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Discerning correctly the Body of Christ in preparation for celebrating the Lord's Supper
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Details
Discerning correctly the Body of Christ in preparation for celebrating the Lord's Supper
Comment
Discerning correctly the Body of Christ in preparation for celebrating the Lord's Supper
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The transcription discusses the importance and significance of the Lord's Supper, also known as communion, in the Christian faith. It explains that the Lord's Supper is a public declaration of faith in Jesus and a celebration of the new covenant and the finished work of Jesus. It also highlights the connection between meals and fellowship in the Bible and how meals were used as acts of worship and thanksgiving to God. The transcription emphasizes that the Lord's Supper is a picture of salvation and a reminder of Jesus' sacrifice for humanity. It concludes by stating that without Jesus, there would be no hope of salvation and that the Old Testament sacrificial system was a foreshadowing of Jesus' sacrifice. So if you'll open your Bibles to John chapter 6. John chapter 6. We'll start reading in verse 47. This is Jesus speaking when he said, Most assuredly I say to you, He who believes in me has everlasting life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness and are dead. This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I shall give is my flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world. The Jews therefore quarreled among themselves, saying, How can this man give us his flesh to eat? Then Jesus said to them, Most assuredly I say to you, Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on me will live because of me. This is the bread which came down from heaven. Not as your Father saved the manna and our dead. He who eats this bread will live forever. Let's pray. Father, we come before you, Lord, with awe, with reverence, with a grateful heart, to partake in this wonderful banquet that you have for us, Lord. Every time we come, Father, as a family, in this sanctuary to partake in your word, you prepare a banquet for us. And Lord, our desire for tonight is that you would open our hearts, Lord, that you would give us revelation of even the things that we think we already know some about, that you would bring us deeper. More importantly, Father, that Christ may be glorified in our hearts through this message even more, and that we will live for you all the days of our lives. Father, touch our hearts and glorify the name of Jesus. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. So the Lord's Supper, what is it? Why do we celebrate it? What is the biblical importance of the Lord's Supper? And more importantly, what are the underlying implications for believers? The Lord's Supper, or as it's commonly referred to as communion, is supposed to be one of the most solemn and important acts that believers do collectively. Why? Because it refers to the finished work of Jesus Christ. Now, it's interesting to me that it's called the Lord's Supper, that God associates this important event with a meal. A supper is a meal. When God created mankind, He placed meals at the center of His relationship with us. He said to Adam and Eve, You are free to eat from any tree in the garden, except the one, of course, that was forbidden. But meals were designed by God to be a place of fellowship, of people coming together in unity and in harmony. Think about holidays that we celebrate every year, Thanksgiving and Christmas and a wedding celebration, somebody's birthday, they usually revolve around a meal. And the people that are celebrating them usually go above and beyond to make sure that the meal is great, not because they want to feed their guests great food, but because the event that they are celebrating is so important. So God designed meals to be places of fellowship, not only with each other, but more importantly, with Him. In the Old Testament times, meals and celebrations were established as an act of worship to the Lord. If we visit the Exodus account, when Israel was still in the house of slavery in Egypt, we read that God gave instructions to Moses. We all know the story. God gives instructions to Moses and says, Sacrifice a lamb, it has to be perfect, one year old, one per household. Every house needed to do this. And they were to use the blood and mark the doorposts and the lintels of every house. After that He said, You are to eat the flesh of the lamb that same night. This was the first Passover meal that was established in Scripture. It's interesting to know that God instituted this first feast, this first celebration, in the midst or in the context of the people of Israel being delivered from bondage or slavery. As you know the story, God caused the angel of death to pass over the houses of those people who had marked the houses with blood and as a result, the firstborns of those houses were spared. Now after they came out of the house of slavery, God instituted six other feasts altogether. There were many feasts in the Old Testament, but there were seven that were the most important feasts every year. And of those seven, there were three that were THE feasts. Passover was one, you may recall Pentecost was the other, and the Feast of Tabernacles was another one. During all these feasts, God's people would come together to celebrate, but also to remember the things that God had done to save them from destruction. All these feasts were really acts of thanksgiving and worship. Today we're going to celebrate a feast. And you see natural elements here and there, but what we do today is really an act of thanksgiving and worship. Pastor John was praying up there in intercession right now, and he was saying that we wouldn't approach this as something common, as something that we do normally. He prayed that God would give us revelation of what exactly it is that we are celebrating here. Because we are celebrating Christ in this event. Now let's fast forward to the Old Testament, and we see that Jesus nears the end of His ministry, and after having done the will of God for three and plus years, He had taught and preached the gospel of the kingdom, He had healed and restored many, He had revealed the name of God the Father to the people, and He had trained His disciples, and laid down the foundation that they needed for New Testament godly living. And on the very night that He is about to be betrayed and arrested, He decides to have a final meal with His disciples. Now before this, they had had many meals together. This wasn't the first one. In Old Testament times, the sharing of a meal was a confirmation of friendship and goodwill. That's what it meant. No wonder why the Pharisees were so angry and enraged when they saw Jesus sitting and eating with the publicans and the tax collectors, with sinners. Because they knew the significance of what it was to share a meal. Now this last meal that Jesus was about to have was no ordinary meal. It was none other than the Passover meal that we read of in the Exodus account. But instead of celebrating and thanking God for saving them from delivering them from slavery in Egypt, this time Jesus points to Himself. The true bread that came down from heaven to save humanity. What was Jesus doing? He wanted His disciples, including you and me, to celebrate that He was about to save them and deliver them from eternal destruction. So to answer the question, what is the Lord's Supper? I believe it is a public declaration of our faith in Jesus. Very much like water baptism is a public confession that we were buried together, when we go in the water, we were buried together with Christ and then we were raised together with Christ. That is a public confession of something that we believe. In the same way, I believe that the Lord's Supper is a public declaration of salvation. It is a picture of salvation. 1 Corinthians 11.26 says, For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until He comes. So we declare and proclaim that Jesus died, but it is not only that He died, it says, until He returns, until He comes back. So if He comes back, that means that He was raised from the dead and He went to prepare a place for us in heaven, and He is going to come back and get us. It is a picture of salvation. It is also a celebration of the new covenant, of the finished work of Jesus, of the complete plan of redemption that God set into motion that eternally saves those from destruction, those who receive Jesus as Lord and as Savior. Hebrews 9.12 says that after Jesus ascended, after the cross, after He was raised from the dead, He ascended and entered the Holy of Holies in heaven, presented His blood once and for all, and obtained an eternal redemption for us. The word redemption means to pay the full ransom price to free a slave. So when we celebrate the Lord's Supper, we profess that Jesus came in the flesh in the likeness of man to rescue us from destruction. When John the Baptist sees Jesus coming onto the Jordan River, he looks at Him and says, Behold the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. John the Baptist is using Passover language, salvation language. The Lamb that was slain back in Exodus, that was able to deliver them from that destruction at that moment, but was not able to do what the blood of lambs and bulls and goats was able to do. Now John the Baptist sees Jesus and says, This is the one whose blood is going to take away the sin of the world. That is to those who receive Him as Lord and Savior. If Jesus hadn't come in the flesh, all humanity would be without hope of salvation. Well, what about Old Testament people? Weren't they God's people? Didn't God say, and these are my people? Weren't they in right standing with God through the system that God had established? The sacrificial system? Yes, but it was never without Jesus. The Bible says that the old system was a type in a shadow of what was to come. Jesus. If Jesus wasn't, then there could be no type and shadow of Him. If I'm standing right here and you can see my shadow, suppose that there's something blocking you from seeing me, but you can see my shadow, that means that I'm here. If I'm not here, then you see no shadow. So even though the Old Testament was written, even though the Old Covenant came first, it could not exist unless the true Lamb of God was already there. The Revelation says that the Lamb of God was slain before the foundation of the earth. So even though that is kind of hard for us to understand, everything was pointing to Jesus. Scripture says, There is no other name given among men under heaven by which we must be saved. It was always Jesus, it will always be Jesus. There is not one person from Genesis to Revelation that receives salvation that does not receive it through the name of Jesus. Granted the Revelation of Jesus wasn't as it is in the Old Testament, as it is now in the Old Testament, we know that. The Pauline Epistles give a picture of the Revelation of Jesus that not even the Gospels give, much less the Old Testament. It was always Jesus from beginning to end. So why do we celebrate the Lord's Supper is another good question. Well, first of all, obedience. Because Jesus said, do it. He said, do this in remembrance of Me. So we do it to remember what Jesus did for us. And it is important that we always keep it fresh in our hearts and in our minds because we are, in our humanity, it's very easy to forget. We go through the motions and it's just easy to forget. In addition to this, when we celebrate the Lord's Supper, we do it because we want to express a deep sense of gratitude for what He did. It is meant to be a humbling experience. Ephesians says that you are saved by grace through faith, and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God and not of works that no man should boast. Last week, Pastor John was teaching on the series of spiritual maturity, and he made reference to that level of maturity that says, Christ and I. Not the perfect mature believer, but one who is in route. And so this believer says, yes, I believe that I am saved by the finished work of Jesus Christ. However, all the work that I'm doing for God is good. I'm serving the Lord in church. I'm preaching. I'm teaching. I'm in intercession. I come to every meeting. I think I may be a little deserving of salvation. We can fall into that trap. As we grow in the Lord and serve Him, we start having successes and victories here and there because we're walking with the Lord. But we may come to the place, if we're not careful, of having that self-righteousness, of being self-righteous. Christ and I. Yes, Christ, but I too. I'm there in that formula. The Lord's Supper is about remembering what Christ did for us. It's meant to bring us down to the reality so that we can say, it is only because of the finished work of Jesus Christ that I am saved, and nothing else. Now all these things, all these serving and working for God, those are good, but those are things that accompany salvation. Just as a side note, I don't want to talk against them. It's good that we serve, it's good that we do our devotionals, and come to church and attend fellowship group and do all the things that we do for the Lord, but they are not the ones that grant us salvation. It is faith in the Lord Jesus. But after we have received the salvation that Jesus offers, then all these good works accompany us. Because the Bible says that before the foundation of the world, God prepared good works that we should walk in them. Jesus is the real gift of heaven. The Bible says, and He sent His Word, He is God the Father. God the Father sent His Word and delivered them of their destruction. John chapter 1 says, and in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Verse 14, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. That's Jesus. And He sent His Word, Jesus, and delivered them of their destruction. It was always the plan of God to do it through Jesus. That is what we celebrate here. And it is good that we remember those things, because if we don't remember that, then we can be in a dangerous place of being too haughty. We also celebrate the Lord's Supper, because we want to reach a deeper level of fellowship with Him. Now, this deep sense of gratitude that I was just talking about, that we express towards the Lord, it causes God to draw near to us. The Bible says, draw near to me, and I will draw near to you. So, this gratitude that we express causes God to come and draw near to us. And when God comes, He manifests Himself in a very unique and personal way to each of us, and that causes us to draw more closely to Him. It causes us that our desire for Him will increase, that our longing for Him will be greater as a result of celebrating an event like this. Our devotion for Him will expand. Our love for Him will deepen. In the Old Testament times, even when Jesus was there with the people, when they celebrated the Passover, it was customary for the people to recite a blessing right before they had the Passover. And the blessing that they recited was, Blessed are you, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who brings forth bread from the earth. If you've seen The Chosen, the program The Chosen, you know that every time Jesus, even with the disciples, that every time they celebrated the Passover, which in scripture, it was only twice that it's registered, it doesn't mean that He didn't celebrate it more, but every time He was about to celebrate it, this is the prayer that was recited. It was customary. But when Jesus is about to celebrate the Passover with His disciples, on this crucial night, He does not recite this prayer. Instead He says, and we read the account in Matthew chapter 26, It says that He took the 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. The account of this account in the Gospel of Luke, you can find it in Luke 22, if you can turn there quickly. I love the language that Jesus uses here. Luke chapter 22, starting in verse 15. Then He said to them, With fervent desire I have desire to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. Jesus knew the significance of the Passover of the Old Testament. He knew the significance that what He was about to do was for all ages and for all eternity. It was going to be able to save humanity or those who received them once and for all. So that's why it says, With fervent desire I have desire to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I say to you, I will no longer eat of it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God. Then He took the cup and gave thanks and said, Take this and divide it among yourselves. For I say to you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes. Verse 19, And He took the bread, gave thanks, and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, This is My body. Remember that phrase. We'll come back to it. This is My body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of Me. Likewise, He also took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in My blood which is shed for you. I want to draw your attention to this phrase, This is My body. It's in both accounts. The Matthew account and the Luke account. He said, This is My body. What is it referring to? Is it referring to the fleshly body of Christ that was given to believers to bring us salvation? The body that was broken? Yes. But there's more to that. Turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 11. And I want to show you why I'm saying there's more to that. 1 Corinthians chapter 11. We'll read verses 27 to 32. 1 Corinthians chapter 11. 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. We often read this passage and we say, Before I come to the table and to receive the Lord's Supper, I need to examine myself if I have any unconfessed sin or anything that needs to be dealt with. Remember Jesus said, If you come to the altar with your gift and you remember that you have something against your brother, go settle it and then come back. When we read this passage, this portion of Scripture, we think of things that we haven't dealt with yet. Any unconvinced sin, I haven't forgiven my brother, I'm going to go and make amends. And it's right, but there's more to it also. 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. That means they're dead. 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. Doesn't the New Testament call the church the body of Christ? Isn't the body of Christ made up of individual believers? Individual believers like you and me. So when we read Jesus saying, This is my body, we normally think of His body that was given on the cross, but it also makes reference to the body of Christ. He is saying, This is my body. It says, For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord's body. Treating other believers, whoever they may be, your spouse, one of the least of these, that believer that you don't really like, that you always try to avoid when you come to church, or that person that we like to gossip on, or point our fingers to make them feel better. When we treat any believer, whether here or anywhere in the world, in an unworthy manner, in a manner that is not honoring to them, it puts us in a very dangerous position because we are dishonoring the Lord. It says that he eats and drinks judgment to himself. For this reason, many are weak and sick among you, and many sleep. Now, I don't read this to end on a heavy note, but it's important to note that when Jesus says, When you approach the Lord's Supper, make sure that you don't do it in an unworthy manner. Make sure that you haven't dishonored anybody in the body of Christ. If you have, then deal with it with the Lord. So, I wanted to end with this, and before we pray, because before we partake in the Lord's Supper, I want to give all of us, we're all human and we all make mistakes, and we all miss it every now and then, but there is a blessing here. The Lord says, I have prepared a table for you in the presence of your enemies. And what we are about to do here is a deep act of worship. I pray that Jesus would be glorified as we partake in this Lord's Supper, and that a deeper revelation and understanding of the finished work of Christ would come as a result. And so, we don't want anything to come in between you and that. That's why I came to this passage. So, before we partake in it, I want us to have some time to reflect, and to ask the Lord, God, have I wronged somebody? Have I treated somebody in an unworthy manner? In a way that is not honoring to them? So, I want us to take this opportunity to confess, and to repent if the Lord shows you that there is somebody in your life, and that includes me too. So, as the worship team comes up, we're going to close in prayer, and if you will all stand. Like I said, this is an amazing act of worship that we are about to do here. And I want us to be solemn. I want us to be in reverence, with an attitude of humility, because of what the Lord Jesus Christ did. So, let's pray. Father, we approach the throne of grace with such grateful hearts, because of what the Lord Jesus did, because of the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. And God, we thank you, Lord, that we were slaves, but we are no longer, because Jesus has set us free. Death was arrested, and my life began, when you revealed yourself to me, and I said yes to you. And so, Father, as we approach the Lord's Supper, God, we pray that you will bring to our remembrance, to our attention, to our memory, if there is anyone, Lord, that we have wronged in the body of Christ. We don't want to approach the Lord's Supper. We don't want to partake in communion of the blood, and the bread, and the body of Christ, if we have wronged someone. We don't want to do it in the wrong way. We want to do it your way. So, we pray, Lord, that as you bring people to our attention, we just say, Lord, I am sorry. I confess my sin, and I ask that you will forgive me, and give me the strength to make amends with somebody if it needs to be done. And we pray, Father, that from now on, we will be discerning of the body. That we will be like David when he was running away from King Saul, who said, far be it from me that I would touch the Lord's anointed. Every believer in the world is anointed by God. Far be it from us that we would speak against the Lord's anointed. Father, help us guard our tongue. And as we approach the Lord's Supper, Father, after having confessed, Lord, if there is any unconfessed sin also in our hearts, Father, we pray that you will forgive us. Lord, we pray that you will glorify yourself, Father. As Pastor John administers and leads us in this time of communion, open our eyes to receive a deeper revelation of Jesus Christ. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. You can be seated. I'm going to ask Steve and Lindsay, Francis and Nishma, if you'll come and prepare. They're going to go through and serve you where you're seated. Isaac and Grace, if you could move into the middle section, please. It's a very good message, Pastor Jose. And he pretty much hit all the key verses concerning communion. A picture that God gave me as I was reading over the portion in 1 Corinthians 11 that he didn't read. Paul is instructing the Corinthians. And the reason that he was rebuking them was that, you know, communion back then was a full meal. It wasn't just a symbolic wafer and a half an ounce of juice. It was a full meal. And people were coming and acting like gluttons during the Lord's Supper. They were getting drunk on wine and they used it as an opportunity to fulfill the desires of their flesh rather than fulfilling this thing that Christ instituted for us to praise and rejoice in the fact that he died for us. What his body broken was and what the blood shed for us was. And Paul says, I've received of the Lord that which I also imparted to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the same night in which he was betrayed, he took bread and when he had given thanks, he broke it. And I've read this passage of Scripture so many times. I've read it giving communion so many times. And this time what stopped me was he gave thanks and he broke it. And immediately my thought went to the feeding of the 5,000, which is also in John chapter 6, that account. And in John chapter 6 it just says, and he distributed the food after praying over it and giving thanks. But in the other three accounts, in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, it says that Jesus took the bread, he gave thanks for it, and then he broke it. You see, he only broke it once. He gave thanks for it, he broke it, and that was sufficient. Hebrews tells us that Christ was broken once. He shed his blood once. And it was sufficient for all of mankind. At the feeding of the 5,000 there was sufficient enough for those who were there and leftovers for those who would come after. It continued to feed even after that event. And so also Christ's body as it was broken and his blood as it was shed continues on multiplying and multiplying. Even as those five loaves and three fishes multiplied to feed others. So also the blood of Christ, his body broken and bruised for us, continues on adding people, supplying people. Supplying, feeding them. There's room for everyone. It reminded me of an old hymn that the chorus says, there's room at the cross for you. Though a million have come, there's still room for one. There's room at the cross for you. Let's stand and pray as we partake of these. The miracle of the 5,000 is an ever living, ever active miracle. As a type and shadow of Christ's body broken for us. And his blood shed for the forgiveness of our sins. Father we bless your name. We thank you Lord God. That in your sovereign plan. Even from before you said let there be light. Even before you moved upon your desire to create. Father you knew it would come to the death of your own son on the cross. And it always amazes me Lord God that you went through with creation anyway. Father we thank you for the broken body of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. That he was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. That the chastisement of our peace was laid upon him. And by the stripes on his back. We receive healing. In all forms, spirit, soul and body. We thank you Lord God that as we take this bread today. As we collectively gather before this table. We give thanks and we break this bread. Not as anything more than symbolic. And we eat this bread in remembrance Lord God. Of Jesus who has not only. Saved and healed us. But as. As in gratitude of the many that he will save and heal. Beyond our lives and through our lives. In Jesus name take the bread and eat it. Amen. We thank you for the cup. The blood of the new covenant. This new covenant that provides for us a new and living way into your presence. This new covenant where you write your law upon our hearts. This new covenant by which. You view us not by our actions. Not by the things that we have done. But through the blood of Christ. You no longer look at us through a veil of separation. But a veil of acceptance. We thank you that the blood of Christ cleanses us from all of our sins. That it has done the work that we don't have to earn it. We don't have to work for it. We don't deserve it and there's nothing we can do to ever be worthy enough to receive it. Thank you Jesus. For shedding your blood. For allowing yourself to go through. Such inhumane treatment. For the joy that was set before you. You endured the cross. And for the joy that was set before us. We have accepted it. And in remembrance of you. In remembrance of what has been done for us. We take of this cup. You may drink in remembrance of him. And as Paul says. At the end of. His statement concerning this. That as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup. You proclaim the Lord's death till he comes. But not only his death till he comes. But we proclaim. The souls. That are still to come as a result. It's what we're believing for as a church right. That many souls would come into his kingdom would we turn. And so we take. This bread in this cup. Remembering what he's done. And in anticipation. Of what he will do. In Jesus name. Amen. Amen.
