Lords Supper2024

The speaker is discussing the importance of the Lord's Supper and its purpose. They emphasize that it is a visual representation of what Jesus Christ has done for us and that it is a necessary part of our growth and testimony. The speaker also highlights the need to remember the presence, provision, and passion of the Lord during the Supper. They caution against taking it carelessly and emphasize the importance of understanding and discerning the significance of Jesus' sacrifice. 11, as we get ready to prepare for the Lord's Supper tonight, and as I mentioned this morning, we're kind of beginning the holy days or the holidays, as we now refer to them, and one of the things is that the first thing that we have in the whole holidays, in that season, is Thanksgiving. And there's nothing more, as I mentioned in the sermon this morning, there is nothing more that will get us thankful than looking at Jesus Christ, and the Lord's Supper is a visual picture of what Jesus Christ has done for us, and sometimes in ours and in my inadequacies in order to say the right things or do the right things, the Lord's Supper kind of compensates for that, because it kind of gives us a picture of what Jesus Christ has done for us, and when we look at the Lord's Supper, he tells us in the first verse of chapter 11 and verse 1, he says, he starts out by saying, Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ. Now I praise you, brethren, that you remember me in all things, and keep the ordinances as I delivered them to you, and so we need to understand that the ordinance is the Lord's Supper, and an ordinance is something that we come together as a church in order to do, and when we perform the ordinances, it's something that is praiseworthy, it's something that gives glory to God, because the ordinances, the Lord's Supper and baptism, the two ordinances that we have, have nothing to do with us. They both have everything to do with Jesus Christ and what he has done for us, and as we think about them, two different ordinances tonight, we are deliberately taking the Lord's Supper and the ordinance of the Lord's Supper, and you know, it's sad sometimes, and I'm proud for each and every one of you to come, and I know we've got some that are sick and everything else, but you know, we ought to make sure that we don't neglect the Lord's Supper. Sometimes I wonder that I don't do it enough, and give us enough opportunities, and then other times I think, you know, you do it so much, people take it for granted and just kind of skip out and don't do anything, but it's a very important ordinance. It's something that we need to do, and you know, unfortunately, a lot of people, well, it has absolutely nothing to do with salvation, so we can skip it, we can put it off to the side, we can neglect it, and that's just not true. That's not what God designed for us to do. So when we understand about the Lord's Supper, that it is more than just a ritual, it's more than just something that we do here in our congregation. The Lord's Supper is something that is necessary for you and I to be a part of in obedience. The Lord's Supper helps us with our maturity, the Lord's Supper is a part of our testimony of us sharing what God has done for us, and it's a necessary thing for our growth. And so tonight I want us to kind of focus on why are we doing the Lord's Supper, and the first thing is, what is the purpose? The purpose of the Lord's Supper is to remember, is to draw us back, and going into this holiday season, there's nothing better to get our holiday started than to look back at what Jesus Christ has done. When we come to the 11th chapter of 1 Corinthians, he tells us the purpose of the Supper. And the first purpose is to remember the presence of the Lord. When he writes this, it's amazing because he tells us in verse 20, he says, When you come together, therefore, into one place, this is not to eat, the Lord's Supper. He goes on, For in eating, every one taketh before other his own supper, and one is hungry, and another is drunk. And what? Do you not have houses to eat and drink in? Or despise you the church of God, and shame them that have not? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you in this? I praise you not. For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus, 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, this do in remembrance of me. And so this do in remembrance of me. The Lord's Supper is an opportunity to remember the Jesus Christ and his presence that is with us. And we're not talking about someone that has been in the past, that has died, that has been buried. But we are talking about Jesus Christ, and we need to understand, not only are we remembering that he died for us, but we're also remembering that he's present with us. And he said, I will never leave you, nor forsake you. And so Jesus Christ is here in this service tonight. He is with us as we observe this. And this is just not a moment of silence for someone that is dead, a moment of silence for someone that is gone. What tonight is in the Lord's Supper is an act of fellowship. It's an act where we come together with Jesus Christ because he is here tonight. And before us is the table. The table that houses the bread and houses the grape juice. And what we are doing tonight is this is a part of fellowship that we have with Jesus Christ tonight. And so tonight, as we do this, we need to also look beyond the symbols. We need to look beyond just the bread and the grape juice. And we need to think about that this is not just a cup and it's not just bread. But these symbols and stuff are what Jesus Christ has done for us in the past. It's what he has already done. And so that we remember the presence of the Lord. But in this act of remembering, we also remember the provision of the Lord. We remember what Jesus Christ has done for us. And so when we take this supper, we understand, he says in verse 24, when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, take eat, this is my body, which is broken for you, this do in remembrance of me. As we observe the Lord's Supper tonight, we need to be thinking about everything that God has done for us. We need to think about everything that God has provided for us. And we need to be thinking about why did he do it? He did it because, you know, a lot of times we say Christ died for my sins. And that's a true statement that Christ did die for our sins. But as believers, I think we ought to change it and say it this way, that Christ died instead of me, because we need to be reminded that, yes, he died for us, but he died in my place. And I think we need to kind of focus in on that a little bit more, because, you know, I think sometimes we get careless and we get cavalier in our manners and stuff when we take the cup into our hand, we take the bread into our hand and we look at these as being symbols that represent, but we don't understand that these were more than symbols. These is what actually happened to Jesus Christ and what he did for us. And it's a way of saying thank you to Jesus Christ for what he has done. But notice also we see not only the purpose of the Lord's Supper, but we see the passion of the Lord's Supper. It says in verse 26, he says, for as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you do show the Lord's death till he comes. As we take this bread and we take this cup, it represents what the grain, the flour, when that wheat is harvested, there's a grain. And in order for that grain to be turned into bread, that grain has to be crushed. It has to be pulverized and made into a ground flour. And then you take that flour and you add a little bit of water, you add a little bit of oil, and then you have to put it into the oven and you have to bake it. You have to apply fire. You have to apply heat. And then you take the cup and we ingest the grape juice into our mouth. And the idea of the grape, in order to get the juice, the grape had to be pressed out. It had to be squeezed to get the life of the grape out of it so that we can take that. And so as we're doing the bread and as we're doing the grape juice, we're remembering the suffering. We're remembering the agony, the things that Jesus Christ went through and did on the cross of Calvary for us. And the Bible says, it explains that the very grape juice is literally the blood of the grape. In Deuteronomy chapter 32 and verse 14, he says, And, you know, I think about the name, the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus Christ prayed and where he was arrested, that literally means the wine press. And it was there that night that Jesus Christ was literally pressed and squeezed out. If you remember, he asked his disciples to pray with him. And what did they do? They went to sleep. And he woke them up and he said, why aren't you praying? Do you not understand? And what did they do? They went back to sleep. But what did Jesus Christ do? He went before his Father and it said, as he was being squeezed, as the pressure mounting upon his fleshly body, he literally sweat drops of blood. The capillaries in his body, his blood had already started to come forth. And so when we observe the Lord's Supper, we make sure that we don't do it carelessly, that we just don't do it to just be doing it. I think the songwriter that wrote Blessed Redeemer, Precious Redeemer, sees now I see him on Calvary's tree, wounded and bleeding for sinners pleading. They were blind and unheeding, but he was dying for me. I think that's what we need to be thinking about tonight. I think we need to be thinking about the passion of Jesus Christ, what he had to endure in order to bring us salvation. And then in verse 26, it tells us that we do this and we show that death, that suffering, what Jesus Christ did for us until he returns in verse 26, until he comes back. And so notice the purpose of the Lord's Supper in verse 29. We see that as we take this supper, we remember his presence. We remember his provision. We remember his passion, but we also remember his purpose. In verse 29, he says, For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord's body. Now what body is he talking about? Is he talking about that body that walked around in sandaled shoes and that walked around the Sea of Galilee and that walked to the cross at Calvary? That's not the body that he's talking about. He's talking about the church. He's talking about you and I that have received Jesus Christ as our personal Savior and have coveted together in this assembly. And what he is talking about, what was happening in this day and time, is they would gather up for the Lord's Supper and they would gather to have this huge feast. And they would come in and as they were having this feast, of course, it wasn't in the wine, the juice that they were serving, that they would bring their wine and stuff and people were literally getting drunk. They had turned this into a big feast and a big meal and a huge production. And can you imagine to get to the point to where you're drunk and you're out of control and then you all of a sudden stop everything and all of a sudden, and then you observe the Lord's Supper. And that's what he's telling us that we don't do. He's talking about the body of the church and that when we come together and we think about the purpose and the suffering of our Lord Jesus Christ, He wants us to remember His passion. He wants us to remember His provision and His purpose. And that He would have a new body. And that body is Jesus Christ. Now, He lives through the body of the church. When you look at the church, you see Jesus Christ. And so, the Lord's Supper being a church ordinance, it ties us and binds us together through the bonds of love. If you go back to 1 Corinthians 10 and verse 17, He says, For we being many are one bread and one body. For we are all partakers of that one bread. All of the grain, all of the seeds that was gathered from that wheat and brought in was grounded down together into a fine flour that was baked and presented as bread. And that's what you and I are. We are partakers. And that word partaker literally means that we are fellowshipping. We are one bread. We are one identity, one unity, one identity. All of us are the Lord's body. It takes every single one of us. Some of us are hands. Some of us are feet. Some of us are others. But it takes every single one of us to present Jesus Christ. You see the same thing in chapter 12 and verse 13 after chapter 11. He says, For by one Spirit are we all baptized, immersed into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free, and have been all made to drink into one Spirit. And so, just like all of the grains come together to form this bread, all of us have been come together to drink out of the one Spirit. We've all come through the spiritual baptism. We talked about that in Colossians a while back. We're not talking about water baptism. We're talking about spiritual immersion. Every single one of us is saved the same exact way. And then notice what he says in verse 2 of chapter 11. He says, I praise you, brethren, that you remember me in all things and keep the ordinances as I have delivered them to you. Keep the ordinances. And then we see in verse 28, But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread and drink of that cup. He doesn't say examine yourself and not eat. You know, I don't know where Christians, and I don't know who preached this and started this idea, but people, you know, they examine themselves. Well, I'm not worthy. I'm not going to partake of the Lord's Supper. He doesn't say that. He says examine yourself and then eat. And so, to withhold ourselves from the Lord's Supper and not to participate in the Lord's Supper as a Christian is a sin. It's disobedience. And so, as we look at this and he says this, why would we examine ourselves? And I think that's the part that we have to focus on. I think that's what we have to look at, because what we are doing is when we examine ourselves, we are confessing our sins. We are confessing what we have done wrong. How that we have our sinners, and is that not the first act of salvation? Is that you have to admit that you are a sinner and that Jesus Christ died for you? And so when we come back to His table, when we are looking back at His purpose and His passion, what are we doing? We're examining ourselves that all of us are unworthy. All of us are sinners. None of us is right. And so we take a moment and we get things right. How do we get things right? He says in 1 John 1.9, if we confess our sins, He's what? Faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And so, guess what? The same thing when I was nine years old and I admitted that I was a sinner is the same thing that I do tonight. I look at my life. I examine my life. And guess what? I'm going to come up not worthy for God. I'm going to come up and I'm going to measure. When I look at myself and examine myself, I am not worthy for everything that Jesus Christ did for me. But guess what? He says you don't have to be worthy. You just have to believe. If we believe in our heart and confess with our mouth, thou shalt be saved. And so He says examine yourself. Admit that you're not worthy. That we didn't deserve His passion. We didn't deserve His love. We didn't deserve His death, but He gave it anyway. And so He says, guess what? Remember and eat. Remember and eat. So the reason of the Lord's Supper all of a sudden becomes this blessing in our life. And it brings us to a place where we let the Holy Spirit of God do some radical surgery in us. It helps to expose some things that are in our heart. And that's why at this particular time, it's good going into the holidays because guess what? The holidays is very, very easy for us to become sinful, to become prideful, to become arrogant, to become selfish. All of these things, if you don't watch out, guess what? All of these things begin to rise up through the holidays, right? You know, you've got to get that favorite dish. You've got to cook it just right. You've got to prepare everything. And what happens? We begin to put so much stuff that's there that we've kind of become like Martha when Jesus Christ came to her house, right? She wanted to make sure. She said, Mary over here, she's not doing anything. But Jesus said, well, guess what? Mary is doing the right thing. She's feeding on me. She's talking to me. She's learning of me. She's taking time to be with me. And so as we observe the Lord's Supper tonight, let us examine ourselves and understand, look into our hearts, but let us confess our sins. And because the more that we try to cover up our sins, the more God's going to uncover them. But if we confess our sins, then what do we do? We cast them as far as the east is from the west. It's a guard at the bottom of the sea never to be brought up again. And so then look at verse 25. Here is our participation. How do we participate in the Lord's Supper? Our participation, number one, is first of all, a time of covenant. It's a time of covenant. It's a time of communion. Look at what he says in verse 25. After the same manner, also he took the cup and when he is up saying, this cup is the New Testament in my blood, this do you, as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. And then he says after the same manner, he did what? He gave the cup. And that word testament that he uses there, this cup is the New Testament. That word testament is the same Old Testament word as covenant. In other words, this is a covenant that Jesus Christ has made with us through His blood. You remember the covenant when He made the covenant with Abraham? Do you remember what He did? You remember He killed the animal? And part of the custom of that day and time was for both individuals to walk through that. They would take that cow. They would kill it. They would cut it in half and both individuals would pass through that corpse, that body of that calf. And what it did was it signified that I promise you upon the penalty of death that I will fulfill my covenant in agreement with you. But guess what? God walked through and then all of a sudden when Abraham got up to say, you know what? I'm fixing to keep my end of the covenant. God made him go to sleep and wouldn't allow him to pass through. See, it was all one-sided. In the Lord's Supper, Jesus' death is one-sided. He did it for you and I. It has nothing to do with us. He gave His blood and He made the covenant with us. And so when we observe the Lord's Supper, we're recognizing and remembering the covenant that Jesus Christ has made for us. And guess what? I had absolutely no part in it. He loved me in spite of me. And so notice here it is a blood covenant. And when we take that cup, when we take that bread, we're saying, God, I am in a covenant with You. I'm in a covenant with all of these brothers and sisters in Christ. We have come together to be thankful for what You did for us and to be a witness to those that don't know this. And so it's a time of covenant, but it's also a time of communion. And it says in verse 26, it says, for as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you do show the Lord's death till He comes. You eat what I eat. You drink what I drink. You are a covenant. You are a communion because of our common love, our common respect, our common commitment to Jesus Christ. Every single one of us here tonight are sinners saved by grace. And so we all come to this table the same way. But it's also a time of contemplation. It's a time to think. It's a time to allow ourselves to open up as we remember the passion of Jesus Christ. None of us have suffered the way Jesus Christ suffered. None of us have suffered to the extent of Jesus Christ. And we need to remember the purpose of our Lord. He says that we might be one body. His body. In Romans 12, verse 5, He talks about members one of another together. In Ephesians chapter 5, we saw that unity all over Ephesians that we are one body. We are all together. And so we ask ourselves, do we realize the seriousness and the solemnity of this supper tonight? Of this ordinance that we are doing? Are we reverent? Are we repentant? Are we where we are supposed to be? See, the problem with the church at Corinth was they were putting themselves before Jesus Christ. They were eating the big meal. They were beating the feast. They were telling people, hey, I'm going first. I'm doing this. And so that's why we wait on each other to observe the Lord's Supper. We wait and we do it all at the same time because we're being reverent. We're being repentant. We're taking ourselves out of the picture and we're focusing on Jesus Christ that is there. And so he says in verse 28, let a man examine himself and so let him eat of that bread. And drink of that cup. Let a man examine himself. And so right now, as we get ready to go into this Lord's Supper tonight, remember what Jesus Christ has done. But also examine yourself. And look at this blood covenant that Jesus Christ made with us. And it had absolutely nothing to do with us. And so once we examine ourselves, once we remember, then we do what? We eat. And so let's have a word of prayer. Father, we just thank You tonight so much for Your love. We thank You so much for the provision of salvation that You made on the cross of Calvary. And tonight as we come together with our brothers and sisters in Christ to observe Your ordinance, to observe Your Supper that You instituted as a blood covenant to each and every one of us, not to do it as an individual, not to do it on our own, but we are to come together as Your body and to observe this Supper because it's a time of contemplation. It's a time of fellowship. It's a time of communion and covenant. And Father, we just come to this tonight and we just as we get ready to observe this Lord's Supper, we just ask each and every one of us in the Holy Spirit to help us to peer into our heart, to peer into our mind, to peer into our body, and Father, to examine ourselves both mentally, physically, spiritually, and see where we are and who we are. And Father, when we come to the conclusion, help us to be able to confess the things that are not supposed to be there because of what You have done on the cross of Calvary and help us to accept Your grace and Your mercy and this covenant that You have done for us, that You have died for us on the cross of Calvary. When You cried, It is finished, You paid my debt. You paid for my sins. And Father, just help us as we observe this Lord's Supper to do it in an attitude of reverence tonight, to do it in an attitude of respect and in seriousness because Lord, it is the covenant that You made with us. As we do this tonight, we just thank You and praise You again for all that You have done for us because we know none of us would be here tonight if it wasn't for You. We thank You for loving us. We thank You for choosing us. We thank You for providing redemption for each and every one of us. In Your most precious and holy name we pray, Amen. At this time, I would like to ask the members of Kentucky Missionary Baptist Church if you would to please stand. We're going to do things just a little bit differently tonight. I'm going to ask Brother Phillip and Brother Austin to come and stand and take the cloth off of our table tonight and open it up ready for taking. We're going to do things just a little bit differently tonight. I want us to orderly to come by tonight and I want you to get your own juice, your own piece of bread and then just kind of hang out here at the altar. Just kind of get over to a spot by yourself and we're just going to observe the Lord's Supper tonight here at this altar as one body. Instead of being spread out and everything, it'll also show that unity. It'll show that harmony with each other that is there. And so we'll just start on this side. If you'll just kind of come through and then the middle section come through and then the section on the right and just kind of get yours and just ease over to a place somewhere in the first two rows or right here around where you can. If you're unable to do it or stand very long, if you'll just come up and get on one of the first front pews there, Brother Austin or Brother Phillip will help serve you. If you're unable to walk up here, we'll help you out. Just hang on to it, yeah. Time is broken down into three different categories. Past, present, and future. And so tonight as we observe the Lord's Supper, we're looking back to the cross of Calvary. But we're also looking forward to the day that He does it in person with us and not in spirit. Tonight He's here in spirit, but then He will be there in person. We also look at the present today because He is with us here tonight. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 11, For I have received of the Lord that which also I have delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus, 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. This do. And remembrance of me. Brother Austin, will you bless our bread? After He blessed it, He said, Take eat. This is my body. After the same manner also He took the cup. So when He had sucked, saying, This cup is the New Testament in my blood. This do you, as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. Brother Phillip, will you bless our cup? And so He said, This cup is the New Testament in my blood. This do you, as often as you drink it. And here He kind of leaves it there. He doesn't say anything, but when we go back to Jesus Christ there in that upper room when He instituted that Lord's Supper, He said that they sang a hymn. And then they went out into the Mount of Olives to the Garden of Gethsemane. And so I don't know what hymn they've sung. I don't know which psalms it was. I hadn't figured that out. He hadn't revealed that to me. But we have a good one that we usually sing it at this time that really sums up everything about our supper really well. And that's Amazing Grace. And so let's join me as we sing the verse of Amazing Grace. Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound That saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now I am found, Was blind, but now I see. Let's sing verse 4. When we've been there ten thousand years, Bright shining as the sun, We've no less days to sing Thy praise Than when we first begun. And then he told them they'd go into all the world and preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. So tonight we go as we go. Father, we just thank you for your love. We thank you again for this service tonight and opportunity to remember. And Father, help us what we have demonstrated and what we have shown here in this service tonight. Help us to take with our mouth, take with our hands and our feet and go out into the world this week and to share the glorious gospel of what you have done for each and every person of mankind and that you gave your life. You gave your body and your blood so that we might have salvation. And Father, all we have to do is have faith and believe. The grace has already been extended. The mercy has been withheld. And Father, your love has been shown abroad. Help us as we go forth. In your most precious name, we pray. Amen. Thank you for being in our service tonight. Amen. Amen.