should ever wash his or her hands of another Christian. No Christian should ever reject another Christian. The Bible says we are to receive one another as Christ has received us, and that is unconditionally and forever. So we cannot come to the Lord's table holding a grudge against another Christian or keeping ourselves aloof from another member of the body. We are to come to this table with love for Christ and with love for His body. You cannot love the head and not the hand or the foot. or the fingers, or the nose, or the ear. It's a table of unity. And that is why communion should never be given to a member who has wronged another member and is under discipline, because he or she will not put it right. Nor should communion be given to those who refuse to be baptized. Because if you are not ready to be baptized, you are not ready to receive communion. The order in the New Testament is, you first publicly confess your faith in Christ by baptism, and then you are received at the Lord's table, and given the right hand of fellowship, and partake in the meal. Nor should communion be given to those who give evidence that they have never been regenerated or converted, but remain members in our churches. Examination, however, is not just the responsibility of the local church, but also of every individual concerning his or her own spiritual life. So Paul says, whoever eats this bread and drinks this cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. That is profaning the purpose of his death. But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the body of the Lord. So, beloved, when we come to the Lord's table, we have to examine ourselves to see if we are rightly related to the head of the body as well as to the other members. We have to ask ourselves questions in the quietness of our hearts. And the first thing we have to do is to examine the reality of our faith. Is it in Christ? as our sin bearer? Do we understand that Christ bore the punishment of our sins, that the pain He endured on the cross was not just the pain of a violent physical death? For Jesus in His infinite being suffered the exact physical and spiritual suffering that you and I would have had to endure in hell if our sins were not forgiven. Do we believe that? Well, if we do, we need to go further, and we need to examine our repentance. For if we believe that Jesus had to suffer in that way for our sins, how can we tolerate them? How do we think nonchalantly about them? Do we take them seriously? Do we hate and loathe them because they cause so much offense to our Lord Jesus Christ and to God? If that's our attitude, then we must daily repent of our daily sins. And then again, friends, and I close, we need to examine our love. How can we believe that Jesus loved us so much as to go to hell for us, to suffer hell for us, I should say, and not give him supreme place, preeminence in our affections? Of course, I know only too well our love is prone to fail, it's weak, that when we prepare ourselves for the Lord's Supper, we are to come to the Lord like Peter came to him after he sinned and said, Lord, you know all things, you know how often I let you down, but Lord, you also know I love you. We have to examine ourselves both for the welfare of our souls and for the unity of the whole body. May God help us to do so seriously and honestly as we come to the table in a few moments.