The title of the sermon this morning, is there anything for supper? I calculate that these words and that question probably crossed my lips about 5,000 times before I went off to college. It was the question I invariably asked my mother who was substantial and strong women strong enough to tolerate the frustrations of having me as one of her sons. The night after night I would ask the same question, is there anything for supper? Meaning by that question you understand not is the food in the house, but did you buy me your much loved son, something special for supper? And I almost invariably find that question haunting me whenever I come to the Lord's table. Is there anything for supper? Let's just say, is there anything here for me apart from a piece of bread and a sip of wine? That was the question in a sense that the apostle Paul was answering when he wrote this part of his first letter to the Corinthians. He was of course writing to a church that was in deep disorder and thankfully for a moment we can leave that disorder to assign. But as a sole characteristic of Paul, whenever he finds disorder in an individual's Christian life or in the life of a whole Christian community, he brings them back to the basic foundation stones to the central things in the gospel. And because part of the divisiveness in the church of Corinth, part of the dysfunction, and to do with the way in which they were celebrating the Lord's supper, this is what he does also here. He brings them all back to the center. He asks the question, don't you realize my dear Christian brothers and sisters, don't you realize what there is fear for supper whenever you come to the Lord's table, which lay apparently accelerated in the context of an entire church meal? And I want to briefly to notice this morning some of the headlines that Paul underscores for us. This seemed to me to be particularly helpful in helping me to focus my mind as I come to the Lord's table as I take the bread and I take the wine to help the answer the question, what is there fear for my spiritual supper? The first word that the apostle uses actually in chapter 10 verse 16 is the word benediction. The top in the Lord's supper he says is the top of divine benediction or as we have it in our translation, the top of divine blessing. When we come to the Lord's table, the Lord Jesus gives us his blessing. Bless is one of those words that we relatively infrequently use. In fact, I think the only context most of us use it outside of our religious context is when somebody sneezes and we say instinctively in response to them, bless you. We may not even know who they are but we say bless you. And in a very interesting way, it's exactly that use of the expression bless you that helps us to understand what Paul is speaking about here because that expression comes from the days of the great plague in medieval Europe. When one of the signs that somebody might have the dreaded plague, the black death, for example, was what they would sneeze. And so because people believed in medieval days that the plague was a sign of the judgment of God upon the people and perhaps even an individual sign that this person was under the judgment curse of God, they instinctively offered a prayer. Bless you, really may God in heaven bless you rather than curse you. And this is precisely what Paul has in mind when he says when the cup is given to you by the Lord Jesus, this is the cup of blessing. And he is probably remembering the time when Jesus in the first occasion gave the cup of blessing and the Passover meal to his disciples as he inaugurated the Lord's Supper and said, take this cup, it is the cup of blessing, it's the cup of fellowship with God, it's the cup of peace with God, it's the cup of salvation that I'm giving to you. And then you remember within the hour he went out into the garden of God's ceremony and he engaged in a kind of dialogue with his father about another cup, which the prophets had often spoken about and described it as the cup of the wrath of God, the judgment of God, but the passing who is granted would experience the curse of God. And so in those few hours our Lord Jesus was giving a kind of symbolic presentation of the gospel to his disciples. He takes from his father's hands the cup of divine cursing he gives to his disciples the cup of divine blessing and salvation. Just as Paul would later say, our Lord Jesus Christ on the cross became a curse for us in order that the blessing earlier promised through Abraham might come to us. So as we come to the Lord's table, we come in our sinfulness and our consciousness that we deserve the judgment. Yes, we deserve the curse of God and we reach out our hands to the Savior who says, I have taken the judgment first that you deserve and now I press into your hands the cup of blessing. It is a benediction. But the Apostle Paul also goes on to say that the Lord suffered as a sign of communion or participation. It's not the bread that we break communion and the body of Christ is not the wine that we drink communion in the blood of Christ. It isn't that we have communion with bread or communion with wine. It's not this bread and this wine are as the gifts of Jesus Christ that is Jesus Christ who is serving us Himself by His Spirit at the supper and He gives to us these signs of His love for us how much He has loved us, the bread is broken, how much He has loved us that He has poured out His precious life blood on the cross for us and Jesus Himself comes to us, the elders who serve you, those who sit around you in the pews who will also serve you, they are the hands as it were of the body of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is Jesus Himself who wants to have communion with you. That is why those words, famous words from Revelation chapter 3 and all likely who I suspect have got to do with the communion service, behold I stand at the door and not if anyone hears my voice and rises and opens the door I will come into Him and I will sat with Him and He with me. This is our Lord Jesus Christ breaking the bread, pressing round the wine and saying come to me, trusting me, loving me, communion with me. Then you notice what Paul says when he comes to that rather dark section of dealing with paid infestibles and idolatry, that Paul also underlines the Lord's Father is a time for consecration. He says, you cannot come to the Lord's table and then go out into the world and behave as though you had never been there. You cannot come to the Lord's table and then go to other tables where Christ is denied and where Christ is denied. Why? Because in coming to the Lord's table you have had communion with the Lord Jesus. You have said to the Lord Jesus, nothing in my hand so I bring simply to you across, I cling, take me as I am Lord Jesus and make me like yourself. That's what communion with Jesus means and so communion with Jesus can only take place where there is consecration to Jesus. So when we come and we take the bread in our hand, we don't even have the order of service in that hand. We don't have our handbags and our purses and our wallets in our hands. We don't have anything that we have accomplished in our hands. We have absolutely nothing in our hands because we are saying, Lord Jesus Christ, I give myself without reservation without ties exclusively to you. So we say to him, Lord Jesus, if at all I love you, Lord Jesus, take my life and let it be consecrated, Lord, to be, take my moments and my days, let them low in ceaseless praise, take my voice, take my lips, take my silver, take my gold, not a might, would I withhold, I am yours, Lord Jesus. So it is wonderfully a sign of our communion with the Lord Jesus Christ. It is marvelously a sign of our consecration to Jesus Christ. Then you notice how Paul also says that this supper is a time for the proclamation of Jesus Christ. Whenever we do this, he says, whenever we break the bread, whenever we drink the wine, we proclaim the Lord's death. It doesn't mean by that incidentally, just that whenever we have the Lord suffer, there ought to be a salmon. He means the Lord's suffer is the salmon. The salmon that we hear with our ears now becomes visible before our eyes, bread that we take, wine that has been poured out for us to drink. What is it? It's a proclamation of the Lord's death. We see it with our eyes. Paul says in lamentation to the Galatians, who had wondered away from us all, foolish Galatians, he says, who has deceived you? Why are you turning away from Jesus only as you are? Who has deceived you before whose eyes Jesus was publicly portrayed as crucify? So you see a stranger came among us and sat down with you in nothing of the Christian faith and said, what will happen here? What's this at the front of the church, that bread I see, that goblet of wine I see? What would we say to them? We would say, what? Listen and watch. And what would they see? They would see this little drama of Jesus' body being broken on the cross. What does that mean? It means that Jesus died on the cross for our sins and shed His blood for our sins. But why are the elders bringing those signs to you? What are you now doing? Oh, we are saying that since the first part of the gospel is that Christ has died for my sins, the second part of the gospel is that He says, come to me, you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Come and rest upon me, and as you see us taking the bread and the wine, we are saying to the Lord Jesus, Lord Jesus, I need your body broken for me on the cross and your blood shed to pardon all of my sins. And Lord Jesus, I give myself to you now because it's true for me. And then finally Paul says, that the Lord's supper is an occasion of great anticipation. It's the time of benediction, it's the time of communion, it's the time of consecration, it's the time of proclamation, and all thank God, it's the time of anticipation. Whenever you do this, every time you do this, He says, wherever you do it, it's been happening in all kinds of places throughout the centuries. Whenever you do this, He says, you remember the Lord today until He comes again. Some of you will know that that great American tradition of the marriage rehearsal dinner is not one that we happen to share in Scotland, but it's one I think I want to export to Scotland, definitely for Christians, because it's such a beautiful illustration of what we are doing here at the Lord's table. Why is the wine such a little shit? Why is the bread so small? It's because this isn't the final supper, that's why these are just dates on the way. This is a meal to sustain you in the pilgrimage. Until that day when the pilgrimage is done, as it is done for some who at our last communion sat beside us. And that last communion has become the fourth place of the marriage supper of the Lamb in which they share the banquet feast of the Lamb of God. Here, if I can put it this way, here we see Jesus through these simple signs of bread and wine, but there we will see Jesus face to face and be made like in forever in the final glorious celebration of everything He has done for us. And so He says to us, when we are weary and when we are faint and when tragedy comes into our lives, and when we are in darkness and when we are perplexed, come to me, you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Is there anything for supper? Are there friends that is afraid for supper? Because Jesus is here and Jesus is my supper. Our Heavenly Father, as we come together to this table and remember all that our Lord Jesus Christ has done for us. That's our hearts and prepare those hearts which we bring through you in these moments to give themselves without reserve to our Lord Jesus Christ who has given himself for us in this great name. We pray.