Andy Davis preaches on the topic of the Lord’s Supper, as seen in 1 Corinthians 11:17-34.
Andy Davis preaches on the topic of the Lord’s Supper, as seen in 1 Corinthians 11:17-34.
– SERMON TRANSCRIPT –
I. The Corinthian Context
Well, this is an unusual week for me. Usually, I know weeks in advance what I am going to preach on. I am a very slow-moving target across the radar screen, you know where I’m heading. But this week, I felt led by the spirit to change the message and the message I was going to preach, God willing, I’ll preach next week. I wanted to preach this morning on the Lord’s Supper. I wanted to preach from the most important text in the New Testament on the Lord’s Supper, which you heard Tom read, 1 Corinthians 11, because it occurred to me that in my almost nine years of preaching here, I’ve never preached a sermon on the Lord’s Supper. I have made comments on it at the time of the Lord’s Supper, I have taught on it in seminars and other times, but never on Sunday morning have I preached. And so, I thought it was reasonable for us to look at the Lord’s Supper from the Scripture and to go in an expositional manner through 1 Corinthians 11 and understand this ordinance. We have a great privilege this morning, a joyful privilege to sit at table with Jesus Christ by the power of the spirit. In some mysterious way to partake in Him and to have our hearts strengthened in our faith and to grow and develop and to be made ready, more and more ready for that final banquet that we are going to sit down with, that eternal banquet. Oh, what a joy that is going to be, but to have our hearts stirred toward that, to be strengthened in our trials, to be encouraged in the faith and built up, so that we can fight the good fight of faith against our flesh and against the world and the devil, all of these things I fully expect are going to happen when we partake of the Lord’s Supper. I can’t think of a better passage as I’ve mentioned, than 1 Corinthians 11, to understand it.
The Corinthian Church was a talented but troubled church. They were talented, they were blessed with spiritual gifts, all of the spiritual gifts were active in that church, they were blessed with an apostolic ministry, we can hardly even imagine the blessing of having the Apostle Paul plant your church for you, and to minister and to teach. But, they were troubled as well, they were troubled by divisions, factions based on human pride and a party spirit, some following Apollos, some Cephas, some Paul, and some following Jesus; they are my favorite ones. We are the Jesus group. All the others, I don’t know who they are following but we are following Jesus, those are the dangerous ones.
But there were problems, sin problems in the church, too, there were difficult issues that Paul was working through, there was immorality, there was a need for church discipline, there was misunderstanding about a sanctified lifestyle, a lifestyle of sexual purity, there was a misunderstanding about marriage and its significance, and there were problems with food sacrificed to idols. There were all kinds of issues going on in this church, even to the point of not really understanding the resurrection body and some saying that there would be no resurrection. And so, Paul has to deal with all of these different issues in 1 Corinthians, but one of the issues he has to deal with are problems concerning the Lord’s Supper. In the middle of dealing with this problem with the Lord’s Supper, he drops a bombshell on them. These people were acting very improperly at the time of the Lord’s Supper to the point of some even getting drunk. It’s a scandalous thing. And the Lord’s Supper meant to be a display of the unity of the Body of Christ was instead the display of their local church’s disunity and problem, and it was a shameful thing, and he said, “I should be commending you, but for this I cannot commend you because of your problems,” and so he drops a bombshell on them concerning the significance of the Lord’s Supper.
He says in Verse 27 and following, “Therefore, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep.” They’ve died over this. Now, that is a sharp word, a stunning word, that anybody could actually die over eating and drinking in a manner unworthy of the Lord, that is the highest form of church discipline when God Himself intervenes and acts, so this is a serious matter. But more than this, more than a warning concerning judgment, which is clearly in this passage, there is also a yearning for blessing, that the church would be blessed by the ordinance of the Lord’s Supper, and that is in my heart as well, that we would receive the full blessing that Jesus clearly intended by setting this up, and that we would not through misunderstanding or through false doctrine miss the blessing that is available for us in the Lord’s Supper.
II. Historical Context
Now, there is a historical context to this. I was myself raised a Roman Catholic, and for many many centuries in the Catholic Church, they had one view of the Lord’s Supper based on the doctrine of transubstantiation. They believed, and based also on the words when Jesus said “This is my body,” that the priest, through the supernatural powers endowed on him by the church, was able to transform the bread and the wine into the actual body and blood of Jesus, though it still tasted like bread and wine, it had become mysteriously the substance of the body of Christ. I was raised in that though I didn’t understand the doctrine. I was raised in that; I was an altar boy. I’ll never forget when the priest would lift the bread up, and at that particular moment I was instructed to ring a bell and I found out years later in Protestant seminary, that that was the moment of transubstantiation when it actually became the body and the blood of Christ.
Well, that was their view for many, many years. Martin Luther, when he was being ordained as a priest, at that high and holy moment when he was actually lifting up the cup, was so overwhelmed with the sense of the majesty of God and the greatness of Christ, was trembling and actually spilled some of the wine on the white linen table cloth. That was a big fault because of the sacredness of that moment, but you can have a sense also of the awe and the wonder and the reverence that Martin Luther had and before he understood the Gospel concerning that. He never really got far away from that understanding of the Lord’s Supper, although he didn’t accept transubstantiation, he still believed in what we call the real presence, that Jesus is physically present in the elements of the bread and the wine. Another man, Ulrich Zwingli, who was a Swiss reformer went very much, completely the other way. He said, it is none of the things that the Catholics were teaching, it is a bare memorial, that’s all. And he diminished it and diminished it to the point where they might celebrate it, if you could call it that, once a year.
III. Modern Context
I fear that many American evangelical churches fall more into that camp, denying as I think they ought, the doctrine of real presence, denying that Jesus is physically there with the bread and the wine or the grape juice. They’ve gone so far the other way as to say, “This really isn’t that big a deal. It’s not a big issue in the life of the church.” Some larger churches consign the Lord’s Supper to the evening service once a quarter, so they are getting only a fraction of their people actually partaking in the Lord’s Supper.
I think this is a big problem for a church. I believe the Lord’s supper is meant to be an incredible avenue or river of blessing for the church. I fully expect when I come here for the Lord’s Supper, to be blessed by God. I fully expect it. I expect that God is going to move by His Spirit in a powerful way and while I know I’m holding actually bread and I’m drinking grape juice, and they are nothing more than bread and grape juice, this is something more than a bare memorial, but that the Spirit of God is going to be active in our midst, in the body of Christ, as our minds are turned in various directions that I’m going to discuss this morning. We are going to be enriched by this experience as the Spirit of God moves through this room. I have prayed for it this morning, and I am trusting him to do it in your hearts. I trust him to do it in mine as well. So, what are we going to do and how are we going to understand the Lord’s Supper? Well, I think the best thing to do is to look to Jesus in the midst of the Lord’s Supper. And really, it’s various kinds of looks.
Years ago, I heard a sermon by my good friend, Mark Dever, on the Lord’s Supper, and he followed this paradigm of looking to this and looking to that. I don’t remember the sermon, but I remember the headings. And I added some headings, and I think it’s a good way to cover 1 Corinthians 11, namely that we are going to look in various directions as we partake in the Lord’s Supper. In Hebrews 12:1-2, it says, “Let us also lay aside every weight and the sin which so easily clings to us, and let us run with endurance, the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the founder and perfector of our faith.” I believe the Lord in His wisdom has given us the Lord’s Supper to help us do precisely that, to look to Jesus the author and perfector of our faith, so that we can finish our race. And so, we’re going to look back, we’re going to look up, we’re going to look inward, we’re going to look down, we’re going to look around and look ahead, based on the words of 1 Corinthians 11.
IV. Looking Back
Let’s start by looking back. And we look back to the Passover, the night that Jesus was betrayed was a Seder. It was a Passover meal. And Jesus, earnestly, He said, desire to eat that Passover with His disciples. There are many key parallels between the Passover and the Lord’s Supper. Both were instituted to be lasting memorials set up from generation to generation. The Passover commemorated the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, released from bondage to slavery by the mighty hand and outstretched arm of God, 10 dreadful plagues judging Egypt and their gods. The last plague was the most terrible of them all, it was the plague on the first born in which there was not a house in Egypt, among the Egyptians, that there wasn’t someone dead. What a terrifying night that was. But, the Israelites were spared because God had commanded that they sacrifice the Passover lamb, and that the lamb’s blood would be painted around the door. The Angel of the Lord as he passed over, would see the blood and not kill the first born in that house, a clear picture of the saving work of the blood of Jesus Christ and how we deserve judgment, but it does not come upon us because of the interposing blood of Jesus Christ. The angel just moves right over and we are not judged though we deserve it.
Well, this was a Passover meal, and Jesus was about to die as the final fulfillment of the Passover. He is going to shed His blood as the lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world, and He is going to fulfill the Passover and it will never need to be done again. I didn’t say it was never done again, I’m just saying it was never needful again, because Jesus fulfilled it. And so instead, He instituted the Lord’s Supper, both of them instituted to be lasting memorials or ordinances from generation to generation. In Exodus 12, Verse 14 it says, “This is a day you are to commemorate; for the generations to come you shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord−a lasting ordinance.” And Jesus says here in our passage, “Do this in remembrance of me.” In Verses 25-26, “Do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me. For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup. . .” this was a lasting ordinance. Both of the services involved bread, both of the services involved wine, both of the services involved drawing the community together around these spiritual realities, both of the services commemorated the work of redemption, God’s work of redemption, and so there are clear parallels. We look back to the Passover, we also look back to the very night, the historical night that Jesus was betrayed. We think about the history of that night, we think about what happened.
Look at Verse 23, “The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread.” So, we’re thinking about that. We remember how Jesus was with his disciples the night he was betrayed. We remember how his betrayer, Judas, dipped his bread into the dish with Jesus, identifying himself as the betrayer, how when he took the bread from Jesus in John’s Gospel, Satan entered into him. We remember that night. We remember how sad and troubled Jesus’s disciples were and how they didn’t understand the things that were going on, and yet how Jesus earnestly desired to eat this meal with them, He said. We remember that night and what happened.
We also look back to Christ’s death, to the body and blood of Jesus Christ. The bread symbolized Christ’s body nailed to the cross; the grape juice, the wine, symbolizing Christ’s blood shed on the cross. And this death on the cross is the center of our redemption, it’s our only hope for freedom from the wrath of God that we deserve for our sins. We remember the body and the blood of Jesus, “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” And so, we remember the death that Jesus paid and the free gift of life. So, Christ’s identification of the bread with His body and the wine with his blood focuses our attention on the need for a substitute who pays the penalty for our sins.
We also look back at the institution of the New Covenant, the establishment of a New Covenant which Jesus mentions. The Passover was an Old Covenant ordinance, but the Lord’s Supper, a New Covenant. The center of the Passover, the Old Covenant, was blood sacrifice, animal sacrifice, that’s the center of it. In Leviticus 17:11, the Lord said, “For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life.” Never forget that phrase, “I have given it to you.” Thanks be to God that He gave us a way to be atoned.. Thanks be to God for that, “I have given it to you, the blood, so that there might be an atonement.” He set up the animal sacrificial system and He fulfilled it in Jesus. For it says in Hebrews 9:22, “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness” of sins.
Who said that? It was God that set that up. He established it. And so, Christ here instituted a New Covenant in his own blood, thus ending forever the need for animal sacrifice. Look at Verse 25, “In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.'” By this New Covenant in Christ’s blood, the wrath of God is fully averted. Wrapped up in the new covenant is the taking out of the heart of stone and the giving of the heart of flesh, that we are actually transformed to love God’s law and obey it with all of our being. This is part of the New Covenant spoken clearly in Jeremiah’s prophecy and in Hebrews Chapter 8. We are brought into perfect eternal fellowship with God, “I will be their God, and they will be my people.” This is the New Covenant, and it’s done in the blood of Jesus and we remember that at the time of the Lord’s Supper, the New Covenant instituted in his blood.
“Christ here instituted a New Covenant in his own blood, thus ending forever the need for animal sacrifice.”
We also should look back when we are sitting, and when the bread is passed and the juice is passed. We should look back to our own experience of faith in Christ, think of how good God has been to you to save your soul, think about who it was that God used to bring you the Gospel, thank God for them. Thank God for the sacrifices that were made before they were even born, to get you the Gospel and all of its truth, thank God that you repented. Thank God that you had faith. These things are gifts of God. Look back to how He has protected you all these years, how He has protected and nurtured your faith, look back at that, that He has got you this far by faith and He is not going to let you go. Don’t commend yourself thinking, “Boy, I’ve been a good believer all these years, I’m still believing in Jesus.” Don’t give yourself credit. Luke 22:31 says “Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail.” And, if your faith hasn’t failed in decades of walking with Jesus, then give Him the glory and give Him the praise. So, look back.
V. Looking Up
We also look up. We look up to God the Father, first and foremost. I noticed in Scripture how regularly Jesus looks up when he takes bread into his hand. Have you noticed this? Consistently, He does this. He takes bread and looks up, and he gives thanks. Now, it’s not mentioned here in 1 Corinthians 11, but I think it’s very vital for us to look to God the Father at the time of the Lord’s Supper, to realize it was God the Father’s plan that Jesus enacted and fulfilled.
It was God the Father who sent His only begotten Son into the world. It was God the Father who set his love on you before the foundation of the world, and it was God the Father who did not spare His only begotten Son, but gave Him up for us all. And, it was so that Christ might bring us to the father that He went through all of those things. “I am the way and the truth and the life, no one comes to the father except through me.” That is his goal, He wants to bring you to the father. And so, we look to the father, saying, “The father is the destination of all of the saving work of Christ, that we would come to the father. And it is with thanksgiving to the father that we take the bread and the juice.”
We also look upward, as I’ve already mentioned, to Christ, our faithful high priest. It is so important that we understand this. Christ’s priestly ministry in one sense is finished forever, and in another sense, it is ongoing until the end of time. He offered Himself, His blood, once for all. The Book of Hebrews could not be clearer about this. I do not understand the Catholic doctrine that the priest is offering Jesus again and again and again, I can’t reconcile that with the Book of Hebrews.
Jesus doesn’t need to be offered again and again. He finished the work on the cross. When He spoke, “it is finished,” it was finished. It was done. Oh, how glorious is that. But his priestly work isn’t finished because He is at the right hand of God and interceding for us as our great high priest. As I’ve mentioned, were it not for that intercessory prayer ministry of our great high priest, we would have been lost a long time ago. Satan would have concocted a series of temptations that would have laid us out and do not imagine you would have been immune. But Jesus is constantly praying for your faith that it may not fail. So, when you take that bread, and when you take that juice in a few minutes, look to Jesus, your great high priest, and thank Him that He’s praying for your soul, and that He will not let you go.
You may be weak in prayer; you may forget to pray. You may tell a friend you’ll pray for them and then you don’t pray, and the Lord later convicts. Jesus isn’t like that. He is not like that. He never forgets to pray for you, and the Father never forgets to listen to his Son, and the Son never fails to get what he asked for. And what is he asking for? That your faith may not fail. And so, look to Jesus, your great high priest, and look to the Holy Spirit, too.
Look to the Holy Spirit, who I have already said and I trust will be active and involved in the body of Christ here this afternoon. Is it afternoon yet? It will be soon. Alright [chuckle]. See, now you’re looking at your watch, I shouldn’t have done that.
But the Spirit of God is going to be moving through this place, uniting our hearts, drawing us together, taking things that could be dry, dead text on the page. Black and white characters on the page, dusty old doctrines and ideas. They are none of the kind, but rather he makes them alive in your heart and you feel the presence of Christ by the power of the Spirit of God it says in Corinthians. So, the Holy Spirit is not mentioned in this text. In another place in 1st Corinthians He says, “You cannot even say Jesus is Lord, except by the Spirit of God.” So, neither can you celebrate rightly the Lord’s Supper, except by the Spirit of God. So, look to the Father and look to the Son, and look to the Spirit.
VI. Looking Within
We also look within. It’s right for us to look within and be realistic about what is really happening in our life right now. We look within and we examine ourselves. Look what it says, “A man” in Verse 28 “ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup.” You heard Tom read the problems in the Corinthian church, how some were going ahead and gorging themselves, others were getting drunk. There was strife and conflict, and bickering, and difficulties. And what a shameful thing, but you know it isn’t long you’re thinking, “Oh, those bad Corinthians.” Well, that’s not a very fruitful thought, brothers and sisters. What about us, do we not bicker? Do we not quarrel? Do we not lust? Is there not pride in us? Are we living up to the calling that we have received? Are we failing to present our bodies to God as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God? I think some days we do, and I think some days we actually present the members of our body to sin as instruments of wickedness. We ought to repent and I think the Lord’s Supper is a good time to repent.
“Search me, O God and know me. Try me and see if there’s any offensive way in me.” So as the trays are being passed, take the time to do that, say, “Lord, show me my sin, teach me what I’m doing wrong.” And you think, well, this is kind of a morbid introspection. It’s not morbid. Morbid means death producing. It’s actually life-giving to do this kind of introspection, just like the work of a dentist getting that nidus of infection, that bacteria, you got to get it out. We don’t want it in. And so, search me, O God, and you confess your sin and you renounce it, and you turn away from it, and you prepare yourself to receive the holy bread and fruit of the vine; you receive it with a commitment to a holy lifestyle. It may be that some of you need to refrain because you don’t think right now, today, you can partake, you won’t partake in a way worthy of the Lord, it’s possible that the Lord may deal with you in that manner, but not for most of us. I think we look inward, not just to our sin, but we look inward to the fact that we do repent, we hate the sin, we are hungry and thirsting for righteousness.
The Spirit himself is testifying with our spirits that we are children of God and that we should partake. I’ll never forget reading about a Scottish pastor, godly pastor, who was administering the Lord’s supper. There was a young woman there sobbing so deeply and felt such a heaviness in her soul about her sin. He knew her situation, he knew that she was a genuine believer in Christ, he knew what was going on, but she just felt unworthy. He leaned over and whispered into her ear, “Take it, Lassie, it’s for sinners.” You don’t have to be sinless and perfect to take the Lord’s Supper, just confess your sin, and if you confess your sin, He is faithful and just and will forgive you your sin and cleanse you from all unrighteousness. And then partake gladly. It’s meant for sinners. That’s what it’s for.
And so, we look inward, we look inward at our sin, we look inward to faith and repentance into that internal testimony of the Spirit, that we are children of God, and we do all of that to be sure that we are eating in a manner worthy of the Lord. We must look inward.
VII. Looking Down
I’d also like to urge that you look down, just take a minute when you get the bread in your hand and just look at it. I don’t believe in transubstantiation. I think it feels like bread, it smells like bread, and it tastes like bread, because it is bread. That’s it, it’s bread. And Aristotle is not going to help us understand it differently. He may have been a very smart man, but we don’t need any help from him here.
Talking about substance and accidents and how it tastes like bread, but it really is the Body of Christ. It is bread, but it is physical, and Jesus set it up for this reason that we might be mindful that there was a time on this planet in space and time, that there was a body of Christ, and He had actual blood, and that body was nailed to the cross and that blood was shed for you. It was physical, it hurt. It was a real death in your place, keep that in mind when you touch that bread, think about it, look down and look at that element and say, this is physical, it’s not a metaphysical theory that was nailed to the cross that day, it was the body of Jesus. And it says in the Book of Colossians that God redeemed you by Christ’s physical body to present you holy in His sight, because he, in Colossians, is dealing with another heresy there, that Jesus didn’t really actually have a physical body. Yes, he did.
The Lord’s Supper is ordained to help us remember that. It is also good to remember that your hands, as you are holding them someday are going to be remade into the image of Christ’s resurrection body, and you are going to be physical for all eternity, too, remember that. Some day you are going to have a resurrection body. More on that in a moment.
VIII. Looking Around
We also need to look around. As we partake in the Lord’s Supper, I want you to notice as you look around that you are not alone in this room. That’s good. We are very individualistic in this country of ours, we are very individualistic, but the Lord is not saving us into individualism. He is saving us into a marvelous body of Christ, made up of people from every tribe and language and people and nation, from all of the generations of the church. That’s the body of Christ. And how beautiful is that, as we sang earlier, how beautiful is the body of Christ, and so we are drawn together into one body.
It says in Verse 33, “So then, my brothers, when you come together to eat, wait for each other.” So, when the dish goes past, we take and we wait, we wait until we are all ready to eat together. And because it says in 1 Corinthians 10:17, “Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf,” and Jesus said, “Drink from it all of you.” So, there’s a sense of unity and a fellowship, there’s a fellowship together.
When we look around, not just to the believers, but we look around to the unbelievers. There are unbelievers watching. Look at Verse 26, “For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.” We preach the Gospel until He comes. Just by doing this, the church is by acting out this drama, we are in some sense preaching the Gospel to an unbelieving world.
Now, a pastor, if he is wise and does a good job at this moment, will urge people who are in this sanctuary who have not repented and trusted in Christ, to not partake of the Lord’s Supper, for then you would be eating and drinking judgment on yourself. And we are urging people who are Gospel hypocrites, who the Spirit of God is not testifying with their spirits that they are children of God, but they go through the church motions and they are fooling everyone, but they are not fooling God, we are urging them not to partake.
We are proclaiming the Lord’s death, but you know even here, I want to speak to you, if you have not been converted, there is a Gospel for you. Though you ought not to take from the bread and the juice today, you can partake of something far better today, and that is faith to the salvation of your soul, that you can have today. For Jesus Christ died on the cross in the place of sinners just like you. He shed His blood, paying the penalty that God demands for your sin. It is available simply by repenting and trusting in Him, you can have full forgiveness of sins for your soul right now. You don’t need anything else. Just hear and believe the Gospel and you can be forgiven. So, we look around to an unbelieving world as we do this, and we proclaim the Lord’s death.
IX. Looking Forward
Finally, we look forward. We look forward. Are you looking forward? I am looking forward. I am looking forward to the second coming of Christ. We proclaim the Lord’s death until He what? Until He comes. He’s coming back, Revelation 19, He’s coming back with the armies of heaven. He’s coming back, riding on a horse. He’s coming back, conquering, and to conquer. He’s coming back to set up an eternal kingdom.. And there is written on Him, the name King of kings and Lord of lords, He is coming back. And we are nearer to that day now than when I began this sermon and then the day you first believe, we are getting closer and closer to the second coming of Christ, and these are just homely symbols of a future feast that we’re going to have in the presence of the almighty God.
We are going to eat with Him, we are going to feast with Him. This is not really a physical feast, you know that, don’t you? It may be and ought to be a spiritual feast, but we are looking ahead to a physical and spiritual kingdom, and we will sit at table with God Almighty, and we will look at him in the face, and we will look to the left and the right, and we will see, as Jesus said in Matthew 8, “Many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.”
It’s coming, and we get to sit there through faith in Christ, we’re looking ahead to that, anticipating it, we’re looking ahead best of all to our final future salvation through the resurrection of the body. There is a banquet that Christ will lay for us, that is the resurrection of the body, listen to Isaiah 25:6-8, “On this mountain the Lord Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples, a banquet of aged wine−the best of meats and the finest of wines. On this mountain he will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations; he will swallow up death forever.”
That’s a feast I can’t wait for. To be free from death and mourning and crying and pain, and to be in a body that will never perish. That’s the future, and we proclaim that by the Lord’s Supper.
So, we look back in remembrance of the Passover and the night that Jesus was betrayed to Jesus’s body, broken and His blood shed into our personal faith in Christ. We look up, in dependence on God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. We look inward to our own sinfulness and to repentance and faith into that internal testimony of the Spirit that we are children of God. We look down at the elements that we’re holding reminding ourselves that the physical body and blood of Christ were given for us that we might have eternal life. And we look around in commitment to the body of Christ, that we are members together of one body and to an unbelieving and watching world that to whom we proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes. And we look ahead and hope to the second coming of Christ and to the great resurrection day, when we will eat and drink anew in our Father’s kingdom. Won’t you pray with me?
Andy Davis preaches on the topic of the Lord’s Supper, as seen in 1 Corinthians 11:17-34.
– SERMON TRANSCRIPT –
I. The Corinthian Context
Well, this is an unusual week for me. Usually, I know weeks in advance what I am going to preach on. I am a very slow-moving target across the radar screen, you know where I’m heading. But this week, I felt led by the spirit to change the message and the message I was going to preach, God willing, I’ll preach next week. I wanted to preach this morning on the Lord’s Supper. I wanted to preach from the most important text in the New Testament on the Lord’s Supper, which you heard Tom read, 1 Corinthians 11, because it occurred to me that in my almost nine years of preaching here, I’ve never preached a sermon on the Lord’s Supper. I have made comments on it at the time of the Lord’s Supper, I have taught on it in seminars and other times, but never on Sunday morning have I preached. And so, I thought it was reasonable for us to look at the Lord’s Supper from the Scripture and to go in an expositional manner through 1 Corinthians 11 and understand this ordinance. We have a great privilege this morning, a joyful privilege to sit at table with Jesus Christ by the power of the spirit. In some mysterious way to partake in Him and to have our hearts strengthened in our faith and to grow and develop and to be made ready, more and more ready for that final banquet that we are going to sit down with, that eternal banquet. Oh, what a joy that is going to be, but to have our hearts stirred toward that, to be strengthened in our trials, to be encouraged in the faith and built up, so that we can fight the good fight of faith against our flesh and against the world and the devil, all of these things I fully expect are going to happen when we partake of the Lord’s Supper. I can’t think of a better passage as I’ve mentioned, than 1 Corinthians 11, to understand it.
The Corinthian Church was a talented but troubled church. They were talented, they were blessed with spiritual gifts, all of the spiritual gifts were active in that church, they were blessed with an apostolic ministry, we can hardly even imagine the blessing of having the Apostle Paul plant your church for you, and to minister and to teach. But, they were troubled as well, they were troubled by divisions, factions based on human pride and a party spirit, some following Apollos, some Cephas, some Paul, and some following Jesus; they are my favorite ones. We are the Jesus group. All the others, I don’t know who they are following but we are following Jesus, those are the dangerous ones.
But there were problems, sin problems in the church, too, there were difficult issues that Paul was working through, there was immorality, there was a need for church discipline, there was misunderstanding about a sanctified lifestyle, a lifestyle of sexual purity, there was a misunderstanding about marriage and its significance, and there were problems with food sacrificed to idols. There were all kinds of issues going on in this church, even to the point of not really understanding the resurrection body and some saying that there would be no resurrection. And so, Paul has to deal with all of these different issues in 1 Corinthians, but one of the issues he has to deal with are problems concerning the Lord’s Supper. In the middle of dealing with this problem with the Lord’s Supper, he drops a bombshell on them. These people were acting very improperly at the time of the Lord’s Supper to the point of some even getting drunk. It’s a scandalous thing. And the Lord’s Supper meant to be a display of the unity of the Body of Christ was instead the display of their local church’s disunity and problem, and it was a shameful thing, and he said, “I should be commending you, but for this I cannot commend you because of your problems,” and so he drops a bombshell on them concerning the significance of the Lord’s Supper.
He says in Verse 27 and following, “Therefore, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep.” They’ve died over this. Now, that is a sharp word, a stunning word, that anybody could actually die over eating and drinking in a manner unworthy of the Lord, that is the highest form of church discipline when God Himself intervenes and acts, so this is a serious matter. But more than this, more than a warning concerning judgment, which is clearly in this passage, there is also a yearning for blessing, that the church would be blessed by the ordinance of the Lord’s Supper, and that is in my heart as well, that we would receive the full blessing that Jesus clearly intended by setting this up, and that we would not through misunderstanding or through false doctrine miss the blessing that is available for us in the Lord’s Supper.
II. Historical Context
Now, there is a historical context to this. I was myself raised a Roman Catholic, and for many many centuries in the Catholic Church, they had one view of the Lord’s Supper based on the doctrine of transubstantiation. They believed, and based also on the words when Jesus said “This is my body,” that the priest, through the supernatural powers endowed on him by the church, was able to transform the bread and the wine into the actual body and blood of Jesus, though it still tasted like bread and wine, it had become mysteriously the substance of the body of Christ. I was raised in that though I didn’t understand the doctrine. I was raised in that; I was an altar boy. I’ll never forget when the priest would lift the bread up, and at that particular moment I was instructed to ring a bell and I found out years later in Protestant seminary, that that was the moment of transubstantiation when it actually became the body and the blood of Christ.
Well, that was their view for many, many years. Martin Luther, when he was being ordained as a priest, at that high and holy moment when he was actually lifting up the cup, was so overwhelmed with the sense of the majesty of God and the greatness of Christ, was trembling and actually spilled some of the wine on the white linen table cloth. That was a big fault because of the sacredness of that moment, but you can have a sense also of the awe and the wonder and the reverence that Martin Luther had and before he understood the Gospel concerning that. He never really got far away from that understanding of the Lord’s Supper, although he didn’t accept transubstantiation, he still believed in what we call the real presence, that Jesus is physically present in the elements of the bread and the wine. Another man, Ulrich Zwingli, who was a Swiss reformer went very much, completely the other way. He said, it is none of the things that the Catholics were teaching, it is a bare memorial, that’s all. And he diminished it and diminished it to the point where they might celebrate it, if you could call it that, once a year.
III. Modern Context
I fear that many American evangelical churches fall more into that camp, denying as I think they ought, the doctrine of real presence, denying that Jesus is physically there with the bread and the wine or the grape juice. They’ve gone so far the other way as to say, “This really isn’t that big a deal. It’s not a big issue in the life of the church.” Some larger churches consign the Lord’s Supper to the evening service once a quarter, so they are getting only a fraction of their people actually partaking in the Lord’s Supper.
I think this is a big problem for a church. I believe the Lord’s supper is meant to be an incredible avenue or river of blessing for the church. I fully expect when I come here for the Lord’s Supper, to be blessed by God. I fully expect it. I expect that God is going to move by His Spirit in a powerful way and while I know I’m holding actually bread and I’m drinking grape juice, and they are nothing more than bread and grape juice, this is something more than a bare memorial, but that the Spirit of God is going to be active in our midst, in the body of Christ, as our minds are turned in various directions that I’m going to discuss this morning. We are going to be enriched by this experience as the Spirit of God moves through this room. I have prayed for it this morning, and I am trusting him to do it in your hearts. I trust him to do it in mine as well. So, what are we going to do and how are we going to understand the Lord’s Supper? Well, I think the best thing to do is to look to Jesus in the midst of the Lord’s Supper. And really, it’s various kinds of looks.
Years ago, I heard a sermon by my good friend, Mark Dever, on the Lord’s Supper, and he followed this paradigm of looking to this and looking to that. I don’t remember the sermon, but I remember the headings. And I added some headings, and I think it’s a good way to cover 1 Corinthians 11, namely that we are going to look in various directions as we partake in the Lord’s Supper. In Hebrews 12:1-2, it says, “Let us also lay aside every weight and the sin which so easily clings to us, and let us run with endurance, the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the founder and perfector of our faith.” I believe the Lord in His wisdom has given us the Lord’s Supper to help us do precisely that, to look to Jesus the author and perfector of our faith, so that we can finish our race. And so, we’re going to look back, we’re going to look up, we’re going to look inward, we’re going to look down, we’re going to look around and look ahead, based on the words of 1 Corinthians 11.
IV. Looking Back
Let’s start by looking back. And we look back to the Passover, the night that Jesus was betrayed was a Seder. It was a Passover meal. And Jesus, earnestly, He said, desire to eat that Passover with His disciples. There are many key parallels between the Passover and the Lord’s Supper. Both were instituted to be lasting memorials set up from generation to generation. The Passover commemorated the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, released from bondage to slavery by the mighty hand and outstretched arm of God, 10 dreadful plagues judging Egypt and their gods. The last plague was the most terrible of them all, it was the plague on the first born in which there was not a house in Egypt, among the Egyptians, that there wasn’t someone dead. What a terrifying night that was. But, the Israelites were spared because God had commanded that they sacrifice the Passover lamb, and that the lamb’s blood would be painted around the door. The Angel of the Lord as he passed over, would see the blood and not kill the first born in that house, a clear picture of the saving work of the blood of Jesus Christ and how we deserve judgment, but it does not come upon us because of the interposing blood of Jesus Christ. The angel just moves right over and we are not judged though we deserve it.
Well, this was a Passover meal, and Jesus was about to die as the final fulfillment of the Passover. He is going to shed His blood as the lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world, and He is going to fulfill the Passover and it will never need to be done again. I didn’t say it was never done again, I’m just saying it was never needful again, because Jesus fulfilled it. And so instead, He instituted the Lord’s Supper, both of them instituted to be lasting memorials or ordinances from generation to generation. In Exodus 12, Verse 14 it says, “This is a day you are to commemorate; for the generations to come you shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord−a lasting ordinance.” And Jesus says here in our passage, “Do this in remembrance of me.” In Verses 25-26, “Do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me. For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup. . .” this was a lasting ordinance. Both of the services involved bread, both of the services involved wine, both of the services involved drawing the community together around these spiritual realities, both of the services commemorated the work of redemption, God’s work of redemption, and so there are clear parallels. We look back to the Passover, we also look back to the very night, the historical night that Jesus was betrayed. We think about the history of that night, we think about what happened.
Look at Verse 23, “The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread.” So, we’re thinking about that. We remember how Jesus was with his disciples the night he was betrayed. We remember how his betrayer, Judas, dipped his bread into the dish with Jesus, identifying himself as the betrayer, how when he took the bread from Jesus in John’s Gospel, Satan entered into him. We remember that night. We remember how sad and troubled Jesus’s disciples were and how they didn’t understand the things that were going on, and yet how Jesus earnestly desired to eat this meal with them, He said. We remember that night and what happened.
We also look back to Christ’s death, to the body and blood of Jesus Christ. The bread symbolized Christ’s body nailed to the cross; the grape juice, the wine, symbolizing Christ’s blood shed on the cross. And this death on the cross is the center of our redemption, it’s our only hope for freedom from the wrath of God that we deserve for our sins. We remember the body and the blood of Jesus, “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” And so, we remember the death that Jesus paid and the free gift of life. So, Christ’s identification of the bread with His body and the wine with his blood focuses our attention on the need for a substitute who pays the penalty for our sins.
We also look back at the institution of the New Covenant, the establishment of a New Covenant which Jesus mentions. The Passover was an Old Covenant ordinance, but the Lord’s Supper, a New Covenant. The center of the Passover, the Old Covenant, was blood sacrifice, animal sacrifice, that’s the center of it. In Leviticus 17:11, the Lord said, “For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life.” Never forget that phrase, “I have given it to you.” Thanks be to God that He gave us a way to be atoned.. Thanks be to God for that, “I have given it to you, the blood, so that there might be an atonement.” He set up the animal sacrificial system and He fulfilled it in Jesus. For it says in Hebrews 9:22, “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness” of sins.
Who said that? It was God that set that up. He established it. And so, Christ here instituted a New Covenant in his own blood, thus ending forever the need for animal sacrifice. Look at Verse 25, “In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.'” By this New Covenant in Christ’s blood, the wrath of God is fully averted. Wrapped up in the new covenant is the taking out of the heart of stone and the giving of the heart of flesh, that we are actually transformed to love God’s law and obey it with all of our being. This is part of the New Covenant spoken clearly in Jeremiah’s prophecy and in Hebrews Chapter 8. We are brought into perfect eternal fellowship with God, “I will be their God, and they will be my people.” This is the New Covenant, and it’s done in the blood of Jesus and we remember that at the time of the Lord’s Supper, the New Covenant instituted in his blood.
“Christ here instituted a New Covenant in his own blood, thus ending forever the need for animal sacrifice.”
We also should look back when we are sitting, and when the bread is passed and the juice is passed. We should look back to our own experience of faith in Christ, think of how good God has been to you to save your soul, think about who it was that God used to bring you the Gospel, thank God for them. Thank God for the sacrifices that were made before they were even born, to get you the Gospel and all of its truth, thank God that you repented. Thank God that you had faith. These things are gifts of God. Look back to how He has protected you all these years, how He has protected and nurtured your faith, look back at that, that He has got you this far by faith and He is not going to let you go. Don’t commend yourself thinking, “Boy, I’ve been a good believer all these years, I’m still believing in Jesus.” Don’t give yourself credit. Luke 22:31 says “Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail.” And, if your faith hasn’t failed in decades of walking with Jesus, then give Him the glory and give Him the praise. So, look back.
V. Looking Up
We also look up. We look up to God the Father, first and foremost. I noticed in Scripture how regularly Jesus looks up when he takes bread into his hand. Have you noticed this? Consistently, He does this. He takes bread and looks up, and he gives thanks. Now, it’s not mentioned here in 1 Corinthians 11, but I think it’s very vital for us to look to God the Father at the time of the Lord’s Supper, to realize it was God the Father’s plan that Jesus enacted and fulfilled.
It was God the Father who sent His only begotten Son into the world. It was God the Father who set his love on you before the foundation of the world, and it was God the Father who did not spare His only begotten Son, but gave Him up for us all. And, it was so that Christ might bring us to the father that He went through all of those things. “I am the way and the truth and the life, no one comes to the father except through me.” That is his goal, He wants to bring you to the father. And so, we look to the father, saying, “The father is the destination of all of the saving work of Christ, that we would come to the father. And it is with thanksgiving to the father that we take the bread and the juice.”
We also look upward, as I’ve already mentioned, to Christ, our faithful high priest. It is so important that we understand this. Christ’s priestly ministry in one sense is finished forever, and in another sense, it is ongoing until the end of time. He offered Himself, His blood, once for all. The Book of Hebrews could not be clearer about this. I do not understand the Catholic doctrine that the priest is offering Jesus again and again and again, I can’t reconcile that with the Book of Hebrews.
Jesus doesn’t need to be offered again and again. He finished the work on the cross. When He spoke, “it is finished,” it was finished. It was done. Oh, how glorious is that. But his priestly work isn’t finished because He is at the right hand of God and interceding for us as our great high priest. As I’ve mentioned, were it not for that intercessory prayer ministry of our great high priest, we would have been lost a long time ago. Satan would have concocted a series of temptations that would have laid us out and do not imagine you would have been immune. But Jesus is constantly praying for your faith that it may not fail. So, when you take that bread, and when you take that juice in a few minutes, look to Jesus, your great high priest, and thank Him that He’s praying for your soul, and that He will not let you go.
You may be weak in prayer; you may forget to pray. You may tell a friend you’ll pray for them and then you don’t pray, and the Lord later convicts. Jesus isn’t like that. He is not like that. He never forgets to pray for you, and the Father never forgets to listen to his Son, and the Son never fails to get what he asked for. And what is he asking for? That your faith may not fail. And so, look to Jesus, your great high priest, and look to the Holy Spirit, too.
Look to the Holy Spirit, who I have already said and I trust will be active and involved in the body of Christ here this afternoon. Is it afternoon yet? It will be soon. Alright [chuckle]. See, now you’re looking at your watch, I shouldn’t have done that.
But the Spirit of God is going to be moving through this place, uniting our hearts, drawing us together, taking things that could be dry, dead text on the page. Black and white characters on the page, dusty old doctrines and ideas. They are none of the kind, but rather he makes them alive in your heart and you feel the presence of Christ by the power of the Spirit of God it says in Corinthians. So, the Holy Spirit is not mentioned in this text. In another place in 1st Corinthians He says, “You cannot even say Jesus is Lord, except by the Spirit of God.” So, neither can you celebrate rightly the Lord’s Supper, except by the Spirit of God. So, look to the Father and look to the Son, and look to the Spirit.
VI. Looking Within
We also look within. It’s right for us to look within and be realistic about what is really happening in our life right now. We look within and we examine ourselves. Look what it says, “A man” in Verse 28 “ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup.” You heard Tom read the problems in the Corinthian church, how some were going ahead and gorging themselves, others were getting drunk. There was strife and conflict, and bickering, and difficulties. And what a shameful thing, but you know it isn’t long you’re thinking, “Oh, those bad Corinthians.” Well, that’s not a very fruitful thought, brothers and sisters. What about us, do we not bicker? Do we not quarrel? Do we not lust? Is there not pride in us? Are we living up to the calling that we have received? Are we failing to present our bodies to God as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God? I think some days we do, and I think some days we actually present the members of our body to sin as instruments of wickedness. We ought to repent and I think the Lord’s Supper is a good time to repent.
“Search me, O God and know me. Try me and see if there’s any offensive way in me.” So as the trays are being passed, take the time to do that, say, “Lord, show me my sin, teach me what I’m doing wrong.” And you think, well, this is kind of a morbid introspection. It’s not morbid. Morbid means death producing. It’s actually life-giving to do this kind of introspection, just like the work of a dentist getting that nidus of infection, that bacteria, you got to get it out. We don’t want it in. And so, search me, O God, and you confess your sin and you renounce it, and you turn away from it, and you prepare yourself to receive the holy bread and fruit of the vine; you receive it with a commitment to a holy lifestyle. It may be that some of you need to refrain because you don’t think right now, today, you can partake, you won’t partake in a way worthy of the Lord, it’s possible that the Lord may deal with you in that manner, but not for most of us. I think we look inward, not just to our sin, but we look inward to the fact that we do repent, we hate the sin, we are hungry and thirsting for righteousness.
The Spirit himself is testifying with our spirits that we are children of God and that we should partake. I’ll never forget reading about a Scottish pastor, godly pastor, who was administering the Lord’s supper. There was a young woman there sobbing so deeply and felt such a heaviness in her soul about her sin. He knew her situation, he knew that she was a genuine believer in Christ, he knew what was going on, but she just felt unworthy. He leaned over and whispered into her ear, “Take it, Lassie, it’s for sinners.” You don’t have to be sinless and perfect to take the Lord’s Supper, just confess your sin, and if you confess your sin, He is faithful and just and will forgive you your sin and cleanse you from all unrighteousness. And then partake gladly. It’s meant for sinners. That’s what it’s for.
And so, we look inward, we look inward at our sin, we look inward to faith and repentance into that internal testimony of the Spirit, that we are children of God, and we do all of that to be sure that we are eating in a manner worthy of the Lord. We must look inward.
VII. Looking Down
I’d also like to urge that you look down, just take a minute when you get the bread in your hand and just look at it. I don’t believe in transubstantiation. I think it feels like bread, it smells like bread, and it tastes like bread, because it is bread. That’s it, it’s bread. And Aristotle is not going to help us understand it differently. He may have been a very smart man, but we don’t need any help from him here.
Talking about substance and accidents and how it tastes like bread, but it really is the Body of Christ. It is bread, but it is physical, and Jesus set it up for this reason that we might be mindful that there was a time on this planet in space and time, that there was a body of Christ, and He had actual blood, and that body was nailed to the cross and that blood was shed for you. It was physical, it hurt. It was a real death in your place, keep that in mind when you touch that bread, think about it, look down and look at that element and say, this is physical, it’s not a metaphysical theory that was nailed to the cross that day, it was the body of Jesus. And it says in the Book of Colossians that God redeemed you by Christ’s physical body to present you holy in His sight, because he, in Colossians, is dealing with another heresy there, that Jesus didn’t really actually have a physical body. Yes, he did.
The Lord’s Supper is ordained to help us remember that. It is also good to remember that your hands, as you are holding them someday are going to be remade into the image of Christ’s resurrection body, and you are going to be physical for all eternity, too, remember that. Some day you are going to have a resurrection body. More on that in a moment.
VIII. Looking Around
We also need to look around. As we partake in the Lord’s Supper, I want you to notice as you look around that you are not alone in this room. That’s good. We are very individualistic in this country of ours, we are very individualistic, but the Lord is not saving us into individualism. He is saving us into a marvelous body of Christ, made up of people from every tribe and language and people and nation, from all of the generations of the church. That’s the body of Christ. And how beautiful is that, as we sang earlier, how beautiful is the body of Christ, and so we are drawn together into one body.
It says in Verse 33, “So then, my brothers, when you come together to eat, wait for each other.” So, when the dish goes past, we take and we wait, we wait until we are all ready to eat together. And because it says in 1 Corinthians 10:17, “Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf,” and Jesus said, “Drink from it all of you.” So, there’s a sense of unity and a fellowship, there’s a fellowship together.
When we look around, not just to the believers, but we look around to the unbelievers. There are unbelievers watching. Look at Verse 26, “For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.” We preach the Gospel until He comes. Just by doing this, the church is by acting out this drama, we are in some sense preaching the Gospel to an unbelieving world.
Now, a pastor, if he is wise and does a good job at this moment, will urge people who are in this sanctuary who have not repented and trusted in Christ, to not partake of the Lord’s Supper, for then you would be eating and drinking judgment on yourself. And we are urging people who are Gospel hypocrites, who the Spirit of God is not testifying with their spirits that they are children of God, but they go through the church motions and they are fooling everyone, but they are not fooling God, we are urging them not to partake.
We are proclaiming the Lord’s death, but you know even here, I want to speak to you, if you have not been converted, there is a Gospel for you. Though you ought not to take from the bread and the juice today, you can partake of something far better today, and that is faith to the salvation of your soul, that you can have today. For Jesus Christ died on the cross in the place of sinners just like you. He shed His blood, paying the penalty that God demands for your sin. It is available simply by repenting and trusting in Him, you can have full forgiveness of sins for your soul right now. You don’t need anything else. Just hear and believe the Gospel and you can be forgiven. So, we look around to an unbelieving world as we do this, and we proclaim the Lord’s death.
IX. Looking Forward
Finally, we look forward. We look forward. Are you looking forward? I am looking forward. I am looking forward to the second coming of Christ. We proclaim the Lord’s death until He what? Until He comes. He’s coming back, Revelation 19, He’s coming back with the armies of heaven. He’s coming back, riding on a horse. He’s coming back, conquering, and to conquer. He’s coming back to set up an eternal kingdom.. And there is written on Him, the name King of kings and Lord of lords, He is coming back. And we are nearer to that day now than when I began this sermon and then the day you first believe, we are getting closer and closer to the second coming of Christ, and these are just homely symbols of a future feast that we’re going to have in the presence of the almighty God.
We are going to eat with Him, we are going to feast with Him. This is not really a physical feast, you know that, don’t you? It may be and ought to be a spiritual feast, but we are looking ahead to a physical and spiritual kingdom, and we will sit at table with God Almighty, and we will look at him in the face, and we will look to the left and the right, and we will see, as Jesus said in Matthew 8, “Many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.”
It’s coming, and we get to sit there through faith in Christ, we’re looking ahead to that, anticipating it, we’re looking ahead best of all to our final future salvation through the resurrection of the body. There is a banquet that Christ will lay for us, that is the resurrection of the body, listen to Isaiah 25:6-8, “On this mountain the Lord Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples, a banquet of aged wine−the best of meats and the finest of wines. On this mountain he will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations; he will swallow up death forever.”
That’s a feast I can’t wait for. To be free from death and mourning and crying and pain, and to be in a body that will never perish. That’s the future, and we proclaim that by the Lord’s Supper.
So, we look back in remembrance of the Passover and the night that Jesus was betrayed to Jesus’s body, broken and His blood shed into our personal faith in Christ. We look up, in dependence on God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. We look inward to our own sinfulness and to repentance and faith into that internal testimony of the Spirit that we are children of God. We look down at the elements that we’re holding reminding ourselves that the physical body and blood of Christ were given for us that we might have eternal life. And we look around in commitment to the body of Christ, that we are members together of one body and to an unbelieving and watching world that to whom we proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes. And we look ahead and hope to the second coming of Christ and to the great resurrection day, when we will eat and drink anew in our Father’s kingdom. Won’t you pray with me?
