Yeah, when you got to Atlanta on 285, so, you know
Well, turn three of your Bibles the first Corinthians 11 looking at verse 17 The bulletin has in there that we're gonna do a 10 keys unwrapping a spiritual gift Mike Osborne did that one last week You did a fine job so I see no need to repeat that we're starting a new series this morning and it's out in your outline That explaining about that and where we're going but this morning talking about communion and there's a great Mystery when we come to the Lord's Supper and it's easy for us to come to Lord's table each each month and simply go through the motions and My goal here is to at least make you aware of the mystery and we're gonna be diving to some things They're pretty deep as we look at the mystery of the Lord's Supper, so I encourage you to pray and and Do your best to stay with us as we look at the word together. Let's turn together to first Corinthians chapter 11 beginning with verse 17 This is God's word In the following directives I have no praise for you for your meetings do more harm than good and the first place I hear that when you come together as a church there are divisions among you and to some extent I believe it no doubt There have to be differences among you to show which of you have God's approval when you come together It is not the Lord's Supper you eat whereas you eat each of you goes ahead without waiting for anybody else one Remains hungry another gets drunk don't you have homes to eat and drink in or you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing What shall I say to you shall I praise you for this? Certainly not far received from the Lord when I also passed on to you The Lord Jesus on the night he has betrayed took bread and when he had given thanks he broke it and said This is my body which is for you do this and remembrance of me and 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 and remembrance of me Whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes Therefore whoever eats the bread or bread or drinks at the cup of the Lord in an unwirly manner Will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord a man ought to examine himself before he eats 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 But if we judge ourselves we would not come under judgment when we are judged by the Lord We are being disciplined so that we will not be condemned with the world So then my brothers when you come together to eat wait for each other if anyone is hungry He should eat at home so that when you meet together and may not result in judgment and when I come I'll give further directions This is God's holy and inspired word well as you can tell from the the verses there How they are we're getting together for the Lord's Supper and they were doing it all wrong to such a degree The Paul said it was no longer even the Lord's Supper and we're going to talk about what that means in just a moment But first we can look at what does the Lord's Supper mean because Paul explains this and correcting them So we're looking at our outline that's in your bulletin and on the screen the first point we see is the mystery of our union with Christ The mystery of our union with Christ we're going to talk a lot about mysteries this morning And so if you leave a bit a bit days not being able to put your arms around all of it That's a good thing and some ways we've tried to take the mystery too much out of communion and so one of our Gold through this morning to put a little bit of it back with a large Supper which is also called communion or the Eucharist is the gospel and pictures In it we're reminded that Christ in his body bore the punishment for our sins and that by shedding his blood He cleanses us of our sins through washing up his blood and so we're reminded of the gospel But the as we think about that and think about that picture. It is a rather graphic picture You're you have bread representing someone's body. You have wine representing someone's blood But even more graphing and probably the strangest part of the entire ceremony is not merely the having a flesh and the having a blood But that we take the flesh we take the bread and we eat it and we take the wine Which represents the blood of Christ and we drink it and and it's a rather graphic and rather gruesome Sacrament because symbolically we're eating Christ flesh and drinking his blood and and it doesn't sound like something good Christians off to do It doesn't sound that sound normal But but it's an important part of the sacrament because by eating the bread and drinking the wine We show that we are Sharing in or participating in the body of Christ and by doing this we're showing a great mystery And here's the mystery the mystery is that as Christians we are united to Christ We are we are united to him and this union with Christ is essential to our salvation unless somehow We share in the body of Christ unless somehow his body becomes our body We cannot be saved and so here's the mystery and let me let me let's go about it this way Think about this. How can Christ death and his life mean anything for you? How can an innocent man die for a guilty man? And how can a guilty person receive the credit for what the innocent man has done? How does that work? For example, if I were to commit murder and you were a good enough friend of mine that you say no I want to go to the electric chair for Mark and you go before the judge and say judge I want you know This is this principle called substitutionary atonement and I want to offer myself as a substitute for Mark and the electric chair the judge would say No, he would never let you do such a thing. He'd say you need to have your head examined You need to go by and go go to the hospital check it out But he would never allow that to happen. Why? It wouldn't be just the guilty has to pay for the crime by the same token Let's say you won the Nobel Peace Prize and you gave me the Nobel Peace Prize now I could keep the prize, but I could never be a Nobel Peace Prize winner It is still yours you still earned it and you cannot credit what you did to earn that To me, and so how in the world then can God credit us with price righteousness? How can God also credit Christ with our guilt? Well here's where the mystery comes in the Bible says that as a Christian here Here's two phrases that are used a lot that we skim over quite often that as a Christian you are in Christ and That Christ is in you now What does that mean that you are in Christ and Christ is in you it's pointing to a great mystery That when you became a Christian That the Holy Spirit comes into you and you you become literally the temple of the Holy Spirit and and the the Holy Spirit by Being in you Christ is in you and there's a sense in which Christ truly dwells in you Christ is in you Through the ministry of the Holy Spirit and also by the Holy Spirit You are in a real sense united to Christ and you are in Christ and and so therefore As you think about this if Christ is in you That means then what you do in your body Christ has done and Christ is doing and so therefore since Christ Your body is now Christ's body all the guilt of your sin has now become his it also means that as Christians That whenever we do in your our body you do with Christ now there are some serious implications of this One of them is as a Christian your sin as a Christian is actually more serious than a sin of a non-Christian Not less serious is actually more serious because whatever you do in your body You take Christ into that act Paul has as a graphic graphic picture of this and and first Corinthians chapter six And first Corinthians chapter six he puts it this way and and I would like to find a way to put this milder But this is the way he explains it. He says if a man Unites himself to a prostitute Because he is united to Christ what he is doing is he is uniting Christ to that prostitute and And that that's as gross a picture as you can get But probably the point is he's getting across is is you are not your own your body is Christ and what you do in your body You bring bring Christ into that act and so it's Christians It's it's to us. That should be a renewed call the holiness and saying do I want to engage Christ in this immorality Do I want to bring him into this because I am in Christ and and Christ is in me and therefore when when Jesus died on the cross He could die for our sins because our sins have literally become his sins Second Corinthians five twenty-one says this God made him who you know sin to become sin on our behalf So that we might become the righteousness of God So because Christ is in us all the sins that we have done in our body are his sins and by the same token Because we are in Christ all that he has done in his body as ours the body that lived the perfect life and Earned honor from the father is our body the body that blood on the cross and suffer the punishment for sins is our body The body that rose again from the dead and now sits at the right hand of God the father Almighty is our body And in order for the works of his body to benefit us we must share in his body And so what we're doing when we put take of the bread We're saying we're saying we're his body has become our body We're showing a participation a sharing in the body the Lord's suffer then shows that mystery Now that that's a great mystery It's one that you can't get your arms around one theologian John Calvin says the mystery of our union with Christ as Difficult to understand as is the incarnation itself and so as we come to Lord's suffer We need to come and simply not simply say this represents the body of Christ who died for me But we also need to understand there's something mysterious going on here It also represents the fact that I share in that body through the Holy Spirit So that's the mystery of our union with Christ introducing the mystery not solving the mystery marvel at the mystery There's a second mystery though that they isn't communion as well. It's the mystery of our union with the church the mystery of our union with the church Now one of the distressing trends of modern Christianity is our tendency to view our relationship with God and purely personal terms We talk about having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ now that's that is that is accurate That's a good thing But the problem is we oftentimes think of it as purely a personal relationship as if our relationship with God can simply be Me and Jesus well the Bible never pictures Christianity that way It's never simply about you and Jesus It's also it's about you and the body of Christ in Jesus you and the church in Jesus when you Become united to Jesus Christ through faith you not only in counter God as an individual, but you encounter God As a part of a community as a part of a family as a part of the body of Christ And so you enter into a relationship with God, but you also enter into a relationship with others now Here's the problem and we see in first Corinthians you notice Paul starts off with with a sort of a Harsh tone not sort of a harsh tone. They extremely harsh tone He says says you're getting together and you're celebrating the Lord suffer and I'm not gonna praise you for what you're doing You're making a mockery of it. Why? Here's what happened The church of Corinth Corinth was a was was St. New Orleans and you get a picture of Corinth and It's just a just a wild place and as people come to Christ and and they they brought a lot of their New Orleans baggage with them And and so here they come they're coming into the church Well, then they started to be divisions within the church little groups and and this group didn't like that group And that group didn't like this group and some of them had their divisions along doctrinal lines But sometimes they're along social and economic lines as well And so what would happen is when they get together for the Lord suffer They wouldn't simply celebrate communion as we do it that have what was called an agape feast plus the Lord suffer It was kind of like a cover dish dinner with communion bread and wine And what would happen is the rich people would be over here and they would bring all their food and they'd eat all our food And they wouldn't share with the poor over there And so the richer are are leaving just bloated and Paul says to the point they're passing out a Communion bottle so much that they're leaving drunk and some people are getting drunk off the communion wine over here And the poor are leaving hungry now Imagine yourself as one of the poor you're coming here and it's a cover dish dinner and you have no food and here's this group over here Just having a great time and you get to watch and That was essentially what was going on and Paul says you don't get it You don't get it. That is not what the Lord suffer is about the Lord suffer is Is not about you coming and enjoying your friends the church is not about you coming and enjoying your friends The church is about being the body of Christ You're united to one another you're connected with one another and Paul says In fact, if you turn back to the last chapter chapter 10 verse 17 He says for we though many are one bread and one body for we all partake of that one bread What he's saying is when you come together the Lord suffer not only does the bread represent the body of Christ But we're all sharing in the same body You know unfortunately we can't illustrate that with our communion services as well The ideal way to illustrate it would be to have one loaf of bread and we all break off of that one loaf You can't do it when you have three services and so on but it's the the point is that we all share in the same loaf We're all connected with one another and so when you became a Christian You're not only I became united to Jesus Christ But you came united with everyone else now here's the problem the problem is that we're all a bunch of sinners And then we're gonna do things that are gonna be offensive to one another and and and hurt one another and yet So and yet we're supposed to live with one another as we live together in the body of Christ And so what what what the Lord's table is supposed to symbolize is not only that we have been forgiven by God But our continual need to forgive one another and so the Lord's table symbolizes that in fact It's such an important aspect of the Lord's suffer when you come together the Lord's suffer You are saying not only I am one with Christ You're also saying I am one with your body which is the church and that is such an important aspect that Paul says that the Corinthian church was being judged by God for their for their divisions in the body look at Verse 27 again 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 verse 29 Anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgment on himself Now the two different ways in which you can take coming to the Lord's table in an unworthy manner This this is critical. This is important Two different ways one is you can come to Lord's table and treat it in a cavalier way in other words You treat it as as mere symbols. It's just you know You look at it as merely bread and merely wine that represents something and therefore, you know It's just bread and you treat it in a cavalier way and you don't treat it as holy and and to do that is the disregard the very thing It represents which is Christ himself You're treating Christ as unholy at that point But the way the Corinthians were doing this and this is the second point is not recognizing the body of the Lord By not recognizing the body of the Lord the context is not talking about the physical body of the Lord is talking about the church Whenever you don't recognize those in the church properly He says you're not recognizing the body of the Lord and because of that judgment was coming upon them And so what he's saying is as we come to the Lord's table the thing that we need to be cautious about more than anything else It's first of all recognize it's high and holy but also treated as high and holy by treating one another with the proper respect Not with divisions within the church. You cannot love the Lord and and not also love his body Which is the church you cannot be united to Christ without also being united to all who are united to him Therefore the table should never be a means by which we exclude God's people But always a means by which we include and the church should never be a place where we exclude others But should always be a place where we include Well, that leads us now to our third point the meaning of the symbols You look to the mystery you see the great mystery the mystery is somehow you are organically united to Christ and somehow We are organically united to each other. We are truly one with one another What do the symbols then mean? Well, establishing the Lord's Supper Jesus did not choose bread and wine simply because they were convenient Now they're there for the Passover. What can I use? What can I find? He didn't do that He used bread and wine for great purposes and there's an insert in your bulletin That explains in more detail What what those symbols mean? And you can you can take that out and look at it We're not going to go into all of that But quickly let me say the bread obviously represents the body of Christ But why did Jesus choose bread to represent the body of Christ and and there's several reasons one is because of the bread a Bread of the Passover the unleavened bread The second though is that bread is the staple of life It's what gives us life Jesus himself said that he was the bread of heaven the bread of life And when we take of the bread what we're saying is that the body of Christ without the body of Christ I cannot live he is the source of my life The wine by the same token you can't you can't replace wine with any other bread beverage You know you can't simply say I'm gonna have crackers and coke and call it communion It won't work and the reason is is because Christ ordained that wine be used a wine Well again wine you look at it has the redness of blood it reminds you of the blood of Christ that has been shed But wine also has other properties throughout throughout scripture wine is a is a symbol of blessing It's a it's it's called the cup of blessing when you would drink what would happen the Passover and at other occasions You would bless the cup and then when you drank the cup you're receiving the blessing and so wine is a symbol of blessing Wine is a symbol of celebration throughout the prophets they talk about the day When the kingdom of God comes in its fullness and there'll be a time of a great prosperity and great celebration The way the prophets paint the picture will be a time when the when the hills drift with aged wine and so wine is is an appropriate symbol And it's a symbol where to use and celebrating the Lord suffer But the bread and the wine are not mere symbols. There's more to the mystery than that and this passage Jesus says that the bread is is his body and the cup of the wine we drink is the new covenant in its blood now these words Have caused some tremendous controversy over the years over the centuries Thousands and literally over a thousand years people have argued about what does this mean? Jesus said this is my body. What does that mean and and I'm not trying to bash other traditions But I'm gonna illustrate some different points and I have to bring out what other traditions believe about this For example the Catholic Church has taken that very literally and it says when Jesus said This is my body the bread literally is the body of Christ and what the Catholic Church has said is when the priest Blesses the the table that the bread is is changes and it's substance It's called transubstantiation and the bread at the point of blessing literally becomes the body of Christ and And so therefore it is to be treated very very sacred It's called the host because it is literally the body of Christ It is no longer merely bread now Some people who came along and said well wait a second it looks like bread It feels like bread and it tastes like bread. How can it be the body of Christ and and so Thomas Aquinas The the great saint of the Catholic Church He said well he borrowed some categories of Aristotle and he said well It has the outward properties of bread, but in its essence it is the body of Christ I Don't quite understand that either but Thomas Aquinas explained it much better than I just did and so he said it has the properties And but it says any distinguishes between the properties of something it's taste its appearance its characteristics from the substance So he said in substance is the body of Christ but in characteristics it's still bread and And then later on what happens the reformers came along and said wait a second There's some problems with this view besides the substance and properties bit There's some problems the first problem is if you say that the bread literally is the body of Christ Then that means every time you're celebrating the Lord suffer you're Re-sacrificing Christ and that is literally what the mass is each each time you celebrate the mass You're re-sacrificing Christ and and and you can't do that because Christ has been sacrificed once and all for soons For soons the re-sacrificing every week would be to minimize his sacrifice on the cross the other problem is Where is Jesus body right now? Where's his body? It's in heaven. Jesus still has a human body and it is and is a human body is the body that paid for on the cross And and rose again for the dead and it is in heaven and it is a human body and as a true human body It cannot take on divine properties Which means it can only be one place at one time if you have a human body that is here and in Geneva and in Rome And in Tallahassee all the same time. It's no longer a human body It can't be a human body if Christ human body can only be one place at one time or else it ceases to be human and Christ ceases to be truly human and truly divine which would be a you know a violation of his nature So they said that they can't be the case. He only has one body and his body is now in heaven well So then what happened to some of the Protestants said well then the bread is merely a symbol a Christ body and the wine is merely a symbol of Christ blood and that they They are mere symbols and don't have any meaning beyond that But that seemed to go too far because because Christ himself identifies himself with the body as we said in verse 1 Corinthians 10 16 Paul says that when you participate in communion you're truly sharing in the body and the blood of Christ Another way of saying you're literally a participating in the body in Christ body and his blood And so when you eat the bread and drink the wine and faith You're truly feeding on Christ in a spiritual way Christ is spiritually present with us and the Lord's Supper and his Spiritual presence is just as real to us as the physical presence of the bread and the wine now Here's the mystery when you come to the Lord's table Christ is truly here as the bread is truly in your hand Christ is spiritually truly here and here's the great part of the mystery As we take of the Lord's Supper and celebrate it together we are in a sense spiritually united to that physical body of Christ Which is in heaven which died for us and rose again for us and so there's a real mystery that takes place And that's why Paul says you can't treat the bread merely as bread and you can't treat the wine merely as wine to do so Is to dishonor the Lord and so the Lord's Supper and it's not a mere symbol of the gospel It's a sign and a seal of the gospel promises Here's the gospel God promises that everyone who puts their faith in Jesus Christ that Christ death and his life is resurrection will be counted to your account And so that means you will be saved so God has made a promise He says if you believe in Jesus you will be saved based on the work of Jesus Christ now you ever doubt that promise You ever question whether or not God is going to be faithful to you to the end Do you ever question whether or not God is going to keep this promise to save you do you ever question whether or not He's going to be faithful to the end I do Don't don't do you ever struggle doubts at all about God's love for you that he's going to be faithful I do we do right You're afraid to say yes because it's church. You didn't want anybody to know that you doubt it everybody hear doubts Everybody hear doubts and so what God does he gave us a sign and a seal of the promise What does that mean? Let me give you an example this way. Let's say that this morning I'm pulling out of the parking lot and I back into your car And you get an estimate and it's going to cost a thousand dollars to fix your car And I don't have a thousand dollars right now So I say in two months I will give you the thousand dollars. I promise you How do you feel about that? My think okay. Mark seems like an honest guy. I think you'll keep his promise. I think And so you know and so you probably believe but you can be a little anxious particularly the longer the two months goes on You don't hear from me and so you know what would make you feel more confident that I would give you the thousand dollars Write it write it down and and so if I write it down and I sign it and I say and it and even better yet If I get it notarized and say I will pay you a thousand dollars and two months, you know, you might still have your doubts But at least you say I've got this sheet of paper You know, I've got I've got I've got a contract. There's a covenant. There's been established between us And I've got I've got a paper signifying that contract or that covenant Well god does the same thing in the Lord suffer He has made a promise to us to save us. He's made a covenant with us And he's put that covenant and he signed that covenant with another which means he's put his seal upon it This is I signed that piece of paper saying I owe you a thousand dollars I'm putting my seal upon it God puts his seal upon his covenant promise to us and when we come to the Lord suffer that has got sealing his promise to save us And it's also a sign and let me illustrate the difference in the sign is seal these two ways when when I got married Now I could have just getting gotten married and told Trisha and said hey, you know, we don't need a sheet of paper We don't need rings I promise to love you you promised to love me and let's just kind of you know leave it that forget the paper forget the rings She didn't go for that idea. No, I didn't really propose that But there's something important about the paper and the ring The ring is you know having a ring does not make you married You can go to any jewelry store and buy this ring and a dent cost you all that much And you can do that But this ring has real value because it's a sign of a vow that both she and I took And so there's significance to the ring it's a sign of something The marriage license that we have in our filing cabinet at home has my signature her signature of pastor signature The best man signature the mate made of honor signature now that's just a piece of paper No, it's not just a piece of paper. It has real value because on there We have attested by witnesses signed and sealed that we made a vow to one another it is a covenant And so you can't simply say well the ring is just a piece of metal the the the the Marriage contract is marriage license is just a piece of paper. No, they're not They have real value in the same way the Lord's table You can't say well, it's just a sign and it's just a symbol. It's more than that It is the ring and it is the marriage license between us and our Lord It is the covenant sign just like this ring is a covenant sign And it is the covenant seal and it's God's signature on his promises to us And so that's why we come to Lord's table and we do it once a month because each month we need to say God are you going to be faithful and every month he comes and says look at your ring Look at the contract look at the promises I have made You know other people have broken their contract with you other people have been faithless with you But I will never be faithless. I will always keep my promises to you And so every month we're reminded of the promises of God every month we come and we say Lord You know tell me again about your love for me Tell me again so that I can live confidently in this world and walk faithfully with you That that's why we come and that's the importance of the suffer. It's a reminder of the promises of God It's a sign and seal of his promises Now as we come to Lord's table and you ask you to take out In the sheet once again. What do you do? How do you prepare yourself? Well Paul warns us not to come before the table in an unworthy manner And so the first thing that we suggest you do in this that's on the back suggestions for celebrating the Lord's suffer First thing we encourage you to do even as we're singing this next song Take some time to confess Confess before God and say Lord I know you're holy and I know I'm not but I thank you the Christ died for my sin And confess to him the ways that you have have violated his commands that you have not confessed before him Confest him areas of your life Uh, where you are not living in faith Confess him those things are people that you treasure more than him the good things that you do in attempt to earn his favor Hey, confess those things and confess the the sins of 1 Corinthians 11 As he mentioned there and he's addressing the body there And then as the bread comes by and this is just a suggestion As you you're holding the bread there in this time for silent meditation Think about how the sins that you've confessed have been laid on the body of Christ and that there truly are his sins now That he has borne them for you on the cross and think about how Christ has given his body for you And how his body has now become your bread your source of life And as the wine comes and you're holding the wine Close your eyes and meditate on that how much God loves you the Christ which shed his very blood for you And meditate on the fact that God promises as he gives you that wine Jesus said we're to celebrate this sufferer and to drink this cup until he comes and remember that great promise That life will not be like this always But one day the promise will come to fulfillment one day We won't need the contract anymore because we'll have Christ with us face to face So take this time to renew your covenant vows before God as you remember his covenant vows to you the sacrament Let's pray Father, we do thank you That you have been low to our weakness and faith How we we struggle to believe your promises And what we thank you that you've given us here reminders of those promises So Lord, we pray that we would not forget We pray that as we protect the bread and protect the wine that we would remember How you have promised to be faithful to us and that therefore we will live as those who know that they are loved We pray this in Christ today