The Ordinance of the Lord's Supper 10-29-23

Overview: Pastor Williams discusses the two ordinances given by the Scriptures for the local church: baptism and the Lord's Supper. He explains that baptism is a symbolic act representing the death and resurrection of Christ, while the Lord's Supper is a commemoration of Christ's sacrifice. He also describes the context of the establishment of the Lord's Supper during Christ's Passion Week and explains the symbolism of the elements on the table during the Last Supper. He emphasizes that the Lord's Supper serves to remind believers of who Jesus is and what He has done for them. Transcription: Amen. I invite you to turn in your Bibles to Matthew chapter 26. Matthew chapter 26. The Scriptures give us two ordinances to follow as a local church. One of these ordinances we experienced just a few weeks ago. The ordinance of baptism. And we believe here, and it is traditional for Southern Baptists nationwide to believe, that baptism has no saving power. It is simply an outward show of an inward faith. The symbolism is the going down into the water symbolizes the death of the old self, the death of Christ, and the raising up, the resurrection to new life in Christ. The symbolism of the water coming off as the one is rose is the washing away of the sin. Again, it's just a symbolism. And today we get to experience the second of those ordinances, the Lord's Supper or communion or the Eucharist, depending on what your background is. It all refers to the same thing, the partaking of the bread and the juice. The Baptist Faith and Message says this, which is the document, if you're not familiar with that, that is the document of the Southern Baptists that puts into writing our beliefs. And so this is what it says about the Lord's Supper. It says, the Lord's Supper is a symbolic act of obedience, whereby the members of the church, through partaking of the bread and the fruit of the vine, memorialize the death of the Redeemer and anticipate His second coming. One author wrote, the Lord's Supper is not merely a memorial to be received by Christians. It is a congregational act in which the covenant community in one baptism obeys Christ by memorializing His sacrifice. The Lord's Supper is not a simple reenactment of the Last Supper. It is a post-resurrection celebration and commemoration of the completed work of Christ. You see, what we're here to do today is to turn our hearts, turn our minds, to be refocused, if you will, on what Christ has done for us. And I want to take just a moment and remind us of the context of the establishment of the Lord's Supper. It was during Christ's Passion Week, His last week before the crucifixion. He rides into Jerusalem under the triumphal entry where everybody is crying out, Hosanna! Hosanna! Bowing and worshiping, singing His praises. It's during that week that He instructs His disciples to go into town and talk to a certain man and tell him that that is where I will celebrate the Passover with my disciples. And that is what we see in Matthew 26, beginning in verse 17. Matthew 26, verse 17 says, Now on the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the disciples came to Jesus saying to Him, Where do you want us to prepare for you to eat the Passover? And He said, Go into the city to a certain man and say to him, The Teacher says, My time is at hand. I will keep the Passover at your house with My disciples. So the disciples did as Jesus had directed them, and they prepared the Passover. When evening had come, He sat down with the twelve. Now as they were eating, He said, Assuredly, I say to you, one of you will betray Me. And they were exceedingly sorrowful, and each of them began to say to Him, Lord, is it I? He answered and said, He who dipped his hand with Me in the dish will betray Me. The Son of Man indeed goes, just as it is written to him. But woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed. It would have been good for that man if he had not been born. Then Judas, who was betraying Him, answered and said, Rabbi, is it I? He said to Him, You have said it. And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to the disciples and said, Take, eat, this is My body. Then He took the cup and gave thanks and gave it to them saying, 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. But I say to you, I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in My Father's kingdom. And when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives. And so we see this moment where Jesus is establishing the Lord's Supper during His Passion Week, during the Passover. And we have to be reminded of what the Passover is. You see, this Passover meal to the disciples, to the Jews of this time, was a time of celebration reminding them of what God had done for their people almost 2,000 years prior to this event that we read in Matthew. The Israelites were slaves to the Egyptians. They were under great persecution and great suffering. And the time was very, very hard on them. And so they began to call out to God, God, save us. And God heard His people and He, through the prophet Moses, gave them some very specific instruction. On this day, you are to take a lamb, you are to slaughter it, offer it as a sacrifice, take its blood, put it on the doorpost of your home, and then you are to consume this lamb. Consume this lamb with bread, unleavened bread. Consume this lamb with some herbs. And after they were to enter into the Promised Land and they were to commemorate this moment with the Passover meal, they added the wine to symbolize God's blessing. And so they were reminding in this moment where Jesus was establishing this covenant, the new covenant, they were being reminded of the old covenant. And so we see the establishing of the Lord's Supper. I want us to now consider the elements of the Lord's Supper that would have been on the table in front of Jesus and His disciples. There would have been a lamb, a sacrificial lamb, that had been offered at the temple, the blood sprinkled in the appropriate places and then brought back to the house to serve at this meal. It was a sacrificial lamb. It was a servant lamb. You see, that lamb was sacrificed for a reason. That lamb served as a reminder of what was required of the people of Israel all those years ago. There has to be a sacrifice. And that was established all the way back in the Garden of Eden when God made clothes for Adam and Eve to cover their shame. Something had to be sacrificed. Blood had to be spilled. As we see in Scripture, without the shedding of blood, there can be no remission of sin. And so this lamb was a sacrificial lamb. It was a servant lamb. But then we have the bread. It is to be unleavened bread. You see, God said, we've got to go. When I say go, you've got to be ready. You don't have time to let that thing rise. Many of you have made bread. You know, you've got to make that dough and then you've got to set it out for a little while and let that stuff puff up a little bit. God said, no, you're not going to have time for that. When I tell you to go, you pick up and go. Be ready. Have your clothes on. Have your bags packed. And you've got to move when I say move. You see, that bread was unleavened bread which represents the purity and holiness of God. And then they would have the herbs. Now, when I cook today, when I put something on the grill over the fire, I like to season my stuff. Sometimes simple salt and pepper. Sometimes I have some kind of coffee rub or a barbecue rub or a Greek seasoning. I've got all kinds of things. When I talk about they wanted to make this thing flavorful, no, these would have been bitter herbs. Because what that stood for is the suffering. Have you ever eaten anything bitter? I remember when I was a teenager, I liked chocolate, right? So I go into my pantry and I've got some Hershey's cocoa powder. And I'm thinking, ooh, chocolate. I take a big old spoonful. Dig it right in my mouth. That's not chocolate. That's death on a spoon. Man, that stuff was bitter. It was horrible. I couldn't get it out of my mouth. And here's that picture of these bitter herbs. And it's not pleasant. It's rough because it symbolizes the suffering of His people. We have the herbs. And then lastly, we have, or fourthly, we have the juice. Now, because this would have been Passover, they would not have used yeast. And so the thought is, the idea is, this is unfermented fruit of the vine. This is essentially grape juice. But this represented the blessing and the abundance of God. And this part was not added until they came into the Promised Land. The land flowing with milk and honey. And they began to celebrate how good God had been to them. Beloved, I don't think I need to remind you or myself this morning how good God's been to us. No matter what we're walking through, no matter what struggle and strife we may have, God has been good. Then we have the songs that they would sing. Many scholars believe that these songs can be found in the book of Psalms. More specifically, Psalm 113-144. Psalms of praise. And they would end with, and most likely when we get to the end of the section of Scripture we read in verse 30 where it says, after they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives that it was most likely one of the Psalms between 115 and 118. Again, a psalm of praise after they had celebrated this remembrance of what God had done for Israel all those years ago. And so it was in this context that Jesus is teaching His disciples and establishing the Lord's Suffering. And of course, you and I have the great benefit of being able to look back and say, oh, I see the symbolism here. As they ate the lamb with the lamb. As they broke the bread with the bread of life. As they established or partake of the bitter herbs with the One who would release them from the suffering that they faced. As they drank the juice of the One who would give blessing and abundance. As they sang songs with the One that the songs were about. And so, He established the Lord's Supper to remind us exactly who He is and what He has done for us. There's something awesome that happens at the end of this section of Scripture. In verse 28, He says, for this is My blood of the New Covenant. So in this moment, there is an exchange that takes place. You'll notice here in just a second, there are a couple of elements from the original Lord's Supper that we don't have here. You see, there was a removal of the lamb. I love lamb. And so if there's a piece of grilled lamb right there on that table, I'd have been done five minutes ago because I'm ready to get to the lamb. But you'll notice there's no lamb. Why? Because Jesus is the Lamb of God and He takes away the sins of the world. We don't need a sacrificial lamb on this table because we have a sacrificial lamb at the right hand of God our Father. We don't need a temporary one that would sit here and if we left it here, it would rot and it would get worms and maggots and it would become disgusting. But no, there's an eternal lamb who gave Himself for us that will not see decay. Beloved, when He walked out of that grave, there was not a bit of death or decay or destruction or rigamortis or breakdown on Him. Why? Because He walked out the same as He walked in. Fully resurrected. The eternal Lamb of God. So we have the removal of the lamb. We have the removal of the herbs. In just a few moments, you will take this little piece of bread and you will put it in your mouth and you will realize there's no seasoning on that thing at all. Part of me says that even a little bit of bitter taste would be an improvement. But we don't need the bitter herbs. Why? Because the sufferings of this present world are nothing to be compared to love as in our Christ Jesus our Lord. That the sufferings we face, beloved, if we're really true and honest to ourselves, the sufferings we face today are nothing compared to the sufferings He faced for us. Because I don't know about you, but I've never been beaten with a cat of nine tails. I don't know about you, but I've never had a crown of thorns pressed down on my head. I don't know about you, but I've never been mocked and spit on and slapped and kicked and beaten to the point where I was barely recognizable as a man. I was never hung on a cross, had nails driven through my hands and my feet. I've never had a spear pierced through my thigh. I've never had the same people that were crying, Hosanna! Hosanna! Hosanna! Then just a few days later say, Crucify Him! Look, preacher, I stomped my toe yesterday. We don't need the bitter herbs because the sufferings we face are nothing compared to what He faced for us. So there is the removal of the lamb, the removal of the bitter herbs, and then there is a refreshing, if you will. What do we still have in our Lord's Supper here today? We have the bread, the wafer, the cracker, whatever you want to call it, which is the body that is broken for us to pay our sin debt, making us the righteousness of God. Making us just in the eyes of a holy God. And then there's the juice that symbolizes the blood that is shed for us. Blessing us with purity and holiness before God. And then there are the songs that we will sing. An act of praise to God, for we have done nothing and He has done everything. So, beloved, as we continue, may our hearts, may our minds be in tune to what we're here for. We're here to be reminded of what Christ has done for us. I want to say this for just a moment. And I want you to hear me and hear me well. God loves you. And He proved that by sending Jesus to offer Himself as a sacrifice for you and for me. And you say, well, preacher, what about ...? There's nothing that you can do that will make God stop loving you. Nothing. There may be things that you do that man may judge you for. There may be things that you do that man may look down on you, but God's love for you will never fade. And on the same side of that coin, God's love for you can never be increased. And so we can't walk around, well, I did this and did this and I'll do this, but God loves me more than He loves you, no? The sacrifice that He made was for everybody that was at that table. And if you want to be amazed, just dive into who the twelve disciples were. And look at the type of people they were. And yet, God loves... One of the studies, and I'm going to try to hurry with this, but I found this very, very interesting. My view of the Last Supper, the Lord's Supper has been skewed by a painting that we all know, right? You see the painting and you have this really long table and all the disciples are on one side of the table and there's Jesus in the middle and the disciples are spread out. That's not how the traditional Jewish Passover meal would have been celebrated. The traditional Jewish Passover meal would have been at a table that was kind of U-shaped. And what that was for is if this is our U, so whoever was helping serve the meal could walk into the middle of that table and serve everybody that was sitting at that table, right? If it was a big, long table, they came in here and they would serve the wine, the food, whatever, and then they would leave. And so, the place of prominence was that the host would sit at the first chair on the left or the first spot. And then the guest of honor would sit at the second spot. And then going around the rest of the table, there was a hierarchy of age and importance. So, this one teacher that I was listening to brought in some Scriptures and I'm not going to dive into, but what he said was John would have took the first spot because he is the one that took the host position. He sat at that first spot. Jesus sat at the second spot because He was the guest of honor. He was the one that was in the most... But right next to Him was Judas. And he said, because if you'll notice in the Scripture, he says the one that dips his hand with me and the bread, right? So, he couldn't have dipped his hand if he was on the other side of the table. He had to be in proximity to Him. And so, it would have been John, Jesus, and Judas. And then that's when the argument of who was the greatest in heaven was going to be. So, you can imagine your kids, right? Trying to get into the front seat of the car. And they're kicking and screaming and dragging the other one out. Now, it's my turn to sit in the front. Well, that's what the disciples were acting like. Where are we going to sit around the table? I'm more important than you are. And I'm higher and I'm older. And they started arguing about who was going to be the greatest. And it kind of makes sense, doesn't it? But that got me to think. John, whom Jesus loved at his right hand. Judas, the one whom hated Him at his left. But Jesus' love... He never looked at Judas and said, Judas, I don't think I'd sit there if I were you, my friend. Judas, I think you need to be on the other side of the table. We know what you're about to do, so you've got the last spot because you're the least of these. No, instead we see Jesus inviting them in. Inviting them to be part of the Twelve and allowing Him to sit at His left hand. Why? Because He loves everyone the same. He loves everyone the same. So I said all of that to say this because I want you to understand this to the very depths of who you are. He loves you. He loves you. He loves you. Don't ever forget that. But with this establishment of the Lord's Supper, there comes a warning. Found in 1 Corinthians 11:27 and 28, Paul writes, 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. Let a man examine himself. You see, that's our responsibility this morning before we partake is that we will all examine ourselves. Are we in a right relationship with God? Are we in a right relationship with the One who gave it all for us? Well, how do we get into a right relationship? One, salvation. Have you acknowledged Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior? Do you trust Him in the work that He did on the cross? This sacrifice that we are symbolizing with this bread and this wine, the sacrifice that was given for you that you might become the righteousness of God, that you might stand before a holy God as righteous and just? You say He did that for you because He loves you. Have you done that today? Is there some sin in your life that you've been holding on to, that you've been hiding, that nobody else may know about? God knows about it. You've been clinging to it. Holding on to it. Keeping it deep inside. But if we're going to be right with God, then we have to lay it out beforehand. God, I'm guilty of this. Forgive me. Cleanse me from all unrighteousness. And Scripture says that if we will confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins. And cleanse us from all unrighteousness. There is nothing that you have done that He will not forgive you for. If you will repent of it, turn to Him and lay it out beforehand. So we want to take a moment right here, right now. We don't want this to be taken lightly or half-heartedly. So we want to give everyone an opportunity to repent, to confess, to receive grace and love and forgiveness of God for any unconfessed sin that they may have in their life. You come. This altar's open. You do business with God before we partake of the Lord's Supper. Isaiah 53, 5 says, He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement for our peace was upon Him. And by His stripes, we are healed. John 19, 1 says, And so then Pilate took Jesus and scourged Him. 1 Peter 2:24, He bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness by whose stripes you were healed. This bread symbolizes Christ's body which was broken for us. And we do this in remembrance and honor of Him. Take and eat. Lord, we do thank You for that body. That body that You wrapped Yourself in, that You came and lived and met us where we were, so that we could have a great high priest that was not ignorant to our situation, but knew exactly what we would face, and yet sinned not. Lord, You are the perfect Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Lord, we thank You for the body. In Jesus' name I pray, Amen. Please remove the lid from the juice. Hebrews 9:22 Without shedding of blood, there is no remission. 1 John 1:7 The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanses us from all sin. Ephesians 1:7 In Him, we have redemption through His blood. The forgiveness of sins according to the riches of His grace. Matthew 26:28 says, For this is my blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins. This juice symbolizes Christ's blood, which was shed for us. And we do this in remembrance and honor of Him. Take and drink. Lord, we thank You for that blood. That blood that was so willingly shed for us of people, of stubborn people that often rejects You, that often sings Your praises with our mouth only to live a life that is not worthy of the Gospel to which we were called. Lord, Your faithfulness is seen in that blood. Because it is that blood that washes us as white as snow. It is that blood that prepares us to be in Your perfect presence for all of eternity. And so, Lord, we thank You for that blood. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen. My prayer for you and for me as we get ready to close out our time of communion, I want to read one of the psalms that they would have sang potentially would have sang at the end of their Lord's Supper. Psalm 117. Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles. Loud Him, all you peoples. For His merciful kindness is great toward us. And the truth of the Lord endures forever. Praise the Lord. And all of God's people said, Amen.