What Is The Lord's Supper?

a physical sign for a spiritual reality

, right? So the spiritual reality of salvation.

The sign of baptism is referring to the union with Christ and being washed by the blood and the Holy Spirit. The Lord's Supper, if you look at the sheet, the bread represents his body, the cup his blood, again pointing to the covenant with Christ. What is the Lord's Supper? The ritual meal established by Christ for his gathered church to celebrate and remember the covenant he provided for them with his blood so that they are strengthened in their faith, unity, and witness.

I'm gonna pause and see if there's a question or comment on that definition. Austin? You get three questions, you're down, you have two more, go ahead. It is the, yeah, why meal? That's a good question. That'll come up a little bit later, maybe. I believe when Jesus sets apart that particular one cup and that one bread, There is the significance of those two elements in a meal. I think the church has regularly practiced those two elements, and then afterwards a meal or during a meal, oftentimes what's called the love feast or what I think in Acts is called fellowship, breaking of bread and prayer, is actually referred to, referring to the Lord's Supper. So I don't think it has to be in a meal, but these two elements were part of a meal originally when Jesus introduced them. And I think the church practiced that meal and fellowship afterwards or during it.

Great question, Austin. All right, again, you can always kind of evaluate a theologian based upon the text he prioritizes. I didn't go with Jesus, so let that be what you want it to be about me. We've already looked at Jesus and how he tied at the very last Passover. He introduces the New Covenant meal of the Lord's Supper because his death is going to end Passover.

We can look back at that, but Corinthians actually references it three times here at least that I wanted to look at and how there's a development of a theology within Corinthians, 1 Corinthians, because I think it actually shows much more application of what it is. So 1 Corinthians 11, this is the text we probably use to introduce the Lord's Supper. more than most.

Come together

And just to highlight, I'm not gonna read the whole passage, but I think they're underlined in your text, come together, come together, come together, come together. Not a Beatles song, the Church of Jesus Christ. So the real emphasis is what you do when you come together and to make sure you're doing it with the whole church when they come together. So the problem is, and there's a bit of an issue of rich-poor, which is an ongoing problem for the church for many centuries and even today, but the whole idea is you're not moving ahead without people there, you are celebrating the Lord's Supper together as the one body of Jesus Christ.

And to really highlight verse 33, his concluding statement,

so then, my brothers, when you come together to eat, wait for one another.

What does that last one another imply? If you're waiting for one another, what does it imply? You know who to expect.

Anybody else have a family gathering like Thanksgiving where the food is all ready and there's always that one uncle who decided to play golf? And everybody has to wait on that one uncle. Why? Because he's part of the family. You know he's coming, you're already planning on him being late, but he's part of the family, so you put off everybody else, and the kids are crying, they're hungry, everybody sees the good food, but you wait.

Well, the church is a family, and the whole idea here is that you know who belongs to the church. You know who is in and out. Now, do they have a membership role like we did? Maybe, because in Acts they counted them. But there's a way in which they know who is expected to be at the Lord's Supper meal and who would be there as they're coming together. So a significance of the unity there in who belongs.

Notice there it's also repeated what Jesus says. Remember, this is one of the primary actions and calls in the Lord's Supper from Jesus himself and what Paul here repeats. There is a remembering, which is a covenant language. We'll get back to that in a little bit. It is necessary for the health and witness of the church.

Here he even says this is why some people are sick. I believe that's actually like a spiritual consequence of sinning against Christ and his body and taking the Lord's Supper wrongly. I don't think he's talking about food poisoning or something. I believe he's actually referring to a sickness that is caused by sin, which there is a category for that.

And then we see two primary actions for those who are about to partake of the Lord's Supper, examine themselves, that's a call to faith and repentance, and a discerning the body, call to love one another. So that's the first kind of significant passage, and the key takeaways are it's what we do to gather, and who we know are supposed to be there, and remembering what Christ has done for us. Uh, the next passage is first Corinthians five, six. Uh, I give you the context that one, two, three, four, that's going beyond.

So remember, this is the guy who's with his father's wife. Paul's solution is remove him. Number three is where we are. And the significance of why the man must be removed when the whole church is gathered is, is an allusion to the Lord's supper. Um, the whole idea is that the man needs to be cast out because By serving him the Lord's Supper, you are giving him a false assurance as he's walking in the sin that Paul will say is unfit for a Christian. In the very next chapter, he'll list out a very similar list of sins as he does in this chapter as those who do not belong to the kingdom because their behavior is so far beyond Christ. So the Lord's Supper here is significant in who is invited in because of the witness it gives to them in assurance, because of the witness it gives to the world as to what kind of things Christians do. The Lord's Supper here is significant in that it's one of the most significant ways in which we celebrate our coveted union and the practical way in which we exercise excommunication.

You are removed from communion. That is what excommunication means. Excommunication, we actually would hope they would still come, sit with us, hear the word of God, repent. That doesn't mean we shun. Excommunication just means we would no longer receive them or want them to receive the table, which is a practice of affirmation and assurance. The next passage here, I'll read, 1 Corinthians 10.

Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry. I speak as to sensible people. Judge for yourselves what I say.

The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? Because there's one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread. Consider the people of Israel are not those who eat the sacrifices, participants in the altar.

What do I imply then, that food offered to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything? No, I imply that what pagan sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be participants with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons. Shall we provoke the Lord of jealousy? Are we stronger than he?

A real participation in his blood

Significant is that word participation. This is where I would want to insist there is a spiritual presence of Christ in what we're doing, that real participation in Christ, a real participation in his blood. Again, the whole assumption is the baptism you receive or the Lord's Supper you take is only beneficial if you actually are united with him. So you are participating as you are being obedient to the physical sign he's given us to remember and rejoice and be thankful for the covenant he's given us in his body, and his body being broken for us and his blood being poured out for us. And then verse 17 is, we are many, but we all come together with the one bread to celebrate that same salvation.

So there's a strong declaration of unity in this passage, but then there's a hard dichotomy in verse 21. If you're celebrating together in the body and blood of Christ being broken for you in the covenant that unites you with him, You are to not participate in the things of demons.

You're to not participate in the sins of the world, the table of demons or the table of the Lord. There's a strong, hard dichotomy. So we see the elevated status of the Lord's Supper and that it sets you aside, like there's a holiness teaching here. You know what's out of bounds because of the Lord's Supper. If you're gonna come and take the Lord's Supper on Sunday, that means you're not going to go to the table of debauchery on Monday.

There's a way in which he's saying you are now set aside as holy because you're participating in holy things. You're also becoming a holy church as you come together and participate in the holy ordinance, participating in the very body and blood of Christ by taking those elements.

It is meant for a body

I'm gonna pause now and see if, see who has questions. And I'll even let you ask them. Yeah, Emma. Yeah, that was the most common question I got when I asked for questions is, what are the various places, ways you could take communion that would not be in a building with a body? I hope to get to that.

This is where we get into that kind of true and pure. The goal isn't to see how irregular we can get. All right, so an easy one, celebrating the, what we might call the Lord's Supper with Dr. Pepper and potato chips at a youth rally, no. So we can kind of create like a fun trajectory of like how far away could you get, and then like how close. I think the clarity of the come together, all right, we'll just go ahead and jump into this. It's later in the notes. But it was like the most question asked. I would not permit it in a wedding I'm overseeing. And I would highly discourage it that you should not do the Lord's Supper in a wedding. It is meant for a body. It is meant for those who are waiting. You know who belongs there. Now, the reason churches would do that, if you are a Catholic, it's the priest who makes the Lord's Supper. It's not the body gathered.

So it's a different ecclesiology. The second lecture I get was probably a little abstract, but who you understand the church to be and how the church functions will determine how the baptism or supper play out. But if you're a high church where the priest makes it something that brings you a certain grace, especially because of the Catholic Church, I don't know how the two relate, but I assume there's some relation that marriage is an ordinance The Lord's Supper is an ordinance, and those two taking place at the same time are some kind of commingling of ordinances, but we don't believe that's an ordinance. A marriage, that is. Yeah, so I don't think they're appropriate for weddings, unless you're gonna have a closed church member-only wedding, but then everybody has to take it. Like, if there's two people to take it, it'd be weird. There's another, like, there's a movement where, like, The church was designed where like dads serve their kids. And that was weird.

We didn't ever do that here. I hope we never do. I think if a family were just to take it in our own home, unless we're in the mission field and they're like Christians, that's bringing confusion about what the church is and what a family is. Like we have government, we have state, church, family, like let all those institutions overlap where they should and not overlap where they shouldn't.

The Lord's Supper is not meant for a dinner table, it's meant for the church. That's my quick hits. We don't deliver it to Homebound or the nursery because that's individual. If we think somebody should be blessed with a visit, we'll sing them a song and we'll listen to a sermon together with them. But it isn't the Lord's Supper if it's not together. So I'm answering the question based upon what it is. The Lord's Supper is when the church is gathered under the word. That's another essential. We'll get there maybe, but it's what we do together.

You see your need of him

Yeah, I actually thought about this particular problem while this was being printed hot off the press. So I would actually add something to how to prepare because a lot of folks don't because they, there's different types of people, right? There's some people who don't ever examine themselves. There's some people who are just so scrupulously like over-examining themselves. They're always guilty because they're never righteous. And there's like an overemphasis. Yeah. The, the oversensitive conscience. There's a lot of folks who just don't come. or take, I would say the whole point of you taking is you see your need of him and you know he's able to save you. I wish I would have added something like that in, yeah, because that oversensitive conscience that is burdened by the sense of sin is actually believing the lie that their sin is more powerful than Jesus Christ.

Now, if there's clear unrepentant sin, here's just kind of related to that. When somebody is convicted by the Holy Spirit, it's very specific how you can repent. When you're accused by Satan, it's usually vague, confusing, and cloudy, and paralyzing. So just have that, so if you're coming in the Lord's Supper, you're feeling guilty over something vague that you can't repent of, that might not be the Holy Spirit. You wanna ask, show me how I can repent so that I can celebrate fully in what Christ has done for me. The Holy Spirit is very precise in what he calls us to repent of.

Yep. So it seems like that person is maybe shifting it. Like, am I a worthy enough person? Where here, it seems like the text is like. Oh, yeah. Yeah, when we do that, it's usually like, am I worthy enough? Here, it's they're not doing everybody. They're moving ahead. They're being selfish. They're keeping the filet mignon for themselves or the good wine before, you know, they're going to drink all the good wine before the other folks show up. That's actually the unworthy manner. So that's why I say, like, it's pretty clear whenever there's, like, a sin that would keep you from doing this. There's also the discerning of the body. There's two actions there. So you're inward focus, but you're also outward focus. Last question before, yep, Joe. Is that Joe? Hey, Joe.

In our setting, for example, what does it mean that we bless it together? Is it just a function of us gathering together that we're blessing it? Is that we're gathering? How do I understand the blessing on the ordinance elements that would make them effective? Is that your question? Because if you're a high church, it actually isn't based upon the spiritual life of the priest. It only is dependent upon if he is in the priestly order of some apostolic succession.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We are all coming together having heard the same gospel, affirm the same gospel, Lord willing, knowing each other enough and knowing enough of each other that we're able to take it The blessing is what the Holy Spirit is gonna do as we are following Christ's instruction by faith and obedience, and we will be built up in unity and grace in ways that we don't understand, but we trust God is doing. But there is no, the question, it was a really good question, but like me blessing it or us blessing it isn't even a category I have. You might say it's pre-blessed. Like, it is the blessing. Yeah. Yeah. I'll have to figure out what that means. It's a little different in terms of like, is it the priest who blesses it? Yeah. It is a blessing. Yeah, it is a blessing that we're taking together. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe next week I'll have a better answer for you. But it isn't the apostolic succession, that's the one thing I know. Any other pressing questions? Oh, five minutes. We'll start working through some of these questions.

Remembrance and thanksgiving

The most significant words tied to the Lord's Supper is remembrance and thanksgiving. There seems to be some kind of movement that really wants to be derogatory towards remembering. You're being derogatory towards the very words that Jesus Christ ties very specifically. It is not mere remembrance. I don't even know what that means.

As if it's just an intellectual practice, the word remember is a covenant language. Yahweh remembered his covenant. The people of God remember the covenant. The whole idea of remembrance is a reflection and a gathering back up and in a way of thanksgiving and rejoicing of what this covenant is. So it isn't just some kind of intellectual practice, which I think most people think of when they think of remembrance in the way that they're kind of derogatory towards it. No, the idea of remembrance is you're rejoicing and retelling and reaffirming the covenant Christ has given you. Covenant remembrance is something that is regularly repeated throughout scripture because we are forgetful.

Again, not merely intellectual, we just drift away. So we have to have the words together, remembrance, Christ gives thanks during it. Another thing we need to realize, it is proclaiming Christ until he returns. There is a witness of proclamation in the practice of it, in what we do. But the key thing for the church to be doing is remembering the covenant and being thankful.

If you're not, to go back to that 1 Corinthians 10, the bigger picture of the chapter, There's being grateful to God in the covenant, and then there's what word associated with idolatry. Gratitude and the covenant, or grumbling and idolatry. Almost every time grumbling is mentioned in scripture, it is tied to idolatry.

So those two things go together. Number two, it unifies the church. We come together to take it. There's a great way in which it's an assurance that we give to each other. The fact that you're willing to take it with me and I'm with you is meant to be an assurance, which is why it is tied to church discipline.

We aren't saying salvation has been taken from you because we don't have that authority. We're simply saying the cup and the bread that extends the right hand of fellowship of assurance is no longer something we can give you because of your profession or behavior. We cannot take salvation away, we never gave it. We give assurance and we can take that away.

So it unifies the church because, again, maybe to Patoon's question about the person has that oversensitive conscience or a sense of guilt. The whole idea is we come together as sinners, saved by the same Jesus Christ, by the same blood on the cross, by the same body that was broken, in partaking of those elements remind us we're all equal at the foot of Jesus in worship and unified under him.

It's a proclamation. It bears witness. It points back to the death of Christ. So it's reminding us. It's a remembering of his death. It points us up to Christ, who is ascended, having completed his work. So we praise and thanks. And it points us forward, knowing that the true marriage supper of the Lamb is still to come. It is partial still. There is a better meal. The next question, I think, is probably getting more to what you're asking, Joe. What makes it effective as a blessing for the church? Is that enumerated for you, or did I remove those? Are there four things there? Oh, you see them. Look at there.

The word and ordinances have to go together

Those partaking, being united with Christ by faith. Those partaking, being united together as a church. Christ being present in a mysterious way by the Holy Spirit. Again, where you are, Christ is with us. That's the most significant declaration we have to remember in Matthew 28.

I have all authority, I am with you always

, and he's with us by the Holy Spirit. And fourth, the word proclaimed. We, and this might be something a little more particularly Protestant, but the word and ordinances have to go together.

They don't stand alone by themselves. So the word, if you didn't have scripture, what did the cross of Christ mean? You don't know. God interprets his own work. Without the Word, you don't know what the cross meant. Without the Word, you don't know what the Lord's Supper is. The Word and the ordinances go together. So it is part of the greater worship service. It's part of the worship service as a whole, and the Word has to accompany it so that we understand and know what it is.

I'm gonna stop there, because the rest of it will be the fun, dicey stuff. Final questions, comments, complaints? Kayla, and then Rob. Yeah, there is something lost in it in the same way they're lost in not hearing the singing together and every other element of what we do together. Again, there's a bit of an understanding of what the body is, what the elements are, and then what salvation is. They're all tied together.

So if we believed that it actually helped forgive you of mortal sins, I think we would have to take it. The good news is there's nothing in scripture that tells you the whole Lord's Supper does this. So I do think there's a way in which it increases faith and unity in the church. It strengthens faith and unity.

Fencing the table

So there is something lost by not being able to come and partake. But I would say the same is true of all the different elements. Yeah. Rob, you had your hand raised. How would we react to a member that's Yeah, that's where we printed this because this is called fencing the table.

I felt like when we were doing this and there were lots of new people coming, I could have been doing it in Latin and been just as effective because it's just not something a lot of churches do. So we're trying to give instruction for who it's for, who it's not for, decided it was important enough. So at some level, somebody would tell us, somebody who took the Lord's Supper they shouldn't have, we want to take conversations afterwards.

If somebody was under discipline and came and intentionally took it, It's a pretty wild thing. We would not like smack it out of their hands. I mean, the whole idea of fencing is we are giving instruction and warning. If we understood that happened, we would want to talk to somebody. We want to try to talk to that person afterwards. Yeah, we have some options. We have it to where it's just distributed and I wouldn't want to put it on the ushers and the ushers don't want to put it on them to see who takes it and who doesn't and smack it out of their hand.

I don't like the visual of everybody coming up to take the Lord's Supper. The whole congregational picture is that it actually is distributed in a congregational way. It's not like true or false church. It's just more of a, I like that more. There's a picture of how you do it. If we really wanted to be tight, this would get into like the open, close, closed.

Again, we could go out and just kind of give tokens. So there are churches where in order to come and take the Lord's Supper, you would have to have been met with and interviewed by an elder. And they would give you a token. And when you come up, you get to give your token and take the Lord's Supper.

Yeah, we could discuss if we want to go more closed, but I mean, the warning is there, if you take an unworthy manner, which that would be, that the warning is on them. Yeah, so it's fenced, not physically enforced in the way we practice it. Sadly we had one fellow who we had to do the restraining order on because he just kept really doing outrageous illegal things He's kept getting too close to females. He wouldn't hear no and so we had to do a restraining order Yeah Yeah, if that's repeated, it depends on who the person is. It depends on how belligerent or confused.

Yeah, it would, I could see like five different pastoral ways we might think about that. Yeah, Brian. I was just going to say that in part, that's the importance of seeing the donor, right? The donor, who's in and out, and how to see, the way that you think they're feeling about the person. Excellent. That's a good last word. We'll come back to it next week. We'll start looking at who's it for.

Father, thank you for your kindness. Thank you for the Lord's Supper that you give us this sign of what it means to participate in Christ and his body and his blood. Pray that as we meditate upon these things, think about these things, we're able to all the more rejoice in remembering the covenant you have provided for us as we partake in the Lord's Supper. We would consider the need to discern the whole body and be mindful of the members of that body around us. Help us all to rejoice greatly together in Christ. In his name we pray, amen.