The Eucharist, which is simply the Greek word for giving thanks, the breaking of bread, love feast. All these have been names used for this central Christian sacrament. And yet with such lofty names, it seems so strange that within the Christian church, it is so divisive at so many levels. We look to the reading of God’s word. If you please join me in prayer. Christ our God, we ask that you’d kindle your fire in us. Indeed, you would carry us away. Be our fire and our sweetness in your word this day. That we may love you with all our hearts, with all our minds, with all of our strength, and our neighbor as ourselves, so that by keeping your commandments, we might glorify you who are the giver of every good and perfect gift. Amen. Continuing in verse 26. Now, as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it, broke it, and gave it to the disciples and said, ‘Take, eat. This is my body. ‘ And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them saying, ‘Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.
I tell you, I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it. Last sermon on baptism, we discuss some of the controversies that we find in the church. The very next day, Monday, four o’clock, I answered the church phone. A man was asking about what we believe as a church, and we do get those kinds of calls from time to time with people’s legit questions. Then there are those other types. Within 30 seconds, I knew which way this is going. The summary of this somewhat conversation, King James only. Immersion was the only legitimate mode of baptism. Certainly, it wrong to baptize anyone before they actually committed any sins. You had to be baptized in order to be saved, no exceptions. The nominations are wrong, and so is church membership, and there’s no such thing as original sin. He was hoping to find a church to plug into. It was not a conversation, it was a monolog. All I was trying to do is just to get off the phone as quickly as I could without being rude. I wanted to ask him, I didn’t, but I wanted to ask him, Do any of your kids still talk to you?
Because calling random churches to try and argue with the pastor, it can’t be a real nice person to be around. Now, he was an extreme, but it is a case for many people that when it comes to talking about things like this, they center in on the controversies. You know you’ve experienced that where people want to be with you about these things. Show me a verse, give me a verse. They want just that very simple couple of things to be able to show your point. But as you well know, when you deal with the Lord’s Supper, baptism, or any profound truth of scripture, it takes more than a sentence or two. It’s not Christianity for dummies. There are things we have to wrestle with, we have to struggle with. It’s hard sometimes when people throw those things out at you and you to give them an answer. The Lord’s Supper, in the same way, is to be this unifying act that unites believers together. The focus and the meaning is centered on Jesus and all that he has done for us. This visible word gives us a picture of the gospel, the good news of salvation by grace alone.
Even there, there’s so much controversy. But it does point us back to the cross, even while it us forward to Christ’s glorious return. Through the supper, we are nourished, we are sustained by Jesus himself through the bond of the Holy spirit who dwells in us. Our shared lives together are to reflect this Jesus. Because the Lord, he ties his inner promises to outer covenantal acts and signs, we are to participate in the Lord’s supper in a visible and vital way as I expression of our faith. A quick review, some of the things we’ve been talking about and regarding a sacrament is it is a sign. It is a visible sign of an invisible grace. It shows the gospel in a visible and intangible way. They are instituted by Jesus himself. He’s the one who commanded them. In the New Testament, there are two sacraments, baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Sensible signs, meaning you can them, you can see them. These sensible signs represent the very thing they’re speaking of. Now, a seal has been used in the ancient world to show that something is authentic or their ownership. You would put your seal on something to show that this belongs to me or this is the thing that I sent.
That is a part of the sign in the seal that we see in the supper. To put it all together, a sacrament is an act, a ritual given by God God, which points us to a greater reality. The sign participates in the very thing that is pointing to. It’s not just a mental reminder. We speak of it as an actual means of grace. How does that work? When you eat and drink the Lord’s Supper, you are now participating in part in that celebration which is yet to come. The promise that God has made in Jesus are represented in this very act. We participate by believing in his promises. Our faith is strengthened by the Lord working through these visible signs. It is Jesus who makes them work, so to say. By themselves, they are just empty acts. Jesus is always the one who gives grace through them. These are visible signs of God. They are about him and his saving work. Even as we saw that baptism just didn’t start out of nowhere, it had direct ties to the sign of circumcision, as Paul tells us in Colossians 2: 11. In the same way the Lord’s Supper, it didn’t just come out of nowhere.
It’s tied to the Passover meal. It speaks and shows the echoes of the Passover in its nature. All four Gospels tell us about the Lord’s Supper that Jesus has his disciples during the Passover meal. Luke 22, And Jesus said to them, ‘I have earnestly desire to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. All the Gospels tell us that when they’re in the upper room, they’re celebrating the Passover. Paul takes us further in 1 Corinthians 5. He says, For Christ, our Passover the Passover Lamb has been sacrificed. We hear that in the echoes of John the Baptist’s words, as he sees Jesus walking by, he says, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. The Passover was that covenant meal that the Lord instituted with Israel. On the very night they were to leave Egypt, the Exodus is that key event in the history of redemption that God constantly points Israel back to. When I brought you out of slavery with a mighty hand, when I took you out of a house of bondage. The Exodus was that central redemptive act that Israel were to look to and to see that they are now God’s people because of all that he has done.
And Exodus 12 gives us the details. We are told there that of the Passover meal, no foreigner shall eat of it. It goes on and says, If a stranger, someone who’s living with you, would want to keep the Passover, let all his males be circumcised. Then he may come and keep it. He shall be a native of the lamb, but no uncircumcised person shall eat of it. This was a meal specifically for God’s people. And Exodus 12 goes on to tell us something about it. They were to kill a lamb. And then it says they take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lentil of the house in which they eat it. So they painted some of the blood up and down on the doorpost. And it It says that they were to eat the flesh of this lamb that night. They were to roast it with fire, with unleavened bread, with bitter herbs. The Lord goes on to say, This is the Lord’s Passover. In verse 12 of verse, he said, For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, I will strike all the first born in the land of Egypt, both man and beast, and on all the gods of Egypt, I will execute judgment.
I am the Lord. The blood shall be assigned for you on the houses where you are. When I see the blood, I will pass over you. No plague will befall you or destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt. This day shall be for you a memorial day. You shall keep it as a feast to the Lord throughout your generations as a statue forever, you shall keep it as a feast. That’s the Passover that God instituted. When the question is, well, why did you have to be circumcised if you were a male? Because that was the entry into the covenant relationship with the Lord. We talked about that in baptism. It was a blood right that is a sign and a seal of this relationship of justification by faith that Paul links together in Romans 4. The Passover lamb was slain. Blood put on the door of the post of the house. A bloodright A sign and seal of justification by faith. A sign of the atonement. A substitute was given on their behalf. Judgment passed over them. That’s the nature of the Passover. A sacrifice given for cleansing, for sanctification. This memorial meal was to take place yearly so that Israel would remember by participating in this very meal.
It helped shape them as a worshiping community. Part of their identity coming out of the Exodus is they were a worshiping community celebrating God’s great deliverance for them. Of course, there are other Old Testament shadows or type which speak to communion. Leviticus 3: 7 describes the peace offering. It was the only sacrifice that you as a worshiper could be eaten with you and your It wasn’t just for the priest. You could come with thanksgiving and joyfulness and celebrate before the Lord, sharing this meal together. The significance of it was that you now had peace with God because he received the sacrifice that you had given to him. It is not an accident that we hear this language in Paul in Ephesians 3, But now in Christ Jesus, you who were once far off, have been brought near by the blood of for he himself is our peace to reconcile us to God. The echoes of the peace offering in the person and work of Jesus. Jesus himself in John 6, he speaks of himself as the bread which came down from heaven, the manna of Exodus 16. He ties that in as well. What we see is these repeated themes and types showing us the significance of Christ.
All of that culminates in the Lord’s Supper. The Book of Hebrews tells us the entire sacrificial system is but a type of Jesus. They are temporary shadows that pointed to the permanent reality of Jesus. Hebrews 9, Jesus has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. On the Eve of Jesus’ death on the cross, he gathers his disciples to share in this new meal which finds its reality and fulfillment in what he is doing. All of these shadows and types are now coming together with Jesus at the focal point that now tells us the nature of communion. So when Jesus is talking with them at the meal, they’re together. He says, as they were eating, he took bread and blessing it, broke it and gave it to them and said, take, eat. This is my body. And then taking the cup When he had given thanks, he gave it to them saying, drink of it all of you for this is the cup of my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. ‘ Now, next week, as we did before, we’re going to look at some of the controversies of the supper, but some initial thoughts.
The meaning of Jesus saying, ‘This is my body. That has been an ongoing source of controversy. The question is, is this literally changed into the very body in the blood of Jesus? Is that what is taking place? So I’m just going to shorten all the argument down. I do not think disciples who were eating this bread handed to them by Jesus would have been thinking that they were literally eating his flesh any more than when Jesus said that he was the door or he was divine. He was speaking not literally, but metaphorically. Having said that, Jesus is truly and really present in the sacrament. We are united to him by this mysterious working of the Holy spirit. We don’t reenact the Passover meal because the right has changed. The blood right, the blood action of circumcision found its fulfillment in the waters of baptism, looking back to the cleansing blood of Jesus. The bloodright of the sacrificial lamb found its fulfillment in the body of Christ, represented nourishing bread. His blood now represented to us in the celebration of wine. Christians can participate in a Jewish Sater meal. Nothing wrong with that, but it’s not the Lord’s Supper.
Jesus fully recentered Israel’s historic meal and its significance upon himself and his sacrificial death. That is an amazing act. We see Jesus doing this repeatedly. He who would say, Truly, I say to you. He was his own authority. That’s one of the things that the Jewish leaders hated about him. He recentered everything in their history of redemption upon himself. And that’s exactly what he’s doing with the Passover. Christ’s communion is not a Sater meal. From this point forward, the Lord’s Supper is an integral part of Christian worship because it is a sign of covenant renewal. A mark of a biblical covenant is an oath of harm or curse that’s pledged if one fails to uphold the covenant. In the Supper, the new covenant is on display. Jesus upholds what we could not. He takes upon himself the curse that we deserved and gives us life. The two important elements are bread and wine, and they are shared together along with the words of Jesus. It has always been a part of this larger worship service preceded by the message of the word. We are unified in the sacrament. We are then to reflect Jesus. He presided over the table just before he gave his life for his people.
Therefore, our unity in Christ includes a care and a concern for one another. There’s no way around it. We are a new covenant community. That means we are included because of God’s great grace to us. Jesus did what we could not. He upheld the covenant that we broke. To do this in the remembrance of him does not mean we simply sit around and just think fondly of Jesus like a family member who’s died. Oh, remember that time when we used to play cards with grandpa about his birthday? Wasn’t that so nice? No, Jesus is alive. He’s coming back. And so are all those for whom Christ has died. Our God is a God of the living, not the dead. In the supper, we share in our union with Christ with all those that have been united to him globally and historically. That’s why communion is not a private devotional act. It’s a strange thing in modern American Christianity where we shifted into that mode for some reason. There’s a little table over here with communion. When you’re ready, just go up and celebrate by yourself when you’ve had this devotional moment. It’s not about your devotional moment or your emotional appeal or sentiment.
It’s about what Jesus has done. One of the reasons it’s also picked up in weddings to be able to have a couple have communion together. Your wedding isn’t special because of that. Communion, like baptism, it’s not about you. It’s about what Jesus has done for his people. The corporate gathering of God’s people is where this is to be shown and realized. Not by yourself. The last thing Americans that we need is one more thing highlighting our individuality and why we’re not a part of everybody else. That’s a foreign biblical thought that we struggle with, but God’s people have not through the ages. And with this, it’s a challenge. Bringing together the joy and the celebration of the supper together with a sobriety and a seriousness. The supper is not a funeral. It’s not a carnival. We rightly see that we are to have a reverence of reflection and a renewal all done with a glad and joyful heart filled with thanksgiving. And in Christ, we can bring that together. A few years back, I know I’ve mentioned this before, an Episcopal church celebrated what they called a Clown Communion, all the priests were dressed as clowns to celebrate to show that it was indeed a party, as it were.
And it was a disgrace. The pictures of it were abysmal. Nobody thought it was a party. They just thought it was a sacrilege. There’s a right way that we go about the supper. There’s a lot of room between morbid introspection and flippant to be sure, but it’s something that we do give thought to. In the table that we see the gospel in its visible form. Our remembering our memorial is a real participation in him. The Supper should help to shape us to form our new life in Christ. One writer, he reminds us, he says, If we wait for Christ’s return, we do so striving to be a community whose fellowship is marked by Jesus self-sacrificing commitment to the well-being of others. Striving to be a community whose fellowship is marked by Jesus self-sacrificing commitment to the well-being of others. Our peace offering is a meal to go with us into the world. We have been reconciled to God and therefore been given a Ministry of reconciliation Eglalation. Those two things go together. We have been brought into God’s family by Jesus. One baptism demonstrates this. The Lord invites us then as a baptized people who have been marked in his family, bearing his name, to come to his table to be fed and to be nourished by him.
The supper is, as it were, a visible hug from the Lord of your inclusion by grace and mercy. As we celebrate together, we are doing so with all of those for whom he has died. Here, yes, in our body, but in our body connected, as I said, around the world through time, even with those who have already gone before us. That supper is a part of that formation of our soul that we are being shaped into the image in the likeness of him who laid down his life for his people, that we would have life, an abundant life in him. The peace that we have received of what we share, who is our peace, who is broken down every wall. That we carry into our relationships with one another and into the world. We have to. Because Jesus dwells in us. There’s no longer room for hostility towards one another. Unforgiveness, a refusal to reconcile. Because we who were far off had been brought near. We who were dead in our trespasses have now been made alive in Christ. He says, Come, come to me and feed on me. I have passed over your transgressions.
I have passed over your sins. You are now bearing a new identity. This is my body. This is my blood. Every aspect of this now is to permeate who you are to the glory of God. And so it is our delight, it is our privilege to be a communing people. As we do, we come and we receive the promises of God by faith. With a little bit of bread and a little bit of wine, and we’re looking at this, we’re trusting in the promises that God indeed is going to bring His son in the fullness of time that we will then share in the participation of the marriage supper of the Lamb. How do I know that is true? I am participating now in part because of God’s promises in Christ Jesus. Who is our Passover lamb, who was slain from the foundation of the world, that we would be justified by faith alone. That is good, great, and glorious news for the people of God. That is worthy of our celebration that should move our hearts to joy and thanksgiving, even with the reflection of reverence and sobriety for what caused Jesus to die.
The good news is, is in him, all of those things can come together. The good news is, is that we are no longer bound in unforgiveness towards each other, towards those who have wronged us. We We can be set free because the Father has given us the name of his Son, and we are a part of a family, and he has called us to celebrate, to dine and to sup with his son, his spirit dwelling in us, crying out, Abba, Father. That’s hard to put that in just a verse or two, isn’t it? That’s the richness of all that God has done for us. It is a lifetime of discovery because it is the beauty of the gospel that we see and touch and taste. Pray with me. Father Almighty, as we come before you this day, we just say thank you. Father, thank you for this table of thanksgiving, this Eucharist. And Father, we pray that you would continue to transform us. Lord, that we would look like Jesus, that we would be renewed week by week into his image. Oh, Lord God, we long to see the fetters of sin broken broken. Lord, all those things within us that is displeasing to you.
We long to see that washed clean entirely. We come asking, Father, that you indeed, by your promises, we continue to sanctify us through the sanctification given once for all through Jesus, our perfect and final sacrifice. Father, set us free. Set us free to be the community of people that bear your name, bear your presence, bringers of your peace. And this we would pray and ask all in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.
Discaimer: This sermon text was generated by an automated transcription service.